Because Rob was out of town until Monday and I’ve been working a lot, we hadn’t had a chance to get a tree until yesterday. You know… Christmas Eve. We walked to the tree lot that’s two blocks from our apartment but they were gone.

That was okay, because there was another one at the foot of the hill, so we walked down to 42nd where that tree lot was also gone. It turns out that all the tree lots wrap things up so by four o’clock there’s no where to buy a tree.

We figured that Fred Meyer would be open and have leftover trees so we walked down to 30th and on the way passed a tree lot. With Trees! But it was locked and the attendants had gone home.  Although we joked about hopping the fence, I suggested taking the somewhat more legitimate route and going into Freddie’s to actually purchase a tree.

They had five.

Five dry, needle-dropping trees that were free, probably because they were fire hazards.

So we walked back to the abandoned tree lot and Rob hopped the fence. We took a tree and left a note and $20.  Actually, poaching a Christmas tree has a long tradition in my family.  For decades my [unnamed relative] has poached a cedar from [redacted] on the grounds that it is growing in a place where it has to be removed anyway.  It’s nice to have these family traditions.