Tis the Season...to be jolly?

Hello.

I know, I know. I’ve been a very bad girl. And I appreciate those of you who’ve missed me. I have a LOT of excuses, but do you want to hear them? I think not. So let’s just jump right into the real news.

First, I feel duty-bound to report on our family’s Thanksgiving festivities. We had a truly lovely four-day-affair, with the traditional CORNUCOPIA (yes) of over-the-top great food and fun. We ate, shopped, and gamed, into the wee hours of each night, and then we got up and did it all over again. I, for one, developed a serious post-holiday hangover, which lasted for about a week after I got home. I’ve never had a true hangover (because I don’t drink) but I feel that my post-Thanksgiving experience was surely close to the real thing. The exhaustion, the headaches, the regret. It was all there in full force. But now that a bit of time has passed, I only remember the highs. Isn’t that why we’re always driven back to our addictions? And so I’m sure I’ll be right back over-eating and over-playing by Christmas.

And while I must confess that our holiday fare was mostly prepared by my hardworking and dedicated sisters and husband, please understand that I was not slack in my contribution to our Thanksgiving festivities. In fact, I had perhaps the most grueling of roles, because I was assigned to write, direct AND produce a holiday family film for my nieces in Zambia. The working title was "It’s a Wonderful Life, Uncle Paul," but you will find the uncut and unrated DVD version styled a bit differently. And I don’t like to brag (seriously) but I must admit it was a first-rate script, and if the acting and camera-work had received the same attention to detail that my script did, the film could probably win some kind of award. Instead it had a few...shall we say...technical difficulties? But we won’t go into that. I’m sure the Zambian screening will go well, and the crass American market has never been known to embrace these international films anyway.

Following Thanksgiving, we hit the ground running with the DREADED basketball games, Nutcracker business, and Christmas parties. Oh sure, these particular activities SOUND harmless enough. But lurking beneath their innocent facades lie all sorts of evils for a person like me. I mean here is my laundry list of personal problems associated with these seemingly nice, normal events:

First, we have basketball. I’ve enjoyed watching Emily play her, okay, not so stellar game for many years now. And at other schools and on other teams, she may have only warmed the bench (prettily, but still) and that would have been only natural given her abilities. But here in our small town, thanks to certain "circumstances", she’s been given the opportunity to play and play and play. And consequently, improve! And sure the team was "0 and what? 0 and 21" last year. But still, she played and I loved watching her.

So now we come to her senior year, and what does she do? She decides to try-out for cheerleader instead of playing ball. And she makes it...and takes her sister’s spot on the cheer squad in the process. And as if that weren’t bad enough, the team decides to get better and actually WIN a game. But we aren’t part of it, the team you know, and so I have to feel angry and bitter. I know I’m sounding hover-crafty here, with the word WE, but I cannot help myself. And of course, Emily says the team is SO much better that she would have been sitting the bench anyway, but I see the pain in her eyes when she says it. Or at least I IMAGINE I see that pain. And that makes me sad, so then I have to cry and carry on. So I think you can see now why the basketball thing is dreaded by me.

Then there’s the Nutcracker. I’m a person who gets conflicted just picking out a can of beans, so imagine how stressed I get when I’m asked to weigh-in on decisions about dresses, hair, makeup, tiaras, and such like? And then I was expected to fix costumes, sew up toe-shoes, and worry about my child being dropped on her head. It’s a wonder I survived and am here to tell you about it. But we did survive (there’s that WE again) and don’t tell anyone but I did enjoy it a tiny bit. Especially the part where Rachel twirled...and looked like an actual ballerina. I mean what mother wouldn’t enjoy that?

And by the way, I also enjoyed the parts of the show where I didn’t have to worry that those safety pins I secured wouldn’t hold those straps up. Like the part where the Mama girl comes out on stilts and little dancers come popping out of her giant skirt. And may I just say that we went down to Amarillo this past weekend and saw the Lone Star Ballet do their version of the Nutcracker, and our mama was far superior to theirs, which may be just my opinion and based solely on the fact that the "mama" in Amarillo had a giant Adam’s apple and therefore we suspected HE wasn’t really a "mama" after all. But that’s neither here nor there.

So back to me (oh how I do love the all-about-me blog)...and the third leg of the triumvirate of stress-inducing events in my life. The CHRISTMAS PARTY. I mean, I love a good party just like all the rest of you, but I can’t seem to get my act together when preparing for them, and I’m afraid it’s showing. For one party, I took the wrong gift, so instead of my friend getting the cute little HoHoHo wall decoration, she opened Rachel’s little black shirt which I’d wrapped for her birthday. Just a tad embarrassing. Then I stress over trying to look festive for these occasions. Because I’ve noticed this year that all of my Christmas garb is either too small or just seems to be screaming "please retire me to the rag pile" because they are either faded or jaded. So what’s a girl to do? I just keep dragging out the old black sweater, which is supposed to make me look "classy" if not Christmassy, but I think the black is looking faded too, so now I just have to hope no one looks too closely at me. Which is probably the case. But I keep getting to these parties and I look around and wonder why everyone looks better than me? And then I remember my role in life...to make others feel better about themselves, by being superior to me, and then I feel pretty good. Seriously.

Okay, I better go. I have a client waiting. Seriously.

And I had one nacho, one chicken tender, and some leftover cranberry salad for lunch. Quite tasty.