Oh What the Hell, It's Christmas!

Normally I would write this post and file it somewhere, like in my "Things that piss me off folder" but honestly, I have been chuckling at my own inner commentary so much the last few hours that I simply have to share.  I will do my best to not hurt anyone's feelings.  (I also post for those of you who will read this and provide me with their own special opinion/commentary as well.)

I came home from work today to a relative just getting in her vehicle on her way out of my house.  After the usual pleasantries she informed me that she knows I don't let the kids drink apple juice or that orange, fake, sugar filled shit they pass off as "orange juice" (my words obviously) but she got the two family of 15 size jugs from a friend and she brought them over for the kids because, "hey, its Christmas."  In order to be as polite as possible all I could say was.... um nothing.  No, I did not say "Oh that's ok.  It is Christmas after all." or  "Oh thank you so much!"  I thought it best to keep my big mouth shut for a change.  It however, did not stop the sarcastic replies from spilling forth in my head.  Here are just a few (my apologies if any of these offend):

Oh, thank you so much!  Your right, it is Christmas and what a perfect time to not give a shit about what our kids drink."

Oh, thank you!  I love it when you obviously know we (not just me) don't buy shitty sugar filled drinks for our kids but do it anyway.  Heck, its Christmas.  Time of peace, joy and disrespect!

Oh, that is so awesome!  Now we won't have to buy milk for a week!

This was some of the 'other' stuff that popped in before I had even hit the front door:

Oh, I know you don't let the kids smoke pot and drink, but heck it's Christmas!

Oh, I know you don't let the kids do heroin or prescription drugs but heck it's Christmas!

I thought I was the picture of maturity keeping this all inside.  If I put too much thought into it I may go off on a rant about respect, or disrespect in this case, or maybe just enough respect to at least ASK first or even the very least ASK why we don't buy this stuff.  No, I am not the food and drink Nazi in the family but we all make choices as a family for good reasons.  A respectful person finds out why.

(I post this also because this has made me make a solemn promise to myself to always be respectful to the future parents in my life.  I will never do what I want and disrespect my children or niece as parents.  I will always ask before I take their kids out, give them candy and let them stay up till 2 am!)

The "G Rated" Hangover

The other night the young lad went to a movie night at his school and had the pleasure of being somewhat unsupervised by his parents.  With this new found freedom I expected him to behave appropriately (which he did) and make wise choices (which he didn’t).  The hyper, twitchy ball got in the car when we picked him up and promptly informed us that he had two Pepsi’s.  In his opening argument he stated that all they had left at the concession was Cream Soda (um, yuck) or Pepsi and he really didn’t finish the second one.  I am going to chalk this one up to not parenting properly and forgetting to expressly tell him to stay away from caffeine like products and make a mental note that the kid most likely thought he had won the lottery with this one.  Alas, the boy couldn’t sleep and I am pretty sure was doing his very best not to bing off the walls in his bedroom after he was put to bed.  He did call down an hour later and informed us that he couldn’t sleep.  He got the standard answer of “read a book”.  Reply went something like this (read sentence really fast for full effect) “I read a book, played cars, coloured some stuff, read another book, played on my Ipod and I still can’t sleep.”  All I could do was chuckle.

Best part?  When he got up in the morning he looked like he was at a frat party till 3:00 a.m. all chicken hairy and eye baggy.  All I said to him was “you know why your tired?”  He replied: “I’m not drinking Pepsi again.”  Chuckled all the way to work as I predict this will be the first of many times he will use that sentence.  Just replace the “Pepsi”.

The Ever Lovin Food Groups

If there is one thing I could request at Christmas (or any other time for that matter) it would be that chocolate be moved from the “Foods to Limit” category to the “Milk and Alternatives” section.  I don’t know about anyone else but I scoff at the suggested healthy alternative to chocolate.  If you want something sweet have a bowl of fruit salad.  Really?  You people know how long it takes to put together a fruit salad (I am just assuming here that they are not referring to the fruit salad that comes in a can that has one, yes one, cherry in the entire tin).  Washing, peeling, cutting, coring, chopping and subsequent washing of hands and multiple kitchen tools!  Seriously!  Want to see a Jerry Springer like chair throwing, I’m sleeping with your best friend and she’s having my baby act?  Tell a chick who is “craving” chocolate to have a fruit salad instead.  There is not enough medication or medical personnel to accommodate that scenario!  Not only that, chocolate has its own magical properties that simply cannot be replicated by a bowl of grapes!

So if I got my Christmas wish, my breakfast the last two days included a healthy diary product in the shape of ole St. Nick and quite a few of those, lets call them yogurt like, neatly filed After Eight mints.  Just add rum and eggnog and I have renewed my love for Christmas breakfasts.  Oh, and maybe a new wardrobe?  Ouch.

Change

Change is one of those things in life we essentially have no control over.  It’s gonna happen, whether we like it or not.  People change, grow and lose their marbles at alarming rates and we are powerless to stop it.  We all know the quote from the famous ogre Shrek “Change is good Donkey”, that being said I think one of the most important, life lessony aspects of change is fear.  People ultimately put off doing what is right for themselves because with the thought of change comes that underlying fear about making the wrong decision or taking the wrong steps and not being able to go back or in some cases worrying about how that change will affect others.  I have a friend right now who has made a huge, life altering decision to look fear in the face and finally put herself first, however uncomfortable or upsetting it may be for other people.  She is one courageous lady and in spite of how hard the last few months have been for her I admire how positive she has remained.  You go girl!

A Lesson in Humility

Humility – The state or quality of being humble; a feeling of one’s own insignificance.

I used to have a long standing tradition with my oldest son to take him shopping and then to the Christmas Bureau to donate gifts for other children at this time of year.  I started doing this with him when he was two years old.  We moved from that to filling shoe boxes full of small gifts for children overseas.  Then, somewhere in our busy lives we stopped doing both these things.  My goal in this was to instill in my son the humility and thoughtfulness that I see is lost in  young men today.  Compassion and generosity for others does not seem to be something that is a cherished personality trait in boys any more and I refused to have those qualities be missing from any young man I was raising.

This past month as I found myself lying awake at night wondering how I was going to pull off Christmas again with a Kraft Dinner budget and stressing about what I am going to get for everyone and what internal organ I could sell to buy said gifts, it occurred to me that I lost my way.  I had to remind myself that you are never to busy to take time out of your day to help those in need.  So….  I signed the older boy and I up to fill Christmas food hampers at our local Christmas bureau.  Yes, I expected some squawking from the boy about cutting into his Xbox time, however he just said, and I quote: “K”.  Not even ok or aww man or any of that.  Huh.  Boy passed first character test. 

So we head out to the church warehouse, meet the man in charge and get to work loading the tables up with the food that has been collected in the boxes for the “shoppers” to come around with each families list and fill the boxes.  Perfect job for Ms. OCD!  I get to stack and organize cans into their proper category and make everything all orderly and nice!  Loving it.  We do that for an hour then get delegated to “shopping” so the boy and I grab a cart and a family list and get to it.  Yup, had fun with this one too.  Every time we found something on the tables for a young kid on the list we celebrated (totally scored on the Chocolate Cheerios and Bear Paws – oh ya). 

I gotta tell ya that I have had more than a few moments lately where I have been surprised at how greedy and ungrateful  teenagers are.  So I wasn’t surprised when we got to the warehouse and found that there was only one other teenager there with her mom and grandmother.  BUT an hour later I was so humbled when a group of three teenage girls showed up to help (they were having a blast) and when we left a group of six teenage boys all piled out of one car and came in to help.  All is not lost in the world. 

I think both the boy and I learned a valuable lesson.  There are people out there who cannot afford to buy Chocolate Cheerios for their kids and are truly struggling to make ends meet.  The boy?  He passed a few more character tests with me that’s for sure.  Me?  I was truly speechless when we got in the car to head home (speechless is not something that happens often for me so it felt weird).  I realized that we both got a bit upset about there being no stewing tomatoes left and they were on our list.  Who would have thought stewing tomatoes would cause us both heartache?   I have had my slice of humble pie. 

So you find yourself caught up in all the Holiday Greed and lose sight of what it is all really about I urge you to take the time to do something kind for someone you don’t know.  Especially at this time of year.  It’s a perfect way to humble oneself and get a reality check.  Heck, bring a teenager.  Might bring on a new found character trait and start their year off with a little less of “what about me” and a little more of “what about others”  Oh, what the world could be!

Attention to Detail - Under Rated Life/Job Skill

Back in the day I worked with my pal Sam who, at any point in the work day, could be heard muttering under her breath “whatever happened to attention to detail?”  As the years went by I started to completely understand what she was going on about – those small details that some people are to “busy” to note or they are to “overwhelmed” to bother with.  You know the type – those harried co-workers who like to spend at least fourty minutes a day bitching about how busy they are and how they are soooo over worked and how they can’t get to their work (some even lodging these complaints as they put on their coats to go outside for their mandatory smoke break.  Gads!)  Yes, you know I have to say it: How about spending the fourty minute bitch time actually doing the work you are bitching about instead?  Hummm, novel idea.

The best one, and one of my listed peeves, are those people who are given a job or project at work and they use the excuse that they have to do this job “at the side of their desk”.  Really?  I have always wanted to ask these people why they can’t do the project in the middle of their desk since it’s clearly work they were given and clearly their boss/manager requires them to do it.  I am pretty sure the boss/manager doesn’t give a crap what part of your desk you do the work on as long as it gets done.  Wait…….  I think I went off.  Anyway, this whole thing came up today in particular because there were a couple of pleasant email in my inbox this morning that made me swear I could hear Sam two desks away going on about those details people so often don’t have time for:  Lets just say that before someone beaks off about a co-worker making mistakes and not doing their job properly one might want to spend a teeny, tiny bit of time checking that they are in fact right (and in this case looking at the spreadsheet that is dated December – not November) and let me just ask if anyone has ever received an email from someone who can clealy see your name embodied in your email address or in your signature line and they still spell your name wrong or type out a name that is completely different than the one you use every day?  Attention to detail or just not giving a crap?  Jury’s out.

Another Burning Question - not Christmas related

Ever think of a question that you absolutely need to know the answer to and are afraid to Google?  I have one and it’s one of those many questions that has been nagging at me incessantly and I can’t get it out of my head.  I have to put it out there just in case one of you happens to know the answer to this burning question and can help me get some rest.

What makes a guy going through medical school decide to be a gynecologist?  I have theories but I just can’t write them.  They all have pervert like tones to them. 

Anyone? 

Christmas Question?

If there really are eggs in eggnog can we drink it for breakfast?  Maybe have a little rum and eggnog with our toast in the morning? 

I knew I liked eggs.

Sarcasm at its finest.......

Well if this isn't the funniest thing ever.
Can't wait to use this one!