hello d nancy!
This is what has been happening the last hour at my house. When the tree was put in I thought it was crooked. dh and dd older said it was is in and not crooked. I used some shims to balance it but boy it really needed. both impatient individuals so i think they figured "it was okay". it had been off the bottom by 2 inches. and I had no idea. and had been screwed into a branch. Today while dh was watering the tree - he moved it (pushed it forward) which caused the tree to fall forward and CRASH! ornaments and water ,from the base, was all over the place. Thank goodness dd older wasn't here because their frustration together and anxiety would have caused more problems.
Dh who gets flustered easily - lost focus on how to help. he started loosing up the bolts and was so so so flustered. you could hear his stress building. Then on top of that the beef bones I had put in the oven at 425 started to smoke - I no longer have a high up pan and the fat splattered everywhere causing the house to be filled with smoke - all while I was holding the tree straight for dd. alarms were blaring.
dh scurried around not knowing what to do. I told him to open the windows as the fire alarms went off. then he was so flustered bc he couldn't figure out how to get the oven to turn off. I asked him to take the pans out which he did and I told him how to turn off the stove.
d old dog proceeded to have a panic attack bc the alarms. we had to give her some meds.
dd fixed the tree, took the panicked dogs outside for me. dd picked up all the broken ornaments and said "hey we can start a new collection". dh swept up the broken ornaments after stepping on more. poor guy. He didn't see where he was stepping. dd picked up the rest of the ornaments.
dh is a little worse for wear. (he wants a fake tree or no tree - poor guy).
oh - while dd took the dogs out the cat pushed her way out and escaped. lol - oh my gosh!!! cat is in again, tree is standing straight, smoke is clearing.
OH MY GOSH