The Return of the Twelve Blogs of Christmas

Yes indeed, children, it is that time of year again: the holidays. Some people enjoy all the traditions and sentimentality of the holiday season, and some people hate their families and go on vacation, avoiding the entire experience. Some people have a little of both, usually the traditions part combined with the hating family part. Some people celebrate Christmas, some Hanukah, some both. When you add Thanksgiving at the beginning and New Year’s Day at the end, the last four weeks of the year can really be chockfull of friends and family and good times, but also expense and angst and aggravation. But, as the TV show song tells us, “You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both, and there you have…” Wait a minute, I now have “The Facts of Life” theme song stuck in my head, and I am writing about the holidays. It is worse than I thought.

So the point is, if I can indeed make a point, that this is a busy time of year for us all, with all the expectations and whatnot. I have it worse than the average overachieving anal-retentive obsessive-compulsive perfectionist because in addition to the Four Horsemen of the Holiday Apocalypse, I also have one daughter’s birthday at the beginning of November and the other daughter’s birthday two weeks after Christmas, providing the bread ends to a big juicy clusterfuck sandwich. So how do I handle the stress of two birthday celebrations, Thanksgiving, Hanukah, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve? That’s right, by adding the unrealistic expectation of blogging twelve times before the end of the year.

Ladies and Gentlemen, in a ridiculous holiday tradition I began last year, I bring you…the Twelve Blogs of Christmas. My challenge to myself, if I choose to accept it, is to share twelve little charming anecdotes with you before its time to stop eating and shopping and start resolving. Surely twelve things will happen between now and the end of the year that are blog-worthy. Maybe not entirely well developed full essay length stories, but certainly enough of something to give us both pause and make us chuckle. What the hell, right? My challenge to you is to comment, and often. I need some positive reinforcement here.

And now, without further ado, I bring you the first story…Is That a Partridge in My Pear Tree?

On Sunday morning, I was up early, before the rest of my family stirred, and decided to bake some muffins for breakfast. After I cracked the eggs and tossed the shells into the sink, I looked out the window over the sink. At that very moment, a hawk landed in the tree outside the window. It wasn’t a tiny little chicken hawk; this was a big soaring bird of prey, just resting comfortably on a sturdy branch not far from the kitchen.

I was not the only one who saw the hawk. My cat, Yoko, also stared out the window and watched it. I have no idea what went through her little walnut brain when she observed what had to be the biggest bird she has ever seen. I also have no idea what the bird would think if it noticed Yoko, which I am not sure it did. But here is what I was thinking: I wonder if that hawk could snatch up Yoko and carry her off to make a tasty meal. Do hawks eat things as large as house cats? Do they occasionally eat stray kittens? If Yoko was carried off by a predator, could I get a new kitten? It’s not that I don’t like my cat, but she’s six and kind of weird and set in her ways and also she likes to suck on my neck and give me hives. I have a good ten to fifteen years more of that. Plus, kittens are cute.

And just like that, the hawk flew away, and I turned back to making my muffins, and Yoko was safe for another day.