The Eternal Optimist Dares All

The Christmas tree is up.

I came home to find my brother had taken it out of storage and assembled it, with lights, while I was gone. A few other heavy and/or unbreakable decorations (the penguins and a couple of Santas) are also scattered around the house and under the tree.

He apparently spent some time, while assembling the tree, cowing the cats with various threats, both physical and psychic. Mittens seems suitably traumatized. Jasmine and Paribanour will occasionally sit up and sniff at the lower branches but are otherwise content to curl up on the festive under skirt beneath the boughs and nap. Paribanour worked herself into a tight little ball but, apparently, was still dazzled by the lights over her head. She slept with one paw raised up over her eyes. Jasmine tried to pick a fight with a penguin but, when it continued to ignore her, eventually gave up.

There are no ornaments on the tree and, despite my observation that it looks just fine the way it is and my recommendation to leave well enough alone, my brother still intends to buy some cheap unbreakables to gild the lily and tempt Fate.

He also retrieved the train set(s) that had been set up and forgotten (because unseeable) on the top of the barrier wall separating the kitchen from the cathedral ceiling living room. He's cleaned off most of the twenty-odd years of dust and grime and now has two complete trains and some three dozen pieces of track which he intends to set up around the base of the tree. He expects the cats to respect the layout.

There is a fine line between unwarranted optimism and outright delusion.