Christmas Strangling…

I am starting a new tradition:  my list of annoyances that deserves a Strangling by either a strand of twinkling lights, tinsel or a stocking.  This list will consist of 12 (randomly ordered) Annoyances.  Why 12?  Well, it’s my blog and it’s in the theme of The 12 Days of Christmas, which gets me started:

12)  The Twelve Days of Christmas Carol.  What the hell is the 12 days of Christmas?  There are 31 days in the month and 24 of those days come before Christmas.  Yes I know, 12 is a significant number in the “look for signs” realm.  I get that.  12 months in a year, 12 steps (or 10, who’s counting) in AA, etc.  But the damn Christmas carol is long and terrible.  Who the hell wants 10 maids a milking?  That just sounds like a lot of hormonal upheaval!  Lactation and dancing, yeah.

11)  People who TEXT Merry Christmas on Christmas, yet don’t send a real Christmas card.  Take me off your to Text list!  That is just rude; being so cheap as to not send a real card but to send a text since it’s part of your Verizon or Cellular One plan!  I’ll tell you what:  Verizon should start charging for every Merry Christmas Text sent on Christmas just to slow the new, retarded tidings.  DO NOT SEND ME A MERRY CHRISTMAS TEXT!  Or a Happy Thanksgiving or Happy Easter or any holiday text!  Blah!

10)  Icicle Lights.  Really!?  We live in Montana with real icicles!  If you have fallen on your ass as much as I have you would hate ice, too.  Now they come in color and blink, so what is the point!  Unless a rainbow pissed on your house no icicle will be rainbow!  (Ok, I love Christmas lights, so this one is just on here since it’s funny.  Decorate on, my fellow Christmas fans).

9)  Double Sided Scotch Tape:  What the F*#K!  That shit sticks to everything except the paper you are trying to coax into conforming to the gift you are wrapping.  Bad invention!  Bad!

8)  FruitCake:  How awesome is cake named after one’s in-laws!  I guess we all know how that name came along:  shitty cake baked by a mentally ill mother-in-law and passed along as a gift! 

7)  Holiday Sales:  Black Friday, Cyber Monday and the newest trend, Green Monday.  Really!  We give names to the most important shopping days of the Holidays?  And some have theme songs!  Wal-Mart ruined a great AC/DC song this year by using “Back in Black” as their Black Friday theme.   Bad Big Box Store, Bad!!!

6)  Santa’s with beards so fake they hang off their lips.  REALLY!  Like little kids are that stupid!  What makes things worse is when the beard hair sticks to your kids clothes.  Now that is just nasty.  Who know where that white, marled mess has been.  (ANd yes, marled is a word…. I think).

5)  Happy Holidays:  It is Christmas!  CHRIST-mas!  It’s a religious holiday, so let’s keep CHRIST in Christmas and in Nativity Scenes, too.  Try and take Baby Jesus away and this “Saint” will march all over your ass!

4)  Toys R’US Commercials:  Ok, tell me shut off my TV and I will punch you in the throat.  Retro Christmas cartoons give me time to wrap presents with double-sided tape.  Toys R US is just a cult that makes kids THINK they want everything yet their ads are on every 15 seconds during prime time!  Ugh!!  And who the hell invented Squinkies?  Tiny little people that plug up my Kirby, yet made it on both my girls’ lists this year!  Hum-Bug!

3)  Alcohol Free Egg Nog:  No explanation needed.

2)  A White-less Christmas:  I want snow, damn-it!  And if you live in MT or WY or ID and don’t like snow…. quit your bitching and move to CA!

1)  Candy Canes:  Why candy canes?  If you have children, it needs no explanation.  They are sticky, gooey, set up like cement in hair, never get eaten all the way and end up in the carpet, Issie’s hair or rear seat of the car since every business and bank hands the damn things out like it’s Christmas or something….. wait.  Oh yeah!  It is Christmas!

Merry Christmas (remember #5) my dear friends!  And may you know that this list was in fun!  Well, most of it! 

Glittery Reindeer Poop

Eryn, Santa, & Isabel 2011

The Holidays are a time of giving; selflessly.  Christmas is magical and once children come along the magic takes on a whole new meaning.  When Eryn was born I had almost a whole year to anticpate her first Christmas.  But I had no idea how awesome it would utlimately be.  Christmas is one thing, but BEING Christmas is an entire new ball of wax mistletoe!  Being Christmas is a new adventure.  Being Christmas happens when a child, your own or one you love enough to be your own, opens a little space in your heart, making it bigger and better than you knew it could be.  And Eryn’s first Christmas gave me another new lesson in “heart enlargening”.   With every Christmas since, especially with her sister,  my heart leaps in sizes!

When Christmas comes to a household with children a magic it’s own begins to manifest.  (I could go on and on about the anticipation of wrapped gifts lurking under the tree, shining with speculation and excitement; the frozen snot of late afternoon sledding and searching for reindeer poop in the snow as proof that Santa is truely watching).  Anyway, onto Christmas morning . . .

Once we become parents the magic of Christmas starts to actually grow inside of us.  Why?  Because WE  become Christmas.  We are the ones who tell the story of Mary and Baby Jesus and the Star (if that so applies- I am open to other traditions).  We are the ones who shop and wrap and hide gifts from peeking eyes.  We become the spirit of St. Nick, waiting till sugarplums dance in their heads to sneak treats in stockings and take bites outta cookies.  And all the while it is magic!  It is tradition and sentimental, quiet moments and yet always hectic.  It’s the prime rib and ham and ornaments and scotch tape (double sided or disappearing).  It’s Secret Santa and parties.  It’s baking and wrapping and shopping.  Yes, Christmas has taken on a “bit” of the commerical, what with Black Friday and Cyber Monday and Green Monday (?) and all the shopping and sales and mayhem.  Yet, doesn’t it all come down to recognizing the real magic of Christmas in ourselves?  To give, not to receive? 

The real trick is to cling to that feeling all year long!  The real meaning of Christmas, for me, anyway is the dazzling, sleepy smiles of my children the morning of Christmas.  Yes, it is the celebration of Christ’s birth, but it is also the celebration of children and their innocence and delight in lights and wrapping paper and, even, reindeer poop (that is evidence.  And how does one know the difference between mule deer poop and Rudolph droppings?  The glitter . . .duh!).  

Merry Christmas!  And let’s remember the Reason for The Season (Christ’s birth) as well as the magic in children.  For didn’t Jesus say:  “Let the little children come to me?” 

 

Trashing Creativity!

How did my Mom keep all my treasures?  Really, she had boxes of my shit stacked in her storage room (I was lucky enough to have gotten most of it pre-house fire).  Knick knacks I thought were important and that I still hold sentimental value for.  Barbies in unopened boxes that my girls beg for; looking up to the top shelf of my closet.  That is probably torture for them, those glittery dolls all packaged up since the 80′s.  There are just a few of those, I wasn’t one of those kids that kept their toys in shrink wrap.  Nope, I played with my stuff pretty hard and not much survived.  Anyway, I am running into some guilt issues with the works of art my girls create on a daily basis.  I love it all, but know I will turn into a full blown hoarder if I start saving it all.  I try to weed through the good and average; the colorful to the dull.  The ones that took time to the ones scrubbed in Crayola out of sheer boredom.  (I took away the Play-Doh months ago and they are going through the crayons like toilet paper).  And then there are the school papers and projects that get toted home everyday; 1st Grade and Pre-School.  What is a mom to do?  Seriously, when I pitch something that I know is trash I still feel that paper looming in the plastic, white abyss; covered in whatever Issie didn’t eat for dinner.  I still feel the paper’s doom right up until it ends up in the big green dumpster outside.  Let’s be honest, once it gets to that point it’s a goner. 

Yes, I have fished papers out of the trash that Mike threw in there.  He likes a tidy house, I am a raccoon . . . clean and tidy is relative when something shiney attracts my attention.  (Another blog).

I love every piece and shred of creativity my girls produce; yet I am getting really crafty with ways to hide the art in the trash.  I cover it with other papers (bills) and left over lunch or dinner.   I still love it, but I have no room.  I could be the perfect mom and scan the art and save it on the computer, but that is work and I am a stay at home mom who doesn’t work!