Take Back The Holidays

You wanna know how I'm feeling? Screw Christmas. Screw Chanukah, too. Folks, I've come to realize that the holiday-tradition bar has been set way too high for a mere mortal like myself. Really. Game over. Holidays are supposed to be fun, remember?

I hereby resolve to:

1. Quit the church Christmas pageant. Rachel and Brian no longer want to participate. And I never really wanted to be in charge of Angels (Group 1) anyway. Screw it.

2. Forget the house. It will never be any cleaner than it is now. Screw that, too.

3. Buy a Christmas tree at Home Depot. Unless you're tramping out into the snowy woods and cutting down your own wild tree, it ain't traditional. Don't freeze your butts off at a Christmas tree farm - don't you realize that's where the trees at Home Depot come from? And they're cheaper at the store, too. Duh.

4. Summon all the kids into the (messy) living room, plop them down on the couch without regard to size/age order, and snap a picture. No matching clothes, no neatly combed hair, nothing. Reality photo cards, folks - they're all the rage.

5. Our second annual New Year's Party? Still on. Anyone who doesn't appreciate pre-made guacamole from Trader Joe's and Hebrew National frozen hotdogs in biscuit dough can just stay home. I'll heat up the hotdogs, though. Maybe.

6. Fancy Christmas dinner? Why? We just had turkey and stuffing on Thanksgiving, right? Have it more than once a year and no one will appreciate it. I think we'll just have cookies and candy canes that day, thanks. That's all the kids really want, anyway.


7. My holiday table will most emphatically not look like the picture above. I have nothing against beautiful, holiday-themed quilted table runners with matching Christmas china and (gasp!) napkins all the same color. In fact, I admire people who set their tables this way. But I have come to accept that such a layout is not within my capability to pull off. Ever.



8. Meaningful, appropriate gift-giving is now banned. I'm giving people whatever is convenient. A beer-bottle opener for the 6-year-old? Why not? Apparently, she likes beer. 5 homemade scarves to be divided among 10 people? Hey - half of the recipients probably don't even want a dorky-looking handknit muffler, anyway. I'm thinking this could be a lot of fun. Stay tuned for gift-giving ideas for and from the teen set.




9. Latkes for Chanukah? I'm using the mix, straight from the box. I'd use frozen, but those taste really bad. Chanukah gifts? Cold, hard cash - er, I mean, gelt. Chanukah gelt. And dreidels? They're around here somewhere - Lord knows, I'm always running across one in the silverware drawer or on a bookshelf until the day before Chanukah, when they all magically disappear until January.

10. Hah! Screw it. I can't think of #10, and Theo wants the computer to fill out college applications or some such nonsense. Can't he see I'm blogging?

Fellow holiday slackers, feel free to share your own resolutions in the comments. No Martha Stewart wanna-be's allowed. This site is for Christmas/Chanukah slackers only. Got it? Good.

Mistakes Have Been Made

I think the kids got into my blog. Date-time stamps awry, juvenile brassiere humor, tell-all tales of my inability to recognize my own children....yeah, I think I'll blame the kids, all right.

Guess what? Father's Day happened a couple of days ago. I'm telling you that in case you live under a rock and missed the outpouring of love and affection for fathers and husbands that was going on all over the blogosphere. And what did I post about on Sunday? Naked knitting....I'm so embarrassed...

But we did celebrate here. The gift I ordered for Larry didn't show up in time (and I can't even say what it is, since he might read my blog for once and find out); so there I was in Target at 9 PM Saturday with the rest of the gift-giving losers trying to find a card and some reasonable facsimile of a Father's Day present. I ended up buying him a bag of Hershey's kisses (cherry-filled) and a cellphone charger for the car.

This isn't the first time that my holiday shopping abilities have proven to be markedly deficient.

What bothers me is that my birthday is coming up on Saturday; and with this gift-giving debacle fresh in Larry's mind, I'm not expecting much. Maybe I should just eat his candy now and be done with it.

It's funny, you know, as a parent, that something that seems like an excellent idea in April can really come back to bite you in June. Something, say, like informing your teen daughter that she needs to finish her freshman year schoolwork before the last week of June, or she won't be attending the high school work camp with her youth group as she had planned. You know, the work camp that is like a week-long slumber party, with fun activities in the evening and a mid-week visit to a fantastic water park....

Light a fire under her, I thought. Give her some incentive!

So, now? I am faced with the prospect of a very unhappy young woman sitting home all next week with her least favorite person in the world (um, that would be me) and her ferociously hated siblings while her father and older brother go off to have a fun time with all the other kids. I was getting chest pains last night just thinking about it. Woo hoo! Happy Birthday to me! Anyone need a mother with 4 kids in tow to visit next week?

March Madness

I went to bed at 7:30 yesterday evening, in an attempt to catch up on sleep and wake up all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed (whatever that means) this morning. Instead, I woke up at 10 PM and couldn't get back to sleep until past midnight.

Have I mentioned how much I hate the switch to DST? Oh. Okay, then.

Today I took Anna clothes shopping so she could get a nice dress for Easter. (If this were a horror movie, the scary music would start right now.) But you know, the clothes in the stores were so ugly, there wasn't even anything for us to fight over? We managed to find a pouffy sundress with a not-disgusting pattern that wasn't too short. (JC Penney - women's department - I know someone wants to know). It took us 3 hours. And Anna didn't glare at me once. I mean, that I noticed. I hate to think what her mood would have been like had we come home empty-handed, though. Hell hath no fury like a woman unadorned....

Larry took me out for ice cream this evening. Wasn't that nice? We tried to act as though we were single and dating, but I don't think we fooled the waitstaff. Larry might as well have been wearing a ball and chain, he looked that haggard. And I'm not even talking about how I looked. I was wearing a sweatshirt with Tigger on it, okay? 'Nuff said.

You know, March isn't supposed to be a high pressure month; but within the next week, I need to celebrate St. Patrick's Day, bake hamantaschen, create Easter bags, and cook Easter dinner. I think we need to convert to a religion with no holidays whatsoever. A religion, perhaps, that doesn't believe in holidays. Because all this merrymaking is going to kill me. I mean, I'm still suffering PTSD flashbacks from December. Please, won't someone stop the madness?

Anyone There?

Today was a distinctly unfunny day. From the burned graham cracker pie crusts to the cold I seem to have picked up, nothing went quite right. But I'm okay now. Holidays are worse in the anticipation than in the actual event. Once I'm caught up in the swing of cooking and baking, it's all almost enjoyable (aside from the high-pitched whining that emanates constantly from my offspring - think cicadas). And I took Anna to get her hair cut today, which made her like me for almost 15 whole minutes. So that's good, too.

When I wasn't in the kitchen or out currying favor with my alienated teenage daughter, I was noticing that the other bloggers I visit get way more comments than me. What's up with that, huh? I have Sitemeter, and I know you're out there. Remember when you were little, and your mother took you to see the play Peter Pan? And everyone had to clap for poor little Tinkerbell, or she'd die or something? You all didn't clap, now did you? I can tell.

Oh, well, our handyman still loves me. He actually came back today and built me a storage bench so that I can hide all the rain boots and bike helmets, instead of having them strewn attractively throughout the living room. This made me very happy. See? It doesn't take much. Also, the kids stayed occupied watching him. I hope he doesn't charge me for the babysitting, too.

Whew! Just under the wire for today - I'm still in it. NaBloPoMo, that is. The pressure, it's incredible.