As I mentioned yesterday, my Christmas tree usually goes up the day after Thanksgiving. It kicks off a Christmas season that lasts six weeks, from just before Advent through to Epiphany. This is not something I was raised with; I simply adopted my own liturgical calendar over the years and it makes sense to me.
Now, I’d like to adopt a patron saint.
I spent Thanksgiving with my parents yesterday. After dinner, I tried to figure out why my father’s computer had quit talking to his printer. After fiddling with this and tweaking that, I decided the drivers might need to be updated. My parents still have a dial-up internet connection. Downloading the drivers would take forever - or something in that range.
Instead, I opted for taking both of my parents’ laptops home with me. While others were out there standing in Black Friday lines, I would be peacefully at home updating drivers, antivirus definitions and anything else that required high speed access to the World Wide Web. That was the plan. And at first, the plan went swimmingly.
Somewhere around noon, just as I finished updating the last updateable thing on my parents’ computers, it occurred to me that I gave away my Christmas tree last year (the tree, on the stand, stood just over 7’ high. I needed a tree that 5’5” me could top with a star without calling in support personnel.) That meant I needed to go buy another tree. Today. On Black Friday. It would mean giving up the right to roll my eyes lovingly at all those people in my family (you know who you are) who stood in long lines to buy a single item, but I needed that tree.
I packed up Mom and Dad’s computers and drove back over to their house. Dad’s computer booted up well and I tried printing a page. Nothing. An error light flashed on the printer. I checked the paper tray. It was full. I turned the printer off and back on again. The light kept flashing. Frustrated, I stared at the computer screen. A tiny red alert caught my attention. Had that been there before? I double clicked on it.
“Paper jam!” said the cheerful pop-up message, with a diagram of exactly where the offending paper was.
Oh. In about 5 seconds, the problem was fixed. I tried not to think of how many hours I had spent trying to cure it with downloads and re-installations.
Next on the agenda: the Christmas tree. Studiously avoiding the malls, I found a store with empty spaces in the parking lot. Not too many people inside the store, either. The lines were moving quickly. Call me superstitious, but being aware of Murphy’s penchant for messing up my plans, I figured that if I bought only one item – the tree – something was bound to happen to make my check-out line go slowly. So I picked up a poinsettia to take out to the cemetery tomorrow and made my way to the cash registers.
A store employee efficiently guided shoppers to the next available cashier. People were spending less than 2 minutes checking out. The line was a smooth flow of happy shoppers.
“Three!” the employee called to me, pointing to cash register 3. I pushed my cart forward. The cashier scanned my little tree and I handed her the poinsettia. She searched the flowers for the price tag. I searched the cart, in case the tag had come loose. Neither of us had any luck. Fellow shoppers with one item breezed through the other lines. The cashier and I exchanged small talk and waited. About ten minutes later, the price was located, I checked out and slunk back out to my car. Murphied again.
It’s days like this one that make me want to adopt a saint. I’ve already found a perfect match: St. Jude, patron of lost causes. Could someone please tell me where I go to sign the papers?
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