Author: The Jody

I’m looking for the spirit of Christmas. I put it around here somewhere.

I just don’t have a whole lot of it this week, and that makes me sad. I used to have tons of it – but maybe I was living a happy, stress-free life then. I surrounded myself with other people who had tons of Christmas spirit (I’m thinking back to when I was a single gal sharing a condo with my sister – we through the open house to beat all open houses. We were LIVING Christmas back then.)

Now I just look around at all I have on my to-do list and it’s overwhelming. Tomorrow is two weeks to Christmas, and I don’t even have a tree yet. I’ve got to deal with holiday stuff going on at my work, and both his kindergarten and his child care place – and I just know I’m going to screw up on one or the other or both. I haven’t finished shopping, and don’t have a CLUE when I’m going to get it done, but I will finally have money for it this next paycheck.

Mom asked what I want for Christmas, and I don’t even have anything to tell her. I mean really, there isn’t any specific thing. So it’s not like I am looking forward to opening my own presents. I know that sounds selfish, but at least I’m being honest. Maybe by seeing how selfish it is, I can work through this. But I like surprises. I want people in my life who know me so well that they don’t even have to ask what I want (well, not for everything), and then I can actually have a little surprise on Christmas morning. Something someone put a lot of thought into, you know?

The house is a mess, one side of the kitchen sink is broken, and every day I argue with Junior about his being spoiled and greedy. “I want want want want” all day long. Two weeks before Christmas, he wants me to buy him stuff. I tried to guilt him into thinking of others: “Aren’t you going to feel bad when someone gives you a gift and you don’t have one for them? This is the time of year when you are giving gifts to tell people how must you love and appreciate them.” He sort of gets it, but I dread taking him shopping to buy gifts for others, because it turns into a “me-fest”. God, at Office Max he wanted me to buy him a $30 game for his computer, and his computer is broken. Didn’t stop the begging. And begging.

Man, this is a whiney post. I may delete all traces of it later. But I will post it for now to try to remove some of the stress I’m feeling, and to see if that helps me out at all.

And the plan is to get a tree tonight. I just have to clear out a space for it somewhere. Ho!

Boy, paging Dr. Freud. I officially had a fellow blogger made a guest appearance in a dream last night. Anyone who knows how to interpret dreams can be my guest.

In summary – I was walking the long way home from the grocery store to my mom’s house, where I guess I lived, carrying a 12-pack of toilet paper. As I was walking someone yelled my name out the window of a 2-family house…it was C. Monks of Utter Wonder! He recognized me from the little picture on my blog, and wanted to know if I could help him get something working correctly on his computer. In my dream, Mr. Monks was only abou 4’11” tall and had Weird Al hair. I have never met Mr. Monks and for all I know, this is accurate. I also met his downstairs neighbor, who was carrying his child (although I’m not sure they were a couple) and was invited to a cocktail party. After the cocktail party I was suddenly Angelica Pickles from Rugrats, and I was singing to a crowd from a balcony, but I was just mouthing the words – Suzy Charmicle was hiding on the floor behind me doing the actual singing. So yes, I apparently sounded like a black woman while singing and nobody guessed…at first.

So many many things in this dream point to so many many problems, no?

(Important: As far as I know, Mr. Monks is married with a lovely family, and hasn’t impregnated any downstairs neighbors he might have.)

I drive through Bolton on my way to and from work every day, and last week I noticed an announcement posted on the big sign they have out in front of the Police Station (I think this is pretty much how news gets out. I’m not sure they have a town hall. Maybe it’s in the building up on the hill beside the police station, but it’s not very visible as you drive by, if it is. Thus the PD sign. Anyway.)

Apparently it’s time for Little League signups in Bolton. Now pardon me for being a grumpy gus, but isn’t it a tad early to do that? Is there an assumption that nobody new will be moving to town between now and April or May or whenever LL starts practices? Why on earth would you have sign-ups so far in advance?

“Hey, kids, we have to sign up for little league, only 4 months till the first practice. Oh, and hey, Petey, I know you’re only 8, but time to get your early admissions forms in to your top choice for college.”

Isn’t there something else that should be starting up sooner, like maybe a winter basketball league or something? Luge?

Geez, when they talk about the pressure on kids when it comes to school and sports, I’ll bet they weren’t even talking about crap like this. I mean, making them decide if they want to play or not this far ahead of time is downright silly. I don’t even know what I want for dinner tonight, never mind making a huge time commitment for something that isn’t going to happen until next summer.

All the snow-storminess behind us, it’s business as usual. Man, I do hate driving when the stuff on the roads is melty and the sun is bright (explaining the melty) which completely and thoroughly blinds you. That gets old REALLY fast.

I mentioned at breakfast that I hope it warms up enough to melt the snow and Junior got a look of pure horror on his face. Oh, right. Kids like snow. Okay, for you, we can keep it until after Christmas. But December 26th, I expect to see bare green patches in the lawn.

Man, Blogger is down, so I’m forced to (HORRORS!) type in this entry by hand. I’ll try to remember to copy and paste it when blogger is back up, otherwise it will be lost forever. Well, not forever, but what do I look like, a machine? I’ve got a couple of pictures here for Anji. I’ll just link to them because they are a little on the large side 72k and 55k and I don’t want to for people to download them every day for the next week of so as they move slowly down in the page. So here is one of my cafe table and chair, and the other of a green plastic adarondack chair. In the corner of the 2nd one, you can see a little red disk swing from Junior’s set. Please note that the red disk is about 1-2 inches from the top of the snow. This is all from this weekend, we had green grass a couple of days ago.

Okay, since the snow did finally stop, I guess I need to go outside and deal with it.

Okay, I dealt with it. Hey, that was fun, nothing like a little wind to make blowing snow a challenge! And you know how I thrive on challenges. Okay, I’ve dealt with snow, done three loads of laundry…can I have some “me time” now?