Thank You God for These . . . Um . . . Well . . . Er . . . Gifts?

Last night we went out to eat (big surprise there) to one of the three local steakhouses.  We were seated in a booth in an empty section.  A large party was quickly seated right next to us.  They had a booth with a small table pulled up next to it and another booth across from that.  There were two more booths behind those ones and there was still room to get around the table so that potentially, they could seat more people there.  The thing that really bugged me is this blond in stiletto boots shows up and she's got a cake and a wrapped gift the size of a small SUV.  Are you kidding me?  She takes the gift and puts it on one of the booths behind them and then puts the cake on the other - thus taking over an entire section of the restaurant.  The hostess even brought people over there to seat them in the gift/cake booths only to find that they were already occupied by the cake and the gift.  My thing is - who the hell did this woman think she was?  I just don't understand people that are that egocentric.  This is a public restaurant.  You have not hired out a banquet room to celebrate a birthday party.  And they brought their own cake!  The restaurant serves dessert.  Why didn't they just buy everyone dessert instead of bringing their own food from home?  I wouldn't go to meet someone for lunch at a restaurant and take a sack lunch with me!  I know it can be hard to find a time and a place to get everyone together for celebratory gatherings but if you want to have a cake from home, here's a thought - HAVE IT AT HOME!  Luckily we were finished with our meal before the gift opening began.  I'm sure they would have wanted our booth to put the ripped up wrapping paper on.  Or better yet, we could have been background for their photos like at the restaurant last week where the woman in the next booth took a flash picture of everything her baby did.  Why do I always get stuck next to "God's gift to the world"?  God, if your listening, I speak for the world.  What is your gift return policy?

12 for 12

My thoughts have been rather scattered lately.  My ADD is in overdrive and with the holiday fast approaching, this is not a good thing.  So today I've decided I'd give you a taste of what goes on in my head.  In honor of 12/12, here are 12 things that have been on my mind.

12.  Why is my house so hot in the daytime?  I'm talking like Jamaica hot.  If we turn the heat down then we are too cold later in the day.  It could just be me but I'm too young to be getting hot flashes.

11.  How did we get so much Christmas stuff?  It seems like Hubby just keeps bringing more and more of it up from the basement.  I have no idea how we have accumulated so much . . . well . . . Christmas crap.  Its festive and I love it.  Its just that there isn't room in our tiny townhouse for it all.

10.  Why is it that every time some little bitty thing goes wrong at our house in the next town over that we are renting out . . . anyway, why do they call property management every time?  Instead of checking the fuses, they just call and say that the indoor garage opener isn't working.  Fine.  Check the fuse and if that's not it then DEAL.  You still have two garage door openers and the keypad on the garage.  Its a one car garage.  Do you really need that many ways to access it?  I swear when I agreed to give these very young boys a chance, I should have realized they were spoiled rotten.  If you asked me right now if I would renew their lease in 2012, the answer would be NO!

9.  I think we may be a mite-free home.  They seem to be gone.  Fingers crossed.  Knock on wood.

8.  I am getting very restless at my job.  I don't know why.  Its not hard.  Its just annoying.  I can't imagine having the commitment of a career and working full-time, but I feel like I want more.  I really should get into this writing a book thing that I keep thinking about.  What harm would it do?  Maybe after the holidays.

7.  My daughter is going to college.  My daughter is going to college.  My daughter is going to college.  Maybe if I say it enough times, I will be ok with it.  She has gotten into the College Down the Street.  She even made it into their honors program.  I know that she will get into others and I am not looking forward to having to help her make this decision.  Choices like which Christmas gift to buy are hard for her because of her OCD.  I can't begin to imagine the drama this decision is going to come with.

6.  Am I blogging just for my own mental health or does reading my blog actually keep people informed on my life and maybe even help them with their problems?  (If nothing else by showing them that we all have problems.)  This blog has quite a few followers but I haven't gotten a new one in quite some time and my other blog http://www.myliteraryopinions.blogspot.com/ only has 5 followers.  It gets more hits than that but only 5 followers is kind of a bummer.  I wonder if I should keep them going?

5.  What am I going to mail my Grandmother's Christmas gift to her in.  I have it wrapped and ready to go in a shirt box.  A typical shirt box.  I wanted to send it Priority Mail so I got one of their mailing boxes.  The one referred to as a shirt box.  The only problem is their shirtbox is about 3/4 of an inch shorter than my shirt box.  Come on people.  A shirt box should be a shirt box.  When will the world get its act together and have uniform standard sizes?

4.  What else can I get my daughter for Christmas?  I have some gifts and some ideas but need more.  If you come up with any, you can comment on this blog.  I just won't post your comment so she doesn't see it.  What would you want if you were a 17 1/2 year old girl?

3.  How come if according to the movie "Fred Claus" when Santa becomes a saint, he and his whole family stop aging and freeze at the age they are at but then in the movie "The Santa Clause 3" he and his wife have a baby how could that happen according to the rules of Santa from "Fred Claus"?  Hubby says they are just movies but I am thinking this is an important thing to kids and what would I say if a random child should ask me?  I think Hollywood should get it together on their Santa lore.

2.  Where am I gonna find the money in our budget to pay for our trip to Hometown between Christmas and New Year's?  I really shouldn't be worrying about this because Hubby took over the budgetting for the year so technically I am giving myself one more month off before I start doing it again but I can't help but worry.  The hotel is like $160 per night.  We are looking at two or three nights.  We don't have that kind of a chunk of change just sitting around.  Besides, if we did I would have already spent it on Christmas.

1.  Is my Grandma ok?  Last week she broke her leg and had to get a rod put in place of the bones between her knee and ankle.  Its times like this when its really hard to live 5 hours away.  I know that my being there wouldn't really do anything except maybe make her smile but I just wish I was.  Calling on the phone just isn't the same.  I miss my Gram.

There you go.  A roller coaster ride through my mind this Christmas season.  I will make my best effort to have my next posting be a more cohesive thought process.  I promise.

Goodness Gracious God All-Mitey

I am caught up in a major catch 22.  See, our middle bird (I call him the middle bird because we got him second out of the three and because he literally sits in the middle between the other birds) has mites.  We believe they are red mites.  Between the interweb and its wonderful wealth of contradicting information and the clueless girl at the vet's office, we are pretty much on our own trying to figure this one out.  We don't want to use any of the over the counter sprays or "traps" because one site said that they have been known to kill birds.  We were told by our local bird experts that they won't transfer from one bird to another without direct contact between the birds, but the chick at the vet's office said "Yeah, your other birds can probably maybe get it I think."  (She was really decisive <insert eye roll here>.)  He did receive a treatment for mites from our local bird experts while he was "vacationing" at their place over Thanksgiving.  The trouble is that they don't seem to be going away.  We clean the cages, perches and toys but the mites are still on the bird.  If we give the bird a treatment, we can't wait till the mites are all gone before we put him back in the cage.  The mites won't all drop dead at the same time because they didn't get the memo that that would be the most convenient procedure for me.  What to do?  What to do?  I should be thankful.  At least they don't transfer to people . . . that I know of.  <furious paranoid scratching>

Personal Postal Purging ------------- (try saying that five times real fast)

I did it!  I did it!  I can't believe I did it!  I finally had the nerve to cut some people off of my Christmas card list!  After sending out 96 cards last year, I decided enough was enough.  I went through my list which was now well over 100 and axed a few non-recipricaters.  Chop! Chop!  I liked sending cards to them and thought they liked receiving them but when you don't hear back from people you just never know.  So I said ado to about ten people.  Yeah, that's right - a whole big ten people.  Chop!  Chop!  I'm ruthless.  What can I say?  Then, I realized I had lost my Christmas card address book.  This was a huge catastrophe in my house.  I looked everywhere and then I started to see the silver lining of this dilemma.  I couldn't find it so I started asking people for their addresses again.  Some responded and some didn't.  Most who didn't respond got the axe.  Chop!  Chop!  They may be great people who were at one point or another cherished friends but if they can't spring for the couple of quarters it takes to buy a stamp.  See ya!  Chop! Chop!  I did manage to find my address book the day after I mailed my cards.  And I have to admit that I did make out a few cards to a few people that I missed.  I even received a card from someone I didn't send one to.  I broke down and sent one to them too.  I was weak and the guilt got to me.  I admit it.  But my number is still below 100 and as Santa is my witness, I will never let my Christmas card list go over 100 cards again. 

Angels Don't Just Grow on Trees

While in Hometown for the holiday weekend, we were out shopping.  Yes, it was on Black Friday but surprisingly it wasn't to get any of the Black Friday deals which all actually happened on Thursday night anyway.  So, we go to Wally World and I was thrilled to see that they had an angel tree in the front of the store.  An angel tree, for those that don't know, is a Christmas tree decorated with slips of paper.  Each slip of paper has the name, age and gender of a child in need on it.  You are supposed to pick a slip off of the tree and buy an age and gender appropriate toy for that child.  There are usually collection boxes around the tree.  I love doing the angel tree and it is something they don't really seem to do here in Suburbia.  I love helping those in need especially at Christmas time.  But I also make an attempt to handle my philanthropical giving on my own and not rely on charities, especially when it comes to one group - military families.  Don't get me wrong,  I'm not unpatriotic.  I appreciate all that our service men and women do for me and our country.  I just have a problem because at one point I was part of a needy military family. I even had to do Christmas by myself while my spouse was deployed.  Nobody, I repeat NOBODY, from any charity ever asked if we needed help.  Nobody offered us food or toys for our child.  Nobody even checked to make sure that I was okay handling the holiday alone as a single parent.  Holidays were hard.  Being away from family was difficult.  We managed to scrape by and our child always had presents to open on Christmas morning and there was always a holiday meal to feast on but it was usually the work of creative financial planning and going without other things that made it possible.  Could we have sought out charities and begged for a hand-out?  Yes, but there is this thing called pride that seems to get in the way.  I'm not saying people should not give to charities that benefit the military families.  This is just my personal experience.  What I am saying is to make sure that ANY charity you are giving to is actually doing what you think and they claim they are doing.  Or better yet don't rely on some corporation, even if it is non-profit, to do the work for you.  If you know a family in need, offer them help directly.  Invite them to your holiday meal.  Share your home with them to provide some company.  Take them a bag of food or some toys for their kids.  It may feel ackward and they may claim not to need it but I can guarantee you they will be thankful even if it isn't directly to your face.  If everyone just took care of their friends and neighbors like family, we wouldn't need all these hundreds of charities funneling money in a million different directions and people wouldn't get overlooked and slip through the cracks.  Show your appreciation directly to our military men and women.  Include them in your Christmas card list.  Check on their families while they are deployed.  You may make a world of difference in a person's life but rely on yourself to do it - not some middleman.

Pssst . . . Santa . . . It's Room 104

The saying goes "you can't go home again" and I've decided that is true for me and my family.  We will be going to Hometown for Thanksgiving and between Christmas and New Year if weather permits but we will not be going for Christmas proper.  We will be spending Christmas Eve and Day here in our own humble abode.  After chatting at length with Uncle Fantastic, I came to realize that the experience I wanted my daughter to have didn't really exist anymore.  There was no sitting around the table on Christmas Eve.  It is now done buffet style.  Not that that's a huge change but it made me realize that what I experienced as a child was my childhood, not my daughter's.  Her childhood and holiday traditions involved myself and her dad.  Just our little family of three.  We have our own Christmas Eve party where we gorge ourselves on junk food and play games and/or do activities.  (Last year it was a Wii tournament.  This year's activities are craft-centered.  Just what Hubby was hoping for!  Yeah, right!)  We have done this for years.  Why should I deny her the Christmas traditions she knows just to try to relive my past.  I don't know if they even break the small sheets of blessed wafers at my grandparents house anymore and well, she's too old to crawl under the table when she's finished and tickle everybody's feet.  Besides, the dog does that now anyway.  She needs to stay rooted in her norm - our traditions.  Next year, she may be off to college and coming home for Christmas and that home will be here in Suburbia, not back in Hometown.  This IS her Hometown whether I want to accept that or not.  She grew up here.  This is what she knows.  So while I will be sad for a moment missing another Christmas Eve with my family, I will embrace the fact that I will be having Christmas Eve with My Family.  Besides, how does Santa know what hotel room number you're in anyway?  Not a risk I want to take.   :)

Child Endangerment: The New Way to a Thinner You

I saw something the other day that made me scowl.  It was a magazine cover.  No, I'm not a Ryan Gosling fan miffed because Bradley Cooper was named the Sexiest Man Alive by People magazine - although I do have to say, I whole heartedly agree with People.  It was a cover picture of Mariah Carey.  The text was something about her losing like, oh I don't know, 70 pounds or something after having her babies a few months ago.  Ok everyone.  Calm down.  This is not the feat you think it is.  Glad you have your pre-baby body back Ms. Carey but do you really think this is cover story worthy?  I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm happy for her.  I just don't understand why this is amazing.  She has a personal chef to cook her healthy meals, she has a personal trainer to guide her body sculpting, she probably has a nanny to watch her kids while she does all of this and without a rigorous 9 to 5 job, she has the time to do it all.  What I really want to see is some nobody on the cover of a magazine.  Some mom who has three kids and lost 70 pounds while only finding minimal time to workout and being forced to eat fast food due to time and financial constraints.  Now that would be a story.  Make it real like we women really are.  I tried losing weight after having my baby.  She was approximately 16 months old and I thought kick boxing sounded fun.  So I bought an instructional video because I didn't have the money to join a gym and/or get a personal trainer.  It went well for the first five minutes but without a nanny to watch my little bundle of joy while I was sweating my way to a thinner me, things were bound to go wrong.  My daughter thought this was a fun game and began to run rings around mommy as she kicked.  I had my timing down pretty good, kicking when she was behind me.  Then the tempo on the video switched and let's just say when a toddler receives a swift foot blow to the head, they don't particularly enjoy it.  We didn't have money to go to the ER so I spent the rest of the day cuddling her apologetically and checking her pupils for signs of a concussion.  So, I think magazines should stop making us feel inferior and start reporting on what is real.  Real problems faced by real people.  Then maybe I'd really buy them instead of just flipping through while in the check-out line.