This post has no point

Today we tagged our Christmas tree and ordered our wreath.

I know, I know. It's October.

But, if we go now, we can do the searching for the tree without slogging through knee deep snow, with below zero wind chill. Plus, since I have already pre-paid for the tree now - we get to hunt, capture and cut the tree and drag it home without the feeling that we have paid for this privilege.

Let me clarify. Emily and I went to tag the tree and order the wreath. My husband - the Detroit born man, has always been a bit uneasy with my quaint New England traditions. For eleven years now I have been forcing him out into snowy New Hampshire fields in December to saw down a balsam and drag it back to our house. This has included hot cider and cookies and jolly small talk with the owners of the tree farm. "Can't we just buy a tree that's already cut down?" he used to plead.

Blasphemy!! We live in New England!! We are surrounded by tree farms!! We will have tradition, dammit!

So, Em and I tromped out to the tree farm in the wet weather and tagged our tree. In about 4 minutes flat. It was the fastest capture of a tree on record. We paid the surly New Hampshire tree farmer and left to go to Walmart. I called Terrance to announce the successful capture.

He was getting ready to leave for the grocery store. My husband does a majority of the grocery shopping. This is for 2 main reasons.

1. He thinks I spend too much money on things we don't need - including continuing to compulsively buy chicken broth, since I am always convinced we are out of chicken broth.
2. He does 99.9% of all cooking in our household.

So, as a gesture of good will he says, "Anything you want me to pick up at the store?"
"yeah", I say, "get me some summer squash, zucchini and ground beef. I am going to make myself a casserole."

We both know that only I will eat this casserole. He is highly suspicious of my cooking. I can't remember the last time that he ate any main dish that I prepared - and I am not being funny here. It isn't that I can't cook - I just cook weird combinations of food, in his opinion. To me, these combinations are comforting.

So - Em and I visit the evil empire and Terrance goes off to the grocery store.

Upon our return, Terrance tells me that the store was out of Zucchini, so he got Italian squash instead. "It looks pretty close to zucchini." he says.

I forget about this - as I am now busy with Em, and laundry and everything else that any parent does in an afternoon.

At 7:30, I decide to go ahead and make my casserole. At the very least, I can bake it and eat it tomorrow. I sit down and open the bag with the summer squash and the Italian squash. And lo and behold, I see a bag with summer squash and zucchini. I start to laugh.

"Terrance, this is zucchini!! I hope you didn't pay more for Italian Squash!"
Terrance ( from the bedroom) "I thought they looked alot alike.