You know that joke, “How do you make God laugh?  Start making plans.”  We got home from Nashville and were going to get busy on preparing the house for the Christmas hub-bub when I got that  ominous tone from the Jim…”Anna, come down stairs. NOW.”  Well, in my new fangled tendency to always look on the bright side of life the good news is, we have a solid house with power, heat and a great family.  On the slightly annoying side of life, we have a huge hackberry tree in our backyard who decided that it was too cold outside (it’s officially in the teens); and wanted to come inside the house.  In other words, we arrived home from our trip to Nashville to find our hackberry tree falling down.  Right now, it’s resting on the back of the house, against the windows and precariously doing a tightwire act on the powerlines going to the house.  So far, so okay.  First casualty was a screen on our sunroom that just didn’t make it but heck we’re still here and no broken windows or powerlines…yet.  So, the house is a wreck.  I called my boss and said that I would try to work from home today since I’m going to have to deal with this issue with the Jim (aka grinchie-poo and negative-ned); as we attempted last night to locate a true 24 hour emergency tree removal service (much like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster, it appears these things are also ellusive and mythical).  Good thing is we located a tree service around 1 AM who will be out here first thing in the AM to see what’s going on, and to begin the choppy, choppy.  Too bad we haven’t transitioned our fireplace yet from gas to wood because we’re about to have some monster firewood.  Will keep you posted on the progress.  In the meantime, I’m happy…I find it mildy amusing and I am solidly looking on the bright side of life.