Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Cooking and Baking and Making...Not I!


We have a snow day here in North Jersey.  I'm a teacher, my child is a student, so that means we are home all day!  However, I just want to put it out there that on this snow day I am not:


1. Cooking. Someone is roasting a butternut squash today to make soup.  Who has a butternut squash just lying around in case of a snow day?   
2. Baking.  Again, five different kinds of cookies are being made today by people in cyberspace.  I think I have flour, sugar and baking soda in my cabinet.  But these people are whipping up cookies with ingredients like raspberry preserves and ricotta cheese and Crunch bars. (Fine, I know it's Christmas cookie season, but just let me have my rant...)

3. Making crafts with my child.  I learned he hated crafts when he was two, so this is never happening regardless of what Pinterest crap pops up on my newsfeed today.

(above facts provided by Facebook, the official source to know everyone else's sh&%)

I am getting a boatload of paperwork done! Bills to pay, calls to make, lessons to write...in other words, thank God for XBox.

However, I am taking said child sledding after lunch to ease my guilt of holing myself up in my room while I sift through everything that's been not-so-patiently waiting for me on my desk.

Whew. That was cheaper than a therapist. Thanks for listening.

Monday, December 2, 2013

You’re a Mean One, Mama Grinch




Call me a Grinch, there, it’s said
but I must admit it, this month I dread.

The month of December just adds more things to my already overflowing to-do list.  Here are the Top 10 Things I’d Rather Not Be Doing in December (or ever): 

10. Shopping with Hoards of People
Grocery shopping on a Saturday afternoon in July is equivalent to slowly being poked in the eyeballs with barbeque skewers.  Any kind of shopping in December on any day of the week at any time of the day is like walking into 20 foot icicles hanging from my home and having them conveniently land in all orifices of my body while “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” plays on loop.

9. Cooking or Baking
I don’t enjoy either in my everyday life so why on Earth would I want to do mass quantities of it in just a few short weeks? 

8. Making Cards, Addressing Cards, and Mailing Cards
You see my family and me on Facebook, isn’t that enough?  And really, what do you do with the card when the season is over? If I told you what I did with the cards I receive after their three-week basket display, I probably wouldn’t ever receive another card again.  Let's save some trees, people, and my sanity!    

7. Receiving “Wish Lists” to Know Exactly What Someone Wants
Unless you are a child making your list for Santa, just stop it.  This takes the joy out of giving!  Okay, it’s great that I have a guide, but seriously, what fun is it to buy the purple cashmere sweater in the back right corner of Macy’s next to the mannequin with the curly hair?  Then I have to present this gift to the recipient as if it were all a big surprise.  Here’s 100 bucks.  Go fight the crowds and get it yourself.

6. Embarking on a Manhunt for the Perfect Gift
Fine, if we just stuck with #7 for people of all ages, this could easily be avoided.  However, I like to have some kind of element of surprise.  I like to give a gift that shows thought and creativity, like I actually know what a person likes and can translate that into a gift.  Oh, forget it.  We all know I’ll just get a gift card.

5. Seeing on Facebook that “Friends” Were Done Wrapping Their Gifts on November 20th
Show-offs! They get their holiday jollies from feeling superior to us worker elves grimacing through the season. Let’s add to that photos of fully completed house decorations posted with the status “Done!”  They are begging for comments like, “Wow, you’re good!” But I beg to differ! They simply have way too much time on their hands or the incessant need for praise via social media.

4. Buying a Gift for Someone at Work Whom I Barely Know
“Hey, I think I saw you in the hallway one day and now I’m your Secret Holiday Little Person.  Now I get to buy you a generic gift like a candle that you will re-gift at your next generic party. Happy Generic Holidays!”

3. Attending Holiday Parties and Pretending That I Enjoy Small Talk
I don’t mind putting on a pretty dress and sipping a cocktail or two.  However, I’ll probably have to sip three or four just to get me through the dull conversation with Joshua the financial person who does financial things while I try to stifle a yawn between gulps of my cocktail.  Joshua has no idea he is causing me to become an alcoholic as I have to keep drinking to avoid disagreeing with his political and religious beliefs that he is trying to jam down my already alcohol-filled throat.  

2. Decorating Inside and Outside, but Mostly Outside
Our inside decorations take about an hour, start to finish.  Throw up a tree, hang some stockings, and we’re calling it a holly, jolly Christmas.  However it’s the outside that pains me because 1) I will always find the time to do this task on the coldest day of the year and 2) I’m afraid of heights and fear that I will fall 18 inches to my death from my step stool.   I don’t decorate with love in my heart, singing “Deck the Halls,” but rather, for my son’s memories. One day he will look back and remember his pretty house decorated by a Grinch at Christmastime. 

And the #1 Thing I’d Rather Not Be Doing in December? Elf on the F’in Shelf
Before Elf on the Shelf became popular, I created my own imaginary elf just to give myself something else to do in December.  Our imaginary elf visits each night from December 1 through December 24 and leaves a small chocolate like a candy kiss and sometimes a miniature note for our son in our cloth Christmas calendar that hangs by the front door.  He loves it, and that’s why the tradition has continued even though 10 of those days I'll be be awoken by a cry of, "Mommmm! The elf didn't come!" while I curse under my breath at our senile elf.  The “elf” forgets a lot of things when her brain is overloaded, which is everyday, and now the elf must bolt down the stairs, create a diversion, put the candy in the tiny calendar pocket, call her son back over to the calendar and tell her son that he just must have missed it, because, “Look, it’s right there!”

But I digress.  I hate Elf on the Shelf.  We never started the corporate one, and now he asks what it is and why that creepy doll doesn’t show up at our house.  I have to explain that OUR elf is all magical and mysterious and miraculously tiny while his friends’ elves stare eerily from atop kitchen cabinets and poop holiday m&m's leaving them all over the countertop to bring for school snack.

Let us “Bah Humbug” together - anything you don’t particularly look forward to during this festive, overpacked season?