Our small town, like all small towns located on the Bible Belt in America, has a nativity scene. Our nativity scene is located on the town square on Main street.
The town square is set up so that if you’re turning left, you will pass right by the nativity scene. You get a close up view.
Look isn’t it cute. There’s Mary and Joseph. The wise men are all around but wait. What is that?!
Is that Baby Jesus? What is up with that hair? All that hair. I have never seen any baby that with much hair? and the Divine style drawn eyebrows. Okay they’re not that high but seriously, drawn and penciled in eyebrows. Oh no. Not on baby Jesus. And the way his arms are stretched out like he’s going to grab me if I lean in too close. And that little mouth.
There’s something about this baby Jesus that creeps me out. It sends shivers up my spine. I don’t know why exactly but it creeps me out. It’s also tiny compared to the others. Baby Jesus would be a super duper premie.
I’ve even joked about stealing this baby Jesus so the city would have to buy a replacement a baby Jesus. ugh.
For some reason, everybody and their Mama is starting to hate one Christmas. Eleanor is losing the spirit. MF never had it (I think he’s lying just to look like a badass for the ladies). There’s even a Bah Humbug club in England.
Back in the day, I used to feel a little blue during the holiday and then I came to resent the holiday. Finally, I have gotten to the point where I can enjoy the thing. Here are some of my tips.
Christmas doesn’t turn crap into gold. Yeah everybody and their mama tells you that Christmas is the time for friends and family. Everybody is supposed to get together and have a jolly old good time. This is all great and all but if your family tap dances on your last nerve: your grandpa is an alcoholic or your aunt is mean and uses you as an emotional whipping girl. None of that is going to change because Jesus was born many years ago. They’re still going to be the same shitheads that they are the other 51 weeks out of the year. Sometimes, you might have to set up some personal boundaries for yourself and limit the time with drunk grandpa and mean aunt if it’s going to harsh your buzz for the entire season.
That being said, if you have been a jackass to someone and are feeling bad about it. This holiday season does give you the opportunity to extend an olive branch or a peace pipe. It’s not calling people out of the blue for no reason, it’s wishing them well for the holiday season.
Your problems aren’t going to go away just because it’s the seasonIf you’re unhappy,fat, or broke, you’re still going to be unhappy, fat, and/or broke. It’s not going to go away because there’s a tree and some presents
People are not nicer during the holiday season. I don’t know what this peace on Earth, goodwill towards man crap is. Ask anyone who works in retail during the holiday season and they will tell you, “people are still the same greedy shits they are the other 11 months of the year. In fact, the greedy shitness is multiplied.” People are shooting each in Toys R Us over what? A Wii. A Bratz doll? People want to be the hero to their own friends and relatives by bringing them the choice gifts so they can get some applause and standing ovations. They will push, pull, poke, and possibly steal the toy out of your shopping cart. Then they drop fifty cents into the Salvation Army bucket and go home thinking they’re a great charitable human being.
Avoid Christmas music. Here’s the deal. The classical music written by the white haired greats such as Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms, Yeah that stuff rules. BUT the stuff that is produced closer to today, it sucks. The record producers know that you’re only going to play it for the few weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas day. They’re not trying to create a Stairway to Heaven or a Help or even a Hey Ya. They know it’s never going to be a number one single or go platinum so they’re going to put out some crap to get a little change in their pockets and go home. To put it simply, Christmas records are CRAP! Avoid that shit. You’ll hear it enough in stores, on television, and on the radio to purposefully put yourself in a position of listening to it on purpose. It’s crappy music with cheesy lyrics. It, for the most part, is not good music. It sucks. Bad arranging. The singer might be out of tune. Nobody is caring because you’ll listen to it for six weeks and then put it up and listen to it six weeks next year. It’s shitty music. So don’t be tearing out the Christmas music right after thanksgiving and expect to not want to poke your eardrums out to rid yourself of that gawdawful noise because that’s just unrealistic. Avoid the shitty Christmas music. Or write to your Congressman to demand that people release stuff that isn’t certified crap. Also, I think those records will say “I hate myself and want to die” if you play them backwards. Yes I do.
Buy your presents online. People go crazy and they especially go crazy in malls. If you can get your gifts online, you avoid that stuff. Of course, my local Chamber of Commerce is going to send me reindeer crap for this particular item. Nice! Fertilizer for my flowers!
You don’t have to go to every party invited. For some reason, there is this pressure to attend every Christmas party. Do you attend every party you have ever been invited? Seriously, say “No thank you, I have other plans.” It doesn’t matter if those plans are sitting on your couch with your cat watching “Veronica Mars” reruns. If you don’t want to go to that particular party, don’t go! OF course, there is this pressure to be a social maven during the holiday. If you’re not a social butterfly who likes large parties or the particular party is filled with people who will make you lose the little faith you have in the human race, don’t be a martyr for the holiday. Don’t go to the shitty party. Give yourself a present.
Avoid peer pressure Yeah Mary has a thousand Christmas lights with some blow up dolls in her front yard but that doesn’t mean YOU have to do that to your house. In many ways, this could apply to some of the above advice. This goes for gifts. If you can’t afford to buy a Wii, don’t let your kid and your neighbors who are getting one make you feel bad for not buying one. Yeah it sucks but bankruptcy because you can’t pay those credit cards later sucks more. So shake it off. Be the rock star that other people want to emulate. Forget those Joneses, they’re probably all on prozac and in therapy anyway.
So there you go. There is some of my advice to survive the holidays without feeling like pooo!
I ran 8 miles today. I had to stop several times due the fact that motorists around here don’t know what to do with a female wearing an orange vest with reflective material running on the shoulder of the road. Several slowed down to the point of almost stopping before speeding up. Two didn’t bother to turn their headlines down from “bright” to regular, hence blinding the crap out of me. I am waiting for the sun to stay out later so that it doesn’t get dark at five o’clock. That would be peachy.
I have big plans to make peppermint bark and black and white cookies. There is also a peanut butter cookie recipe I might try if I’m not sick of baking by then. There are so many Christmas cookie recipes out there. I have read this site with the 12 days of cookies. I might end up trying some of those as well. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Apparently there is a crime spree in my neighborhood with someone breaking into cars. They even had the nerve to steal a riding lawn mower. That is chutzpah folks. The police aren’t doing that much because I haven’t seen them patrolling the area. That’s creepy.
I talked to an old friend from high school that I hadn’t talked to in over twenty years. It’s amazing what people remember about you. Apparently, I am remembered as being smart. I got the “I tried to be a lawyer but I flunked the LSAT. What did you make?” It felt all awkward like I was being asked some personal question.
The Duggars had another kid. This makes 18 kids. I’m tired of hearing about it. I think it’s a shame that the older kids, or more specifically the girls, are regulated to helping raise the younger kids and therefore are sacrificing their childhood for their parents’ agenda. I think that is slightly misogynistic and a crying shame. One of my pet peeves has always been parents who push their hopes and dreams onto their kids and don’t let their kids develop their own identities and desires. I think forcing the girls to become caregivers for the younger kids definitely falls under that category.
Yeah yeah, It’s the 19th and you haven’t finished your Christmas shopping. You’re freaking out and while you know you don’t want to know into super debt, you still feel you need to put something under the tree. I know that feeling. Truth is, I haven’t finished my shopping either.
I’m also a fan of Fiestaware. Those are some sturdy and cute dishes. You can find buttloads of old dishes made in the past (30s and on) but you can also get the new straight from the factory dishes at department stores. They have a classic line that look nice but don’t necessarily scream, “I got these dishes in 1986” They’re timeless.
Food of the month clubs. It’s the gift that keeps on giving. Here’s a bacon of the month club. Personally, I’m drooling over the cheese of the month club. CHEESE. OYEZ. FROMMAGE.
This might not be necessarily favorite thing but I live in a place where I don’t have access to some of the foods that I loved in DC. So if you are internet savvy, you might want to consider getting some of your friend’s favorite foods from far away. A lot of places will deliver food via fed ex. FOR EXAMPLE!
Artisanal Cheese will deliver cheese anywhere so I can get the brie.
H and H bagels, the New York bagel company (sorry folks but bagels from new york taste different and a lot of what you buy in the supermarket labeled bagels aren’t bagels) will deliver. So will Katz’s Deli.
Giordano’s out of Chicago will deliver it’s famous stuffed pizza
You can always look on amazon.com food section for groceries that aren’t necessarily placed everywhere like “Utz’s potato chips“
Runningwise, I am all over my Nike + ipod sport kit. It’s a little sensor that you can place on your shoe with a sensor that attaches to your ipod. It keeps track of your time, pace, and distance. If you enter your weight, it will give an estimate of calories burned. It is all that and a bag of chips and probably the best thing I bought for myself all year. If you look in this picture, you can see the sensor on my running shoe.
Books. I love books. I always have to recommend some.
Even though I was born and raised in Arkansas, Washington DC, the federal district and last plantation in America (ha), is the place that has always felt like home.
I miss the diversity. I miss the streets and the row houses. I miss the pedestrian friendliness of it all. I miss my 1920s Art Deco apartment building with long winding halls similar to the Shining inside.
I miss the ethnic restaurants and the museums. I even miss the snarky Washington City Paper and knowing enough about the local business to get all the jokes. Sometimes, I miss the goofy stuff like the exploding manholes or the fact that it takes several hours to get anything done at DMV.
I miss the educated and curious about the world people. There were lots of runners and running clubs. I always got a kick how they would have this TV show called “It’s Academic” on Saturday (or was it Sunday) morning which was QUIZ BOWL. That’s right QUIZ BOWL on television. The most amusing part is that the school’s cheerleaders were there. Cheerleaders for quiz bowl. Now that is RICH! There was free classical music at the National Museum of Art.
I miss the crazy influx of interns in the summer who walk around thinking their hot shit. I miss playing frisbee on the mall and watching the people play tennis on the public court in Adams Morgan. I miss the chuckling at the UPS trucks double parked on the street with the parking ticket stuck under the window.
I miss the four stories of escalators in the courthouse. I even miss the court security which was the same people for the entire time I was there. I always forgot I had a camera in my purse. It was to the point that I had a permanent “hello my name is” sticker on the back of it. (or course this means it wasn’t digital).
I like how there is enough of a willingness for intellectual debate that when a church group puts up ads on the metrobus, an atheist group will pop up and purchase some ad space for atheist propoganda. Yes equal time.
Dupont Circle.
And snow. IT would actually snow once in a while with a bonafide good dusting.
I miss the craziness of having to call work or school to tell them that you will be late because a Presidential motorcade is blocking your route.
Bellesouth says that I tagged her on facebook for this meme but she is sadly mistaken. I haven’t done this meme anywhere and since it’s Holidailies, I thought I would amuse you with these snippets.
The Rules: Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 16 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 16 random people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you.
I actually keep a large and annotated bucket/things to do before I croak/goal list. There are hundreds of things on there
I want to finish a marathon
Even though I am from Arkansas which considers itself the South even though the coasts consider it the Midwest (these are some fighting words y’all), I do not like fried catfish, sweet tea, boiled okra, deer hunting, the Arkansas Razorback football team or watermelon. I’m afraid the state might revoke my driver’s license, “Sorry hon but you’re no Arkansan of mine!”
Once upon a time, I had a website and I wrote an entry about how I was so horny I could cry. A reader sent me a vibrator for Christmas. God bless the internet
I love the writing of William Faulkner and want to read everything he has ever written
I was inspired to take piano lessons from a Bugs Bunny cartoon involving Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2
I still want to be able to play that song
One of the most amusing memories of my brother is when he put an egg in the microwave to cook it. I believe I was 12 and he was 10. The egg exploded and blew the microwave door wide open.
I have straddled the equator in Kenya
When I’m on my own accord and not bound my societal conventions or legal obligations, I curse like a sailor.
If it’s possible to have a diet Dr. Pepper addition, then I definitely need join Diet Dr. Pepper Anonymous.
I want to ride on camel while looking at the pyramids in Egypt. I need to hurry up, I hear acid rain is making them erode away
I’m scared of snakes
I like taking photographs. In another life, I would be a photojournalist
I turn into a babbling baby talking idiot whenever I see a kitty cat or a tiny puppy dog. Seriously, someone is going to shoot me someday.
I lost 30 pounds this year. GO ME!
This isn’t actually facebook so I’ll just tag anybody who reads this and needs a holidailies prompt.
This now ubiquitous video of an Iraqi journalist throwing shoes at George W. Bush will never get old for me. In fact, I like it so much that I fear I will be placed on the terrorist watch list. Oh Baby Bush has some lightning fast reflexes there. It seems that he is used to people throwing crap at him.
I guess if I went to school every day with a bunch of people yelling bad words at me, I would be hating crowds too.
The hilarious part is that Mark Pryor, the man who couldn’t be bothered to put up an Obama sign in his yard is now for having the Little Rock Nine come and the big time photo op that it entails. Did I mention he skipped out on the big Hillary for Obama rally on the Capital? Many many folks were completely lackluster in their campaigning even though Obama came here in 2006 to campaign for Mike Beebe.
See the “vote for Beebe” sign? I told you.
This is very surprising and one answer for that just might be racism. In fact, John Brummett called the citizens of Arkansas out for it. (I can’t find the original link so here is the column about the letters received after the original column ran).
So when I read the article about the Tuskeegee airmen and the Little Rock Nine with the headline, “We’ve Completed Our Mission” from this quotation:
“The culmination of our efforts and others’ was this great prize we were given on Nov. 4,” he [retired Lt. William Broadwater, 82] said. “Now we feel like we’ve completed our mission. This inauguration will be the ultimate result.”
I’m sorry Mr. Broadwater but as long as there are people making jokes about whether Obama will plant a watermelon patch at the White house (something I endured at a funeral, of all places) or someone is raising a Confederate flag to protest the election or you see “The Anti-Christ Hussein Obama” at a tattoo parlor, the mission is not over. Unless you are referring to the fact that the Commander in Chief will be a black man which could be considered the ultimate end result of the Tuskeegee Airmen’s mission, then yes that mission will be accomplished January 20th.
But the war is definitely, definitely not over.
This “fish and Chips” logo on the back of a Mini Cooper in Little Rock cracked me up. There are so many fundamentalist that the “Jesus fish” is pretty ubiquitous around these parts. Every once ina while, I will see an “evolution fish” but this “fish and chips” fish makes me laugh. In fact, I think I want one for myself.
