Deconstructing C’mas…the sequel

I think back fondly to my own clean sweep of C'mas just a day or so into 2012. In a blast of cleaning frenzy aided by my new storage boxes from Bed, Bath my home went from Winter Wonderland to Bring on Spring in less than 48 hours. Woohoo!

Each day on my way home from work I'd note a few more homes defrocked of their holiday finery. Most people use January 6^th (Little C'mas or the day the Wise Men arrived to pay homage to Baby Jesus) as the C'mas décor cutoff date and this year it fell on a Friday making that weekend the local C'mas defrocking weekend (especially with the unseasonably warm temps).

By Monday the 9^th the world had returned to its less twinkly splendor. No more wreaths on doors and windows, no more bushes swathed in colored lights or faux icicle lights swinging from the rafters. Instead of peeking into random windows and being greeted by C'mas trees festooned with baubles it was back to seeing a lamp or TV table decorating the window view.

Sure there was the random straggler who had their tree down inside the house but still was turning on the outside strings of white lights dripping from their rafters or letting the Santa snowglobe bounce on the lawn for another week or so but overall, the holiday fervor had been tamped down to the dreary brown hues of mid-Winter. Well, all but those two damn houses.

There are two houses in my neighborhood (nowhere near each other so I can't accuse them of competing on some level) that remain fully decked out. There are still trees twinkling from inside the living room window and the full spectrum of holiday fluff and bluster in the yard, giant nativity scenes, bouncing Santas, twinkly lights, the whole nine. I know these people are home. I see their cars come and go, I see their porch lights and bedroom lights turn on and off, it's not like they've skipped town until the Spring thaw and left C'mas to linger on until their return. Nope. They're just lettin' the season linger on well past its yearly usefulness (to line the pockets of retail establishments, right?).

In the past few days I've noticed that at least one of these homes is starting to chip away at the tree ornaments. First the perfectly placed gold garland came down. The next day there were fewer ornaments on the tree, this morning there were even fewer ornaments on the tree and the lawn was devoid of a gaggle of C'mas icons though the rafter lights and front door wreath remained intact. WTF people? Really? How long can this process take you? I can't even imagine how or why this takes so long. Aren't they sick of looking at it yet? I can only imagine them glancing over during a commercial break of The Good Wife and going, "hmmmm, I think I'll remove 4 more ornaments tonight, that'll move things along".

Assuming they decorated T'giving weekend, they are now roughly in their TENTH WEEK of living in a C'mas wonderland. It's just not supposed to last this long people. MAKE IT GO AWAY, PLEASE!

I can't miss it if it never leaves now can I?

Isn’t this fun?

The four of you who read this blog (HIIIIII!) must be wondering what the HELL is going on. I mean there've been post after post tonight.

Okay, yeah, I admit I am taking a page from the Pat and Vanna playbook and possibly drinking and blogging but, well, that's a different discussion (woohoo, day off tomorrow).

But the OTHER reason (the REAL reason) is that with 2010 I can seamlessly publish this to my blog. It's amazing. It'll subject you to endless blog posts on my whim.

And I haven't even set this up at WORK yet.

Get ready kiddies, I feel empowered!

Oh C’mas Tree

Okay, you get it, I do have a deep and abiding affection for the whole C'mas experience (minus the religious part, don't get me started); the lights, the music, the overall decorations, the festiveness, yup I LOVE IT (oh yeah, and don't forget those awesome holiday movies…"Holiday in Handcuffs"!). But part of the reason I CAN love it is the limited nature of the whole experience. It starts (earlier every year), it HAPPENS…and it goes away.

Well, it goes away for MOST of us…

There are at least two homes in my neighborhood that are still fully decked out for C'mas. As of this coming Sunday it will be 5 weeks since December 25^th. The weather has been unseasonably warm and even mostly dry, plenty of time to de-construct C'mas inside and out but these two homes, two families, not them, they're hangin' onto those twinkly lights and bouncy blow-up snowglobes for all it's worth.

One home has a beautifully decorated (fake) tree. The first time I noticed it was probably within a week after T'giving, it was perfect, the garland was draped just right, there were lovely white lights and perfectly spaced glass globes. I swooned. But now we're about two months past that moment of love at first sight and frankly, I'm a bit bored by the symmetrical garland and the twinkly white lights. I want to see a blank window again. I want to see simple white sheers and lovely drapes. I want to gaze in and see their sofas and coffee table. Mr. and Mrs. Middle America…TAKE DOWN THAT TREE (please).

Look the whole reason to love something as divisive as CHRISTMAS is because it STOPS being C'mas and these people will NOT let it stop. Look we're almost up to that awesome American holiday…Super Bowl Sunday…then we'll be immersed in Valentine's Day (ugh, and I'm actually IN a loving relationship and I say…UGH).

I implore you folks, respect the time constraints of C'mas, take it down by January 6^th, tuck it all away and don't re-visit it again until the Friday after T'giving when you trudge reluctantly into the attic in your jammies while your family slumbers in a turkey day stupor around you.

Really, you'll be surprised how much more ROOM you have when that tree is tucked away in the giant tree bag you snagged on sale from Bed, Bath.

Margarita Mondays!

And Tuesdays, Wednesdays, ANY DAYS! So Pat Sajak has 'fessed up to tippin' a few with Vanna before they had to peddle those ceramic dalmations. I give them credit, they're smarter than I ever had them pegged to be.

If you're a tad younger than me you'll have no idea what I'm talking about so I'll fill ya in here. For many, many years Wheel of Fortune didn't dole out cash and swell trips; oh NOOOOOOOOO, they made you "buy" crap with your winnings you couldn't just leave there with cash in pocket. Probably the best known gift was the much maligned CERAMIC DALMATION, I don't actually remember any of the other prizes just that damn dalmation.

So good ol' Pat Sajak managed to TELL THE TRUTH (so not cool, Pat, much better to LIE and then be found out later) in an interview and the media can't get enough of it. Sweet LORD, this is hilarious. I can't even express how much more respect I have for Pat and Vanna after this admission. My one true wish is that everyone else feels the same affection for these two as I now feel.

C'mon kids, let's get on the honesty bandwagon. Yeah, they downed on average four 'gritas during the set turnovers. Well what the hell were they SUPPOSED to be doing? You can only read so much Shakespeare on your downtime, may as well party hard and love your life.

Oh Pat and Vanna, I sincerely *heart* you both!

I’ll turn you into a NEWT!

So much in the news these days; so very, very much.

Newt (the American presidential candidate not the lizard referred to in Monty Python) is promising us we'll have a settlement or something like that on the moon by 2020. Really? Why? Is he trying to feed into some childhood dream of going into space? Folks, we need jobs, here, in America, right NOW. We need to MAKE THINGS again, we need to MANUFACTURE shit. We don't need to settle on the moon for any real or supposed reason. Truly we don't.

Let's focus on the current crop of out-of-work, lazy, self-entitled Americans before we start focusing on fucking up a whole other celestial body.

Really, just STOP IT!

Smokers Unite!

Well, I actually don't need to tell them to do that, they already HAVE united, right outside the door I use to enter and exit the office building where I work. C'mon people, I get it you still smoke and it's your RIGHT (dammit) but do you need to cluster around the door? There are picnic tables 30 feet away that you could sit at or at least move off to the side. Why oh why do you think it's a good idea to literally be in a semi-circle around the door?

All these people are educated adults, right? I mean their dressed in the typical business-casual uniform and there are only "business-y" businesses in this building so it isn't like they've been sheltered from the world and raised by wolves somewhere. They should have some peripheral understanding of basic polite behavior, right?

Clearly wrong since there they are every time I try to leave the building (I get in too early for them to be there on my way in) during the day.

If you're a smoker, I respect your American right to suck smoke deep into your lungs, swirl it around, and spew it out in fetid plumes through your nose and mouth…just DON'T DO IT ON ME. Ewwwwww.

Have we met?

I've been with my husband for more than 10 years. We haven't been married for 10 years but we've been together for that long and shared a home for most of that time. But how much do we really know about each other?

We're both pretty private people about personal habits and it occurs to me that I don't know a lot about certain things he does and vice versa. It's not big things so much (I don't think so anyway) it's little dopey things that I can't even picture, it's actually a weird little fantasy world I have of my husband.

I just went into the upstairs bathroom; he'd just taken a shower. We have a little space heater in the bathroom because I like to get out of the shower into a VERY WARM ROOM. I never gave it any thought as to whether or not he even noticed there was a heater in the room but then I went to move it and realized it was warm to the touch. Hmmm, does he do the same thing as I do? Does he make the bathroom toasty warm so that he steps out of the steamy embrace of a shower into the warm air of an overheated bathroom? Maybe so.

What about that nose hair trimmer in the medicine chest? I'm pretty sure he uses it but I've never actually seen it in-use.

There was a mega-millions lottery ticket on the desk last week. I asked him if he was in the habit of buying mega-millions tix and he said that it was an impulse purchase at the liquor store but I just couldn't conjure up an image of my husband as a lottery ticket purchaser. Weird, right? I mean lots of people buy lottery tix every damn day, I do it sometimes and I'll bet he can't picture me doing that. Hmmm.

There's just these odd little habits that I know I have that he doesn't know I have and that's both cool and weird. On the other hand maybe he knows about some of them but I don't know he knows. I love to wear socks to bed and then take them off as soon as I'm warm enough and run my feet over the cold sheets. Does he know that? I don't really know.

There are just so many things that I know he does but I don't really KNOW and even more than that…I CAN'T PICTURE him doing.

I can't even decide if I'm curious about these things. Some of them are really personal things. We're not those people that just walk in on the other when they're in the bathroom. We don't do it. Hell, we're not even Facebook friends even though we have a ton of "friends" in common (a bit weird, right?). I don't know his shower habits (nor he mine).

I have an ex-husband ( I have more than one) who had no personal boundaries. He thought nothing of helping his sisters with their math homework while sitting on the bowl taking a dump. YUK! I don't really need that much info about my partner. I don't WANT that much info and dude, BOUNDARIES! WTF?

But I'm a tad fascinated by what I don't know about my current (and hopefully FINAL) husband. I love the man, truly I do. He's handsome (he is, he's damn good looking for a man of his age or even 10 years younger) and he's pretty sweet and kind and he tolerates the hideous dogs which I insist on rescuing but what is his secret life? The problem is that I don't really want to know. I WANT him to have those little things because I want to keep MINE. I do.

It's everything from our dog-feeding style to what we do behind that closed bathroom door. I swear that he sweeps back the shower curtain like he's making his broadway debut; this assessment is based on the number of shower curtain loops are tangled after his shower.

Don't you wonder what you don't know about your spouse? Not the big things but the little things? How they clip their toenails or whether they pick their nose as though they were digging for gold?

I don't want to know them all because I don't want him to know them all about me, I just don't. It's nice to have a few things that are mine in a relationship. No true deep, dark secrets or anything, somehow those are easier to divulge, nope it's more like how often I shave my armpits or how far up my legs I shave (no, I'm not TELLING YOU either).

Oh people, so fascinating even when they kinda belong to us…