I hope every one had a wonderful holiday. This Christmas provided a learning opportunity for me. (I know, what doesn’t?) I had never spent Christmas in the city before and I learned that the “holiday spirit” is quite different from rural or small town Oklahoma. Usually I purchase a survival kit of food right before Thanksgiving and avoid any and all public settings until after Christmas. This year I decided to bake cookies, and with no Betty Crocker heritage I owned no baking supplies. I made the trek out into the scary world...
Grocery stores are the most expensive places to get food. However, they are necessary on Christmas Eve to avoid the wrath of the swamp creatures at Wal-Mart.
People have road rage all year long. But during the holidays, people are much more maniacal, becoming incensed if your legal driving prevents their illegal maneuvers.
That being said, driving at this time becomes the Indy 500 with added hazards and penalties like that of medieval Europe. Left turns become an offense punishable by death. I have never made so many illegal U-turns in my life.
With all these commercials raving about the “holiday spirit” and the “time of generosity and giving,” I wonder what world they live in. I’ve never seen so many people angry and ready to kill in my life. And douchebag meters increase by 50%.
Living in a second floor apartment is wonderful if you want a private balcony, more security, and limited access from creepy people. But after a hard day of surviving in the holiday world, carrying sacks of groceries up stairs in a breezeway in a twenty degree windchill sucks. If there were an Olympics for consolidating groceries into the least amount of bags possible, I’d win.
For sanity’s sake, a bad day like that requires a good lunch.
Of course it’s raining.
Parking lots turn into hundreds of individual American Gladiator matches.
I wish I drove a tank instead of a new car.
It’s happened. For one day I became a stress baker.
If you only use your oven for frozen pizzas, you will not know that the heating coil is older than you until you realize it takes half an hour for a single batch of cookies to bake!
Lastly, Christmas should come with a day’s supply of Paxil. The holiday is so commercialized and idealized that people will normal lives become severely depressed when they realize their lives aren’t from A Christmas Story, A Miracle on 34th Street, the Coca-Cola commercials, or Norman Rockwell art. Those of us with slightly worse luck are pushed off the deep end, with some becoming suicidal. In closing, Christmas should be a relaxed day to spend time with whomever you love most. But, those of us living in the real world know that that will never be possible when there are hams and turkeys to be cooked, cookies to be baked, gifts to purchase and wrap, and necessary reminders that murder is illegal.
Thank you.
