I don't always care for the Christmas Tree Shop

We have dubbed it the Shit Shack because half the stuff we’ve bought at the Christmas Tree Shop seems to break or fall apart. It’s a good store for things like Fourth of July plates or things that are just a solid piece of decoration but if it has to function or has a switch, I find it all just falls apart.

I bought these little solar lights to hang off the deck at the old house. They gave off no more illumination than a pen light and then broke anyway. I got this other solar candle in this wicker basket and the thing broke the first time a breeze blew it over.

The latest was this new umbrella I bought for the deck table after the old one blew over and broke. I like it better than I did when I got it home but it seems very high, so it isn’t as helpful casting a shadow. The junction where the two parts meet doesn’t have a lot of overlap so the top part is kind of teetering a little. I’ll live with it but I am a pessimist and expect the thing to break.

God, I love to complain.

I’m not sure why I went to the Christmas Tree Shop to buy the umbrella. I know those umbrellas can be expensive and it was an unplanned expense so I didn’t feel like spending a ton and since we’re 10 minutes from the store, I just ran there in the midst of other errands. I figured, “At least if it breaks, it won’t have cost a lot of money.” That’s the reasoning why you buy things at the dollar store on impulse: It cost $1 so you’re not out too much. The problem is that the Christmas Tree Shop is more like the Thirty-Five Dollar Store. Everything just seems a little off to me and it’s cheap but not quite cheap enough to risk spending the money. You can find fun stuff there but you have to separate it from the crap.

I don’t know. I just have this general intolerance for crappy merchandise. So many times I will buy things from various stores and they fall to pieces so easily and I resent it.

Plus, walking into the Christmas Tree Shop is like stepping into molasses. It’s always packed so there’s no such thing as in and out. The customers seem like they make it worse, like they’re just resigned to standing in line, as one resigns oneself to the eventual embrace of death, so they make no effort to hurry anything up. I can’t stand that. Look alive. I don’t like shopping so I try to get out ASAP. Even when I’m not in a hurry, I’m in a hurry.