Today some friends drove us out to Ikea. We've had our perfectly perfect fake Christmas tree for two years now, and it's decorated and lovely, filling the living room with a glow, but when I saw the stack of REAL Christmas trees in the parking lot, I thought, oh I love how a Christmas tree smells, I have to have one.
After shopping and the darling lunch they serve there at the Ikea restaurant, Peter and I headed outside to the Christmas tree lot. "Skolka?" Peter asks. "How much?" Almost two thousand rubles, just under $80. My thought: "Fine." Peter's thought: "For a second Christmas tree? For a smell?"
I insist. Peter is whisked away by a Santa-hatted helper to pay inside. In two minutes–a miracle considering how long the lines are in Ikea–he's back. I'm trying to choose a tree. Here is what makes it hard. All the trees are swaddled in a cocoon of netting. In spite of this, Russians are happily picking out trees. I've never had to choose a tree based solely on its height while it's wrapped up like a mummy. I can only guess at each tree's proportions, girth and whatever other attributes a tree might have. Is it even, is it lopsided, is it too wide, too weird? Who can tell one Christmas tree tube from another? Peter is waving around our $80 receipt, demanding I choose a tree and I'm like, I don't mean to be rude, but I'm American. Can't I see them naked?
"What is everyone saying?" I ask Peter. I mean, there is a crowd of people choosing trees, I'm trying to figure out by what criteria you choose a tree when it's wrapped in a straight jacket. In response, Peter wails, "We don't even have a stand!"
"Oh god, you're right, forget it." I'm overwhelmed by how worked up he is and how silly the whole thing is, even though I'd already cleared a place for it in the house, had it make friends with the fake tree, strung lights on it and tied those little Swedish heart-shaped gingerbread cookies we'd bought in Ikea all over it mentally.
So I make Peter go back in Ikea to "return" the tree.
At the returns counter you must take a number, Peter takes two numbers, 28 and then, inexplicably, 41. Forlorn looking Russians pack the returns area, they look like they've just come back from the gulag with their whiny toddlers in snowpants and a dresser that came without a knob. We ask a clerk how long the wait is. "One to two hours," she tells us, and she gives us a look like I work in the returns department of Ikea in Russia and you want me to feel sorry for you?
"Forget it," Peter says.
"Well, you might as well get a tree then," says the husband-friend who drove us. He is waiting for us with the car engine running, witnessing Christmas-tree-gate. "Oh, I make my husband buy Christmas trees and return them every day of the week," says the wife-friend, which in the polite South where they are from means, "We are never bringing these people with us anywhere ever again!"
I'm back to blindly choosing a tree by its height and moisture content. There is something about this process that renders me helpless. Okay, if you can't choose a good one, choose a big one, I think, quoting my Uncle Sonny.
A prospective Christmas tree-buyer walks up and asks Peter how much the trees are. Is Peter calm with his answer? "I don't know! How much is this?" He shakes the receipt at him. "Why don't you have him buy the tree from us?" I ask. Heck, we'll sell him our receipt for a thousand rubles and go home happy at this point. "I don't even want a tree!" Peter loses it. "I paid almost TWO THOUSAND RUBLES for a tree I don't want, and that I won't be able to make stand up!" The two Santa-hatted guys working the Christmas tree lot try not to smile at Peter-the-spitting-Christmas-tree-owner.
One of them says, "I'll take you to talk to the manager."
Peter comes out of Ikea smiling. I picked up a sprig of fir branch lying on the ground and sniffed it during the one hour drive back. For free! We brought in our packages, and then spent the evening enjoying the glow of our perfectly perfect fake Chirstmas tree.
twenty-something years of "what have you been up to?" 
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