Two redneck women, a can of cooking spray and a Christmas tree

Last Saturday I trekked all the way to Little Kansas, OK, to visit my BFF Tiff (who has a brand spankin' new blog, by the way). We met her and her husband, John, back when Kady was probably two, so we've known 'em awhile. Even though I'm 11 years older than Tiff we hit it off right from the start. I swear there are times we share a brain. When they moved to Tahlequah, which might as well have been on the other side of the universe, I was devastated, but I love 'em and wanted the best for them. But....not once did I ever make to to Tahlequah to see them. I know. I'll just put my BFF Award right next to my Mom of the Year Award.

So when I sent Tiff a text last Thursday and asked if she minded that we invade her home on Saturday she said she nearly fell out of her chair in surprise and utter excitement, because, ya know, I often do that to people - excite and surprise.

She had sent the directions in a text message and after Sam's basketball practice we were on the road. Now, maybe I'm just a really slow driver, but Tiff said it would only take 45 minutes to get there. I took us nearly two hours, however, the last 30 minutes were spent driving back and forth on a seemingly endless red dirt road, swearing the entire time that I heard banjos. If I'd seen one toothless hillbilly, barefoot in overalls I'd have been SO outta there, BFF or not. We finally arrived, chatted, got the grand tour of the house, the kids ate, we chatted some more, I burned a few Christmas CDs for her and then she announced it was time to put up the Christmas tree.

Her tree is GINORMOUSLY HUGE and while I was a little jealous, I was also a little intimidated by the behemoth she said we were going to put in her dining room. It made my 6 1/2 foot living room tree look like a shrub and my 5 foot dining room tree look like that poor tree from the Charlie Brown Christmas special. She also had this gargantuan base for the tree that was supposed to rotate the tree to make sure all ornaments have equal face time. I would never be able to have a rotating tree because no matter how hard I try to convince my children the back of the trees need ornaments, too, they just don't get it. My tree would be all sparkle, sparkle, sparkle....bare....bare....bare....sparkle, sparkle, sparkle....

We hoisted the metal pole on the bottom section of the tree into the hole on the base, Tiff tightened the screws and voila, section one of three complete. Yah right. We lifted the middle section and put it into place, except it wouldn't go all the way down into the fitting. We tried to pull it back out and start over, but it was stuck. We took turns holding the base of the tree while the other tried to yank that middle section back up. There was a piece of wire that had gotten in the way, thereby causing the two sections to be forever fused together. We were both scratched up, sweating and had muttered a few cuss words under our breath when Tiff said, "Wait. I have an idea." She went to the kitchen cabinet and whipped out a can of canola oil cooking spray. When I busted out laughing she shrugged and said, "What? The WD-40's in John's truck." And then she sprayed her Christmas tree pole with canola oil. Eventually we managed to get the wire out of the way, but I don't think it had anything to do with the cooking spray, and we took the pieces apart and put them back together correctly. We put the top section on and stood back to admire our handiwork. While we were admiring Sam hollered from the living room, "Y'all know that tree's leaning, right?" The boy nearly got a can of canola oil thrown at his wee head.

But he was right - the tree was leaning and doing it bigtime. After some wiggling, head-scratcing and muttering, Tiff got a screwdriver and crawled under the tree to tighten the screws again. And again. And again. No matter how many times she tightened them they would not hold that tree steady. After she read the directions on the rotating base, it was apparent that her tree was entirely too gigantic for that base. We dismantled the tree, piece by piece, she found a roll of painter's tape (the duct tape was with the WD-40 in John's truck) and she sat in the floor to figure out how to Southern engineer it. She removed the little plastic collar that was designed to steady the a "trunk", aka pole, in the base, then said, "Where's the dang canola oil?" Then my BFF Tiff sprayed canola oil all over the pole and what she did next was so visually hilarious and borderline x-rated that I can't even begin to write about it. When she saw the expression on my face and realized what she was doing we both lost it. She ended up on her back on the dining room floor, I ended up doubled over and we both laughed till we were out of breath. Abby walked through at one point, didn't even ask what was so funny, just shook her head and kept on walking.

When we regained our composure I suggested that instead of lubricating that poor tree any more, why not just use the tape. Of course, by that point we were both slap-happy and our minds were in the gutter so every comment from that point on was chock full of inuendo and made us cackle like a couple of hens. Two hours after we began, her tree was finally standing proud in her dining room, it's base wrapped in tape, and tied to a closet door because it was still a little lean-y.

I'm not sure how to end this story. There are so many ways.

Like, "Redneck Christmas to all and to all a can of canola oil!"

Or, "All I want for Christmas is some WD-40..."

But I think I'll leave you with this - "And remember kids: All of life's problems can be solved with your BFF, a roll of tape and a can of cooking spray."