the cheese stands alone

Out On A Limb

I came this close to having the perfect excuse to miss work:
I had my hand stuck up a Christmas tree's ass.

We have one of those artficial trees with the little fiber-optic lights in the branches. Sure, it completely violates everything traditional about old tannenbaum, but it doesn't die.
(Side note: this is an important feature because your Cheesemistress gets irrationally attached to inanimate objects and the post-holiday routine with a natural tree contained copious weeping and mourning at the eventual demise and discardation of the tree, cast aside on the highway's edge like a forgotten prom date. It was determined that if we got an artificial tree, I could still go visit it when boxed in the closet.
The tree, I mean, not me.)
Also, the artificial tree is very pretty and hypnotizes me so I stay out of the kitchen and don't try to make peanut butter fudge anymore, much to the relief of the local fire department and the poison control center.
Since it's my day off, I planned to get the tree put up and decorated so that when the GM1 gets home (17 days and counting, for those of you keeping score) he won't have that chore on his plate.
Nor any evil fudge.
So I get yon tree out of yon box, and in the process drop the base, causing the little plug-this-in-here-for-lights widget to spontaneously recess itself a bit deeper. Okay, it fell down inside the base. Completely. I dropped it kind of hard, to be honest.
And tripped over it.
There is a little hatch on the base of the base. I opened this hatch, and being blessed with small hands (I could have been such a successful gynecologist, I really would have had a following because guys, size DOES matter.) I stuck my hand in the hatch and fished around for the widget so as to shove it back into place. I found it, and shoved, and hey presto, working widget.
Then I began to carefully retrieve my hand. Something inside the tree base said "Oh HELL no" and grabbed me, specifically attaching to my ring. I wiggled. It wiggled to compensate. I waggled. Tightening waggle, as it turns out.
I was stuck with my hand up a Christmas tree's ass.
This never happened to Jimmy Stewart, I bet.
After about a half hour of trying to find a slippery substance I could squirt into an electrical tree base and still use it later, suddenly the base decided it didn't need my jewelry that bad and turned me loose. Off fell the base.
Onto my foot.
Free, free, oh my god free at last.
But now if I call in to work, I have to claim a broken toe instead of...
And it's not nearly as compelling, you know?