S#@t’s Gettin’ Real, Here

It started with my roots.

They’re getting a little…sparkly…(refusing to use the word grey)…

I texted my hairdresser to get this shit taken care of.

She gave me her available times.

 

Which made me think about my available times.

 

Of which there are VIRTUALLY NONE.

 

I went through each day.  And every one of them, between now and the 25th, has something going on.  Kids, practices, work, concerts, gatherings.  Somehow, within that mess, I need to get my kids presentable, clean the house in a more serious fashion than just moving piles of crap from A to B,  and buy the man friend the perfect gift that shows him exactly how much he means to me and that he’ll never forget and that has flashing lights and firepower and is on sale.

 

I knew I had all of that to do.  I really did.  But today was the day when it took on a framework, and became quantifiable, and hit me in the solar plexus.

 

Shit’s gettin’ real, here.

“I Don’t Share Your Greed, the Only Card I Need…”

Every family has their holiday traditions.

And nearly every family has some offbeat family traditions, ones unique to them, that elicit odd looks when shared with others.

I have a lovely friend, whose (Jewish) family used a cow puppet as a Christmas tree topper.  Every year.

Another friend had to be told that Slap Shot wasn’t a Christmas movie, because his family watched it every single year at Christmas.

My family always liked to cap off Christmas day with an especially off-color round of Balderdash.

(Nothing will ever, ever make me laugh as hard as my sister’s definition for ampersand: a sex act performed with egg beaters whilst wearing roller skates on the steps of city hall.)

My boy, just last year, provided my family with our wacko tradition.

We were putting together a Christmas playlist.  He was around the corner in the living room.

Us:  Hey, do you guys have any favorite Christmas songs you want on this list?

Boy Child:  Ace of Spades!

Us: CHRISTMAS songs!

Boy Child:  (pauses for a super long time)  Ace of Spades!

And so began a Christmas tradition in our house.

I Was Just There

I (might) have a special ability.

I have this uncanny knack for being in the wrong place at the right time.

On more than a few occasions, I have been in a place that shortly thereafter, is the site of unpleasantness.

One time, it was a stabbing at a business in the same parking lot where the kids and I had been picking up diapers at a drugstore, not a half hour before.

Another time, it was a machete wielding robber at a hair salon where my son had just put a hairdresser through the wringer, a mere 5 minutes previously.

It happened again today.

I didn’t intend to go to that store.  I meant to go to a drugstore that hadn’t been in that location for at least 5 years.  But I got mixed up.   And settled for that store.  I left maybe half an hour before the roof fell in.

You can accuse me of magical thinking, or rampant narcissism, but I think they’re valid questions:

Do I have a prescient ability to avoid disaster?

Or am I a harbinger of chaos?

Toys “Were” Us (Tonight)

Tonight we bit the bullet.

We started to Christmas shop.

For REALS.

Not the browse-the-mall-but-we’ll-make-decisions-later stuff we’d been doing.

We dove into the fun part: toys.

Some of it was the perfect storm of sale price and declared desire.

Some of it was driven by lack of choice (a pertinent question: where has all the Go Diego, Go shit gone?).

Some of it was magic. The look on the man-friend’s face when he found the crayon maker for the Girl Child? Probably will go down as one of my favorite memories of Christmas 2012.

We did it, and it’s mostly done, and no one got hurt.

(That’s a lie. They opened up another checkout line, and in my rush to be in it, I TOTALLY CLOCKED A KID IN THE HEAD. I still maintain he walked into my fist, either way, I apologized profusely, and his mother only gave me partial side-eye.)

I left feeling a little melancholy. I miss toys. I miss coveting them, dreaming about them. I miss being able to get into a mindset where play and possibility were so much more automatic.

And then the man-friend sent me ahead to the car.

And bought my present at Toys R Us.

I’m fairly super-psyched by that.

Dear Santa 2012

Dear Santa,

Let’s dispense with the whole “I’ve been good all year” bull shit.  It demeans us both.

Anyone who has a relationship with Santa knows it is terribly lopsided.  So let’s continue that with a list of things you can do for me.

1.  I’d like a new car.  Nothing that comes from the factories.  It needs to be big enough on the inside to fit both my kids and all their crap and the man friend and maybe a couple of other people and a butt-ton of groceries.  Then, in an act that defies the laws of physics, it needs to be small enough externally that I can actually park it worth a damn, and without the usual inhalation of breath and semi-squeezing shut of eyes and praying that generally occurs for me in parking lots.  And make it a shade of blue I can’t actually describe to you, but I’ll know it when I see it.

2.  Please bring me patience.  I’d like it in easy to swallow pill form, a once a day kind of a thing.  It would have to be extra strength, to last through the 50th daily reminder to brush teeth/flush/close the door after you/that you are neither “sexy” nor do you “know it”.

3.  Let Amy Poehler finally, finally realize we are supposed to be best friends.

4.  I want a crystal ball.  Screw the future, doesn’t interest me.  I want the ball to tell me what into the hell to make for supper.  I’m inspired about one night every two weeks.  The other 13 nights are filled with guilt and recriminations and pleading and resignation and take out.

5.  I saved my biggest, best one for last.  I want the ultimate slumber party with my sisters.  Somewhere with big white fluffy robes and king sized beds all around.  Every crappy junk food we ever loved (Ruffles, I’m lookin’ at you)

And we would make each other laugh til we nearly peed.  And we’d watch Dirty Dancing, and So I Married an Axe Murderer and Muriel’s Wedding. 

And recite nearly every goddamn line by heart, because we do it all the time and annoy everyone around us, but it would just be us, and it would be AWESOME.

So Santa, that’s it.  Not a big list.  Just five things.  You got this, right?

Peace,

G