12 Drummers Drumming: Twelfth Blog

Christmas is over. The decorations are packed up and stowed in the attic. The house has been swept clean of fake pine needles; yes, fake Christmas trees also shed their plastic needles, adding both that touch of realism and the potential for your children and pets to ingest some extra lead. The house is so bare and devoid of festive touches, it looks like it’s been robbed. All that remains are the memories of the holiday season, and nobody can take those away from you. Hell, no amount of hallucinogens will erase those. How about a little holiday wrap up? Here you go, my own top ten list. Only it’s twelve, for the twelve days, er, blogs, of Christmas, and it’s not really a "best of" list, more of a random list, and I’ll stop now and let you read:

12. Holiday food is very tasty. What other time of year do you have at least four different kinds of made from scratch cookies in containers on the counter, not to mention candy and cakes and even just for the holidays ice cream flavors and non-dairy creamer? Is there any food that hasn’t been sold out to make a holiday buck? And it’s all in my house in quantities that could feed a third world country for a month. You know what else comes along with all the yummy food that you eat and eat until pants seem superfluous? About five to ten pounds. How is it even possible to gain five pounds in two days? I’m not eating for two nor swimming in the Olympics. No way did I consume over ten thousand calories in two days. And even if I did, I moved some, didn’t I? Doesn’t the act of chewing burn a few calories? What about getting off the couch and walking to the pantry? I hate all the holiday food that I ate because I love it so much.

11. My older daughter gave me a Christmas gift this year that she knew I would love: a pedicure kit. She gave me one of those callus razors and a three sided foot grater and a bottle of pale purple nail polish. I love to get pedicures and go about every three weeks to a nail salon to have my toes painted in a color that would never be appropriate on the fingers of a grown woman.

She was definitely thinking along the right track, but the execution, well, nice try, kid. When in her twelve years has she ever seen me give myself a pedicure? I don’t want to scrape my own feet; that’s why I pay a Vietnamese woman to do it. If I had a fish tank of those fish that nibble the dead skin off your heels, I might reconsider. Until then, I plan on risking a fungal infection by paying someone else to refurbish my trotters.

10. Don’t most people wish they could spend more time with their families? Everyone is so busy these days; even children have to pencil in playtime on  their day planners. The holidays are the perfect time for everyone to relax, take a break from their jam-packed schedules, and just enjoy quality time together. Sounds great for about three days. After that, we all start to hate each other. This one chews with her mouth open. That one rolls her eyes every five seconds. And really, can you not excuse yourself and go to the restroom if you have to do that? Do you have to do it in front of me? Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Constant smothering attention topped with the demand to be fed and entertained is just irritating. Isn’t it time for you all to go back to school and work? I might have given birth to two of you, and enjoyed conceiving you with him, but if I have to look at any of you for one more day, I am going to punch you in the side of the head.

9. I love giving gifts. I go out of my way to try to get things for the people I love that are either something they would really love or something they would really need even if they didn’t realize it until the wrapping paper is ripped off. With my daughters, though, Christmas is getting to be a challenge, and it is sucking all the fun out of my perfectionist gift giving over achieving. When one kid believes in Santa and the other doesn’t, it ain’t easy to perpetuate that lie. Here’s another version of the same problem. One kid asks for clothes and shoes. The other one wants toys and games and stuffed animals. (And sheets. What the what?) How do I or Santa make that fair? It’s a lose-lose, and someone invariably ends up disappointed. This year it was S, my younger daughter. She had left a two page list for Santa, but she still was shocked that she didn’t get everything she wanted. The rest of us were treated to her bad attitude and pouty face for the rest of Christmas. I don’t remember asking Santa for that.

8. With the kids out of school and my husband off from work and my sister’s family visiting, I had to adjust my usual daily gym routine. I tried to embrace this fitness hiatus as a chance to allow my body to rest and heal, and then I tried to see the break as an opportunity to start fresh and enthusiastic in January. What really happened was that I got crabby due to the lack of daily endorphins.

You know what else? Things feel better when they are used regularly. After a few days off, I can barely walk up and down the stairs. Getting off the couch takes a forklift. Is someone playing with bubble wrap? No, it’s just my knees. I spend so much time being sore from working out that I didn’t realize how bad everything hurt when it doesn’t move. Which means that January I will have the joy of both sore muscles and sore joints. Rest and heal, my fat ass.

7. I love when my family comes to visit, well, when some of my family comes to visit. What I don’t love is getting ready for them. All that cleaning and finding homes for all the crap that sits on the counters. Planning meals and sweeping up the dust bunnies that I would normally step over. Making sure the toilets look like they were freshly installed. Removing the homes of ten thousand spiders in all the corners and on the ceiling fans and light fixtures. All that deep cleaning makes no sense, because it’s not like the visit starts with a surprise military inspection. Generally it starts with everyone taking off their shoes and hiding them somewhere that they can’t remember when they go to look for them five minutes after the time they planned on leaving.

Everything gets done, though, and I can “relax” and enjoy the visit. And then when they leave, I am sad to see them go, but I am also sad to see the eight loads of laundry, the three extra bags of garbage, and the candy wrappers hidden under my couch. I’m only saying this because I know my sister feels the same way. In fact, we all do, we just don’t say it out loud. I love to have you come, but I hate all the work I have to do before and after.

6. The best part of the holidays is having nothing you have to do. There’s no where you have to be, no structure to the day. If you want to sleep late, sleep late. If you want to eat lunch at three in the afternoon, bon appétit. And chances are good that all the shopping and wrapping is done by December 24. All the prep work is finished and the big day arrives. Everyone is happy.

Then, about 2:30 on Christmas, the realization hits that there is nothing else that needs to be done, and what now? What are we going to do for the next week? I’m bored, my husband’s bored, the kids are bored. I become the cruise director, yet no one wants to do any of my suggested activities. Instead, they choose to complain about how bored they are while lying upside down on the sofa watching the same episode of The Regular Show that they have seen for the past three days in a row. I can’t threaten to call Santa. All I have in the arsenal is to make them practice piano or scoop the kitty litter. How much do my kids hate to practice piano if it is on a par with scooping cat turds out of gravel? We live our lives by our routine. When you take that away, it’s becomes pure survival mode, as if Christmas Day were the apocalypse. I am pretty sure my older daughter has stockpiled drinking water and canned food in her closet.

5. Turducken. Ever try it? It’s a Cajun thing, or so I’ve heard. It’s this thing where you take a hen and shove it inside a duck which is then shoved inside a turkey. In between each layer is some sort of spicy stuffing, sausage or cornbread or some other weird stuff I can’t pronounce. The bones are removed from each bird except the turkey’s legs, so it becomes this giant wad of meat with two drumsticks. And while the bones are gone, all the fat and skin is left intact. You don’t actually put it together yourself, unless you are into taxidermy or serial killing. You buy it prestuffed and it’s expensive as hell.

It’s also a waste, since not everyone, including me, has any interest in eating that unnatural entrée. You take it home and bake if for about five years; it takes a long time to cook through three animals. You know what it smells like when it bakes? Ass. Spicy ass.

We aren’t Cajun, we’re Jewish, well, some of us are, but it’s not like we grew up with Turducken. My husband and brother in law decided a few years ago that the concept of eating animals shoved inside animals was something they would like to explore further, and thus a new family tradition was born. It’s a good thing Christmas only comes once a year. I’m still trying to get the smell out of the curtains.

4. Hanukah overlapped Christmas this year, as it does every three years or something like that. Hanukah is a mysterious holiday. Not only does no one know how to spell it, but also no one knows when it is. Christmas is arbitrarily on December 25, but Hanukah skips around. Add to that the fact that it starts  at sundown the night before, and even the calendar makers can’t tell us when it is. Is it sundown on the twentieth or does it start the twenty first? The reason it’s never on the same date is because Hanukah follows the lunar calendar, or as I like to say, your period. Also, if you can’t find it, you can’t forbid it. It’s hard enough to make Hanukah feel like a real holiday on its own without throwing Christmas into it. I much prefer when it is at the beginning of the month, so I can give my children socks and underwear without them seeming so paltry compared to what Santa brings.

3. You know what’s special? Homemade gifts. One year, when I was about nine, I forgot to get a present for my grandfather. I had no money, so I looked around my bedroom to see what I could make for him. I chose an empty turtle bank I wasn’t using. It was green and purple and had sleepy eyes, and on its shell was the coin slot. I took a few plastic violets (I was a big fan of the five-and-dime when I was a kid) that I had lying about and stuck them in the coin slot, and voila! A turtle bank with fake flowers blocking the hole. “What the fuck is that?” my grandfather asked when he opened it. He looked at me like I was crazy, and I am pretty sure after he left I took the violets out of the bank and put everything back in my room.

I get homemade gifts too. None are as special as a turtle bank with plastic flowers, but most of them make me think something my grandfather would say aloud and then try to find a place to display it without offending the budding artist. This year I got a poem that rhymed for the first half but then switched to free verse. It was glued to a piece of cardboard that had been covered with old wrinkled wrapping paper. Yes, I love it. But what the fuck am I supposed to do with it? Put it in the pile with the water bottle fish and the misshapen yellow pinch pot?

2. You know how happy you are when you get something you really wanted? And then you know how you feel when that something breaks the first time you use it? That sucks, doesn’t it? This really was not S’s year. Not only did she not get all two pages of what she wanted from Santa, what she did get was made by incompetent elves. Her cat face fingerless gloves lost an eye the first time she wore them. Her walrus pajamas split down the seam thanks to the piss poor sewing of some third world elfin child. Her light-up thing- do requires some weird sized battery only available at the North Pole. Half her brand new goodies had to go back for replacements. How am I supposed to help boost the economy if every piece of crap I buy is, well, a piece of crap? And of course, after her new stuff breaks, she slips into a horrible mood. See #9.

1. If I see one more “Jesus is the reason for the season” car magnet or church sign, I am going to carbomb Christmas. I don’t want to think about the religious implications of Christmas. I just want to watch Rudolph and hang a stocking and decorate a tree and put out a plate of cookies and milk for Santa. Sure, the whole idea of a fat man dressed all in red who loves children so much he sneaks into their houses while they are sleeping to leave them gifts is a tad creepy. But is it any creepier than a woman getting pregnant by some unseen higher power and then giving birth to this superbaby in a barn? At least I don’t believe Santa is going to die for my sins. I’m not knocking anyone else’s religious beliefs (well, I am, kinda) but why not allow me to keep Christmas in my way and you keep Christmas in yours? If I want to take one day a year to spend thousands of dollars buying crap my family and friends don’t need as an excuse for overeating, what business is it of yours? Everyone else is doing it too. So get over yourself, preachy Christmas people. Excess is an American tradition.

Whew, I made it, another year of twelve blogs crammed into one month’s time. Happy New Year, dear reader. Yes, I mean you. I am pretty sure you are the only one reading this anyway, so happy New Year to you. Now it’s time to get on with 2012. Why not start with that credit card bill from December?