New Year, the holiday for neurotics

New Year is one of my most favorite times of year. I love that everything gets a clean slate, that all of your bad habits are a thing of the past and somehow, this year, things will change. I love the Rose Bowl Parade, cleaning out my closets, and having a day off work that you don't feel compelled to spend with your family. But most of all I love the list making. Nothing in this world makes me happier than making lists, and posting them and then crossing things off of them. I make lists for everything; long-term projects, short-term projects, things to do before I die, grocery lists for every store in town (should I ever need to stop at the west-side grocery store I have a list that reminds me what products are sold there that are not sold at my store). The list goes on and on. I even just love to say the word list. I make them when I am anxious to relax me or when I am excited (what to do with Chad's bonus check!).

I recognize that the lists may be the most obvious manifestation of my particular brand of crazy, but I can't give them up. My lists are my measure of my accomplishments, how far I have come in a year. It is the best way for me to pause for introspection when usually the only direction it seems like I go is forward, full speed ahead. I will spend the next week combing through all the lists I have hidden in my datebooks, notebooks, white boards and cork boards to make the list of where I am going this year. If I hit a snag there is always the do-over of Chinese New Year. How can you not love a holiday that requires you to sweep out your whole house? Because if there is anything I love more than a list, it is a list that states the order in which I will clean my house.

Sean is Old like me

Happy Belated Birthday Sean! The most wonderful gift on the planet is already in the mail.

Peacemaker

I wouldn't consider myself the most devout Catholic. There are a lot of things about my faith that really speak to me, and a lot of things about my church that really don't, the whole we don't like gays thing, relegating women to supporting roles, banning birth control, etc, etc. However, I am a person who can take the good with the bad so every year my husband, child and I trudge ourselves to Christmas mass. Every year I go just to hear the words of Isaiah, "They name him Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero, Father-Forever, Prince of Peace. His dominion is vast and forever peaceful."

If I am honest with myself I would have to say that I don't really believe in God. However, I do believe that the story of Jesus is probably one of the greatest stories ever told, and like all good stories, it does not need to be true to be powerful. To imagine that a whole society of people were swayed to believe through the power of mere words that a child had been born to bring peace to the world is pretty amazing. Those words are still powerful enough today that people still await a God-Hero. What is a Wonder-Counselor? Something that has to have a happy ending I think.

Shoppers behaving badly

So Chad and I made the mistake of trying to make a return at the mall on Saturday where we were trapped in the mall parking lot for an hour and half. Yes, you read right. It was like quicksand, you pulled in and suddenly realized that you couldn't get out. We passed the time and kept the hysteria at bay by photographing mall parkers behaving badly.

The first shot is every single car surrounding this spot parking over the yellow line, the second is a person who apparently just abandoned their vehicle in the middle of an aisle when they couldn't find a parking spot. Also witnessed but not photographed, someone parking horizontally across the first four spaces in an aisle and a woman in a full length fur coat and boots going into the kohl's. With a Bluetooth earpiece in. I have seriously never seen anyone look so ridiculous, until she used her cart to literally ram another woman out of the way of the doors.

At about forty minutes the time in the car became less about shitty mall parking (where are the urban planners when you need them) than about observing a grandiose a social experiment. Between the woman honking and giving Chad the finger because somehow he was the one person in the stopped dead traffic who should have been moving and seeing all the minivan Dvd players light up one by one you learn a little bit about who you are as a person. Chad and I listened to Christmas music, talked about whether or not we could afford a new car and were generally grateful to just be forced to do nothing. Okay, maybe a little irritated that it was in a mall parking lot, but mostly grateful. It may be a comment on our over-scheduled lives that any down-time is appreciated, but I choose to believe that Chad and I are made for each other and can be happy stuck together in a rental car in the middle of a mall parking lot.

Olivia, on the other hand, took one look at the angry mob out the window and decided a nap would be a good idea.

Here Comes The Sun

I know that it is basically a winter shit storm here right now, but something very important happened this week that somehow makes all the difference. Winter solstice. I know it is probably because I live in hippy-dippy Madison that I give the solstice any credence, but just knowing that what little sun there is will last longer every day now is the mental boost you need when even the radio dj's are yelling at their own meteorologists to shut up. I seriously heard that yesterday, it was awesome.

Besides, now that I have already had my mid-December crying meltdown about the snow I feel that I can embrace it.

Out with the old

One of my favorite things to do around the holiday season is to purge. Usually my mom takes Olivia for a couple of days after Christmas and I clear out anything and everything that can go to Salvation Army and find places to put the mountains of crap that child receives every year. however, this year my mom's administration at work is being bastard coated bastards and not letting any of the nursing staff take time off for the months of December and January. So I am taking advantage of Chad being snowed in with 10 inches of snow to try and clear out.

The only problem is that now my husband and child are witness to this process and are clinging to every holey t-shirt, broken toy and never-used item that is in this house. So i finally just busted out that there will be nothing new purchased or brought into the house until this stuff is gone. Maybe I should have been doing this before Christmas all along.

Yeah, that nice Christmas dinner and tree trimming? Olivia sat up in the middle of dinner and VOMITED ALL OVER THE TABLE-twice. Then walked into the living room and, wait for it, VOMITED RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE TREE.

So, yeah, merry freaking Christmas. I will be spending tomorrow in the doctor's office because Olivia vomiting means only strep throat. Then I will be snowed in with our incoming ten inches and a puker. If you are reading this and you are related to me, I have some terrible news. There are no gifts coming, and no Christmas cards either. No cookies, no candies.

But I got those damn ornaments on.

Learning Curve

So today, after days of running around like a chicken with its head cut off, I called in sick to Christmas. i gave my car to Chad so i couldn't be tempted to run just one more errand and stayed home with my kid. My poor kid who hasn't had a whole day to just play in over a month just about lost her head. She would literally stop mid-game and say, "Wait I just remembered one more thing that we could do!" So tonight we will have soup and then take advantage of the one day this week that it is not going to snow 7 inches and go see some Christmas lights. Maybe we will even get around to trimming the tree that has been standing in our living room for five days.

I forgot that Christmas was fun.

Show Stopper

Understandably, the one thing that has been hitting my aunt really hard about the chemo is losing her hair. The only thing hitting her harder is the wig she has to wear until it grows back. Since my offers to shave my head were promptly rejected, the only thing I had to offer was Olivia doing a bizarre little dance while wearing the wig. This may be funny to absolutely no one else, but even the thought of her wearing this wig makes me crack up.

Why I Am A Lazy Bastard

So the activity today was go to a Christmas concert. We are really fortunate in Madison to have a ton of free or cheap concerts going at pretty much all times. So when I started reading the list of today's concerts I knew before I even finished what we would be seeing. Olivia's all time greatest obsession, The Trinity Irish Dancers. I have seen these kids perform I don't know how many times and every time I do the inevitable conversation comes up that makes me a lazy bastard. Olivia has been begging to join the troop for about a year now, but I don't have the heart to tell her that it is a cult. A wig-wearing, high kicking cult. A cult that would require me to spends hundreds of dollars, give up my Tuesday evenings and most of my Saturdays to watching her wear a tacky costume and jumping up and down and I just can't do it. This is my parenting line in the sand, no Irish dancing.

Chad is giving it six months before I cave.

Adventagious

So instead of candy in the advent calendar we choose the high road of daily Advent activities. Olivia has added it to her growing list of why we are The Worst Parents Ever (insert eye roll here). In some ways it is a great way to squeeze in all those Christmas things that you wouldn't do unless your kid was waving a small piece of paper in your face as her proof that you MUST do it or suffer the loud tantrum consequences. On the other hand, you have to do crap. And trust me, coming up with 25 days of stuff starts to get creative somewhere around day 16. I believe next week I will be having a picnic under the Christmas tree.

For the first time ever, shockingly, Olivia has started to refuse to participate in certain activities. I thought that Olivia would be much older when I found myself saying through clenched teeth, "It is Christmas and we will sit here and sing carols or so help me God no one will get presents."

Suck It Martha!

A masterpiece to rival Michaelangelo and only a minimal amount of candy was consumed. However, a ridiculous amount of frosting ended up in her hair.

What You Learn After 12 Days Hanging With Someone Undergoing Chemo and Putting Your Grandfather In A Nursing Home

Yeah, good times. So, I have been busy. I have learned that all the years of my stinginess with television and sweets all came to fruition when I needed to get a four year-old to sit, still, quietly. Endless Hershey kisses and Nickelodeon can apparently achieve just that. I learned that it is, indeed, not possible to stage an intervention for a woman and her Lifetime movies (but you can give positive reinforcement for her love of Rachel Maddow). I learned you can be the classiest people in the room in a wig and a three year-old Old Navy skirt. That life as I know it would cease to exist without caffeine free Diet Coke and Trazadone. That no matter how much you love someone they can't live forever. That all you can do in life is try to make the right choices and the rest really isn't up to you. That Chanel nail polish is the best stocking stuffer of the season, even Oprah says so. And those assholes in Florida have a better Target than me. Seriously, I have 100 inches of snow, the least I deserve is the best Target. Bitches.