Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree...your branches are so bend-y

"I didn't know that the literal meaning of "trim the tree" was to actually cut its branches," my daughter Sydney observed as I hacked at our unruly decoration with my gardening shears after Brad had spent the better part of a half hour whittling the bottom into a manageable shape to accommodate the base-holder. He didn't appreciate my helpful suggestions of carving the trunk stem into a bear or a gnome. Syd and I lassoed lights around the tree and then we wrestled it into the living room, littering the floor with flesh-penetrating pine needles.

"What should we name him," I asked as we watched only the red lights blink on and off. I noticed that a majority of the branches appeared to point upwards almost as though our tree was..."Flip," I yelled, "We'll call him Flip!" Declaring it sacrilegious to christian a conifer with a cuss word, Brad stormed off. "Well," I mused, "Flip could stand for flippant." "What does flippant mean," Sydney asked.  After she managed to survive my withering gaze for her vocabulary short-comings, I explained that flippant meant irreverent. "That is NOT a word," Sydney protested. I sighed. We perform variations of this word waltz once every other month or so where EVERY time I am proven right regarding the definition of a term. And yet, I am still routinely accused of making up words. "You mean irrelevant," Sydney corrected. "No," I replied firmly, "irreverent." "You sound like Scooby-Doo," she accused. Irreverent IS hard to say, I thought to myself. Irregardless (of whether irregardless is actually a word), my college-age daughter should still be finding ways to widen her vocabulary. And, as with all things, one sure-fire method is to always ask your mother.