How to Have a Merry Little Christmas (Piers)

Gnädiges Pierschen (o tannenbaum o tannenbaum),
Caro Piersolino (gesù bambino),
° Shall I tell you

How to Have a Merry Christmas?

Well I will.
° Christmas Day minus 1278: calculate that your 15yearshingles will expire in August 2006. Set up a trust fund (in the amount of the expected cost times 3) for make benefit glorious roof.
° Christmas Day minus 132: notice that your roof has expired. Coincidentally notice that it doesn’t leak, that there hasn’t been rain in 3 months, and that it’s way too hot for roofing.
° Christmas Day minus 86: observe from the almanac that the pleasant and sunny month of October has arrived. Phone roofers.
° Christmas Day minus 55: comment that this was the only entirely rainy October in the history of the Valley. Blame Global Warming. Phone roofers.
° Christmas Day minus 40: smile grandly when the bid for standing seam steel comes in at just under twice the anticipated cost.
° Christmas Day minus 17: mention casually at the lumber store that one’s roofers have forgotten one.
° Christmas Day minus 14: greet roofers, give updated peptalk (I used to say, “Lads, safety first, no job’s worth an injury.” But now it’s, “Lads, if ye must fall off the roof, at least fall headfirst and break your neck clean through, that way ye won’t be a care on wife or mother or child or American taxpayer.” Pepped ‘em up right smart, especially the two apprentices who‘d never ascended a roof as steep as mine.)
° Christmas Day minus 7: start devoting the hours between 2a.m. and 4:30a.m. to trying to work the geometry in time to impart same to head roofer. Reserve some of that wakefulness to worry about leaks.
° Christmas Day minus 6: foment rebellion among the apprentices.
° Christmas Day minus 5: rejoice in the successfully applied geometry, deplore the walking off the job by the rebelled against contractor.
° Christmas Day minus 4: admire my handsome new roof (which after 8 days’ labour extends over almost half the house, minus the porch, minus the kitchen). Await rain confidently.
° Christmas Day minus 3: write Christmas cards, eat fruitcake, stage the baking of the panettone, wrap gifts, listen to the gentle rain pittypatting on the metal.
° Christmas Day minus 2: faint dead away when I discover a deep pool of water in the SE corner of the hall, just exactly under the most leakprone and complex geometry. All those sleepless nights for this?!
° Christmas Day minus 1.995: dance a gigue of gioy when I dip my finger into the pool and find it’s only cat urine. What a relief, nel senso doppio!

§

° Speaking of relief, I know you’ll feel it when you’ve finished playing the 7 Masses facing you between now and midnight.
° I believe I would just skip that second cup of coffee at breakfast.

° Drily, Giac.