Category Archives: Family

December 30, 2011 · 0:00

Return

I am afraid of this weekend. No, not of New Years Eve or the end of 2011 or the beginning of 2012. I take New Years in a Doris Day sort of way – Que sera, sera. That’s French for WHATEVER.

But no, I’m afraid because I have to go back there again. To the mall. With a return.

There are two shopping malls not far from here Tysons Corner I and Tysons II. Tysons I is a normal mall. Homogenized. Pasteurized. It has the same stores as every mall in the U.S. Macy’s. Brookstone. Ann Taylor. Nothing different there.

Tysons II, however, is different. Very different. Tysons II, The Galleria, is filled with outrageously priced stores and a Macy’s. Nordstroms, Cartier, Montblanc. The Ritz has a direct entrance.

The only attractive feature to someone like me is that there is always plenty of parking and no traffic. It’s seductive. So Every year at Christmas time, I forget that I don’t belong and go for one last gift. I vow never again to go. But by the next Christmas I forget.

This year was no different. Two days before Christmas, I needed one last gift, a scarf for my mother-in-law.

“I know,” I thought, stupidly. “I’ll go to the Macy’s at Tysons II.” I am an idiot. But, remember, lots of parking, no traffic. Christmas Magic, right?

There were no employees in Macy’s. I tried to buy a couple of things, and nobody would take my money. So I went out into the mall. I stopped in one store and found a nice scarf for Helen. Looked at the tag — $198. For a scarf for an 85-year-old lady who sometimes dribbles. Nope. Don’t think so.

So I continued down the main hall in the mall, occasionally stopping to look at something equally overpriced.

Then it started snowing. In the mall. INSIDE the mall. On me. It was 64 and sunny outside that day. No snow THERE. But inside, well, it was beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

I continued walking.

You know how car dealers show their latest models in shopping malls sometimes? Well, this one did too.

(Google Image)

Maserati

(Google Image)

Ferrari

(Google Image)

Lamborghini

I did not buy a car. I did not buy a $200 scarf. I didn’t even get the Clinique skin cream I needed from Macy’s.

I did get a small gadget from the only reasonable store there, a kitchen store. It doesn’t work, though. So I have to go back.

If you don’t hear from me for a while, please send snow shoes.

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Filed under Family, Humor, Stupidity

Tagged as Aging, Boomerism, Christmas, Humor, Traffic

December 26, 2011 · 0:00

A Different “End”

If I’d known that I would spend “Boxing Day” with my head stuck in a toilet, I would have at least had way more to drink on Christmas Day.

And researching how to retrieve something that was accidentally flushed down the toilet was not the way I planned to spend my day off, either. But hey, I’m always game. Besides, it may just keep my marriage intact. And with enough time, anything becomes a good story. Just maybe not today.

And more annoyingly, I will have to begrudgingly admit that John is right. Kind of. My husband is the only man on the planet who not only doesn’t leave the toilet seat up, he even closes the lid. I consider this to be superhuman behavior. How can he possibly remember to do that? Oh yeah, he’s looking at it the whole time he’s there, more often than not. I have a totally different vantage point.

Besides, I grew up with two brothers, a father, two sisters and a mother in a house with one bathroom. For me as long as there IS a toilet and it is not engaged, I’m game.

Over the years, it’s become a bit of an issue between John and me. He has never given up, not even after 25 years. He preaches, “Close the seat!” and I ignore.

“Dirt, Spray, Germs!” he complains.

“Access!” I respond. And as someone with a 40 year history of bowel trouble, I win.

John finds comfort elsewhere. The guest bathroom. Many female guests have peed on the floor when they wander into our bathroom in the middle of the night and sat down on the pot. I began keeping the mop there, so no one has to own up to it in the morning. But I digress.

You see, in the wee hours of Christmas/not-Christmas night, I did the unthinkable in my husband’s eyes. I changed the roll of toilet paper. With the seat up.

There are now two of three pieces of the spindle on the bathroom counter. I wonder where the third piece could possibly be …

So, now that my research is done, I know that I need a thing called a “closet auger.”

Then I need to spend a whole lot of time in the bathroom without John figuring out what happened. Because, while I will spend my day with my head in a toilet, I ain’t gonna eat crow.

29 Comments

Filed under Family, Humor, Uncategorized

Tagged as Bad days, Christmas, Crap

December 17, 2011 · 0:00

Not on my list …

I was in a toy store recently, when the clerk handed a plastic bag containing a toy to the woman in front of me, and said “Thank you, Merry Christmas” to the woman.

To my surprise, she did NOT say “Your Welcome!” She did not respond “Merry Christmas to you too!” Nor did she say “Have a good day!” as required in retail nowadays.

Nope, she collapsed onto one knee and said “Thank the Lord.”

“Oh sweet Jesus,” I thought.

Her husband glared at me as if to say in a very Christian way: “You wanna make something out of it?”

I shook my head, and proceeded to pay for the toy I was buying. I didn’t thank God for it, because I don’t really think that God cares if I bought my new nephew the Spot book or the one with the fuzzy pages.

Nope, I thanked the clerk for helping me and went on to my next errand.

I didn’t fall to my knees to thank God. I have a bad knee.

But this morning I was wondering what toy was so hard to come by that it resulted in prayer. So of course, I Googled. And was I surprised at what I found.

I didn’t find the “Tickle me Elmo” shortage this year. Nope, nothing of the sort. Toys all seem to be in good supply.

But I did find that one place of business is offering a different slant on Christmas this year. It’s in Chicago, so you won’t be finding me there this year. OR MY HUSBAND.

You see, The Admiral Theatre, a strip club, is offering a free lap dance for anyone bringing in a new, unwrapped gift to be donated to charity.

Do you think all the girls wear Santa hats beards? More importantly, are they fat and jolly?

I bet there is a man or two who would get down on his knees to pray for that.

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Filed under Family, Humor, Stupidity

Tagged as Christmas, Santa

December 6, 2011 · 0:00

A Different Toy Story

Nobody suspects I would have done anything of the sort. I’ve fooled them all. Well, at least I’ve fooled the folks I work with. And that will do.

You see, we have a terrific Christmas tradition at my office. We have a party, yes, and it’s actually fun because we like each other. And the highlight of the party is a gift exchange. About two weeks prior to the party, we choose the name of a co-worker, and bring a gift for that person as if he or she were 7 years old. We open the gifts and have a great time guessing who gave it to us. Then the toys are collected and given to a local charity.

We have a blast, it’s for a good cause, and everybody tells their funny childhood remembrances of what we would have done with a toy like they got.

But it was awkward for me this year, because I got a doll.

She was a beautiful, blue-eyed doll with rosy cheeks and curly blond hair just like mine. Any girl would love her and gently care for her. Any girl would treasure that pretty doll. Any girl would have given that beautiful doll to her own daughter to love, too.

Any girl but me. Because for the most part, I hated dolls. And for most of my childhood did anything to avoid playing with them. Except when I was about 7.

Well, I guess I answered honestly when I said that, uhhh, yeah, I would have played with the delicate dolly. And, yeah, I would have played with it when I was about 7 years old. So yeah, the gift, umm, fit me. I didn’t elaborate, though.

I didn’t, for example, tell anyone that the dolly would not have been happy with the situation.

I blame my parents, they bought that particular house. I blame my brother. Me, I was innocent. I was led astray. I was forced to do it. The fact that it was hilarious and became one of my favorite memories is completely irrelevant.

You see, the house I grew up with was next to the railroad tracks. And naturally, because it was strictly forbidden, my brother Fred and I used to spend lots of time playing on the tracks. We’d put our ears to the rail to listen for trains, and, once we were sure none were coming, we’d run across the tracks.

That was fun for part of the first summer we lived there, but hey we were 6 and 9. We needed growth opportunities.

We flattened pennies until we had enough to lay track from New York to New Haven made entirely of smushed Lincoln faces. For a while we would wait for a train to come and then hop across the tracks, trying not to trip and die. Fortunately we both succeeded and outgrew our interest in that particular challenge. We tried to flip the track switch so that the train would jump the track and go down our driveway instead of on towards New Haven. But for some reason, someone had locked the switch, and no matter what we did, we could not get the train to go down our driveway. It was probably just as well.

One day, I got home from a friend’s house to find that my favorite stuffed animal, an orange poodle won for me by my dad, was missing. Naturally, I accused my brother of hiding it.

“I didn’t hide it, Lease,” he said. “I played with it. It was just sitting on your bed,” he said in that brotherly tone that indicates I was stupid for questioning him.

He walked into my room, grabbed another stuffed toy, my stuffed Pebbles doll with the plastic head, and said. “Come on. This is really neat.”

Out we went, down to the tracks. We waited and waited, putting an occasional ear to the rail. Finally, Fred placed Pebbles on the tracks. Like Pauline, Pebbles looked skyward. Like Pauline, as the train approached, her feet wiggled. Unlike Pauline, however, there was no rescue.

The train whizzed by sending the most delightful plume of stuffing up and out, way over the top of the train. It was a hit. We rushed back for additional victims. All my stuffed toys and each and every doll met a sorry end.

We would have let Pauline go, though. Really.

As it turned out, today at the party, my boss had picked my name, and the doll was from her. “Would you have played with a doll like her?” she asked, no doubt envisioning me dressing her up and playing with her like other girls.

“Absolutely,” I said, weighing the doll and imagining just how high up this particular doll’s stuffing would go.

47 Comments

Filed under Family, Humor, Stupidity

Tagged as Family, Trains

December 2, 2011 · 0:00

Both Sides Now

“The Season” makes me crabby. Grumpy. Irritable. I’ve come to hate it. Everything about it. I hate the music, the crowded stores, the decorations. I especially hate the decorations.

Last year a friend stopped by our house in the middle of December. “God, it’s December 15^th,” I said to her, “and the only decoration I have up is the wreath on the door!”

“I don’t think that counts, Lease,” responded my husband John. “You didn’t take that down from last year.”

“Oh, yeah.”

Tonight, I’m looking around at my undecorated house thinking, “uggggh,” not “Ho ho ho!”

It wasn’t always true, though. I used to be one of them. I was a veritable Christmas Elf. I baked, I decorated. I embroidered Christmas stockings for the whole family. My son Jacob and I built gingerbread houses that did not come from a mix or a box and were actually made of gingerbread stuck together in the shape of a house! My friends got a bottle of homemade Irish Cream liqueur. Some used it to get their kids to bed on Christmas Eve.

But mostly, I sang. The records, tapes and CDs came out on Thanksgiving. From the moment I woke up the day after Thanksgiving, until New Years, I would trill away. “White Christmas,” “Do You Hear What I Hear?” “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas.” I belted “Mele Kalikimaka” when I had an established escape route to avoid people trying to punch me. I know the words to all 18,423 verses of Frosty the Snowman. I would start singing in the shower and keep going until John tackled me and put duct tape across my mouth, usually at about 8:30 a.m. Regardless, I’d start up again the next morning.

If the current, Crabby Christmas Me got a hold of the old Merry Christmas Me, I would slap myself silly.

So you see, I do understand the Christmas-sy part of Christmas. The love, the joy, the traditions.

But now I see the other side. And it’s that “tradition” part that is to blame.

You see, my family’s always been fairly competitive. My mother and her sister Ruth were particularly so. They’d argue at each shared Sunday dinner over a million things: whose gravy was better (my mother’s), who cracked the best one-liner (always Aunt Ruth – she was a hoot), and most traumatically for me, whose young daughter was taller. (Duh, Maureen was almost a year older than me – of course she won every time. But you’re not taller now, are you? And you’re still older, Maur. You’re still older. How do you like it??) Darn, I wish I’d missed the competitive gene.

When I was a kid, Aunt Ruth was high on the list of my favorite relatives. Now she’s tops on an altogether different list. And it ain’t Santa’s list, neither.

Because Aunt Ruth started a family tradition. A competition. But it’s not a family tradition I recommend, especially during the Christmas season. In fact, it should have a warning, although I’m not sure where you’d put it: Don’t try this at home.

You see, Aunt Ruth started the tradition of kicking the bucket on a major holiday. What fun! Great idea! Not many families do that! Hey, we are DIFFERENT!

Knowing Aunt Ruth, I’m sure her last thought was “Doris, you’ll never top this one! I’m dying on Thanksgiving!!!!” She was no doubt a bit miffed when my mother joined her a couple of years later. Because, not to be outdone, Mom arrived in the afterlife on Easter Sunday.

Their party really got going when we reached Y2K, and my sister Judy died unexpectedly on my birthday in January. Now, you might argue that my birthday is not, technically speaking, a holiday. Not a paid day off for most folks. But hey, in my book, this qualifies. So there.

As time went on, there were fewer and fewer holidays I could celebrate. The only big one left was Christmas.

Guess what happened on Christmas, 2000! Yup, Dad reclaimed his spot at the head of the table with Mom, Judy and Aunt Ruth. Dad trumped them all. Or because it was Christmas, perhaps he trumpeted them all. Maybe both.

I must say I am rather ticked off about it all. Sort of changes the tone of the Holidays, you see. I plan to have words with all four of them, next time I see them. And I will not be nice.

In the meantime, celebrating holidays, well, it just seems so odd to me. Especially Christmas, because Christmas is so stuff-oriented, and most of my Christmas stuff is from them. It takes a bit of the fun out of decorating.

For a while, I considered joining the Eastern Orthodox Church. That way I could celebrate the same holidays, just on different days. I could keep all my Christmas crap! I could decorate! I could bake! I could sing! But then I realized that the change would just give us all additional high priority target dates, and I don’t have enough family members left to meet the challenge. So Eastern Orthodox is out.

At the same time, I also realized that, when Dad hit the Holiday Lottery, the whole tradition had to stop. Because I’m pretty sure that biting the dust on, say, Columbus Day, just wouldn’t cut it. So why bother?

Nevertheless, this whole thing has made me decidedly anti-Holiday.

There is one holiday I still look forward to, though. Groundhog Day. I just can’t figure out what sort of decorations to put up.