This holiday tinsel.
And when Bossy says this tinsel, she doesn’t mean tinsel in general, or tinsel that looks like this, she means this tinsel, since, for over a decade, Bossy and her family have been casting these very strands on the tree and then — get this — collecting it into a bundle at the close of every holiday so it can be stored with the rest of the ornaments.
Growing up, Bossy’s family always put a little tinsel on their tree, but Bossy never knew she had an official position on tinsel until Bossy’s mom showed up with these very strands all those years ago. “I found a second-hand store selling old fashioned tinsel,” Bossy’s mom said. “It’s heavier than the cheap shit they make today,” she added, because Bossy’s mom works in profanity the way other men might work in oils, it’s her medium.
The heavier tinsel strands do what they’re supposed to do, they hang straight and shimmery from the tree’s boughs. Because Bossy is pretty sure real icicles don’t have a problem with static cling.
And now applause goes out to Bossy’s son, for being this year’s Tinsel Hand Model.
This one could be cross-categorized under poverty party, no?
The heavier tinsel is superior. If I remember where we found ours, I will let you know.
I’ll see your tinsel and raise….
We’ve got some lovely tinsel made from actual tin. Seriously cool stuff, and, I suspect, easier to reuse than the floppy stuff. You can get it from Lee Valley http://www.leevalley.com/gifts/page.aspx?c=2&p=45140&cat=4,104,53211
Oooh! I wonder if that’s the same kind of tinsel we used to play with. My brother and I would take a few strands, wad them up, and rub them on the TV screen (in the days before soft flat screens–i think any smooth, hard surface will do). this would smooth out the wad, and we’d do it on all sides, eventually turning the blob into a little cube. For no reason at all.
I don’t know how we initially discovered this, but I distinctly recall my disappointment the year we realized that tinsel ingredients had changed.
WE love tinsel but haven’t had it in YEARS, thanks to children and pets who like to eat it. PICA much?
No tinsel here since we got dogs. I don’t like pulling it out of their butts.
My family has been using the same tinsel since I was 5. I’m 31. Grossest part? My mom has been known to “recycle” strands after a trip through the cat. So if my mom ever asks you to help put the tinsel on the tree, politely decline 🙂
I have also experienced the tinsel that has made a complete trip through the cat.
I think some of the older types had lead in them.
So I take it that Stella doesn’t eat tinsel????
I have a few Great Dane questions. Our sweet elderly shepherd mix is slowing down and I am thinking GD puppy this spring sometime.
Where does Stella sleep? Does she have run of the house? My last two Great Danes lived inside – but my kitchens were bigger then and could accommodate a twin bed mattress.
Did you buy from a breeder?
Can you email any links or advice?
Thanks!!!
Bonnie in Houston
optimist@gmail.com
No tinsel here. I don’t think I’d have the patience for it.
Ah, yes – the memories! I grew up with the really heavy, lead-containing tinsel. And very year it was the same exact batch of tinsel – carefully applied, even more carefully removed. I think Mom stopped short of actually counting the individual strands, though… We also had REAL (!) candles on the tree.
You save the tinsel but you buy new lights every year? Christmas continues to baffle me.
Tinsel traveling through dogs and cats just made me cackle, and read this out loud to Husband.
Once we each wondered what had happened to the gobs of Halloween mini-snickers etc that mysteriously disappeared; over the next week or so our back lawn was graced with R2-Dturds as the metallic wrappings reappeared.
Sorry to go there. You all started it.
Maybe I’m not even sorry.
Thanks for the laugh.
David, the new lights are bought because the cheap Chinese ones are designed to burn out each summer. Mine are still up; for the next month in this dark state, I call them Winter Lights and they cheer me up.
I like that old, wide tinsel, too, but we had to stop using the heavy-duty stuff after Christmas of 2006, when we found our cat running around the house with…
Well, I guess they were poop-beads strung on shiny gold tinsel, hanging from the cat’s bum. Like pearls, but a little less shiny and rare. Anyway, we couldn’t pull the tinsel, because it’s kind of sharp, so we just had to keep trimming the danglies and waiting for the rest of the tinsel to finish making it’s passage through the cat’s ass. Two fun days!
Now, if we use tinsel at all, we use the cheap stuff that breaks if you breathe on it too hard, because if one of the cats eats it, the poop comes out sparkly, but not also dangly.
Bonnie #8
Your kitchenSSSSSS? How may kitchens did you have?
Reeb #12
R2-Dturds might just be the funniest thing I’ve ever heard! (And I odn’t like bathroom humor)
“…as other men might work in oils.” Dude, is your mom a dude? A dude like Chandler’s mom on Friends, or as in “My Two Daddies”? JK – I crack myself up.
I hate tinsel like poison.
Are you sure this isn’t a daily poverty post?
Two Great Danes that lived in two separate kitchens – I was a single chick back then and moved around more. : -)
Tootsie always has applause for BOSSY’S Son.
And a wonderful model he makes! When i was a kid, my sister and I used to throw a handful of tinsel on the tree – it made my mom so mad. Then we would have to take it off and do it “right”. We did that with the little cherry things that hung over the branches. Remember those?
Growing up, we had neighbors who would dutifully remove the tinsel from their tree, IRON IT STRAIGHT and place it back in the box just the way it was arranged when they bought it in 1952.
Reading about the tinsel here and learning it had lead in it explains a lot about those neighbors.