Holidays – Page 2 – Nutshellcity.com

2020 Nutshells, Coronavirus, Family, Holidays

The last-minute gift-giver’s guide to Christmas

December 14, 2020 No Comments

It happens every year. You wait too long to get Christmas gifts for family and friends, and you realize you’re in mortal danger of having to handout rolls of quarters. And thanks to COVID-19, this year it’s even worse. Gift delivery is backed up, shortages abound everywhere and the thought of going to stores sounds both risky, but also like something a Neanderthal might do. I mean, what is this? 2019?!? So, I thought I would share a few simple, last-minute gift ideas, including some that DIY-ers in desperate straits could whip up in a hurry.

• Take an example from the kids and actually make something for loved ones and friends. Try finger-painting portraiture or making a sculpture of Alexander Hamilton out of glued-together macaroni. It works for them, why can’t it work for adults, too?

• Better yet, put the kids to work making gifts for you. They love that kind of stuff. And if you don’t have kids, try the neighbor’s children down the street. They look artsy and in need of something to do.

• Extension cords. I can guarantee that if you give anyone an assortment of indoor and outdoor extension cords in all manner of lengths and duty ratings, plus timers and splitters, they will love you forever.

2020 Nutshells, Family, Florida, Holidays, Parenthood and Children

The magic of Christmas decorating with dead lights and lizards

December 7, 2020 No Comments

Ah, the decorating for Christmas. Nothing speaks more to who you are as a person, not to mention your familial skills, than how you handle the annual tradition of turning your home into a holiday extravaganza. Most see it as a festive, joyous occasion that lets family come together and bond. Hooray!

OR … a complete disaster when everything goes wrong and two lizards get loose in the house. Because … yeah … 2020. Booo! But I imagine these are common events as people dress up their domiciles for the holidays. How many of these traditions did you cross off your to-do list this year?

• Only in Florida do you get lizards perched atop a Christmas tree like the traditional star, or maybe even a Baby Jesus. In other parts of the country you might worry about snow or leaves or even squirrels getting lodged into your tree. But Floridians have to think about shaking out reptiles. I didn’t, so we ended up with two of the little buggers running around and needing to be corralled. “Oh, just leave him,” my daughter pleaded. “Look how majestic he looks up there surveying the land.”

• Then there are the Christmas tree lights that don’t light. That’s OK. Nothing lasts forever, and thank goodness they supplied extra bulbs and fuses. But I ask you this: In all your years of Christmas decorating, have you ever got a string of lights to spring back to life thanks to extra bulbs and fuses? I never have. I immediately turn to the fuses, always thinking, “Hey. I’m Mr. Fixit. I’ll save the day because I know stuff and my family will celebrate me as a hero!” What I don’t know is that replacing fuses that are about the size of dust mites requires the same kind of microsurgery equipment found only in the top hospitals.

2020 Nutshells, Animals, Holidays

The ailing kitty and the happy new year

January 1, 2020 No Comments

Because, why not? I mean, what better way to start the New Year than dealing with a cat who not only has a urinary tract infection, but also hyperthyroidism. And for at least the near future will need two different pills administered with her food. A cat who is already so picky about eating. To say that she looks disdainfully at food she doesn’t like would be an insult to the word “disdain.” An old cat, set in her ways. Stubbornness is hard-wired into her DNA.

The cat – Tea Grass – is up there in years already, and she had started losing weight. Pretty dramatically. Suddenly skin and bones. We thought she was just picky. Because she is picky. The kind of picky that says, “Hey, I’ll sooner starve to death than eat this slop you’re serving.”

And she’s not even our cat.

Only, I need to get past that. She IS our cat. Our adopted cat who is probably 15 or 16 years old, and with her fella’, Sunburst, was in need of a home when her owner passed away. We just happened to have a front porch perfect for them. And when I said, “sure, they can take up residence there,” I pictured going out each morning and pouring some food in a bowl and calling it a day. “Porch cats are fed,” I would proclaim to the world. “Normal living may resume with no impediments to enjoyment, regular routines or mental sanity. Hooray!”

Ah, that would be the life.

2019 Nutshells, Family, Holidays

Arrival of the holiday puzzle dork

December 24, 2019 No Comments

Is this who I am now? A holiday puzzle master? Or puzzle dork? And an injured, hobbled, doubled-over one at that.

The things we find ourselves doing over the holidays …

I’m not normally a puzzle kind of guy. But it had been raining. My daughter was getting over being sick. We were all cooped up in the house a couple days before Christmas, watching so much television that I could literally feel my brain cells snapping like popcorn.

“We need to play a game,” I finally said.

But there are only so many times that you can be beaten by a 13-year-old kid before you either resort to bourbon or throw in the towel.

So my wife offered a suggestion in her chipper way: “How about a puzzle?!?”

And that was when it all started to spiral out of control. When I was swallowed deep, down into the belly of the beast. Consumed by a monster. Overtaken and addicted to the thrill of fitting all those oddly-shaped bits of cardboard together.

2019 Nutshells, Family, Getting old ... er ... older, Health, Holidays, Parenthood and Children

Little Christmas traditions, even through BLANGITY sickness

December 18, 2019 No Comments

She really should have been in bed. After spending the day throwing up in dramatic fashion – you know, like all over the car after getting picked up early from school – she should have been tucked under the covers. Resting. Trying to sleep.

“I threw up nine times today, dad,” she told me at one point. Whether it was a cry for sympathy or a badge of honor, I wasn’t quite sure.

But I did know she needed to be in bed, and I had told her this about 94 times that evening. In about 94 different ways, all escalating in seriousness and frustration and meanness. “GO … TO … BED, BLINGITY-BLANGIN’-BLANGIT!”

And on the 94th try, I thought I had done it. She trudged off to her room.

2019 Nutshells, Holidays

The over-the-top Christmas gift-giving guide

December 11, 2019 No Comments

If you’re like me, you’re terrified by the calendar. Aware that we are already deep into December, but have few, if any, holiday gifts for people under the tree. Forget the tree! You don’t even have IDEAS, and time is running short. Worse still, all the Christmas gift-giving lists you read have nothing but practical, realistic and affordable gifts that lack the wow factor that you’re really gunning for. I hear you.

Christmas should be about what’s most important: Impressing family and friends with trendy presents that scream, “I’m hip and you’re not!” You know, the Christmas spirit. So, I’m here to offer you my 2019 “I’m-Hipper-Than-You” Christmas Gift Guide with the best things to buy:

• Anything with the word “Smart” in front of it. You can’t go wrong here. Just get on Amazon, type it in the search window and buy everything that comes up. Smart watches. Smart home devices. Smart fitness gear. Smart kitchen gadgets.

2019 Nutshells, Childhood, Family, Holidays, Parenthood and Children

Christmas gifting meets the teen years

December 4, 2019 No Comments

What do you buy a nearly 14-year-old daughter for Christmas? Does anyone know the answer to this question? That is the dilemma my wife and I are facing this December. Because it doesn’t appear there’s an easy answer.

The landscape has changed dramatically in just a year or two, and it seems all of the old standbys and easy go-tos have withered away. I’m not sure what they’ve been replaced by.

“What do you think we should get her?” my wife asked at lunch the other day.

“Get her?!?” I replied. “Shoot, I’m not even sure who ‘her’ is anymore!”

Any ideas?!? I don’t have any. Zero! I asked a colleague with older daughters what he does and he told me, “gift cards and cash, dude. Just go with gift cards and cash. Anything else and you’re ASKING for trouble.”

2019 Nutshells, Family, Holidays

Don’t get blown-up by legal fireworks … the world will laugh

July 3, 2019 No Comments

Here’s a life lesson – one of those, “Listen up, children, and you’ll grow up to be old and gray:” Never set off fireworks under a grapevine arbor. Not the kind of high-powered, military-grade types that will bring down drones in mid-flight. BUT ALSO not the low-powered kind you get at convenience stores and have cute, little drawings of smiling kitties and daisies.

I hope you all followed the rule this year. Last year we didn’t, and learned it leads to another lesson: Don’t get blown-up by legal fireworks … the world will laugh.

As I write this, I have no idea what is in store for me this year’s Fourth of July. My deadline was early in the week. So all I know as I write this is my mother bought a bunch of fireworks for the big shindig she hosts on Independence Day. Lined up in her garage were quite a selection of goodies: A duck that laid eggs (no idea who thinks these up, or how that one will go.) A truck that drives and launches mortars from its payload. A couple of rockets on red sticks that look capable of bringing down a drone in mid-flight.

“I bought them for the kids,” she said. “They’re all legal and safe and perfectly age-appropriate.”

2019 Nutshells, Holidays

A frozen-up fridge and new year prospects

January 2, 2019 No Comments

I still don’t know what to make of it: Fitting end to a hectic year, or an omen of what’s to come for 2019? Geez, universe, couldn’t you be a little more clear?

Or less cruel?!?

It happened on New Year’s Eve, as I finished cooking for my wife and daughter. Nothing too elaborate – a pork loin braised in milk, Italian-style. All was going according to plan – the timing, the smells, the taste. Right how I wanted it. In my mind, the perfect night.

2018 Nutshells, Holidays

A few ruminations on Christmas

December 26, 2018 No Comments

Another Christmas has passed, and what a wonderful and festive holiday it was, filled with merriment and cheer, and enough family to drive a 20-million-year-old boulder crazy.

So, it’s time to pause and take a moment to remember this Christmas with a little rumination about what it all meant:
• Glitter should be banned by the Geneva Convention. Some will criticize me and say there are bigger problems in the world, but I would argue they haven’t seen my sofa after a couple rounds of opening Christmas presents in the living room. Every time I get up, my hindquarters sparkle so much they can be viewed from low-level orbit. My wife read an article that said our fascination with glitter harks back to our love of the open water and its glimmering surface. Hey, if I need a glimpse of that, I’ll go to the kitchen tap and pour myself a glass.