Here’s a Christmas tale from my family: Once upon a time, my Sicilian great grandmother got so pissed at her crooked Christmas tree that she nailed it to the floor. This is a woman I can relate to.

Would it be Scroogey of me to say how much I have hated our do-it-yourself Christmas tree from Home Depot, the discount one with no instructions? The one my husband bought without me 8 years ago when I was too pregnant to object, much less go with him to pick it out. Every fricking little piece had to be assembled. Eventually we wrote down the order of the branches in crayon on the side of the box. But still, why was it me, every single year, who had the thankless job of putting that damn thing together, and then stringing it with a wad of lights?

This year, I said “No more, we’re getting another tree — WITH BUILT IT LIGHTS.” Then I priced them — $399 at Hobby Lobby — and that’s HALF PRICE! So I figured I would suffer through the tree assemblage one last time and buy a marked-down tree after Christmas. But fate had other plans.

This morning, Bob and I hauled the old tree box out of the attic, the box sagging so badly we had to slide it down the stairs. Just like every other year, the kids helped me take out the pieces and organize them on the floor, and then magically disappeared, with only me listening to Jimmy Buffet singing “How’d you like to spend Christmas on Christmas Island?” Answering him with a screaming “YES” in my head as I fished into the box for the last of the moldy branches. Then I saw it, a little mess of hair and sticks, no wait, bones, nestled into the crux of a branch. Down in the bottom of the box were tell-tale pellets. I went upstairs where everybody was hiding watching TV.

“I can’t do this,” I told them. “I just can’t.” When I reported dead mice in the tree box, they all went rushing downstairs, faster than Christmas morning, yelling, “Let me see!”

We debated for a split second whether to go ahead and assemble the tree, but Bob said the magic words, “mouse droppings,” and I helped him shove all the branches in the garbage like so much cast off wrapping paper.

So guess what’s in my living room now? That’s right folks, a shiny new tree with BUILT IN LIGHTS. It came in THREE pieces WITH INSTRUCTIONS. I bought it my own damn self. Somewhere up there my great grandma is looking down on me and smiling.

There’s a new little quiz on Facebook, “What kind of mother are you?” I haven’t taken it yet. I know what kind of a mother I am.

- I’m the kind of mother who flips through Facebook while my kids are screaming for macaroni and cheese.

- I’m the kind of mother who can’t sleep all night because the upstairs air conditioner broke and it’s 89 degrees up there where the kids are sleeping, and it’s 79 degrees down here where I’m sleeping, and I can’t decide if I should wake them up and bring them down here to sleep on the floor or leave them to their sweaty but peaceful slumber.

- I’m the kind of mother who will spend $2.50 on a school notebook with a Corvette on the cover when a 90 cent plain black notebook would work just as well.

- I’m the kind of mother who sometimes slips out of the house early in the morning without kissing everyone goodbye, but they think I kiss them everyday in their sleep, anyway.

Wishing that the summer would never end. It stays light out ’til 8:30 and we go down to the river after supper to look for spider holes and crazy ants. The kids take a break from shooting space aliens in cyberspace and revert to cave children happily throwing dirt clods into the murky water. Bob stops talking geek and I shake off the downtown commuter blues.

In less than a month we will trade this for nights full of mandatory reading and math problems. We will fight about getting homework done before bath time. We will fight over TV and bedtime. We will cram gymnastics and flag football in between spasms of work. We will fight.

Savoring these last few days of long sunlight and lazy evenings. Pretending to be prepared for the onslaught of fall. But this time, I’m not ready for the change of seasons. I don’t yet want to be.

A snapshot from our family vacation to Ohio: We are walking through my husband’s childhood neighborhood. Each of us is searching for something different. A camera strung on my neck, I am looking for the house of my dreams, which I spied just down the hill. A new place to fantasize about, perched on a lake with its own private beach. A Southern Living spread come to life far north of the Mason-Dixon, and I aim to shoot it.

Girl is hunting Indian bubble gum. Bob turns her onto it, pulling down a thin twisted twig from a wild grape vine. He calls it Indian gum because legend has it that the Indians used to chew it. It tastes bitter and nothing like gum, let alone bubble gum, but Girl is hungry and baby bear that she is, she roots it out everywhere along the road.

Boy is looking alternatively for snakes, frogs, groundhogs and crab apples that can be smashed on the pavement, because he learns from Bob that that’s what you do with crab apples.

Bob is searching for Snakesville — the grassy hill where he and his pack of wild boys used to catch garter snakes. It’s all overgrown now, unrecognizable to him. It’s hard for him to get his bearings — there’s no trace of it. He squints into the thicket, scouting for the paths they used to take as shortcuts home. These too are grown and gone, just like the children who made them. On the long way back I realize I am the only one on this walk not seeing things with the eyes of a child.