Bah Humbuggery

Christmas.

I don't mind it. I don't do it up like crazy or get all freaked out. I just go into the sticky yule labyrinth like everybody else, trying to get things done.

Every year in mid-November I visit this sweet little fantasy in my head: Candy will get caught up on all non-Christmas things early. The goal being, come the second week of December, to have a nice clean house, final grades for the semester turned in, Christmas shopping done. That way, I can put on one of my many Christmas CDs, Johnnny Mathis, Carpenters, Dan Fogelberg, and my all-time favorite, A Charlie Brown Christmas, and sit on the living room floor to wrap all my gifts. Peacefully. Unhurriedly.

It is not happening this year. In fact, it has never once happened.

My house is still a mess, I still have presents to buy, and when I wrapped the ones I have, I generously included some cat hair under the scotch tape. I have a blow-zillion things to do before I do the holiday traveling, most of which will not get done.

But I don't care. I'm smack-dab in the middle of one of the best times of my life. My parents are still living, 88 and 84, (those are their ages, not their names) and I'm not dying of anything that I know of, and I get to spend my first Christmas with the best fiance in the free world. Last year he came here on the 26th. It's just not the same as Christmas Day.

Someone help Candy. She is mellowing. Temporarily.

Once the holidays are over, I'll despise everything again. More. So there.

I mean it.

Quit looking at me.

Merry Christmas.