One thing A and I got to do for the very first time together: buy a Christmas-tree. A, having watched ‘When Harry met Sally’ one too many times, had this idea of us carrying the Christmas-tree together and it being uber romantic. So mid December we headed (more or less – slid) down the icy and snowy roads to the little place down the road, where they sold Christmas trees. Amazed by the big selection, A went for the biggest tree he could possibly find while I was looking for something more suitable for us. After discussing the issue of carrying the tree up the hill for 15 minutes in the cold, A cave in and allowed me to pick a very manageable tree. We talked to the tree-seller a bit about a tree stand, which apparently in Oslo you can buy at a gas station?! She suggested some other places to go to as well but A – being a handy man – decided he would figure something out himself and would make it work without actually having to buy a tree stand. I nodded and already thought about buying a tree stand after class the next day.
The tree seller wrapped up our tree and wished us a ‘god Jul’ (if you need a guide on how to pronounce this, I am sure A would be more than happy to pronounce it for you – several times even, if he pronounces it correctly is not for me to judge…!). So A ordered me to carry the top of the tree while he – walking like a foot behind me, carried the bottom of the tree (we went for a big one this year… – also yes, I picked out the tree, this is important for later).
After a few minutes we somehow got home (note: the roads were super icy and we didn’t wear our ice skates) and A announced, that this was just like When Harry met Sally, only with a smaller tree and us not being in New York City, for both I was very grateful.
A immediately started looking for things in our apartment he could use for a tree stand, he laid eyes on a very nice pot and decided, this will have to do it. And it did. He juggled around with a few other things and then somehow magically managed to put up the tree, without causing any damage to himself or his surroundings. Very proudly he looked at me with his, ‘See, told you so’-face. And I nodded, making sure it wouldn’t tip over (which until now – about 3 weeks later) it still hasn’t.
Later that day we decided it would be time for us to decorate our tree. We picked out some Christmas-decorations from the person who former lived in our apartment. We found some nice ornaments, a star for the top of the tree and – being patriotic – of course little Norwegian flags (in the states, you put popcorn up, here we use flags…). All of a sudden I smelt something terrifyingly horrible and I looked at A and said, ‘A, our tree smells like…’ and he nodded and said, ‘yeah, like piss… right?’ I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, A said something along the lines of, ‘this is what happens when a girl picks out the Christmas-tree’ and I thought of ways to disguise the horrific smell. In the end Windex had to do it, we were out of febreze.
That night, when A and I went to bed, A started laughing and he said, ‘you know, that was a very memorable first… our very first piss-mas-tree, but next year, please let me pick the tree…’
A bird loves a fish 