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!
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.
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.
After my Jingle Bell 5K experience with hills, I decided to enter the Little Rock Half Marathon instead of the marathon. With that adjustment, I decided to incorporate some hills into my training regiment and see what happens. So far so good.
Today was an 8 mile run. It’s not the longest run I’ve ever done (that would be 12) but it is pretty far and still a little intimidating. There was 10 mile an hour winds that seemed to be blowing in my face. It didn’t matter which direction I was running, the wind seemed to adjust to be blowing RIGHT IN MY FACE. It was hard enough that I felt it was slowing me down. My short goal is to manage to jog up this hill without stopping to walk. It’s pretty steep. I didn’t make it this time. Maybe next time.
No one tried to run me off the road.
I did however meet another runner which surprised me. There doesn’t seem to be that many bona fide runners around here.
So when it was all said and done. (according to the Nike + iPod)
8 miles
1:40:31
average pace 12:33 minute/mile
My favorite song for this run was “When I Grow Up” by the Pussycat Dolls.
My friend Jennybee is a new Aunt. Even though I am not only old enough to have a child and am old enough to start worrying about the freshness of my eggs, I still don’t feel old enough to actually have a kid. I’m stuck in some sort of adolescent mindset. When I get bonafide big wrinkles, I am going to faint. I have friends who have teenagers and they weren’t teenage moms. Lord have mercy, when did I get old?
Today I heard that in this town, an African American woman who lives in a prominently white neighborhood had her house vandalized and the police did nothing. I mean people literally spray painted “N&****” on the front of it. It didn’t even make the local paper. How the hell does that happen? in 2008?!? I am stunned. Completely stunned. Of course, I had to call my friend to apologize for making jokes about her Fort Knox style security system on her house.
My post Jingle Bell 5K soreness and hill running problems during the race have convinced me that instead of signing u for the Little Rock Marathon, I am going to sign up for the half instead and do more hill training and pace training instead of just trying to finish. I think my legs will thank me.
As a business owner, I can attest that I am feeling the economic fallout of everybody being broke. It’s a sad sad day in Melissaland.
A few weeks ago while running in the dusk, a guy turned his headlights on bright and swerved toward the shoulder where I was located. Seriously, some mother fucker tried to “pretend” to run over me. What if he had lost control of his big ass truck and not been able to swerve back in time. I had on the big hunter orange vest with reflective tape that promised to be seen from 1200 feet away. Who does that?
Bellesouth decided to send out some Thanks for Thanksgiving and I’m copying her because it sure seems like a good idea. Bellesouth is smart. Also, I am a little intense and bitch a lot so I need to let people know that I am grateful for stuff. I mean I did win a book that retails for 60 bucks. Hey 40 bucks of free money from an ebay buyers is still SWEET!
I’m thankful for my family. Sometimes I want to slap them upside the head for being stubborn or passive aggressive but they are ultimately very supportive, kind, considerate people. I love them very much.
I am thankful for my friends. While I don’t think I have that many of them, I am grateful for the ones that I have. They are gold, just like Ponyboy.
I’m thankful for running. It keeps me fit. It gives me focus and considering that my quadraplegic cousin Rick couldn’t walk for the last thirty years of his life, it’s something that I shouldn’t take for granted. (I’m thinking about the Duck 10K and the Jingle Bell 5K)
I’m thankful that African Americans who were alive to be beaten by the police for wanting to go to school or eat at a lunch counter are still alive to see the United States of America elect the first African American President. (and one with a funny sounding ethnic name, no less).
No one can ever take this away from you or me. This might just be the most historic moment that I have been able to witness. I am glad that I was a tiny part of it by volunteering for the campaign.
I’m thankful for facebook and myspace which lets me get back in touch with people I haven’t seen in years. It’s interesting to go back to your roots and see how far you’ve come. Also, I got to go to a fabulous Halloween party out of the deal.
I’m thankful for the opportunity to be in a profession that looks at the things wrong with the world and makes efforts to change them. Every day is a challenge and is an opportunity.
Lastly, I love my pets. No matter how bad things get, it reminds me that there is a world out there and that some things out there in the world need my attention. The cats need food and a changed litterbox no matter how crappy my day went. There’s something in there that inspires me to keep on trucking.
