Today's Activities

Number One: Breakfast-- eat that yummy banana bread you made yesterday. Two: Start Cooking for Christmas Eve Family Event..... make Texas style beans, chili, tamales. Do not spend all day baking. HEB makes fine cookies. Especially that pecan tart with shortbread (wow) crust. Three: stress over nothing. Screw the holidays if they can't take a joke!

I've noticed in a couple of blogs a sense of frustration and anxiety over the holidays. I'm sure part of that comes from working in retail-- it's the absolute worst time of the year to have to earn your living in the mall or any other place where frantic, glazed-eyed zombies search for an elusive "perfect gift". Me, I just have to ignore students who didn't bother with their grade all semester but after it's totally too late to do anything about it, want to "meet with me." Yeah, man. I'll meet with you. I hear that there's a cold front moving into Hell right now. Just wait till it's there, and I'll arrange a quick little meeting for me to "justify" you lame-o grade to you. But heck, that is easy! I just have to happily delete emails I'm not required to answer and ignore any phone messages. I remember when the first George Bush was out of office, and some reporters were clamoring for some kind of comment on something, and he said "I don't have to answer you people anymore." That's how I feel.

So anyway, I got distracted. What I really wanted to discuss was Christmas. This year, I'm fairly okay with it. Yes, I felt cranky and scrooge-like when it started being "Christmas" at retail outlets shortly before frickin' Halloween. And I don't like yard decorations. And I have yet to try the gingerbread or eggnog lattes at Starbucks cause I don't want to be jonesin' for them the rest of the year when they're not available. But all in all, I'm sort of looking forward to various aspects of the holiday season. Andrew & I had a good time in Florida with the relatives there-- photos will be forthcoming eventually. Some cool beach time was spent. We traipsed around this very cool condo that's going up on the end of Pensacola beach pretending it was at all possible we were going to buy the million (yes, that's right) dollar penthouse condo. Yes, it did have a really fabulous view. It was cool! But altogether, the condo felt a little "retirement village"ish. Even if there was a snowball's chance we could afford a million dollar condo. (With three smallish bedrooms). Today, I'm hosting the Christmas eve traditional San Antonio tamale feast. And tomorrow, we'll drive out to the lake house to spend some time with extended family there. There are even (gasp) possibly board games in the future. If I could get everyone to wear the same sweater (preferably red, with a flashing reindeer nose on it) I might have to try. It's all part of my evil plan to be happy instead of miserable, and so far, it's actually working. The whole "no-gifts-for-anyone-other-than-people-you-actually-know-something-about-buying-gifts-for" plan has worked admirably thus far.

Christmas doesn't have to be the commercial suck fest it often is. It can be a time to hang out and eat good food, and hang out with those family members you don't want to throttle after ten minutes in the room. But you do have to work at it.