We’ve bought our Christmas tree at Scottsdale Farms the last few years, ever since the Lions Club stopped selling discount trees in a strip mall parking lot between Cici’s Pizza and Performance Bicycle.

Per its website, Scottsdale Farms is a 65-acre plant nursery and 12,000 square foot barn where they house and sell furniture and home décor, local art, clothing, jewelry, and other seasonal stuff like candles, ornaments, artificial trees.  It’s a grand place.

Standing in the ‘Enchanted Tree Forest’ just outside the big barn and a few steps from the penned chickens (Do Not Touch – They Peck) and pigs, a helper told us that the $$$ tree my wife thought was nice and full was the ‘Labradoodle’ of trees.

“Are you allergic to Christmas trees?” the helper asked.

“Yes, I am,” my wife said enthusiastically.

“Then this is the tree for you.”

I half-expected the helper to lift the tree, drop it, to show how all the needles would refrain from falling off, not forming a ring of needles around the base of the tree.

This was news to me – my wife’s Xmas tree allergy – surprising me so much, I laughed at the whole notion: non-allergenic trees.  Preposterous!

I thought some more.  A Christmas tree is, after all, a tree; trees release pollen; pollen makes you sneeze; therefore, a Christmas tree makes you sneeze.  This is the kind of not-so-stunning revelation that makes me feel allergic to smart.

Then again, whoa.  Am I to believe trees release pollen even after they’re cut?  Let’s say yes, isn’t it greatly reduced? Besides, it’s nearly December, hardly pollen season.

Who’s breeding these trees, documenting their allergenic traits?  Or did I just fall prey to Sales & Marketing 101? A designer tree is pricier, so it must be better, more appealing than a humdrum, un-designed, pollen-dropping, sneeze-inducing normal tree.  Right?

The man credited for cross-breeding the first Labradoodle deeply regrets it.  He tells the story of how the first Labradoodle came to be here, if you’re interested: Psychology Today – Labradoodle Article .

His regrets include, but are not limited to: coats that still produce allergies, eye problems, hip and elbow problems, epilepsy, fits, untrainable dogs, crazy dogs – all still being sold at top dollar by unethical ‘backyard breeders’.  Ultimately, a diminishment of value for pure breeds in favor of a marketing term: designer dogs.

The Labradoodle of firs (I’ve narrowed it down to Fraser, Noble, or Nordmann) is now standing tall after one day of listing slightly as viewed from one particular angle.  With Cheryl’s help, I loosened the tree stand’s screws, repositioned the fir, then re-tightened the screws. Day two, still upright, darn near vertical.

It looks great, so robust and full it practically engulfs and hides the ornaments.

I was just about to think the $$$ worth it when my wife asks if I could smell the tree.

“I don’t smell anything either,” she said, disappointed.

Did I mention what my wife wants for Christmas?  A dog.

Today, I went into the attic to look for someone else’s inspiration.

Yesterday, a sales rep from our pest service (not the guy that actually sprays, who’d arrived minutes earlier, but the guy that sells, who happens to look just like the guy that sprays) inspected our attic for critters.  The purpose of his visit, he said, “See if there’s anything we’re missing.”

“Ok, sure,” I said, suddenly concerned that raccoons had quietly set up shop, living it up in our attic without us knowing.

The next five minutes of fear went unrealized.  “Your house looks great,” the sales rep said, “But I might suggest more insulation, save you some money, it’s specially treated with insecticide.”

I went up looking for one particular book in a box of books.  I don’t like having my books in boxes in the attic, but my bookshelves are overflowing.  I reluctantly boxed about fifty or eighty a couple years ago and remembered one of the boxed genres, science-fiction, really old sci-fi I hadn’t read in thirty years.  I was looking for a story by Harlan Ellison, Shatterday.

I’ve been paying attention to blogs lately – their themes, format, and content and one in particular, Neil Gaiman’s, a British science fiction and fantasy novelist, wrote in his blog about Harlan Ellison and a story, Shatterday, that inspired and convinced him he could write for a living.

I thought maybe years ago I’d read the story.  (And I wondered, how could I have read this and not been inspired too?)  No Shatterday, but I found a collection of Harlan Ellison short stories called Alone Against Tomorrow.  The introduction, written by Ellison in 1970, states the theme unifying the collection: alienation.

Ellison writes, “The explanation for racial strife, random violence, mass madness, the rape of our planet.  Man feels cut off.  He feels denied.  He feels alone.  He is alienated.”  Ellison quotes Oscar Wilde: “To reject one’s own experiences is to arrest one’s own development.  To deny one’s own experience is to put a lie into the lips of one’s own life.  It is no less than a denial of the Soul.”

In Aerosmith’s song, Toys in the Attic, Steven Tyler seems to sing about alienation:

Leaving the things that are real behind

Leaving the things that you love from mind

All of the things that you learned from fears

Nothing is left for the years

Voices scream

Nothing’s seen

Real’s a dream

The first story in Ellison’s collection, Alone Against Tomorrow is titled, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.

Maybe a blog is like a scream.

My wife is officially in the holiday spirit.  Yesterday, we attended my niece Audrey’s ballet show at Central Forsyth High School.  The dancers ranged in age from 6-year olds to high school seniors.  Audrey is a thin vine disguised as an eighth-grader who likes to dance and it shows.

The skills of the dancers ranged, of course, and one notices these things even trying not to, but the dancers who drew my attention all had one thing in common – they smiled.

One of the tiniest dancers, who lost her balance before the others, turned left when all others turned right, drew me in, not for the entertainment value, not for the cuteness factor (she had both), but for the joy in her smile.  Pure joy.  When you like what you’re doing, people watch you, root for you, applaud for you.

Before you hand out the Uncle-of-the-Week Award, know that this was my first time watching Audrey whose danced for years.  And it was considerably easier to turn off yesterday’s OSU-Maryland game than this Saturday’s OSU-Michigan.  Lucky Audrey.

Just this week in class, a musically astute physics student of mine asked what my favorite Nutcracker song was.  Kids often ask for my favorite this or that.  But the Nutcracker?  A first.  I couldn’t name a single song, though arcane as this knowledge might be, I still couldn’t admit it.  He let me off the hook and asked, “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy”?  That’s the one.

“Good morning,” I’ll say to my first two classes of the day.  On a good day, three kids will return the greeting.  “Let’s try that again,” I’ll say, “Good morning.”  Half the class responds this time.  One day last week, I said “Let’s try that again,” and left the room for a second.  I returned through the door on the run, kept running through to the rear of the classroom and helped myself to a student’s baggie of dry Frosted Flakes, threw my head back and dumped a stream of flakes into my mouth, catching maybe half, throwing the baggie aside, and said, “Good morning.”  A resounding Good morning from the class.

That’s me smiling.

I compare this, my personal blog, to my first fitness tracker – a Fitbit, since replaced by a Garmin.  An accountability tool that, by functioning well enough, works itself out of a job, upgraded in favor of an improved model.

My Garmin fitness tracker prods me to work my body: walk, run, bike, hike.  With any luck, this personal blog will prod me to work my mind: think, journal, essay, write.  To be replaced by an improved model.