Merry Christmas, You Filthy Animals

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Friday's Random Thoughts - Someone's In A Bad Mood On My Son's Birthday

"What else can I be [but cross] when I live in such a world of fools as this? Merry Christmas! Out upon merry Christmas! What's Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, and not an hour richer, a time for balancing your books and having every item in 'em through a round dozen of months presently dead against you? If I could work my will," said Scrooge, indignantly, "every idiot who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!" - Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol

Someone alert Fox News! Boiled in pudding? A stake of holly through the heart? That's a war on Christmas.

I do not like this time of year and I never will. Nope. Maybe I liked it when I was a kid. I must have. Kids like Christmas. But it's difficult to remember that time, because now December is my least favorite month.

It's not all because of Christmas. I don't like winter. If Christmas was in July, I might be more on board.  And even though the temperature has been extremely mild so far, I still know it's winter. It's like when you bump into someone you have legitimate reasons to dislike and the person acts surprisingly nice. You really must stay on guard because you know that, deep down, she's still a bitch.

So if Christmas didn't happen in the last month of the year, I might be on board.

Maybe.

There's just so much bullshit involved in this season. Black Friday which is now Black Thursday Night.

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And don't even get me started on those ridiculous elves.

Here's a question: If the elves are sent to watch over your kids so they can report their behavior to Santa, WHY do the elves act like such degenerates the whole time? (Click the link for something hilarious.) It's like sending criminals to report on the behavior of other criminals or sending strippers to tell other women to keep their clothes on or sending Lindsay Lohan to report on the behavior of Amanda Bynes.

There's also the Christmas movies and songs that are FULL OF CRAP. Actually, this sort of thing brought about one of my favorite holiday traditions, which is listening to Patton Oswalt's comedy routine about the song Christmas Shoes.

"Someone's in a bad mood on my son's birthday?"

Sacrilicious.

I wrote my mom about the possibility of some new thing that could happen (sorry for being vague). My mom said yesterday that she will pray for it to happen if that's what I want.

And all I could think is what the hell does it matter what I want anymore?

She said she's afraid that I'm letting rejection eat me alive.


Trust me, I'm not happy about my lack of optimism. I feel guilty that I'm not grateful enough for all I have so that my gratefulness will counteract my disappointment in things.

Maybe I'm not as great and strong as people want me to be.

I was trying to think of ways to get out of my 2012 slump and to adopt a new attitude.

When I worked at the newspaper in Shreveport 10 years ago, I participated in a leadership program. I remember the person running it asked, "What do you want your life to look like?"

It seems like a small question, but it's huge. I thought about it then and my first thought was, "Well, I don't want to be here anymore!"

Shortly after that, I turned 30. I quit my job, got a new job at Southern Living, moved from Louisiana to Alabama, and I changed my life.

Side note: My father-in-law always said the 30s were the hardest years and, damn, was he ever right. Biblically hard. Swarm-of-locusts hard.

I'm going to turn 40 in 2013 and I'm wondering what I want my life to look like.

First thought: Well, I don't want to be here anymore.

The thing is that I don't know what I mean by "here."

In this house?

In this red state?

In this cycle of hope and rejection?

In this bad mood?

Bah humbug.

Maybe I'm buying into the Mayan hype, but I think life as we know it has to change in 2013.

What do you want your life to look like?

That's something I'm going to have to think about, but I'll begin with this:

FRT Shout-Out: While I've moaned and groaned about things, BFF Tina has listened and been there for me. Every single day. That's an amazing thing. Sometimes you go through hard times and you figure out that a lot of people are only friends with you if it's easy for them. But there are people who, for 20-plus years, stick by you, comfort you, commiserate with you, and when someone does you wrong she says, "You fuck with Amy B., then you fuck with me."

Thanks, my friend.

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Start Your Day With This

I don't know what you have going on this morning, but I hope your day is off to a good start like mine.

No. 1: A source for a story called me back bright and early. Yea for farmers and their early wake-up calls. (That's not sarcasm. I'm up early, too, and I LOVE when sources call me back.)

No. 2: I went to Starbucks to get a latte because this has become a real problem for me. Anyway, the man in front of me didn't have enough change so I gave him some. When it was my turn to order, the Starbucks guy, whose name I should really know by now, said, "One good deed deserves another. This is free today."

Woo hoo!

It's the little things. This makes up for the fact that one of the cats threw up on the sofa. They truly are Satan's furry minions.

Then I came home from Starbucks and watched this video. If you know me then you probably know I profess to hate Christmas music because Christmas music makes me cry. But, if I have to choose a favorite song, All I Want for Christmas is the one. This version is so joyful (although Mariah's star nipples are somewhat bothersome). I'm gonna need The Roots to come to all my Christmas gatherings, please.

Then I watched this version, because I'm a glutton for punishment. Then I got a little teary-eyed. The fact is that I'm a big liar when I pretend not to be a sappy romantic.

OK, carry on with your day now.

Related Link: 31-Day Christmas Challenge in 31 Minutes

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Take That Magic Somewhere Else, Buddy

If you're familiar with Elf Magic, then you already know that these little assholes show up every year after Thanksgiving and start playing pranks and making messes, all in the name of "holiday spirit."

Holiday spirit, my ass.

Here's one good thing about getting older. I now have one child who is nearly a grown man and could give two hoots about pretending certain things exist. I have another child who is not a girl, not yet a woman. No, wait, that's Britney Spears circa 2001. The person in my house is a pre-teen with a penchant for drama and drinking orange Fanta. She also likes to "believe."

Kate's enthusiasm for holiday traditions is one of the things I love about her. She is very different from me in this way. I am not a person who gets overly worked up about the holidays or making sure we do the same thing year after year.  Kate wants a tree the day after Thanksgiving. She wants to decorate the entire house. She wants to know why I won't decorate the house with lights. (No. 1, I don't own a ladder. No. 2, I don't want to have to take down the lights a month later.)

Keeping up with these mother-effing elves is not one of my favorite holiday activities. (My favorite holiday activities are drinking bourbon, making S'mores, watching The Sound of Music until right after the gazebo scene, and posting this 2007 photo of what Jacob did with my stepmother's salt and pepper shakers.)

I like all these things but I don't like anything that creates more clean-up work for me.

That is why I DO NOT condone the mess-making that is supposed to occur with these elves and their "magic."

No, no, no.

Are there parents out there who don't have enough to do? Because, if you're that hard up for activities, I've got about 6 loads of laundry you can come put away.

Why would you create a mess just so your child will believe that Santa's elves are complete jackasses?!

I don't get it.

Parents should sit their little freeloaders down and say, "Santa sent one of his elves to help us out this holiday season. The holidays are very busy and it's important that everyone pitch in."

Nope, apparently Santa Claus sends his elves to jack up your shit. Thanks for nothing, you fat bastard.

So this year, if the girl is still into playing pretend, these elves better make themselves useful and not behave like the worst houseguests in the history of houseguestery!

They will clean. Yea! Look what Eileen did, she cleaned the kitchen last night!

They will cook. Yea! Bedford made us a batch of macaroni and cheese.

Oh, look, the elves teamed up to make Mommy a drink.

There will be none of last year's shenanigans, like when Bedford got drunk and naked, took a bath in marshmallows, and shoved his face in whipped cream.

He also called your mother a whore.

Bedford, you so nasty.

The elves will not:

Mess up the living room with five gajillion post-it notes.

Seriously, who does this? 

Waste the toilet paper.
In this economy? Oh, hell no. Ain't nobody got money to waste on toilet paper.

Fish out of the toilet. Dude, that's gross.

Clean the toilet? Yes.

I expect the elves to be extremely well-behaved this year.

Or else I'll let our evil cat Lucy have her way with them.

Satan sent me here to destroy everything in your house.

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Super Sad Holiday Shit

Kate and Jacob, Christmas 2010

I just dropped Kate and Jacob at the mall so they could do some Christmas shopping. They argued briefly about who should get to hold the cash.

"Before you go in, agree that you're going to work together and get along," I said in my best Mom Voice.

"We will," they said together in sing-song, not entirely reassuring.

After I dropped them off, I drove down to the coffee shop nearby and I'm sitting here writing. Though, clearly, I'm not writing what I'm supposed to be writing. I have begun it, this task of writing the most difficult chapter in my book, but I'm taking a break. I'm circling around it.

I need to breathe in and out for a minute.

It's rainy, dark and gray, perfect weather for sitting in a booth drinking a latte while you tap onto a keyboard the combination of letters that will spell out the worst thing you've ever experienced.

When Kate and Jacob jumped out of the car earlier, I watched them run through the rain and into the store at one end of the mall. I had one of those moments when I felt so much love for them that it hurt.

I don't normally give them money to buy me gifts. Up until two years ago, their dad would take them out to buy me something, like a sweater from Anthropologie or a new book or two. Last year, my counselor said I would need to make sure that the children knew they should still buy gifts for me and for each other. It would be good for them and good for me. But I would have to make sure that happened. It would be my job.

Honestly, I'm one of those annoying people who will say, "You don't have to give me anything" or I give my mom a list that is full of practical things. For instance, I just ran out of my face wash and I'm thinking about having Santa stop by Rite Aid so he can put a bottle of Neutrogena in my stocking.

I resisted my counselor's advice the past couple of years thinking it was silly to give the kids money just to spend on me, but she was right, of course. They need to think about other people and what they might like this time of year. They need to learn to shop for Christmas gifts.

And I might like to have a few gifts to open, little surprises that Kate and Jacob have chosen for me.

After I dropped them off, I felt like crying. I feel it now, this thing lodged in my throat.

I don't know why.

Stupid f*cking holidays.

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Winter is the Worst

Valentine's Day is a pain in my ass.

"I like these cold, gray winter days. Days like these let you savor a bad mood." Bill Watterson

Oh winter, must we go through this every year? 

It’s no secret that I hate this time of year. I fantasize about living the sort of life where I can go to a tropical island every December and I don’t have to come back until late February (after the most bull shit holiday ever, Valentine’s Day).

I’m not one of those people who adores Christmas and everything that comes with it. The main thing I feel about it is anxiety. I have no money. I have an 11-year-old daughter who asks that multiple things, including an iPad, be added to her Christmas list every day.

                                                                                    

I don't want to be a Grinch.

I do my part. The first Christmas after Charles died, I went to the Boy Scout Christmas tree lot, picked out a tree with my daughter, Kate, and watched as two scouts tied it to the roof of my car. At home, I dragged it in the house and managed to get it into the tree stand by myself. The first year you do something by yourself is the hardest. It gets easier after that.

I try my best to be enthusiastic about the holiday. I might like it more if it wasn’t smack in the middle of winter. Hello, winter. I say “winter” the way Seinfeld always said “Newman.” Winter sucks.

 
I made a list of the ways winter bites. But I’m going to try to come up with positive things to say about this time of year. Instead of “Bah humbug,” I’ll try to say something chipper, something like “Yea! More rain is awesome!” or “Yippee, I sure do love the color gray! Blue skies are so overrated.”

Here are a few other ways I'm going to change my thinking from negative to positive:

1. I hate being cold. I love wearing scarves and fuzzy socks. 

2. I hate shopping for Christmas gifts. I love wrapping Christmas gifts. 

3. Christmas songs make me sad. I love watching my favorite Christmas movie, Die Hard. Don't tell me it's not a Christmas movie. It features an awesome Christmas song (one that won't make you cry). 

4. I hate gloomy, gray, rainy days. I love reading while curled up under a blanket on the sofa. 

5. I hate that I can’t sit on my back patio drinking cocktails while cooking dinner on the grill. I like toasting marshmallows in the fireplace, making s’mores, and drinking red wine. 

6. I hate that it gets dark before 5 pm. I love putting my pajamas on at 5 pm. 

 
7. I hate that all I want to do is eat fattening comfort food while wearing sweatpants. I love that I don’t have to shave my legs. At all. Ever.

8. I hate snow.  I love Calvin & Hobbes winter comic strips. Calvin makes the best snowmen. I'll try to think about winter as nothing more than a swift sled ride into spring. 

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Winter Blues - Thoughts on Grieving

When the holidays approach, my internal worry machine hits hyper-drive. I worry about the early sunset, all those hours when there is no light other than the lamp on my bedside table. I worry that I will stop working out, polish off a tub of cream cheese with a sleeve of crackers every day, and gain 15 pounds. I worry about hearing Christmas songs while I'm out in public because Christmas songs make me cry. I worry about having enough money for gifts and a tree and vodka and cranberry juice. I worry about falling back into the dark hole of grief and regret.

Each year, I feel better. I am happier now than I have been in a long time, but I still wish I could skip winter, pass Go and head straight to spring. I still feel all the things I felt when I wrote the essay I'm posting below. I just feel these things on a smaller scale. I still love waiting rooms. I'm still waiting for something really great to happen, to remind me that really great things do happen. As a visual reminder, I bought myself this print and put it in my kitchen.

In the meantime, I practice being grateful every day for the wonderful things in my life: my children, who are smart, funny, strong, and loving; my family and my friends, who offer me endless support and love; my good health; my comfortable home; the existence of George Clooney; and the fact that I still try to believe one day I will find my personal George Clooney. (Dear Santa...)


At any given moment, people are thrust into this place of grief and worry and waiting. I hope this essay helps them feel less alone. I remind myself all the time that this too shall pass. Spring will come again.


Friday, December 11, 2009
“Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery's shadow or reflection: the fact that you don't merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.” CS Lewis

Lately, I love waiting rooms. In these bland rooms, I sit still and look as if I’m doing something. I stare at the pages of a book or magazine without actually reading. I take a break from the world with its endless expectations. I can do nothing without judgment because I’m in the midst of the very important and socially acceptable task of waiting. This is better than the far preferable but more harshly judged act of staying in your pajamas all day, watching daytime TV, and telling yourself you can’t get off the couch because it would disturb the kitten curled up on your lap.

Monday, I visited three waiting rooms. This may be my record. I waited for Jacob at the orthodontist. I waited for Kate at The Amelia Center, a counseling center for grieving children. I waited for Kate again at The Birmingham School of Music where she is taking guitar lessons. In truth, I don’t need a special room for this. My days are largely spent waiting.

Since August, I have learned that the months after death and trauma do not pass as normal time. What has been little more than four months feels more like 10 long days. I have developed the amazing talent of being able to sit at my desk staring into space for 20 minutes only to realize later that an hour has passed. My distraction is not that of a child, hopping from one subject to another, completely unrelated to the first. My distraction is that of someone unable to look away from a gold watch. I am hypnotized by one lone fact, swinging back and forth in front of me.
 
And I wait.

Some days I play at normal. I am a far better actress than I ever imagined. I’ve never been able to release my awareness of self long enough to play a decent role. In drama classes, I much preferred being the prompter just off stage, helping forgetful actors remember their lines. Now I see that I can act the part of someone having a good time or, at the very least, a normal time.

In truth, I am a cliche. I am a chapter in a book on loss – the kind of books so many people pressed into my hands in the days and weeks after Charles’s death, after what was the worst day of my life. (And I will not add “so far” to that sentence.) The stages of grief do not pass in an orderly fashion or a timely manner. They do not come one after the other. Sometimes they sit on one another and fight for attention like sibling rivals. “Look at me,” anger says. “No, no, look at me,” denial cries. Depression takes a backseat and only watches the fight because depression always has the upper hand. Depression is along for the ride while you bargain and cry and yell the ‘F’ word as loud as possible while driving down a quiet street. Depression knows it will be there after the others are put in a corner for time-out.

If I had a say, I’d still be in the shock and denial stage. That stage was excellent. While you know the facts, your brain is like a kindly grandmother who says, “Now, now, wait a minute, let’s not do anything crazy yet. Let’s pack that information in this pretty box over here. See this one in the corner? You can open it later. For now, put a smile on your face. Here, let’s make this easier. Let’s put a nice, white haze over everything and put this soft sweater on you so you won’t feel any of the big, mean world’s hard edges. There you go. Now run along and have a good time with your friends.”

This stage can be prolonged by the imbibing of excessive amounts of alcohol, but I wouldn’t recommend it really. I actually drink less. If I’m going to feel this bad I’d rather power through. If I’m going to grieve I’m going to do it right, do it right now, and get a gold star on my Stages of Grief report card.

“You jump right into things, don’t you? You don’t give yourself a break,” my counselor recently said.

I told her, “If I have to swim through a pool of crap, I’d rather just get in and get that shit over with.” I know. I have a way with words that even that son of a bitch Shakespeare would envy.

I read a story online about a woman whose insurance company cut her disability benefits for depression because someone found photos of her on Facebook having a “good time.” I read the story aloud and commented on the unfairness of it, although it shouldn’t be surprising that an insurance company wouldn’t actually understand an illness. Kate said, “That’s stupid. You look like you’re having a good time and you’re depressed. My MeMe looks like she’s having a good time and she’s depressed. I look like I’m having a good time and I’m depressed.”

Kate, at 9 years old, knows something those idiots at the insurance company pretend not to: Putting a smile on your face is like hanging a Christmas wreath on your front door. It might look like you’re celebrating the holidays when really you’re only doing what your neighbors expect of you. Inside, you might be wishing the damn holiday with its unreasonable expectations and depressing songs would pass already.

You might just be waiting for things to be normal again.

You put your new knowledge - that normal no longer exists - in a pretty box in the corner where it fits right in under the Christmas tree.

Kate and Jacob, Christmas at Grammy's 2010

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