I have a lesson that will save you a lot of pain in the future, and by writing it down it should save me a lot of pain.
For those of you who put up artificial trees, start at the bottom. Yes, I know this makes perfect sense, but you’d be surprised how uncommon common sense is. You’d also be surprised that starting at the top sounded like a good idea at the time because I had already put the top of the tree up, so why not keep going like that? Clearly I didn’t take into account that I’d be lying on the floor half an hour later, looking up the tree and pushing those branches in place while getting artificial pines in my hair. Meh. Now I know. It was definitely a good lesson in letting my stubbornness take over. That’s a trait that comes in handy.