Author: The Jody

Okay, the only item I’ve done on the list is good old number four. Tree out the back, floor swept, vacuumed, and swept again (why do we buy a real tree?) and the space in the corner looks good. I will slide the magazine rack in – it matches the LL Bean Fireplace Wood Rack Set my parents got me the year before last (sort of a forged iron thing) and hope for the best with the toys.

I will slowly have a collection of really cool things in my house…one Christmas at a time.

It’s time again for me to share my to do list. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the show!

1. Sing the Mohegan Sun “Load Letter Paper” song next time the printer at work is empty.

2. Buy some more Aquaphor so I can just leave a tube at work. Enough carrying it back and forth already!

3. Replace all the toothbrushes, and buy extra for guests. Even though we don’t have a lot of guests, I’m impressed that my sister always has extra toothbrushes in the house. You know, in case you have icky breath, I guess.

4. Remove Xmas tree from living room, reclaim space with grown-up stuff (my new magazine rack works) before Junior’s toys see the opening and reproduce into the space like some space-age mold creature. Hey, it could happen.

5. Buy spray to kill space-age mold creatures.

The week between Christmas and the New Year has to be the oddest of the year. I mean, can anyone get themselves into a frenzy of work knowing that

a) a good half the people you normally deal with (if not more) are on vacation, and

b) it’s the 2nd short week in a row?

I worked Friday, so last week was odd just because of that “holiday on a Thursday” thing, but danged if we don’t have that again this week? Ceeeeripes! Now I like a 4 day work week as much as the next person, but I prefer the 4 days to all fall in a row. Call me wacky.

I’m already missing the Christmas music. I told you I would. Junior said we could listen to his Radio Disney Christmas CD in the car the other day, and I didn’t complain. But WXLO, which for some reason is the only station that came in on the car radio this morning, is stuck in some kind of MAJOR RUT, and the songs I heard this morning were the same ones I’ve heard for the past 4 months, no lie. I tried to find another station (DO YOU HEAR THAT, JayBeau?) and while fuzzy, I found one playing a good “MIX” of music, including a Pat Benetar song from the 80s. I think it was Pat Benetar (does she sing “Invincible?”) – and it wasn’t that completely overplayed “Love is a Battlefield”. Would it be so hard for WXLO to actually change the playlist a little more often? Enough of the remake of “Big Yellow Taxi”. ENOUGH.

My son and my nephew were playing video games together. Junior turns 6 in 10 days, my nephew will in 5 months. Listening to them tonight was like watching the Leominster city council on the local cable access channel.

I don’t even know what game they were playing, but they spent 30 minutes arguing over which of them had picked red, thereby totally blowing all the time they had available to play the game. Both of them were too stubborn to just say “okay, you can be red” because they had reduced it to who was right and who was wrong about who had picked it first. What was at stake wasn’t being red, it was being correct. They lost site of what was important, which was to just pick a color and play the game.

I did take the time to point all this out to Junior on the ride home and he got very upset when he realized they’d blown it. I heard snuffling in the back seat, and when asked I was told he was feeling sorry for himself. Well, hey, no need for me to point out that’s what he was doing.

He says next time he’ll say “okay, you can be red” but part of me sees a lot of Jody in him, and I’m the kind of gal who would rather be right than just about anything else, which is why I’d make a lousy politician.

So I have less than a week to accomplish all the things I’d intended to do in 2003. I’d better get started today. So what should I start with, playing the guitar or writing a book?