Audrey’s famous Friendsmas party and cookie exchange is this weekend, which means we’ve got a sitter for the pets (a new one—you know her, actually… she’s the cultist from this story and sometimes I think they like her more than me) and we’re making the drive up to Wisconsin. Which seems like a lot for a one day event, but you’ve never had those amazing truffles my new mom makes.
Don’t stop now – keep reading!
I don’t know about the rest of the world (blame the public school system for that) but here in the US Thanksgiving is behind us and the holiday shopping season is in full swing.
Now, the internet is going to be full of advice for you: where to find the best sales, 10 Reasons to Do All Your Holiday Shopping Online, 7 Reasons to Get Out of the House and Shop Local, reminders that pets are forever and don’t make good gifts, etc. It’s the same shit every year, isn’t it?
There will also be loads of gift guides out there for people you don’t really have any difficulty buying for: Dad, caffeine addict, film buff; or for people you don’t actually have in your life: the wine expert, the world traveler, the modern art collector.
None of that here. How ‘bout a gift guide for the people you wish you didn’t have to buy a gift for?
I know you’re all anxious for a Christmas update. But first, I think it’s important that you know something about the person you’re talking to.
I’m still an early riser on Christmas Day.
Inner me.
Today, for many of you, is Boxing Day—the day after Christmas Day.
However, I must write to you from the past, because I am still christmassing just that hard.
Come up to my level, will you?
‘Tis the season, friends.
Well, yes. But also…
I’m writing to you from my favorite spot in the whole house—three and a half feet from a tree that looks like it stepped out of a Macy’s window to spend the season with us—wearing jingle bell earrings and a jingle bell bracelet and a jingle bell necklace,* because if you don’t jingle all the way you’re not Christmassing hard enough and you don’t get eggnog shakes with cookie dough vodka in.
Yas plz.
Them’s the rules.
This Christmas has been especially hectic for me—for reasons I hope to reveal very soon—and I confess I’ve left myself very little time for blogging, blog reading, or any of the other blog-related things I usually do all week long. Instead, I’ve been picking time’s pocket, pilfering stray minutes to get my Christmas cards out (yeah, that happened so embarrassingly late that no international cards could go out this year), paint uncooperative teenagers for the school play (then spending hours after trimming green out of my cuticles, because when you use the cheap stuff it stains), wrangle Husband and Offspring into their Christmas shopping because they keep thinking they’ve got weeks left to go (they manifestly do not), and do 100% of my shopping online because I don’t have time to leave the house for anything that isn’t one of the 87 bajillion errands that crop up each day.
All of this to say I’m about to get lazy on your asses. I’m going to recycle material.
Don’t think of it as lazy; think of it as environmentally friendly.
I don’t have a picture of my Christmas tree the week before it came down, because it seemed morbid to photograph its last wretched days. You’ll have to trust me on this point: it was looking pretty miserable – any internet comments section would have diagnosed it with depression, possibly bipolar, and started prescribing meds, with at least one wandering moron insisting that it just had Asperger’s and we should all leave it alone.
