You are capable of being something – anything – without posting it on the Internet.
A lot of people are doing that whole month long grateful post thing. You know, the thing where every day, for the entire month of November, you post a pithy status update on your social media app of choice professing loudly and clearly for all to hear that – YES, YOU ARE GRATEFUL.
If this is your thing, cool. Let me say that again for the people in the back: IF THIS IS YOUR THING, COOL.
I am not saying you shouldn’t do it.
But don’t be coming at me with bullshit like the claim that I am not grateful becauseI choose to not post a daily gratitude affirmation for the entire world to read.
Honestly, people.
Here’s the thing about Facebook. It’s a place where people can, much like in Las Vegas, be just about anything they want to be. Grateful is one of them. It’s all about the impression that you give people with your Facebook impressions, and all that jazz.
There are going to occasionally be people posting about gratitude that actually are the most terrible, selfish and ungrateful people on the planet. And there are similarly going to be people that don’t post the whole gratitude thing, and appreciate things more than you could ever imagine. This is the result of the Internet’s ability to let people unabashadly craft their own persona, based on reality or not.
So this can serve as a little reminder for those of you that are in the back, and haven’t gotten the memo just yet: you do not have to post on Facebook – or anywhere else – about being thankful to actually be grateful for what you have.
It’s the 21st century, and I would wager a bet that there is one thing historians will one day point to as defining these earliest decades of the age: the Internet debates.
You know them.
They are the debates in which everyone has an opinion that is confused for fact, and it needs to be heard. Loudly.
They are often arguments about the right way to parent. Or, generally speaking, how people do things in different ways, all the while believing theirs to be the only right way.
Everyone involved is undoubtedly offended at some point.
This year’s Christmas season is not lacking in them, the Internet debates. At the strike of midnight on Halloween night, the holiday-related debates started seeping out the woodwork of every crack and crevice the Internet has to offer.
The people who decorate for Christmas before Thanksgiving kicked it all off in the debate against those that wait until their turkey has digested.
Shortly after, people started spitting hatred at each other over Thanksgiving turkey or Thanksgiving ham.
It continued with the people that do the Elf on the Shelf versus the people that think it’s creepy and/or over the top and/or teaching your kids to adhere to an authoritarian government’s surveillance.
(A bit much on the last point there, wouldn’t you say?)
Then it was the people that maintain Santa Claus is real (at all costs) fighting – sometimes virulently – against those that couldn’t lie to their children for any reason. Ever.
This was around the time it became insufferable, as it does every year.
And this year has, so far, been a real doozy. It’s been a lot of discussion about consent and ‘Baby It’s Cold Outside,’ which I have written about on this blog. It’s been the age old correctness of “Happy Holidays” versus “Merry Christmas.” It’s even gone down the dark hole of whether or not Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer has secret and insidious messaging to it.
The most recent debate I saw float up out of nowhere in the comments section on Facebook was White versus Colored. As in the color of lights people put on their trees. I could not believe some of the things people were saying, either. Straight lined, cold blooded hatred and bitterness towards people of the side opposing.
Is it just me, or have things gotten a little weird? Culturally speaking, I mean.
Political correctness and everyone’s opinion suddenly being considered fact has effectively taken over not only the Internet, but daily life. I’m not talking about people giving you actual facts… I’m talking about opinions, and that escalating to being offended. At my local grocery store, the cashiers keep a list of holiday greetings they are and are not allowed to say to people for fear of offending someone while checking out their cheese curds and quinoa.
The folly in it all is it’s destroying everything people have, and for what? To prove a point? To be right? To be less offended?
So you have chosen not to do Elf on the Shelf for your kids. Great! It isn’t necessary to go on a crusade to therefore stop others from doing it, even going as far as to tell your kids to tell their friends that their elves are creepy and perverted.
Or you are an atheist and offended by the mere idea of The Nativity. Cool. I have beliefs too. That doesn’t mean I insist that every thing inconsistent with my own beliefs be taken down around my hometown, as a group of atheists in my community recently suggested of local nativity displays.
With all of these debates, there are two camps: those that do, those that don’t. There is no in between, and it all seems to be rooted in a whole lot of judgment. What the proponents of each side fails to realize, though, is that what they do actually bears no weight on anyone else.
All I want for Christmas is for the debates to stop.
I don’t mean for people to all suddenly believe in the same things. And I don’t mean for people to start ignoring facts, let’s be clear there. I just mean – maybe – for the holiday season we could give each other the gift of keeping our divisive, judgmental opinions to ourselves.
Maybe we could have a little more understanding that other people live life differently. And that it’s okay. Your neighbor can eat whatever they want for the holidays, and in turn you have the freedom to have your Elf on the Shelf engage in all the shenanigans you want, unencumbered. You prominently display your nativity scene on your front yard, the guy down the street doesn’t celebrate any holidays at all and you keep your mouth shut about it.
After all, it’s just a holiday. Let people have it for whatever they want it to be (or not).
Then again, maybe this – like everything else – is just a debate waiting to happen.
I’m going to drop a real bomb on you guys, here. It’s a doozy. Brace yourselves.
I do the Elf on the Shelf for my kids.
Yeah, that’s right. I have the Elf on the Shelf. Not just the Elf on the Shelf, but one for each of my kids plus an Elf for my older dog and the reindeer for my puppy.
That’s five – count ’em, FIVE – stuffed dolls that I take out every holiday season, and move around nightly, creating hijinks and antics. I even buy the accessories now. All for the enjoyment of my children.
<Insert fainting in shock and horror GIF>
I started about five or six years ago and my kids loved it. I mean LOVED. I never tied it to behavior, like some parents do. A couple times if my kids were fighting I’d have the elves do their thing, but ALSO leave a note: “Santa says quit fighting!” Nothing beyond that, though. If I forget a night, whatever. It becomes a joke that Mom blew it, because they’ve also always known it was me moving those silly things around.
I always used to say that I would never do stuff like that (I may have even said it here on my blog). You know that arrogant person that has zero kids who knew everything they would and would not do as a parent? That was me, and the Elf on the Shelf was that thing I definitely wasn’t going to do. Even for a period of time after I had my children.
At some point, though – somewhere in the process – I realized something so unimaginable and profound, it may come as even more of a shock to you guys than the simple fact of me doing the Elf on the Shelf:
My children’s’ childhoods are about their enjoyment, not my own personal judgments and opinions. Yours too.
You guys can imagine, then, that I feel pretty fucking accosted on a daily basis now, when I log onto the Internet to see a stream of hate for the Elf on the Shelf in every feed I come across. Articles. Blogs. Opinion sites. People’s random Facebook status updates…loaded with hatred and loathing for this simple family tradition.
See that’s the thing I’ve noticed about the people that don’t do the Elf on the Shelf… they’re just like vegans. The old joke about vegans goes like this: do you know how you can tell someone is a vegan? Don’t worry…they’ll tell you. All the haters of the Elf on the Shelf seem to be capable of doing during the holiday season is telling people that and why they hate the thing.
The Elf on the Shelf is what you make of it. It can be a tool to control your kids’ behavior for the month or so before Christmas. It can be a fun little family tradition you do every night during the holiday season.
It can also be something you don’t bring into your home.
That’s your prerogative.
Those of you that don’t, though, need to take a serious chill on all the hate. Honestly. Chill the fuck out.
I get that you guys – adults – think it’s creepy. I get that the thing has this sort of voyeuristic look to it’s face. I have a bitchy look to my face, you don’t see people straight up calling me a bitch every time they log onto the Internet. (At least that I’m aware of.)
Some people use it as a weird little guy sitting on a shelf, spying on you – or whatever. Those are the people that call the Elf on the Shelf (to be clear, a doll made of felt and stuffing) a “pervert.” That’s us – adults – applying our shitty experiences to otherwise innocent things. Dolls, for fuck’s sake. Why stop at the Elf on the Shelf? Why not consider every doll or toy or fake-slightly-weird-looking toy “creepy” and ban them from your house?
I understand that it’s just another lie we tell our kids. Between Santa, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy… adding another make-believe fantasy to lighten up the heaviness of the modern childhood – well that’s just too fucking far. Right, Monica – mother of one who most definitely will not play in to letting her child have an ounce of fucking levity, from Day One?
Chill the fuck out, Monica.
Some people use it as a behavioral tool, as in the elf doesn’t move if you’ve been bad. To those people, just waiting around every corner is some lady, clutching her pearls, ready to comment about how people shouldn’t need a doll to keep their kids in line. Alright, Pearl Clutcher, fair enough. But you know what is better than judging the struggles a parent has with their kids? Keeping your fucking judgments to yourself.
(In the words of our Holy Mother of Orange County, Vicki Gunvalson: “judge me when you are perfect.”)
And don’t even get the ineffable writers at the likes of Scary Mommy or Bustle started on the mere hassle of doing the whole Elf thing every night. I mean, for goodness sakes, you’ve fed and clothed your children, now you purchased a little doll to move around every night, voluntarily I’ll add, and you have to do this for – what, like a month? And the only payment for this unbelievably agonizing task is your children’s happiness?!
I get it.
I get that the thing has a creepy face, like every other doll your kids have.
I get that fantasy is another word for “imagination,” and there is no place for that shit in a child’s head these days.
And – more than anything – I understand that the plight of the modern parent is that you’ve had all these kids, and yet consider the majority of their kid-ness to be a giant inconvenience to your own life.
Have I mentioned to all of you faithful blog followers before that I hate the holidays? The spending and the family and the lines and the gimme-gimme-gimme-what’d-you-get-mes… it is all just a little much for me.
So as we now close into the final stretch, I’ve pretty much been drinking heavily, swearing profusely, and emotionally eating my way to the end. But those aren’t the only ways I’m ensuring a cantankerous Christmas for me and the people that have the great misfortune of being around me.
A Crotchety Christmas Eve
I’ve decided that Christmas Eve is going to come with a side of crotchety bitch.
For two weeks or so, I’ve had a really bad chest cold; this of course did not excuse me from having to cook a multitude of meals, clean the house, get the gifts wrapped, run the errands, and do every other random bullshit preparatory thing that needed to be done. Because while everyone else gets sick and gets to sit around on their asses whining and being waited on and shit, mom gets sick and everyone just demands more.
So on Christmas Eve, my mother and father are coming over and Santa will have come in the afternoon somehow (stealthily, I might add … I have yet to figure that one out). Then we’ll open presents while I get shitfaced, eat dinner, have dessert, and I’ll shuttle the two of them out the door before they either (a) get into an argument, or (b) get back together after 22 years apart.
But remember that I’m cranky because I’ve been sick and no one really seems to have given a damn, so I plan on inserting some crotchety behavior into Christmas Eve. Just in case they thought they were all off the hook for being a bunch of ignorant jerks while I hacked and spewed everywhere. Somewhere, somehow (another thing I have yet to determine) I plan on throwing some freakish bout of hostility into the mix. I’m thinking that since I still have a cough, I might throw myself onto the floor and start banging my fists into the ground while I hack. Nothing says “crotchety old bitch” like proving your point.
A Cuntly Christmas Brunch
When I was in middle school (fuck this “middle school” west coast bullshit, by the way … where I grew up it was called junior high … but I digress), I learned what the term “cunt” meant. It makes me cringe to even say/hear/read/type it, so I’ll keep it to a minimum, but nonetheless that one day in junior high (motherfuckers … it’s motherfucking junior high), I learned that this is a crass way to refer to a woman’s vagina. And if you are trying to insult someone, of course it would be only natural to use a woman’s body part as the deepest of offenses.
I myself even call my husband a vulva and/or hairy labia in a derogatory fashion when we argue. I also call him a vulva and/or hairy labia when we’re in bed, but that’s another story altogether.
Besides being sick, I have gotten more details on people’s medical problems, health issues, bowel movements, and other assorted bodily things than I have wanted to as of late. I think it has to do with the fact that I mostly hang out with old people. My dad needs hip surgery. My mother in law has a cold in her eye and it makes her look like a rabid raccoon. My grandfather had a very productive bowel movement the other day after seven doses of Dulcolax and a bowl of prunes.
TMI, right? Well to get even with all of these people for conjuring up images that I never in a million years would have wanted to think about, my revenge will obviously be my own TMI.
I think I’ll start by talking about a strange vaginal itch (disclaimer: I do not have a strange vaginal itch). Then I’ll move on to discussing the fact that my labia smells like butterscotch (disclaimer: my labia does not smell like butterscotch). Then I thought I would tap off the whole Cuntly Christmas Brunch by standing in the middle of the kitchen, my hand down my pants and scratching vehemently, then turn around just at the right moment and ask if anyone wants butterscotch liquor in their egg nog. It’ll be super crass, super horrifying, and fucking awesome.
A Callous Christmas Dinner
OK, Christmas Eve (tonight) I’m cooking dinner for my parents and we’re opening gifts. Christmas morning (tomorrow in the am) I’m making a huge brunch for all segments of our families and friends that are local (albeit, very few are coming). Christmas Dinner we are going to my in-law’s house to open gifts with them, have dinner, and pretend like we all enjoy each other’s company.
My Cantankerous Christmas wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t do something to reinforce my title as “Queen of Bitches,” so I think I’ve decided on being as rough, callous, and uninterested as possible. Fortunately, we’ll be at my in-law’s, and this is what they are used to. They hate me. I respond by pretty much sitting and not saying much. My husband is similar, which I noticed very early on. I remember one time we were at his parent’s house and I noticed he was very callous when he was around his parents. He would stand there silently, with his arms crossed. He never really talked about anything unless he was asked a question.
When I asked him about it, he said that he knew he acted that way, and that he was callous like that on purpose. He said if he wasn’t, then his mother would spew her emotion everywhere and manipulate him to get things from him (in the way of commitments, time, and career and otherwise sacrifices). Whether this is the case or not, I still don’t know. What I do know is that I typically follow his lead and keep my mouth relatively shut (well, shut for me) because it is his family. And most of them hate me too.
So what are you doing for Christmas, faithful blog followers? Being chipper and loving it? Hating it in a bout of vehement misanthropy like me? Deleting yourself from my blog now that you realize how much of a truly crass and angry woman I can be?
I know that I can be a tough pill to swallow, but this whole Cantankerous Christmas really couldn’t be any better of a situation for me. I get to be a misanthrope. I get an excuse to drink copious amounts of alcoholic grape juice. And I get to open myself to a world of stories to tell. People always say to me: “Christmas is what you make of it.” They are of course referring to the fact that I’m far away from my family and in an unhappy place in life right now. But I think it goes beyond Christmas being what you make of it; it’s about Christmas being about who you are. Many of you don’t know me in person, so it isn’t really fair when you send me your hatemail and tell me I’m a “fucking asshole,” an “ugly whore,” and a “miserable cunt.” Because you don’t know me in person and you don’t know that I really am one of the nicest and most caring people you will ever meet.
But that doesn’t come without a price: I am called a bitch for a reason, and I am referred to as “blunt” because I say it exactly how it is. You might say I’m a little … cantankerous. I think Christmas this year is what I make of it, sure; and my Christmas is about who I am. A Merry Cantankerous Christmas to you, faithful blog followers, or whatever respective holiday you celebrate around this time of year. I hope it is what you make of it, and you are you in the process.
I got really into fall at first. I do every year. I got the pumpkins. And the goards and shit. Halloween was a big fucking fiasco of costumes and events and more events and hayrides. I’ve baked tons of pumpkin-flavored things, and will bake more. We’re even hosting a Thanksgiving-themed open house the weekend before Thanksgiving.
But it makes me super homesick too.
I miss the falling leaves that give the time of year the title “fall.” We have some in California, but those aren’t brown and golden and red. They’re green and caused by 90 degree Santa Ana winds, and I’m allergic to them.
I miss the change of the weather. People say “oh … we have a change of weather here.” You don’t say? Because next week it’s projected to be in the mid-80s again and I’ll be sitting inside in the air conditioning as Thanksgiving closes in. Change of seasons?
I miss having my family close by. I have my dad here and my husband’s family, and of course my mom’s trailer trash family; but it isn’t my family. Most of them don’t want much to do with me either. And it isn’t my aunt and uncle that helped my dad raise me after my mom left. It’s not my cousins. It isn’t my vast group of friends that I have always considered to be closer than some of my closest blood relatives. There isn’t that same sense of community I had growing up.
So fall makes me homesick. But who am I kidding? Just about every time of year, and every thing I see, makes me homesick. It goes without saying I’m ready for this experiment of living on the West Coast to come to an end.
Until it does, and as fall continues on and I continue to feel homesick around every turn of every bend, I hold fast to the things that I have here that I call home.
Pizza, Deli Sandwiches, and Pumpkin Pie
Pizza is my most staple food item when I get homesick. I don’t want to hear anybody’s crap about how bad that is for me either. A pizza with nothing but cheese (which is how I like it), or even pizza dough with other ingredients (like in the picture above), has less saturated fat and cholesterol on it than some salads. Deli-style sandwiches with nothing but a slice of cheese and loads of lettuce come in at a close second.
Pumpkin pie is also a big homesickness-reliever, which is good because as compared to apple pie, cherry pie, cheesecake, cake, candy, and other desserts, pumpkin pie without the crust is fat free. I can eat bucketfuls of that shit (and believe you me, I do) without all the guilt.
Cheesy 80s and 90s Movies
How many cheesy 80s movies are not set in the Midwest, and particularly in Chicago? From Girls Just Wanna’ Have Fun to Ferris Buehler’s Day Off; into the 90s with High Fidelity. I even watch Father of the Bride, parts I and II. The scenery, the weather, the culture I grew up with all makes me feel just a little bit better when I’m feeling homesick.
Chicago Team Gear
I have enough Chicago team gear to get me through any bout of homesickness. I have a sweatshirt from my high school, two hoodies from the Chicago Bulls, a third hoodie that just says ‘City of Chicago,’ two White Sox t-shirts, two Bears shirts, a Bulls shirt that doesn’t fit, I have a Bulls bumper sticker on my car, two Bulls lanyards I have yet to use, and my computer even has a sticker of Michael Jordan on the back of it.
And I have a story to go with all of it, which I’m sure the people in my immediate life are sick of hearing. But if they’re so sick of hearing it, or sick of hearing about how homesick I am, they can maybe stop being so stubborn and give the Midwest a shot (ahem …..).
My Fun Fall Swap
Lastly, I participated in this thing called a Fun Fall Swap. Some bloggers that were into the fall stuff (as I was initially) decided to get together, have one person send out “secret swapper” info, and then we all had one month to send out a fall-themed gift.
I got mine a week ago, and while I cannot figure out for the life of me who sent it (I’m betting it’s either “My Brain On Kids” or “Diapers Or Wine“…), it is nonetheless the best of the swap gifts I have seen so far.
UPDATE: It was Quirky Chrissy … I love her more than I love french toast. If you know me, you know that’s a big deal.
Knowing how in love I am with all-things-Midwest, my secret swapper sent me this awesome reprint of a World’s Fair Chicago poster. I know what you are saying: “how in the hell is that fall?” Well, duh … it says November. That’s more fucking fall than all the hay bail, pumpkin, and brown-colored shit out there.
My fun fall swap could not have come at a better time: when I’m homesick. Sitting on the couch in yoga pants and my Bulls sweatshirt that is beginning to smell a little bit like feet since I won’t stop wearing it; with half-eaten slices of pizza around me and pumpkin pie smeared on my face. As I continue to shovel more pumpkin pie and stare longingly at Michael Jordan on the back of my computer, with 80s movies on Netflix playing on repeat in the background. And every time Sarah Jessica Parker says in the opening scene of ‘Girls Just Wanna’ Have Fun’: “My daydream was always the same – that some day I was gonna’ get to Chicago, because that’s where they make Dance TV,” I mouth the words, bits of deli sandwich falling out of my mouth to mix with my homesick tears.
My fun fall swap arrived just in time to save me from this destitute.
Okay, it didn’t save me from shit. Framed, it now sits next to me on the couch and joins the ranks of things I stare longingly at. But it’s still a good thing. Big, big thanks to whomever my fall swapper was … your pick was perfect.
Now I would love for fall to be over. So then we’ll get through the holidays and holiday time depression can be over, then it will be a new year and who knows what the new year will bring?
There are exactly two weeks left until Halloween. That can mean one thing and one thing only for this lady: Halloween indulgences.
So Halloween is the kick start of the holiday season, it seems. After that it’s like a landslide to New Years. But the one thing that’s different for me than most other people is that it’s the only part of the holiday season that I allow myself indulgences.
I’m not a real holiday person. In fact, I hate the holidays. The family breathing down your neck, making requests of you left and right. The increases in the social calendar obligations. The money. The gratuitous gift giving. Having to clean around the decorations. All the food in excess. The money. The money. The money. And more than anything: the holiday blues. I get them every year and despite my urge to have a Prozac shake every morning until the New Year, I usually just mope my way through it.So Thanksgiving doesn’t see 3,000+ calories for me; in fact, I usually eat salad. Christmas cookies and candy and other assorted food-coma items are not something I partake in often either – I’m not the biggest fan of desserts most of the time.
You faithful blog followers are all probably envisioning that when I say “Halloween indulgences” I’m sitting around, shoveling miniature-sized Three Musketeers bars down my throat, while I pour Pixie Stix in my mouth, like a princess adorned with all the candy jewelry Candyland has to offer.
Sadly, this is just not the case. It would be funny, but like I said: I’m not really into desserty-type stuff most of the time.
Halloween Indulgence 1: New Halloween Decorations
I like Halloween decorations. I don’t mean the ones that are all blood and gore and crap. I also don’t mean overly elaborate ones. I like simple, but cute Halloween decorations that remind me of being a little kid again. Especially The Peanuts Halloween stuff – they just get me every time.
So I buy new Halloween decorations every year. I don’t mean that I throw out the old and bring in the new, I just add to my collection. Fortunately, since I don’t buy that much (maybe one or two things per year), we still don’t have that much. Some indoor skeleton lights. A couple grave stones. Cobwebs. A blue skeleton head. Those types of things. This year I bought an adorable mummy candle holder.
Halloween Indulgence 2: Making Homemade Costumes As An Excuse To …
… sit on my ass. Spend less money on costumes. Control what the costume is going to be. Sit on my ass some more. Go to my knitting/crafting group. Did I mention sit on my ass?
Making homemade Halloween costumes requires that I be in place and left alone for periods of time that I don’t usually get to be in place and left alone. “If you don’t leave me alone, I’ll never get your Halloween costume done!” is the primary reason why I start costumes in July.
Halloween Indulgence 3: Pumpkins and Gourds and Shit
It might be because so many gourds are phallic. It might also be because they are a cheap and easy way to decorate. Yesterday we went to the local pumpkin patch and I bought about forty pumpkins and assorted gourds and corn cobs for $30. Being a shopaholic that is on the way into the holiday blues (often temporarily cured with shopping), this is awesome. I can spend hours drowning my sorrows sifting through bins of shit that looks like a penis without breaking the bank, like clothes or shoe-shopping would.
Seems like a total win to me.
Halloween Indulgence 4: Cheesy Halloween TV Shows and Movies
When I was in high school, my dad and I would watch Mystery Science Theatre 3000 all the time. Since then (we’re talking for about fifteen years, now) I always poke fun at movies while watching them.
Cheesy Halloween TV Shows and Movies are the best for this. Last night I forced everyone to watch The Brain That Wouldn’t Die – a movie from the early 60s about a crazy doctor who gets into a car accident and tries to preserve his fiance’s head while he finds a body to attach it to. Sadly, my husband doesn’t appreciate my humor such as he should, so it usually ends in me sitting and cracking jokes to myself.
Halloween Indulgence 5: Boney With His Massive Invisible Boner
A while back, I introduced you all to Boney with his massive invisible boner. I’m not entirely sure how I came up with this concept. I mean, it’s just a plastic skeleton that I got at Michael’s a few years ago for $10. And despite my previous comment about sifting through a bin of phallic gourds, my mind is rarely anywhere near the gutter (I mean, my idea of sexytime is reading a book in sweatpants).
Nonetheless, Boney with his massive invisible boner becomes my mascot from the time he comes out of storage until November 1st every year.
Halloween Indulgence 6: Dressing Up My Animals
No, I do not mean Pookies or husband. I mean my actual animals.
Before my dog Watson died a few years ago, he got stuck playing dress up. Now that he is gone, I dress up the guinea pig, Agamemnon.
But I don’t just dress him up. I dress him up time after time, and have fashion shows with him in the living room. In the living room covered with penis-shaped gourds, with Boney and his massive invisible boner as the audience. Nothing weird about this at all, right? I make him some popcorn, set up a little runway, and turn up the Right Said Fred “I’m Too Sexy.” It’s very bizarre and I’m pretty sure he hates me at this point; although, he does seem to like it once in a while.
I’ll leave you with the most recent of the guinea pig fashion shows.
