The best ideas . . .

. . . always lead to me spending money. Make that MORE money.

Christmas is coming up, right? Just about everyone in the world already has their trees up and decorated, but I do things on my own schedule. I decided not to bring in the monster tree this year -- it would have required removing virtually everything except the Camaro and the freezer from the garage, then moving it back in. If I were some kind of sicko pervert with a garage you could do surgery in (like the guy down the road who keeps his garage door open so we can all see how disgustingly clean it is), moving everything out would be no big deal. But I've got better things to do with my time than organize a garage that's been a catchall for eleven and a half years.

So. It would be easier to do a couple of smaller trees than the monster, I decide, and we just happened to have a couple in the attic. Hey, if you add them together, they're almost as big as Gargantua, but I can handle both on my own. More or less.

I bring the larger one down -- translate to: throw bags from the attic to bounce off whatever's in the way on the garage floor, because, of course, there is no empty floor space for it to land on. While I'm in the attic, I also toss down a 3-foot tree, which lands with surprisingly little damage.

I take the short tree into the living room and avoid sniffing canine noses and paws the size of dinner plates and put the sucker together. And it only takes a couple of tries! Then I put lights on. Gargantua, of course, is lighted. Shorty's not. Not a big deal, though. I have approximately 18,000 Christmas lights in the attic and in the dogs' closet. (You think I kid???)

While I'm stringing lights that the dogs are trying to eat, I get this great idea (hence, the subject of this post): since I have Shorty for ornaments in general and the 3-footer for my cowboy ornaments (the topper's a little angel with blond curls and a red cowboy hat -- too cute), why not get a tacky silver aluminum tree for my flamingo ornaments? I mean, what could be cooler than a tacky silver tree with tacky flamingo ornaments? (Well, the same tree with a topper of Santa in shorts and sunglasses, but I haven't seen one yet.)

Now I'm not being critical of flamingos. I love 'em, I've got dozens of them in all sizes and shapes and degrees of awfulness. But the truth is, fake flamingos are inherently tacky. That's one of the things I love about them.

But I can't find a small silver tree in my limited shopping time, so I put out the word to my buds in Romance Writers Ink -- the best writers group ever -- and within about twelve hours, I have my silver tree. Well, I don't have it yet, but one of my buds does and she's bringing it to our meeting Saturday.

Another of our buds says "Use blue tinsel for the flamingo/water effect." Sounds cool to me, so I go shopping today and buy blue tinsel. (Icicles, actually, since it came in prettier shades of blue.) And then I got these glittery pink feathers and a little pink non-flamingo bird and some pretty blue dangly things. This is going to be one incredibly cool tree.

So the tree's bought. More stuff has been bought to go with it. And now, after digging through my Christmas closet for two freakin' hours, I CAN'T FIND MY FREAKIN' FLAMINGO ORNAMENTS. See what I mean about having to spend money? Either I have to locate those little flockers, or I'll have to buy new ones. And do you know how hard it is to find classy kitsch on short notice?

Wonder if I could swing a trip to Florida before Christmas . . . Rachel9:29 PM