It was only a dream...

Pine needles have taken over my house. They are everywhere...hiding in the pile of the carpet, poised and waiting to strike under the door thresholds, and climbing the bookshelves. They are everywhere. I spent two hours vacuuming after taking down the Christmas tree today, which can be described as nothing short of surgical removal of the green monsters. And yet I keep finding them. If it's really quiet, I can hear them laughing at me.

This wouldn't be such an issue if I weren't, as macabre as it may seem, allergic to pine. Every year, when the tree goes up, and when the tree comes down, I end up covered in hives. I'm red. I itch. I scratch. I gnash my teeth. And those needles, the little bastards, love every minute of it. I want to find them, one by one, and exterminate them, the fuckers.

I think my biggest mistake happened years ago when I decided that every kid needs a real Christmas tree. When my son was very small, we started the tradition of going out to the tree farm the weekend after Thanksgiving, picking out the biggest pine monstrosity we could find, and then hauling it home to plot the demise of my living room. Of course I was married back then, and it was relatively easy to convince the other half to do most of the legwork. But even after we moved out on our own, I refused to rob the boy of the smell of a fresh tree and a holiday tradition. So we continue to allow the beasts into our home. It's insane.

Now the carcass of the tree is at the curb, waiting for the nice men to come take it away. But the needles have infiltrated the compound. I went to the bathroom a few minutes ago, and there were several stuck I-don't-want-to-know-where that jumped ship when I unzipped my jeans. I went down the stairs to work on the laundry, and three of them found their way into my socks. In the kitchen, getting a glass of water, I found two of them giggling under the corner of the throw-rug.

I want to bathe in calamine and develop a benadryl addiction. I want to hunt the damn needles down and fry them with a blowtorch. I want to sleep tonight knowing that when I wake up in the morning, there won't be a young forest growing next to the couch. I want, more than anything, to stop ITCHING.

For now, though, I'm going to have to just keep vacuuming. Maybe if I'm lucky I'll be able to hear the needles scream as they're sucked up into oblivion....