Icome home to find a white box in the middle of the living room big enough to hold one of those plastic steam engines a kid can sit on top of while pulling friends around the living room on box cars over linked-together railroad tracks.

“A train!” I yell, overjoyed, as locomotives – or just about anything with steam belching out of its belly (except ravenous dogs mistaking my fingers for sausages) – I love.

“I made an executive decision,” my wife, Tia declares.

Hearing this, I know two things. First, whatever the decision is, it cannot be questioned.

Second, it cannot even be argued with. Or, rather, I can, but I know better not to.

“My friend Sophie (not her real name, to protect her aesthetic judgment) said she saw the most beautiful artificial Christmas tree at Douglas Fir, Ltd” (a

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