Secret Badass

The Week in Selfies: 1/11/21 - 1/17/21

Jan 15, 2023

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Putting my fake Christmas tree away is the most dangerous thing I do.

I have one closet. It is deep, very tall, and slightly triangle shaped but there is only one.

My apartment is a roughly 400 square foot one bedroom apartment in New York City so this is not a surprise but it does pose some challenges.

The closet holds my clothes, my suitcase, cleaning supplies, that thing from Ikea I bought that doesn’t work in my house but I never returned, laundry supplies, shoes, other miscellany, and a portal to another world. There is little room for much else.

So, when the holiday season of 2020 came to its natural conclusion (I believe that’s how time works), I faced a dilemma; what was I going to do with this 5 ft fake tree that my parents so lovingly sent me?

I put off the decision by ordering an inordinate amount of storage items from the Container Store, including the smallest tree bag I could find - an 8 ft tree bag. In my head, 8 ft was not actually that much taller than 5 ft but as I took my tree apart and put it in the bag I realized, I was quite mistaken.

Oh, no matter. I could still try and get it into the top of my closet. I pulled out my step ladder, dragged the bag up with me, and tried to figure out how to maneuver the tree up in there. Turns out, the tree was heavier than I thought and 3 extra feet of bag did get in the way and I ran out of patience and breath quite quickly.

With myself and the tree filled tree bag back safely on the ground, I thought it would be a good idea to…tape up the excess part of the bag. With duct tape. Very haphazardly. And when I was done, I took a step back and realized…it looked like a dead body. It looked like there was a dead body in parts shoved into a green bag and closed with very obvious tape. It looked like someone who had never ever seen one single true crime show was trying to get rid of some evidence.

I took a picture, texted it around, and laughed for another hour.

Then I took the tree out of the bag, and put the two parts into trash bags.

My answer to making the fake tree look less like a dead body was to put it into separate trash bags.

Once my new storage system was in place, I went back to trying to wrestle it up into my closet. For context, I have to basically push the tree up into the closet straight up and down and then turn it 90° and then slide it onto the top shelf, situating it just right against the angle of the closet so it still leaves room for my myriad of other boxes. I have to do all that while attempting not to fall off the step ladder alone in my house. After much sweating, I did finally succeed.

Last year, I got a bag that was closer to the right size. And still did not figure out a better way to get my tree into my closet.

This year, with a sprained ankle, I still did not figure out a better way to get my tree into my closet. But I did say, in my head, to myself, the whole time, “Be careful. Don’t die. Be careful. Don’t die. Ya dumb tree just get up there. BUT don’t fall on me. Be careful. Don’t die.”

I did not die.

But, you know, every year when I finally get the tree into my closet, I feel like a secret badass. A secret badass who did not die and who will forget about this issue again for another eleven months.

That’s future Samantha’s problem. This badass needs a rest.

Monday, January 11, 2021