Things To Hate and Love at Christmas

Well, its almost December and the Christmas season is in full flower. There are so many things to love about the season, it sounds cliched when you start to list them. I'm going to do it anyway as soon as I finish listing the things that really piss me off. You can do this if you are half curmudgeon on your mom's side as I am. Here we go: I detest songs that aren't about Christmas but toss in the word "Christmas" to get air play. Case in point - "Last Christmas" by George Michael. I'm sure you've heard the insipid drivel... "Last Christmas you gave me your heart and the very next day you tore it apart..." Its a break up song - not a Christmas song. When I hear that piece of crap I want to punch Santa Claus.

I hate pfefferneusse. First of all, it is a stupid word. I know its not English but its dumb. And those nasty, plastic, chemical tasting, squishy excuses for cookies taste like they've got styrofoam as a main ingredient. The only good part is the icing. If you are ever at a Christmas party and you find pfefferneusse with the icing nibbled off tucked in a napkin and stuffed in the trash, come and find me! We'll chat...

If there's one more performance by a skanky, rehabbed, slutburger of a singer trying to evoke a child's wonder of Christmas by opening their eyes really wide and enunciating really well, I will vomit in my Christmas stocking. The only ones who can successfully evoke a child's wonder of Christmas are - children - and that only lasts for a few years. Then wonder is out the door and greed steps in, settles into the recliner and starts barking orders and making lists.

The only thing worse than Christmas sweaters on humans is Christmas clothing on pets. Bitches, please...pets are not decorations. Dogs and cats are inherently adorable. When you put antlers on them, it does not add cuteness - it takes away their dignity. Newsflash - the dog in the Grinch story is fictional. That's why he's cute - not because of the little antler on his head.

Lastly, (and I know there's more stuff about Christmas that irritates me but I can't think of it just now, or it hasn't started bugging me this early in the season...) I'm getting sick of muzak versions of Christmas music. Those overly arranged songs with too many strings make me want to smack Rudolph - right on his little blinky nose.

Now, I love the smell of Christmas trees. In front of any store that has seasonal greenery on its sidewalk, you will find me with my nose buried in an evergreen, sniffing. I love that smell. The sound of the Salvation Army bells is a great Christmas thing. I always carry dollars for when I see one of them. I really like it when they give me a little candy cane... Butter cookies are wonderful especially the ones with almond extract in them - frosted. Mmmmmm! Christmas is the only time of year when non-chocolate sweets are acceptable.

Good Christmas music is marvelous. Today at FoodMax I heard a Rat Pack-ish rendition of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and I almost popped open a redi-mix martini. It was so good! As I said, there is much to love about the Christmas season. That's probably why the other stuff gets my undies in such a bunch. And it's still November! By Christmas Day, I'm probably just going to have to go commando since all my undies will be tangled in a giant wad. Better add new undies to my list...

Not A Lot like Prison

We had so much fun today. The hub and I went to San Francisco where we met a friend we worked with 30 years ago on Alcatraz. Yes we all worked on Alcatraz. We were park rangers when it cost $2 to ride the boat over to the island. The tour was free - still is - you pay for the boat although it costs a whole lot more to go take the boat now than it did in 1979.

Considering that the place was a prison, and a generally depressing place when it was open, we had an unseemly amount of fun when we worked out there. We all had to walk the mile and a half tour route three times a day and it was uphill the whole way. As a result, we were all skinny as rails so all the seventy five cent beer we drank at the Eagle bar had no effect on our flab quota. Sometimes we'd meet somebody in the bar had been on our tour and then - free beer!

Alcatraz was a terrific place to have a party, too. We just had to make sure the beer smell was gone by the time the first tour went through in the morning. Once, a bunch of us decided to spend the night on the island. We went crabbing off the dock and reenacted the bludgeoning murders that happened on the island on the delicious little crustaceans so we could eat them. The bad part was that the night watchman was a vegetarian pacifist who quit his job shortly after our crab dinner. Oops - our bad. We were kind of gross.

We gave good tour, though. Once I was leading my group up the hill and we stumbled upon a group of really tall, very beautiful, half naked women. They saw us and ran screaming into a tent that I had never seen before. I recovered my composure and called to my group. And called again to the men. The other people that were there informed us that they were shooting a Macy's ad and their spotter got distracted (hmm wonder why?). They were very sorry.

I finally wrangled my men back into my group ( I might have lost one short, bald guy but his wife didn't seem to mind). Anyway, I started giving my tour again and looked down at my drab NPS uniform. One lady read my mind and piped up "Oh honey, if you can look good in what you've got on, you can look good in anything." I loved her instantly and wanted her to be my mommy.

Alcatraz was a great place to work and we enjoyed ourselves immensely. I think the visitors could tell how much we liked working there - it had to show in our faces, our whole beings. We loved that place - still do - but we can't drink beer like we used to and if we tried to walk one and a half miles uphill three times a day five days a week, we would die.

Motivationaly Speaking

The hub and I just got back from a special edition of Fat Camp. We listened to a motivational speaker and Chris Farley notwithstanding, she was really - motivating! She stands just a shade under 5 feet tall and she weighed 281 lbs at her heaviest. She lost150 pounds and has kept it off for four years. Now, I wish we hadn't seen her just three days before Thanksgiving because I was really looking forward to honking down half a turkey, but I think that might have been the plan all along.

Last night we went to some friends' house for dinner. I offered to take dessert, and I made brownies. This was difficult for me because I love brownie batter. Also brownies, cut correctly spew many, many, huge juicy crumbs which I like to eat. I managed to get enough batter into the pan to make a batch and enough brownies onto a platter to qualify as dessert. The crumbs were delicious...

The great thing about this practice Thanksgiving dinner was that the hub and I got to find our stumbling blocks. Mine is mostly the whole dinner. I'm a carb lover and Thanksgiving dinner is like my version of heroin. A kilo of stuffing, a kilo of potatoes (sweet and mashed) and don't get me started on the pies.In addition to the carbs, I can totally snarf a good pound of turkey and the odd thing is that if you weigh everything I eat on Thursday and add gravy, I guarantee I will put at least twice as much flab on my hips as the weight of the fix (I mean food).

They say that the average person will put on 10 pounds between Thanksgiving and New Years. It takes 3500 calories over and above what you burn to gain one pound...that's freaking 35,000 extra calories! Dang. I'm gonna have to watch it. Not like I used to watch it - straight down my gullet. Plus, we're having a contest in Fat Camp. Everybody who wants to puts in $5 and the one who loses the most (unlikely that everybody will lose), or if everybody gains (likely as heck), the one who maintains or gains least wins the pot.

Competitive weenie that I am, I'll try to win. My desire to triumph over my adversaries will help me avoid temptation. My need to win will trump my desire to stuff myself with cookies. But then, that may have been the plan all along.

Tell Me a Tail

Lately, I've had lots of time lately to spend with my pets. The dogs have us trained to get them treats whenever we go into the kitchen. If we don't, the larger of the two (a Border Collie) woofs at me til I do. The two cats are cool looking and really pretty but they are dumb as dirt. Once, we were trying to figure out what animals cats are stupider than. We got to krill and couldn't think of anything else. They are fun, sweet and really cute, but haven't got the brains God gave a turnip. Now, I'm not saying that dogs are that smart, but compared to cats? Einstein!

One of the coolest things about all of them is their tails. Wilson, our kitten, sometimes notices he has something attached to his butt which really makes him mad so he grabs his rear end with both front paws and attacks his tail. He ends up somersaulting off whatever surface he happens to be on which is usually our bed. When he lands on the floor he sits up and looks around completely bewildered. Then he saunters off as if to say " What? I didn't do anything."

The dogs just use their tails to register emotion. They wag when they're happy, hang when they're sad and go under their legs when they're scared. It would be so cool to have a tail! I wouldn't want a prehensile one because I would feel compelled to climb things and I really don't like heights. I would wag it a lot, though.

If people had tails it would make clothes a lot different. I can just hear them on Project Runway; "Heidi, look at the embellishment on the tail area!" "I was just noticing that, Nina, its brilliant!" Furniture would have to be designed to accommodate tails. I can see that recliners could be a problem but when I found a chair I like I would wag like there is no tomorrow.

I would wag my tail at the gym unless it got caught in a weight machine. Then I'd yelp and put it between my legs when I got it out. When I saw the hub or my kids, I'd wag it like crazy. When I went by my old work place, it would stick straight out and bristle like a big mascara brush. A tail would be awesome on cold days - You could wrap it around your feet instead of slippers. On April Fool's Day, your tail could tap people on the shoulder while you're looking totally in the other direction. Plus you could secretly hold tails behind everybody's back if you had a "thing" going on. There are all kinds of kinky possibilities which I am embarrassed to go into but use your imagination.

I think I need to spend less time contemplating my pets. I'm starting to really want a tail. And not just because I'm thinking kinky. Can you imagine sports teams congratulating each other with tails? Football pads for tails? This could go on for a really long time. I have lots of time on my hands...

Love Me, Love My Hair

I was raised by a mom who loved me but had really odd ways of showing it. Nowadays, and since my kids were little, parents have known that its important to make sure a child has a healthy self esteem. Its gotten to the point that its not unusual to run into a kid with an ego the size of a Buick. Then you want to run into them again. But, I digress.

My mom was of the opinion that a person, particularly a female person, should never like her looks. Her hair was to be scorned, processed and dyed (in her favor, she did have a kind of Pepe Le Pew meets Cruella DeVille thing going on under the dye). Faces are places to put makeup ("After 16, a woman needs to wear makeup every day" ), and bodies are to be reviled and forced to lose weight whether they need to or not. But not by doing excercise. Just by eating less and less. Its a wonder my sister and I aren't anorexic. I do take Paxil every day, though...

The wierd thing is, my mom was an extrordinarily beautiful woman. She always reminded me of Snow White, what with the black hair, blue eyes and pale skin. She also had a rack like Marilyn Monroe. Since she never nursed babies (It wasn't done in the '50s) so those puppies were perky til the day she died. I got my chest from my dad - literally. Oh well, they say small busted women have big hearts and I do.

Once, when I was about seven, I asked my mom if I was pretty. If she'd said "yes", I would have felt good and forgotten all about it. What she said was "Looks aren't important - what's important is your personality". She was right, of course, but not hearing "yes" meant "no" to my larval brain. And I have remembered that all these years. She also always told me I needed to lose "5 more pounds". I also should wear my hair short because the long hair "adds 5 pounds" My mom had a thing about 5 pounds. Every Christmas she "gained 5 pounds" and was "on a diet"She must have gained and lost 5,000 pounds over the course of my childhood. Five pounds at a time.

It bugged her that I didn't really care about my weight, hair length/style, ("After 16 - pigtails belong in the barnyard") or make up. She said one day that she was too young to have a gray haired child. I said it wasn't that gray and I didn't want to dump chemicals all over my head so I look young. She said "Oh, no you're not one of those women who likes their gray hair!" Heaven forbid I should like my hair. I've been working out like a maniac lately so I'm liking my body, too. Mom's ashes are probably whirling around in their urn.

Anyway, I know that "5 more pounds" was Momese for "I love you", but it wasn't great for developing self esteem. I've lost 50 pounds now and it would be cool to be able to show my mom but she'd probably say "You're going to keep it up, right? And lose 5 more pounds." Then I'd have to scream until no more sound came out and eat til there was no more food in the house. Hey, I think I just figured something out - I wasn't a fat ugly kid - I was normal!

Warmth in Winter

When I was a kid, my family moved with my father's job to Copenhagen, Denmark. There were lots of cool things about living there; travel, culture, history, but the neatest things I came across and what I carry with me to this day from the Great Frozen North are the covers on my bed.

We went to Denmark from Houston, Texas, where covers on your bed were really just a formality. You certainly didn't need them to keep warm - warm was the default state of existence in Houston and covers were usually kicked off. They were a nod to tradition, but not technically necessary for sleep.

In Denmark, people used eiderdown comforters. I loved them! At the time I was 11 years old and I didn't realize that all those little eider ducks had to die to make me toasty. Even in summer, the comforters were nice for optimum snoozability. In winter they were crucial. In Danish they were called a"dyne" which looks like its pronounced "dine" but its not. Pronounced correctly and passed through my American filter, it comes out "doona".

Nowadays, there are dyne fillers that are synthetic and much cheaper than genuine duck down. Plus you don't have to denude a little duck butt to get it. I like the down ones, though, because, well, because, oh heck, I'm a pig, they're nicer than the fake ones. Sorry ducks.

There's a bit of science to sleeping properly under a dyne. You lay still and don't flap the covers around because you are busy generating a warm air pocket around yourself. If you want to turn over, you can't raise the covers up and flip, you have to slowly rearrange your body so the air pocket stays intact. It becomes second nature quickly when you're a kid. When you're trying to drum this behavior into your grown up hubby's head - it can take 25 - 30 years.

I usually get in bed before the hub-unit and get a nice envelope of temperate air generated. He comes in and instead of raising a tiny flap of dyne and sliding under the covers, he raises his whole side of the dyne and breeches my air pocket! He has improved over the years but since we only use the dyne in cold weather, he has to relearn the procedure every winter. My hub is good at a great many things getting into bed with a dyne is not always one of them.

Anyway, I was thinking about stapling his side down, but that would probably damage the dyne. But I'm cool with his misappropriation of my air pocket as long as it only happens once or twice a year. I enjoy my dyne. It reminds me of my childhood in Denmark. In Denmark I learned that Gorm the Old was the first Viking king, beer is good, and that nothing beats a dyne for a great night's sleep!

Inspector Gadget D.D.S.

Sometime in the last year, I broke a tooth. Last time I went in for a cleaning, they found the broken tooth and made me an appointment to get it fixed. I forgot to go to that appointment. See, I have very ambivalent feelings about dentists; not the people themselves, but all those tools and the sounds and smells. Well, I went in for my current cleaning last week and my tooth had not miraculously fixed itself. Even though I willed it to. Stupid tooth.

So, I went into the dentist's office today, hardly shaking at all. I sat gingerly on a wing chair in the waiting room. I prefer the sofa, but another Nervous Nellie was parked there. She got called in first. We avoided eye contact as she disappeared into the back. I sent silent good thoughts her way. The door opened again almost immediately and they called my name.

I marched back into the bowels of the dentistry and plopped in the really comfy chair ( I really want one of those! ) and my dentist came in. I've been going to this same dentist for nearly 25 years and I adore him. He's a total gadgetophile, so I know my teeth and gums are state of the art. Plus the hygienist always loads me up with enough floss that I never have to buy it. So I score big time!

Today, I got numbed up beyond all imagination, then the dentist and his assistant performed the most intricate manual ballet with water squirters, air sprayers, sucking devices, and wads of cotton and gauze. At one time or another, there were lights, cameras, and action in my mouth. I didn't know my lips could stretch that far! I was fine until he started up the drill which makes that whiney sound. As soon as I hear that, every muscle in my body clenches and Dr. Nice Man asks "Does it hurt?" I say "Ngo - ith dust the sownd". He says "I'm sorry, there's nothing we can do about that." I bet if a method to get rid of that sound exists he'll get one and if it doesn't, he'll invent it.


He'd have retired years ago but there are always new dentist toys. In fact, today as he was numbing my bottom lip to Angelina proportions he told me he'd ordered a device that can numb just one tooth at a time. It hadn't come yet - but soon! I knew I should have forgotten this appointment, too.... There was a really cool thing, though, after he got my tooth drilled out, he took pictures with his computer gizmo and sent the photo to a little magic machine. It carved up a chunk of toothish looking stuff into exactly the shape that fit my tooth! A little glue, some drool and I was on my way with a brand new crown and I didn't have to wait with a temporary for a week.

Here are four words I never thought would issue from my brain: I love my dentist! If he ever does retire, I'll have to haul my comfy chair to his house and wait on his lawn til he comes out to check my teeth. I'll take along some dental toys to entice him. It could work...