As I sat down at my computer, I could hear Simon and Garfunkel singing that famous song in my head: “Hello darkness, my old friend …”
How had it comes to this? How had it all gone so wrong? How did I think I would find good, meaningful Christmas presents on Amazon’s “Last minute deals?”
Very often the biggest downside of the holidays is trying to seamlessly fit together countless visits with family and friends so everyone goes away happy. It takes a master planner, a lot of patience, a quantum computer with next-generation calendar software and praying to multiple deities. Even then, your sanity will need to be sacrificed for it to work. Over the years I’ve become something of a pro at it, and I thought I would share my 10-step process for making your holiday season juggling merry:
1. Know that no matter how dire and impossible it might seem, in the end it will all work out and everyone will be happy. Keeping a positive attitude at all times is incredibly important. So is having a well-stocked bar.
2. When family and friends call to tell you their plans, it is wise to actually pay attention. Maybe even take notes. Because just like school, there will be a quiz later. And unlike school, your wife or significant other will not give you partial credit for answers like, “Uh … I think they’ll be here probably sometime this month … or possibly next … but definitely not February.”
It was NOT one of those moments when your life flashes before your eyes. Those cinematic moments when all images and memories dramatically play out in your mind in a fraction of a second. No, there wasn’t time for that. Rather, this was one of those near-death experiences when all you recognize is the sound of your own cursing, the feeling of weightlessness as you desperately try to regain your balance and the knowledge that you will definitely make national news if you expire while carrying a box of Christmas decorations down the stairs. When did decorating for Christmas become so dangerous?!? “I told you to be careful because there was stuff at the bottom of the stairs,” my wife told me, after remarking at how masterfully I saved myself (even if I did wet my pants.) “Yeah, but I thought that meant don’t crush the baby Jesus in the manger or step on some glass ornaments. Next time try, ‘There are lots of boxes and you probably will die if you trip on them.’”
Thanksgiving. Little known fact: Some historians have argued the holiday was started when the Pilgrims got together to give thanks for their turkey defrosting in time. Their microwave was on the fritz, and there was great concern they wouldn’t be able to pry loose the little bag of frozen giblets. (Boy, do I know that feeling!) But too often we forget it’s not just the big things (health, frozen giblets, employment, Powerball, that our children haven’t been incarcerated for Bitcoin scams) that we need to give thanks for. No, sometimes it’s the seemingly inconsequential things that we often take for granted, and forget deserves our thanks, too. So, this week I’m taking a little time to give thanks for a few things that don’t always register on the big chart, but that I should show gratitude for all the same: • I’m thankful for my dog. And I have to remind myself of that sometimes. Because she sheds more hair than, frankly, she has on her body. Which could only mean that she is collecting other dogs’ hair, bringing it home and scattering it around the house in some kind of weird K-9 ritual. But my daughter has been playing videos of dog owners catching their animals doing pretty naughty things and videotaping it. (Real examples: “Lenny, did you eat the entire sofa down to the springs?” or “Petunia, did you poop in the refrigerator AGAIN?”) Yowza! My dog sniffs too much on walks and it makes me cranky. Whoop-de-doo! […]
Sometimes deadlines are not the friends of writers. They fall at inopportune times. Before events actually happen, leaving the writer to hypothesize, to conjecturize, to see the future and try to tell what happens before it actually does. And that’s what I’m doing this week. Because I desperately want to write about my family’s Fourth of July cookout. But it happened after my column was due. Only … I just can’t wait! I know how it will go. I know how it will turn out. And I think it went something like … The Fourth of July cookout at my mother’s house. Actually, it’s not a cookout. My wife for years has been saying we should make it a REAL cookout. Make it easy and just grill. My mother does have a grill. Only, it’s NOT for grilling. She uses it for wheeling the cats in their baskets to the car when she has to take them to the vet. Every word of that is the God’s honest truth. She wheels her cats to the car in a grill! You can spend all the time you want trying to make sense of that, but good luck. It will never add up. Every Fourth of July we go over to my mother’s. It’s just blocks from the fireworks. We take a bunch of food that we cook on our own. It’s the kind of food that will clog your arteries and make you the weight of a granite boulder. The kind […]
It’s been almost a week, so it’s time to dig through those bags of Christmas presents stacked up in the bedroom and try to make some sense of the head-scratchers. You know, the unusual and perplexing ones you received. Call it “The Christmas Gift Search for Meaning.” That’s when you try to find the answer to why someone thought you needed such a thing. Try it. It’s rather enlightening. Two portable car battery chargers – These both came from my aunt. She’s the queen of strange and mystifying Christmas gifts. Usually there’s a theme, and this year it was: “A hurricane is gonna’ kick you in your privates, so be prepared!!!” As such — and because here in St. Augustine, Fla., we’ve been through two hurricanes in a single calendar year — we got solar-powered radios, military-grade tactical flashlights AND multiple car battery chargers … just in case while fleeing a hurricane my car breaks down MULTIPLE TIMES. My aunt doesn’t understand that in this disposable age, when car batteries go dead, people just walk away and call an Uber. Even in hurricanes.
It doesn’t help that it’s 76 degrees outside, and that when you file into the car, there are mosquitoes buzzing your ears. But gather up your family, no matter what the temperature, and load them in for a spin around town looking for Christmas lights, and you’ll feel the holiday spirit, even in Florida … where it feels more like a rotisserie chicken than December. The temperature doesn’t matter as you roll around looking for the most garish, the most over-the-top, the most outlandish, retina-blinding, chaotic spectacles of light that anyone can plant in their yard. There are houses drowned in blow-up lawn decorations with absolutely no thought put into how they’re grouped together. Hula Santa in board shorts hanging with frigid North Pole Santa and penguins? Who cares! It’s Christmas! Houses displaying taste and grace and a holiday sensibility with simple, twinkling white lights and dignified Christmas wreathes. And houses that look like their owners bought up the entire holiday sale aisle and then dumped them out of a helicopter.
It may have been a world record for Christmas decorating. In fact, I think it took longer to get the boxes out of the attic than it did to get ornaments on the tree and the holiday nick-knacks dispersed about the house. I’ve nearly foregone Christmas just so I wouldn’t have to drag those dang boxes down the rickety attic steps. Nothing is worse than hitting your head multiple times, stumbling over luggage and nearly toppling out of the opening, only to be told: “No! That’s a box of Thanksgiving stuff! We need Christmas!” But once it was all down, decorating became a slapdash race this year. Even more so than previous years. At times, it looked more like net-casting or leaf-blowing than decorating. Maybe it was the weather. It felt like 120 degrees outside as I strained in the sun to put Christmas light icicles around the front porch and not get impaled on the bougainvillea. My wife reported to her aunt in Long Island that it was a very Florida Christmas: “We’re all in shorts, the doors are open and we’ve got the AC running.” Maybe that had something to do with the not-so-festive mood. The just-get-it-done approach. Like we were at the beach, not the North Pole.
It was a time to give thanks — to be mindful, take stock in all that we have and show gratitude. That is the meaning of Thanksgiving. But along with it, the holiday brings a lot of other lessons for us to learn and ponder. Lessons not quite as significant, but just as important. Like how dogs would sooner be thrown into a pool of hot lava than go out in the rain. And if you’re in a hurry – because it’s Thanksgiving morning and there’s a turkey in the oven – they’ll fight you even more. My brother and his family traveled north this year to visit my sister-in-law’s family. We took care of his dog, who I affectionately refer to as “Meat Chunk.” It’s because she resembles a side of beef. She runs around the house with my dog crashing into things, dislodging structural support walls and crushing toes. Because my dog and his are like dueling tornadoes, Meat Chunk was going back to her house Thanksgiving morning. The rainy morning. The morning when everything was flooded. The morning I had a 15-second window that didn’t include time for scrambling around the car trying to get her out and yelling, “Damn you, Meat Chunk, it’s just a little rain!” That got a few stares on the street.
Memo to Dad Subject: Upcoming performance of ‘The Winter Spectacular’ Because you are known NOT to pay attention, I am writing you this memo to go over important instructions for my performance of “The Winter Spectacular.” As you may recall, but probably don’t because you had that blank look on your face at dinner, “The Winter Spectacular” is when I dance and spin colored streamers to the delightful sounds of Christmas music. It is for select family members and takes place in the dining room. You remember now? All coming back to you? Your role in the performance is very simple … which is why I’m worried. Whenever something is “simple” you either: 1) over-complicate it, or 2) don’t pay any attention. LIKE RIGHT NOW! Are you paying attention!?! Come on, stay with me. OK, so here are some key things you must remember: • The performance will last approximately 4 hours. There will be seven 20-minute intermissions, and an encore that should take a little over an hour depending on how long the applause goes on for. • You are strictly forbidden from taking bathroom breaks, coffee breaks, breaks to complain about how long the show is or any mention of soccer matches on TV that you’re missing. We all know you’re DVR-ing them!