Scrooge you too!

December is a stressful enough time of the year and right now I’m at least 2 weeks behind in, well, just about everything.

I haven’t even started my Christmas cards. I have gifts that need wrapped. Which, at work we “adopted” a nearby school that 90 some percent of the kids families are living at or below poverty level (and that was before the economy tanked.) I have to have that gift wrapped and delivered by Monday. So I might as well wrap the whole pile while I have all the paper and ribbons and shit out. I still have 4 gift cards I need to buy. I need to make 11 pounds of fudge, 3 batches of caramel corn (I used to make popcorn balls, but I can’t get the damn things to come out right since I got my flat top stove), 4 batches of no-bake cookies AND buy containers to pack all that shit in. Not to mention the crap I need to make to take to various holiday parties over the next several weeks. You’re probably wondering why I have to make all this stuff. Between my mom, my sister and my MIL you’d think one of them could figure some of these recipes out. But nooooo, they tell me my fudge is the creamiest, my no-bake cookies are the awesome-ist (which is true) and my caramel corn is just like grandpa used to make. They can never get it to taste as good as mine. Since this is the only flattery I get my head swells so big that I can't think straight and once again I get suckered into making it all.

Also happening this week, my dad has a birthday. He’s still telling everyone he’ll be 39, but really he’s turning 60. So we’re all supposed to go out to dinner Saturday. And I still haven’t found the perfect birthday card. My 18 year old nephew flew in from Oklahoma for a visit and is staying with my parents – but he’ll probably end up here a couple of nights this week. My 12 year wedding anniversary is also this weekend. There was an argument on Sunday that put that milesonte in serious jeopardy. I got in my car and drove 35 minutes to my parent’s house for a visit and still had steam coming out of my ears when I got there.

What with everything that I’ve got going on I said fuck decorating. That’s right. Get over it people. And (spoiler alert) there’s no Santa Claus anyway and I don’t have kids to appreciate the effort. It’s not that I don’t have decorations. I have a whole shitload of decorations. What I don’t have is the time or motivation to dig them all out and set them up. And don’t even get me started on the putting away of the decorations.

Now that I’ve set the background for you, you can understand on Sunday when my mom asked “Do you want a Christmas village set?” why I went a little bonkers. At some point during my tirade of “Are you freakin’ kidding me? Hell no, I don’t want any damn Christmas village! Why does everyone have to get on my ass about not decorating?” Around this time I realized the look on my mom’s face was reminiscent of that time I got caught smoking in the bathroom at school. So I quickly ended with “Oh, but thanks for asking.” Good save, right?