My Christmas

Christmas is over. Whew!

Gone are the Christmases of my childhood, when I laid around eating candy and looking over my presents. These last two days have been so busy, I haven’t had time to even think about posting. From endless cooking, baking, pulling out the nice china, crystal and silver, last-minute wrapping, getting everyone presentable for church, laying out stockings and cookies and milk and watching family Christmas movies to cleaning up wrapping paper, saving bows, putting batteries in toys, playing Pictionary (which is really the worst game ever), arguing over Pictionary (which is really the worst game ever), hand-washing and putting away the nice china, crystal and silver, I loved (almost) every minute of it, but I have a litle secret to share with you.

I’m glad it’s over.

To those of you still blessed with cherubic young children, I stand on the other side of puberty right now, calling across to you over its turbulent, zit-pus-filled waters to please, please appreciate their cherubicity while it lasts because Christmas with teenagers is an altogether different experience from what you’ve got going now. Hubs and I have endured 24-7 guffawing these last few days over everything from our board game-playing skills to our (unintentional!) coordinating pajamas on Christmas morning. It has exactly the same effect as Chinese water torture, in that I am about to crack.

Because let me tell you, being mocked over my pajamas at seven fucking a-m is not my idea of a good time.

“I seem to remember the two of you wearing matching beagle t-shirts not that long ago,” I said irritatedly, standing pregnant and fuming in my red flannel pajamas as the girls chortled on the sofa. “I don’t know why you think our pajamas are so funny.”

“Because when I did it,” 16 screeched, “I was in FOURTH GRADE!” And the laughter went to eleven.

“Is it too late to take these presents back?” I asked Hubs.

Also, in a bizarre and twisted turn of events, 16, who spent the last two weeks being a vegetarian (i.e., eating carbs, carbs, carbs and vegetables swimming in cheese sauce in lieu of any meat products whatsoever, until Hubs asked her whether she realized that she was on a weight-gaining diet, at which point she weighed herself and freaked the hell out), decided two days before Christmas to go on Atkins.

Except that she didn’t bother to read anything about Atkins, so it’s like a weird version of Atkins in which she’s decided to eat only a pound of sandwich meat and a bunch of boiled eggs every day. The problem is that prior to making this genius pseudo-Atkins decision, she had already requested creamed corn, mashed potatoes, chocolate stout cake and pumpkin bread for Christmas. Which I made. And which she then refused to touch.

Need I even waste time and word space typing out how annoying this was? No. Let’s move on to the guilty secret portion of this post.

Guess what I got for Christmas? Season one of Little House on the Prairie. I can’t explain how much I’ve been craving finally watching this show from start to finish. I loved it as a child, but saw it in reruns on TBS, all out of order, and now, I’m determined to finally watch every episode, as it happened. I wondered as I put the first disc in yesterday if I would finally recognize it as as the schmaltzy, Hallmark card show it’s touted to be, but oh sweet jeebus, put me in a one-room log cabin with a youngish Michael Landon, three girls who actually help with chores and a quilt for a door and I swear, I’ll be happy for the rest of my days. I told my husband that I think the show appealed to me as a child because Charles Ingalls was the perfect dad, masculine and rugged with a sensitive side, not to mention mad fiddle-playing skillz. And as an adult, I’m liking the show even more, because Carolyn is kind of bitchy sometimes and I can totally relate (I mean, I’d be all, I hate this dirt floor and I also hate your friend who spits, too!), and because you can tell she totally has a real-life crush on Michael Landon there in the beginning, and because Melissa Gilbert is actually sort of homely and not like a Hollywood child actor at all. And I got a good laugh over the “Indians,” who were white guys in brown makeup and black eyeliner- Was it really that hard to find SAG card-carrying Native Americans? Gah! So yeah. If you can’t find me, I’m probably watching Little House, at least for the next five or so years (I mean, didn’t that show run about 37 seasons?).

And to prove I’m not a total dork (despite what my girls would tell you), I also got excellent CDs by Vienna Teng, Imogen Heap and Regina Spektor, Gilmore Girls Season 3 and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind on DVD, among other things.

And as an aside, I’m reading Running with Scissors right now and I totally love it. It’s cracking me up.

This post is running on and on, but we had a lot of catching up to do, you know?

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