Since we are still a relatively young family, Jeff, the kids and I don't really have any long-standing Christmas traditions yet. Every year has been a different variation on the whole Get Together With Family, Exchange Gifts, Drink, Eat, Observe A Random Nervous Breakdown, and Breath A Sigh Of Relief When Crazy Grandma Fails To Pull A Steak Knife On Someone During Christmas Dinner.
Now that we have kids, I'm thinking that the time has come to establish some sort of tradition, something the kids can count on besides Mommy dodging questions about how Santa can enter our house through a glassed-in fireplace, how he enters homes without chimney's, and why Elsa gets any presents at all when she's been so blatantly insolent for the past month (okay, so this question I'm asking myself....I guess the answer is because she's two...because she's inherently evil...because this is finally my parents' cosmic revenge for the time I stole a box of Fruit Roll-ups and subsequently weaved a month-long web of lies, false accusations and evidence-planting before finally confessing to my crime).
When I was a kid, Christmas was filled with traditions. With things I could always count on year after year. Like advent calendars. And candle-light church services. And fighting with my siblings over who was going to get stuck with the snack pack of Raisin Bran cereal in his or her stocking while the rest got to feast on Sugar Smacks, Golden Grahams, or the Mother Of All Christmas Cereal: Lucky Charms. Seriously, this battle was waged every year....Raisin Bran was the lump of coal in our house. You got Raisin Bran, and Santa was basically peeing directly onto your head.
As we got older, our father introduced to us what became known as the Annual Check Hunt. Or, as it eventually became, the Annual Everyone Else Finds His Or Her Check Except Carrie, Who Will Ultimately Stomp Off To Her Bedroom, Ranting About Conspiracies And The Unfairness Of The Universe. Hunt.
The Annual Check Hunt was quite elaborate, now that I think about it. Our father would write a little story about Christmas, and embedded within the story were clues as to where everyone's check was hidden. Some of the clues were obvious: Race against the clock, Swept under the rug, The idea was shelved. As time went on, however, and our father got more creative (or perhaps simply crazier), the clues became a bit more...esoteric. If the story contained something about a mouse, this meant a check was stuck in the fridge, inside a wrapped slice of cheese. If the story had the word potato, someone's check was stuffed between the couch cushions. If a story made reference to the color red, someone's check was hidden in our mother's China cabinet.
Carrie usually had the hardest time finding her check. Not because the clues to its whereabouts were necessarily the hardest (though I do remember hers being in the cheese once), but because on a scale of 1 to 10, Carrie's level of patience was pretty much a negative google....Even less when my father would offer her more vague and cryptic clues as he looked on with a mixture of amusement and anxiety. And our mother's calm attempt to steer my sister in the right direction only incensed Carrie further:
My Mom: What's your clue, Car?
Carrie: I don't know, something about family legends.
My Mom: Oh, okay. Well, what sort of legends do you know about our family?
Carrie: I don't know? You're always taking about Benjamin Rush being some long lost ancestor.
My Mom: Okay. So do we have any Benjamin Rush paraphernalia anywhere?
Carrie: How the hell should I know? Do you have a constitution replica hidden somewhere? A powered wig stuffed in a cabinet? A bucket of leeches on the coffee table?* (Interestingly enough, all three of these things was a possibility)
My Mom: ...Noooo....
Carrie (sighing heavily and rolling her eyes): This is so stupid.
My Dad: What's the matter, Carrie? Not getting your whey?
Carrie: No, and Mom's just giving me stupid, annoying clues that don't make any sense.
My Mom: Benjamin Rush isn't stupid.
My Dad: Why are you telling her about Benjamin Rush?
My Mom: Because he's part of our family legend.
Carrie: Why, because some stupid long-lost great uncle said he was related to us?
My Dad: I think you're making this tuffet, er, tougher than it really is.
Carrie: Great, Dad. I guess I'm too freaking idiotic to figure it out myself.
My Dad: No, but it sounds like your patience is hanging by a thread.
Carrie: You think?
Eventually the game would boil down to Hot and Cold, which would lead Carrie into the kitchen, the fridge, and eventually into a half-eaten container of cottage cheese. Unless of course she just became so irriated with my mother, she simply gave up and stomped down the hall to her bedroom, loudly proclaiming that she hated checks, Christmas, cottage cheese, and pretty much everything else on the planet.
We developed other traditions--sneaking alcohol into the house through my bedroom window, cleaning out the fridge and playing Name That Leftover, and acting out entire plays where we each took on the role of a different family member (the first Christmas Jeff spent with my family, he had to play My Mother. That performance pretty much sealed the marriage deal for me). Each one brought my family closer. To a mental institution.
And so, my little family has some growing to do before we start getting strange. Or perhaps we're already there. Either way, establishing our Christmas traditions over the years will be a fun, interesting ride. I'm already scoping out places to hide my kids' checks. The butter dish looks like a good spot.
Merry Christmas, dear readers. Peace.
*For years our mother has cleaved to the idea that Benjamin Rush (our great-great-great-great-uncle's cousin thrice removed or something) killed George Washington with leeches. While I have found nothing online to support this theory, I will say that our mother has proclaimed all sorts of things, including that whales do not deserve to be saved from beaching themselves because they are the dummies who beached themselves in the first place. Ah yes...gotta love my mom.
Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Sunday, December 20, 2009
The Twelve Days of Christmas, Motherhood Style
I've written another song. Please feel free to sing along. (And don't be a smart-ass and skip to the end...Jeff pointed out that everyone would do that, and I got all pissed off and insisted that they wouldn't. Please don't give him the satisfaction of being right. He gets to be smug around me way too much.)
The Twelve Days of Christmas, Motherhood Style
On the first day of Christmas my children gave to me
a reason for Jeff's vasectomy
On the second day of Christmas my children gave to me
Two saggy boobs
And a reason for Jeff's vasectomy
On the third day of Christmas my children gave to me
Three bite marks
Two saggy boobs
And a reason for Jeff's vasectomy
On the fourth day of Christmas my children gave to me
Four naughty words
Three bite marks
Two saggy boobs
And a reason for Jeff's vasectomy
On the fifth day of Christmas my children gave to me
Fiiiiiive bathtub riiiiiings...
Four naughty words
Three bite marks
Two saggy boobs
And a reason for Jeff's vasectomy
On the sixth day of Christmas my children gave to me
Six nervous breakdowns
Fiiiiiive bathtub riiiiiings...
Four naughty words
Three bite marks
Two saggy boobs
And a reason for Jeff's vasectomy
On the seventh day of Christmas my children gave to me
Seven temper tantrums
Six nervous breakdowns
Fiiiiiive bathtub riiiiiings...
Four naughty words
Three bite marks
Two saggy boobs
And a reason for Jeff's vasectomy
On the eight day of Christmas my children gave to me
Eight stains of milk and
Seven temper tantrums
Six nervous breakdowns
Fiiiiiive bathtub riiiiiings...
Four naughty words
Three bite marks
Two saggy boobs
And a reason for Jeff's vasectomy
On the ninth day of Christmas my children gave to me
Nine loads of laundry
Eight stains of milk and
Seven temper tantrums
Six nervous breakdowns
Fiiiiiive bathtub riiiiiings...
Four naughty words
Three bite marks
Two saggy boobs
And a reason for Jeff's vasectomy
On the tenth day of Christmas my children gave to me
Ten nights of teething
Nine loads of laundry
Eight stains of milk and
Seven temper tantrums
Six nervous breakdowns
Fiiiiiive bathtub riiiiiings...
Four naughty words
Three bite marks
Two saggy boobs
And a reason for Jeff's vasectomy
On the eleventh day of Christmas my children gave to me
Eleven diapers reeking
Ten nights of teething
Nine loads of laundry
Eight stains of milk and
Seven temper tantrums
Six nervous breakdowns
Fiiiiiive bathtub riiiiiings...
Four naughty words
Three bite marks
Two saggy boobs
And a reason for Jeff's vasectomy
On the twelfth day of Christmas my husband gave to me
A twelve-pack of beer.
Merry Christmas.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
SLACKER!
Over the past seven days, the title of this blog has been galvanized.
When I first titled this blog, I thought it was kinda cute, a truism that moms everywhere could relate to. Motherhood is Easy....As Long As You Have Nothing Else To Do For The Next 50 Years. Hardy Har. I suppose the transverse (or inverse?) of my blog title would read something like: If Yo Do Have Something Else To Do, Motherhood Is A Giant Pain In The Ass. Or maybe: If You Want Motherhood To Be Easy, Don't Expect To Get Anything Done...Like, Ever
Because since this week....Holy Crap. Jeff and I went to Vegas last weekend and our parents tag-teamed babysitting the kids. Since we've returned, I have spent most of my time treading water in the endless sea of Household Chores with two cement blocks tied to each leg. These blocks I've affectionately nicknamed Rollie and Elsa.
As you can see, it went about as well as I expected.
I've also been busily cleaning up after my beloved parents, who got the anchor-leg of the babysitting gig, God bless 'em. The only downside to this is that my house once again looks like I hosted Motley Crue for a week (see blog entry Payback's A Dirty Swiffer). My mother successfully managed to destroy my coffee maker. I'm not sure how this happened. She's been operating coffee makers for fifty-five years. I'm not sure why my particular model is more challenging for her to operate than an F-16 fighter jet. She can figure out how to use our TV remote (although I think she accidentally recorded nine episodes of Dancing with the Stars), so she should be able to handle a Mr. Coffee, right?
After they left I found coffee on my back-splash, rings of it beneath my sugar canisters, drips of it beneath the sink, black coffee grinds sprinkled like pixie dust across the kitchen floor. It's like a crime scene--my mother murdered Mr. Coffee, in the kitchen, with his own carafe. Ay-yay-yay.
So between cleaning up after my house guests, Christmas shopping, getting ready for playdates and parties and hoeing the backyard (I would elaborate, but it would take too long and I don't really feel like it), my blog has suffered some serious neglect. For that I apologize. I'll try my best to keep up, although as I sit and write, my laundry is multiplying and toys are beginning their inexorable march out of my children's rooms, down the hallway and into the living room. So we'll see how it goes.
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