can't see the forest for the trees...

"an expression used of someone
who is too involved in the details of
a problem to look at the situation as
a whole." (The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition. 2002)




katherine decided yesterday we needed to erect yet a fourth Christmas tree here on the lane...
(why not? we still had two in the basement just waiting to be brought upstairs and decorated:/) she wanted to put one in her bedroom.

i suppose the small one she ALREADY had in her bedroom was not enough?

anyway, i told her if her daddy would bring another one upstairs i'd put the lights on it for her and  she could decorate it.

a few hours later, i looked up to see katherine standing in my doorway.

"mom, i think dad brought the wrong tree up from the basement..." she said.

"didn't you tell him to bring up the 8ft. one?" i asked.

"i told him NOT the great big one, but the one he put in my room is touching the ceiling."

"which part of your ceiling," i asked, " the lower part or the higher part???" (katherine's ceiling is slanted 12ft-8ft with the line of the roof.)

she left my doorway only to return a moment later.

"the higher part," she answered.

i walked into her room to see a 12ft tree standing in the middle of the room. the top branch was slightly bent at the ceiling. i just shook my head:?

"i'll bring the other one up tomorrow," i told her. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

well, a winter storm warning was issued for our area today, and school was dismissed an hour early. so, i picked up katherine, and we headed home to deck out our halls yet a little more.

"just take the bottom part off of that tree, mom." katherine continued, "then, you won't have to drag the other one up from the basement..."

i'd already had that thought and was dismantling the monster even as she spoke. i stood there for about 15 or 20 minutes modelling the branches, preparing the shorter version of the tree to go into the stand. (which, by the way, didn't work in the end because it was not the bottom piece and did not have a long enough "trunk" to fit in the stand;) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"something is wrong with that tree anyway," katherine said. "the sections aren't even the same color... and the middle looked bigger than the bottom when it was all together."

i looked at the "top part" of the tree, which i was holding and grooming, then looked at the "bottom part" of the tree, which was still in the tree stand. cocking my head to the side, it dawned on me that katherine was right! the tree john had brought upstairs (in sections) and put together were sections of two different trees. i'd just been standing too close (and had had MORE than my fill of trimming trees for 2008)to the tree to even notice!

ugh
love and blessings, dani xxx
ps the photo above is of the right tree (the 8 footer). i wish i'd gotten a photo of the mismatch but not enough to put the monster back together incorrectly:b