Santa, Baby...

My stepfather used to tell a story about his ex-wife, who didn't care for grapes.

This made two of them.

His ex-wife one day, he said, came home with a big bag of grapes from the grocery store. He was perplexed. "Why did you buy these?" he asked. "You don't like grapes. I don't like grapes. We don't like grapes. So why did you buy so many grapes?"

"They were on sale!" he says she said. "25 cents a pound. What a bargain!"

Sales are like that. They represent huge savings over what you would have paid if you needed the thing you bought, which you didn't, so you get this tremendous sense of value for the money you've just wasted.

I became pinko commie scum so gradually, I never even noticed it happening.

But what is it with this? I really want (do not need) a few things: a new TV, because mine goes all wibbly-wobbly when I put on the new "Jeeves and Wooster" DVDs that my daughter gave me for Christmas. So this 13-year-old piece of crap (the TV, not my daughter) is giving out already, which is aggravating, because I don't think those newfangled wide-angle flat ones will fit inside the TV alcove of my entertainment center, which means I also need new furniture.

Not to mention that HDTV makes everything look like a 1987 episode of "All My Children."

The battery adaptor on this laptop only works if it's plugged in at a very specific angle; otherwise, it's running on battery power alone, which lasts approximately one minute and forty-seven seconds. So I may be needing a new adaptor, or something.

It's better than my desktop computer, a 2001 PowerMac G4. Don't get me wrong, the computer is going strong. It just can't handle video, GIFs, flash, Java, or any kind of animation, which wouldn't be a problem, except that these things seem to be prerequisites for using the internet lately. Fine. Characters typed on your keyboard will show up soon enough on your screen. Be patient. Go play a couple of games of solitaire while you're waiting. You like spinning rainbows, don't you? Well, there you go.

My iPhone 4 is getting a little slow and will no longer sync with the abovementioned laptop because there isn't enough free space unless I delete my entire music library and reinstall it every time. It won't sync with the desktop at all, because plugging anything new into a USB port causes the mouse and keyboard to stop responding.

My wi-fi off my DSL modem is too slow to stream video content and I have to turn off wi-fi on my phone in order to get Pandora to play or my Facebook app to work, which it sometimes does, but not always, because reliable cell service in Travis Heights can't be had for love or money, no matter who your provider is.

And the motor on my coffee grinder won't activate unless you line up the base just exactly so and whisper prayers of devotion to whoever the god of coffee is, probably Vulcan or Mercury or somebody like that.

And I'd like a new mattress. Mine was bought when I was pregnant with Anna and has pretty noticeable butt impressions.

So there you go: a wish list of things that I probably really will purchase at some point in the not-too-distant future, but just those things. Then we're done... right?

Mind you, I am pretty fond of grapes.

Shame for the Holidays

There's a lot to be said for starting the festivities on Christmas Eve, keeping your decorations up through Twelfthnight, and wrapping up the whole shebang (so to speak) on January 6th.

You get to take advantage of after-Christmas sales to do some of your Christmas shopping, for one. And you get to act all snotty to anyone who asks why you haven't taken your lights down yet. "Oh," you can say, with just the faintest superior curl to your upper lip. "Well, naturally, I wouldn't dream of taking down my Christmas things until Epiphany. Are there people who actually take them down before Christmas is over?!"

The more your neighbor professes Christianity while you yourself do not, the more supercilious you get to be about celebrating Christmas properly. Pedantry over piety, that's what I always say.

Happy Solstice! Now we enter the longest night of the year, unless that was last night. I can't be bothered to look it up. I just know that today was the shortest day. It will be a long night in any case. Tonight is a night for fighting off cats who think my hair might have milk in it and contemplating my innumerable failings with regards to my family.

Do you have a family of some kind? If the answer is yes, chances are you're harboring a vague and indefinable sense of guilt, unless you're lucky enough to suffer specific pangs about your particular wrongdoings, in which case you might try Catholicism.

Religion has an important purpose. That is, one assumes it must, because otherwise it wouldn't be so widespread, would it? Aside even from the fairly selfish need to believe that those we love, and we, won't cease to exist forever when we die (and I'm sorry, but being reabsorbed into the everythingness of the universe and dissipated throughout existence in the form of cultural consciousness, cosmic dust, and plant life isn't really what I had in mind), it's important to feel that your role on the great stage is not merely a walk-on with no lines, just as easily filled by anyone else who can get into the costume with two hours' alterations. You, and the things you think, say, and do, must make a difference. Otherwise why bother?

The flip side is that it leaves the non-religious out in the cold every now and then. Existentialism plagues us all. Not being religious, I don't have many easy answers to toss back against the cold unimportance of my efforts towards a meaningful existence. Everything has to be framed within a context, which is of necessity pretty limited.

That's why, if you aren't plagued by existential questions, and you take down your Christmas lights on December 26th with a peaceful sense of another Christmas well-celebrated, well! Shame on you.

Keeping the ASS in ChristmASS

Well - half of it, anyway.

It's worth repeating: Cats are not good helpers when it comes to wrapping Christmas presents.

Okay, so it isn't really worth repeating. It wasn't even worth mentioning in the first place, since pretty much anyone who gives half a rat's ass about cats is already fully aware of this fact. But what the hell. For those of you who don't know it, even the most weary, elderly, sedentary cat gets a little sparkle in his eye when the wrapping paper comes out. The crisp rustle of it, the intoxicating aroma of fresh-printed ink sliding out from a cellophane sheath; the glossy snap of Scotch tape being pulled from the reel; the wriggling twirl of the foiled ribbons; the hissing snip of scissors slicing through shiny paper - well, you can hardly expect a cat to contain itself.

Cats neither own horses nor wear pants, which makes it especially tricky for them to hold the one or keep the other on.

But despite the helpful efforts of two furry, diminutive, pointy-ended housemates, I did manage to wrap what I've accumulated so far of Christmas presents.

Katie moved out just a few months ago. She's 21 now, setting off on her first flight of adulthood (sort of). Eric is 23, living with a girl I adore somewhat apprehensively. It's scary, getting attached to your offspring's potential better halves. You don't know where it's going to end up - I mean, sure, she's awesome, and they're happy, and the two of them are so good together.

I've been in that relationship. Many times. Many.

Or not; actually, those two seem stable and calm in a way that I never quite managed, and have been so for a couple of years now. There's a certain unobtrusive purring of the kind of relationship-supporting machinery that keeps running as long as you aren't one to get all excitable and start flinging wrenches in the form of hopeful future partners, unsupportable financial cravings, or just one more kitten.

Anyway, in the wake of Katie's moving-out, I did some empty-nesting, which is to say I went through the toy chest and the depths of the storage areas and the piles of everything in the closets that's never been cleaned out, ever. There were hundreds of stuffed toys, a few of them important and worth hanging onto, most others not. There were children's books that got read once or twice and stuffed into the back of an overcrowded shelf. There were blocks, puzzles, Barbies, beads, teasets and action figures. There were kids' meal toys from pretty much every fast-food place you can think of, and possibly some you'd rather you hadn't.

So all these extraneous things went out - in bags of trash or recyclables, in boxes of items donated to Goodwill. Katie's whole high-school subscription to Vogue got trashed. Now if I could just eradicate the smell of the perfume samples.

All in all there were so many boxes and bags, it's kind of hard to go and buy a bunch of Christmas crap that I know will be fully appreciated for all of two weeks before being relegated to the back of the closets I've just spent so much effort digging out from under years of needless excess.

Keeping to a minimum of what we need and really want is more of a Quixotic struggle than I'd anticipated.

Bingo, overexcited by the myriad sensory excitements of Christmas wrapping, got carried away and tilted at a brown paper shopping bag tonight, and I'm sorry to say that he was very soundly defeated. He jumped into the bag, tipped it over, jumped out, jumped back in, spun around, and got his upper body stuck through one of the string handles. The ensuing ruckus was so noisy and violent that his younger, fatter cohort, Baby Kitty, promptly slunk off to hide behind the encyclopedias in the bookcase.

This is also where she hid from the Christmas tree when I put it up, because apparently in Soviet Russia, CHRISTMAS TREE TERRORIZES CAT.

We put the ass-backwards in Christmas.

Drink the Kool-Aid and Nobody Gets Hurt

Each workgroup is to decorate a door in its area in the holiday spirit. Only one will win, and the winner shall feast upon the bloody flesh of the losers.

Whoops! Sorry, got a little carried away there. They'll get a box of peanut brittle.

I'm not participating, because I'll be off for the day (having worked the weekend - thus escaping, I might add, a lot more lightly than many of my coworkers who had significantly less pleasant duties during the winter storm, such as actually talking to people), but some have suggested that the recent extreme and difficult weather ought to tie into our office holiday observances.

For instance, Santa's sleigh could be locked in ice-bound traffic. Reindeer would be eaten by stranded, desperate travelers. (I think Norway already has a national dish based on this concept, so it's not without precedent.)

Better yet, the Kool-Aid guy could break through the ice walls with his refined-sugar-processed-flavor-product powers and bring peace and harmony back to a teetering civilization (which, I'm sorry, should really not be so wobbly after just two and a half days without unrestricted access to Wal-Mart) - but at what price? What would he tell us today? Is the inorganic, processed-food apocalypse foretold by his wanton destruction of our flimsy man-made structures? Isn't his jolly demeanor in the face of utter ruin the very embodiment of what commercial marketing is all about?

On a similar note, I began my holiday shopping today (it's Christmas shopping, actually, but I like to call it holiday shopping in order to offend the type of people who insist on spelling Christmas CHRISTmas, then spend obscene amounts of money on stuff nobody really needs and take down all their decorations on December 26) with an earnest endeavour to "shop local," as they say.

Have you spent much time in local shops? It strikes me that these shops largely exist to cater to tourists - which is fine - but does make them less than ideal in terms of a place for a local to buy presents for other locals. I mean, I want to support local business as much as anyone, but my boyfriend wants an enamel-coated 12-piece cookware set, and the closest I can find to that locally is a novelty shot glass that reads "Keep Austin Weird."

So shop local, spruce up your office, drive safely, and look out for the Kool-Aid Man. That guy is bad news.

Helpful Holiday Tips

Don't give cutlery as a gift - holiday or otherwise, tradition says. To do so foreshadows (or actually brings on) a severance of the relationship.

But what if you're in a relationship you want to get out of? Is it appropriate to give someone you'd like to be an ex a set of steak knives for Christmas?

This is left as an exercise for the reader.

Gift-giving is a fascinating tradition in any case, fraught with symbolism both intentional and unintentional. What present is appropriate to give a family member, child, parent, sibling, spouse, lover, friend? When is it proper to give an item intended to complement (and therefore make suggestions towards the development of) the taste of someone you care about, and when is it overbearing?

In any case, edible underwear at an office party are generally a bad idea.

It's funny, now that I look back as an adult, how uncomplicated childhood Christmases all seemed to be. No one has any particular expectations from children other than not chewing with their mouths open and not awakening the whole extended family more than two hours before first light on Christmas morning. Gifts have meaning, but they don't have Meaning (until you hit adolescence, at which point God help everyone involved). Times were simpler. Also, it snowed.

Tomorrow after lunch, my boss and I are driving down to Corpus Christi for a site visit for our upcoming annual conference in April. I always love traveling, no matter where to, because it's very introspective, or philosophical, or something. I'm hoping to see a friend or two while I'm down there, but if not, it's no big deal; we'll be back soon. My boss was my secret Santa at our office Christmas party. She gave me a small travel bag stocked with miniature bottles of wine. What does this mean?!?

Maybe my helpful holiday tip for this year is that, if you're too overwhelmed to send out Christmas cards, everyone else will either not notice, or be so overwhelmed with their own holiday guilt that they assume there's a good reason they got cut from your list and will therefore accept unquestioningly your silence on this occasion. I for one would like to make it clear that an absence of Christmas cards on my part only signifies that I am disorganized and frazzled, and does not in any way reflect a lack on anyone else's part.

If I send you some knives, though, that's a whole different story.

All I Want for Christmas

Guess what? I'm getting a new water heater!

This means right off the bat that Santa is a lot nicer to me than I am to my Secret Santa victi - I mean, beneficiary at work.

Why yes! We do have a Secret Santa exchange. It's my first Christmas in the group, so it's my first year to participate. This is how it works: for three days running, you leave a little surprise present (but NOT a cat poop - I can't stress this enough) on your person's desk before they get in, or after they've left for the day. These presents should only cost a dollar or so apiece. And lo, upon the fourth day will ye a department luncheon hold, and then you reveal your identity and give them something worth about $10.

Well, I drew my cube neighbor's name. So on the first day I gave him a package of tinsel icicles worth 89 cents. Tinsel icicles are useful at keeping small children away from the Christmas tree because they conduct static electricity so well. Small children, who have a general tendency to shuffle, attract the icicles to stretch leisurely outwards from the tree branches and brush gently against the child, to whom they then deliver a painful electric shock. Trying to guess what's in your packages, are you? That'll teach ya!

This morning I left him a very small, somewhat disturbing Santa-star-shaped Christmas ornament. You'd probably have to see it.

Tomorrow he's supposed to get something good: one of those little candy-cane-shaped containers full of m&ms (no, the green ones have not all been taken out already - don't think I didn't hear that!) but I'll have to drive down there later at night again, as he gets in before I do in the morning, and this evening, for some odd reason, he wouldn't leave.

My Secret Santa is clearly my boss. I'm sorry, I like her and all, but no one else in our department is anal enough to wrap presents that neatly, so it's a dead giveaway. I've gotten one box of herbal tea and one of hot chocolate, neither of which I drink. But the kids like it.

Meanwhile, back on the home front, the landlord has examined our leaky hot-water heater and determined we need a new one. I'm overjoyed! We've really needed one for a long time, aside from the leaking. It rumbles ominously, is probably full of nutshells courtesy of the squirrels in the attic, and only delivers enough hot water for one shower. And if it's cold out, you better hurry.

The landlord also decided we need a new kitchen floor. Again. The house actually needs foundation repair, but that's probably more than I'm worth as a tenant. The existing kitchen floor is covered with vinyl tiles over an old, crumbling subfloor, which in turn was nailed down over some much older, uglier, 1970's era vinyl tiles. I'm glad the landlord wants to repair the problem, but am afraid that if things keep going on this way, you won't be able to get into the kitchen without a stepladder and a severe case of scoliosis.

It's no more than a lousy Secret Santa like me deserves. I'm just hoping that, in the Christmas spirit, my cube neighbor will find it in his heart to forgive me.

Good Neighbors

A couple of weeks ago I tried to be a responsible house person and started taking down the Christmas lights. This seemed like a good idea at the time. But some of them are pinned up quite high, and I have my doubts about our ladder, and I ended up leaving a couple of strings of them just dangling there.

Meanwhile, all the neighbors are still turning theirs on every night. That's Travis Heights for you. To hell with the season: Christmas lights are sparkly!

Maybe if the rain lets up a little this weekend, I'll put the lights back up.

I love this neighborhood; this is one of the reasons why. I've lived plenty of places where people just let stuff go, and have on occasion been one of those people - though, for the record, I would never park in the yard, never! But this is different. It's not even a matter of marching to a different drummer. It's more that, while the drummer is joyfully encouraged to explore his or her own musical experience, no one would expect the marchers to adjust their personal ideals of tempo to match.

We had a neighbor a few years ago - I shall call him "Hank" (for 'twas his name), who hated us because we were such lousy, irresponsible house people. Cats everywhere, for starters. Hank kept his yard tidy, his lawn manicured, and his trees and bushes pruned. He had no pets. Oddly, he seemed to like my kids, but I always knew we were not good enough for him. God knows I used to try. I studied the Reader's Digest New Complete Do-It-Yourself Manual, but to no avail. Someone gave us a second copy as a gift, and as a gesture of goodwill, I gave it to Hank, who pretended to be grateful. Once, a limb from one of our trees (the entire neighborhood was a hackberry forest) came down and felled the fence between our backyards. It sagged for a week before I hauled the fencepost up and lashed it to the tree trunk. Hank informed me that the angle at which I'd done this would pull down all the rest of the fenceposts; so I went out and bought some quick-set cement, dug out the fencepost, and set it in place. Hank grudgingly admitted that this worked, but it took me much too long to get around to. I tried edging the front yard, but couldn't find the sidewalk, so left big, uneven ripples in the edges of the lawn, overlapping the concrete. Hank watched, waves of 60-something-responsible-house-person disapproval radiating from him. Occasionally he'd trap one of my cats and I'd have to go bail it out from the pound. It got to where I just avoided going outside at all, but this only made things worse.

But I feel like I belong in Travis Heights: relaxed; offbeat; a little messy; full of congenial, well-fed dogs and cats; and above all else, happy.

Because in Travis Heights, it's always Christmas!

It's Okay to Eat Falafel

For the last hour and a half, Anna and I have been cuddled up on the couch watching The Polar Express - a bit scary for me, I mean for kids - on the ABC Family Channel, "Family" here being apparently defined as "conservative." I guess it makes sense: liberals believe in abortion, and therefore never actually have children.

The message is one that Anna's been exposed to a lot over the last couple of weeks. Skepticism is evil. Believe! The characters in all these movies travel from doubt and misery to faith and happiness, only it's not exactly faith, is it, if the reason you now believe is that the object of your skepticism comes flying up in a sled pulled by magic reindeer and gives you a pat on the head and a Tonka truck.

The ABC Family Channel specials are punctuated heavily with commercials, a fine example of preaching one message but then clearly demonstrating another. Granted that most of the commercials seem to be for things like a trial subscription to a 17,462-CD collection of the most inspirational worship music in the world. Cancel at any time!

But the one that got me was a commercial for buttons. "It's OK to say Merry Christmas to me!" is emblazoned across these cheerful red-and-green ornaments you can wear proudly throughout the holiday season. You can get it on a bumper sticker too, but you'll feel kind of stupid come mid-January.

Ya know, I wasn't raised, and am not, religious. Still my family comes from a Protestant Christian background and we do celebrate Christmas. People tend to celebrate something or other at midwinter, preferably involving sparkly things, alcohol, and mistletoe, but at its heart about reinforcing overall goodwill and a sense of community. And for good reason. Especially in northern climates, the middle of winter was probably the point where everybody about wanted to kill each other.

Christmas is part of the culture I belong to, but it's not a religious holiday to me. But for those for whom it is a religious holiday, doesn't it kind of undermine the meaning to try to stamp out other religions' and cultures' celebrations of the season, and get everyone, generically, to say "Merry Christmas," whether they mean it or not? I don't get this.

It's okay to say Merry Christmas to me, or Happy Hanukah, or Season's Greetings or Joyful Yule or Felicitous Kwanzaa or whatever. Honestly, as long as people are expressing good wishes to one another, it seems kind of silly to quibble about the details. The buttons carry a nasty unwritten implication that wishing Merry Christmas to those who don't believe the way the wearer does will probably get you punched in the face, because we all know how joyless and hypersensitive non-Christians are.

Why didn't they get Bill O'Reilly to be the commercial spokesman? Perhaps he was busy. Listening to inspirational worship music in the shower, probably.

Caroling

Not this year, perhaps. My throat feels like someone drove a freight train through it.*

Of course the Friday right before the Christmas holidays is the most suspicious possible day to call in sick. I'm certain the panicmonger supervisor thought I was faking, so it's a good thing nobody invited her to happy hour. One of my coworkers was there. "I just had one of those 8-hour bugs," I told him.

Alas! how sharp the teeth of Karma, in your ass...

Some local real estate agent made the rounds of the neighborhood last week, dropping off poinsettias on everyone's doorstep. What a sucker! We're renting. But as far as I'm concerned he might as well have given me a puppy. What do I do with this? I already have so many plants, and all crowded indoors, too; and with the Christmas tree, dropping needles all over the place, there's hardly space to move in the living room. Next year? Smaller tree.

Fortunately over the next few days I'll get the chance to spread out a bit: Jim and the girls are going to San Antonio for Christmas, and leaving Eric and me here - since Eric has to be in truancy court again on the 27th. I'd have a party, but almost all my friends are out of town (sigh). But at least I can get some cleaning done.

It's too early in the morning for wassail, isn't it?

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*Diane, get your mind out of the gutter

He Shall Feed His Flock

My favorite piece of Christmas music, played quite a bit too fast, but I still get goosebumps all over when the soprano comes in. I've always wanted to sing this with Jessie...

Fun with Christmas Lights

Did you know that when you have a steeply pitched metal roof, it's just like the top of your house is a giant slide? Whee!

We're wrapping the oak tree instead.

"Sleigh Ride" Makes the Baby Jesus Cry

When you have four cats, it's usually not a good idea to go home emptyhanded.

So on my way home, I stopped at what we affectionately term the Kwik-E-Mart in the parking lot adjoining work. I live pretty close by, so I could almost hear the hungry wailing of ravenous beasts. But it turned out to be just a Christmas jingle.

Never mind that Thanksgiving is tomorrow. Would it kill these people to wait just one more day? If I were wealthy and powerful, I'd lobby Congress to pass legislation forbidding the wanton display of any Christmas paraphernalia until after dusk, Thanksgiving Day.

No, that's a lie. If I were wealthy and powerful I'd move to a Greek island and hire a large number* of attractive male personal assistants. For, you know, errands.

Unfortunately, this particular piece of Christmas music was "Sleigh Ride," by Leroy Anderson, and for as long as I can remember this has been perhaps my least favorite piece of music in the known universe. I do have a pretty solid basis for comparison. I happen to own - and proud of it, too! - a Liberace Christmas CD I once received as a white elephant gift at an office holiday party. It's an awe-inspiring thing. It sounds kind of like the head Blue Meanie from Yellow Submarine dressed up in a sequined Santa suit and OD'd on Valium, managing in the process to lose bowel control all over a powder-blue baby grand. To add to the overall effect, it's very poorly remastered, so sometimes the pitch sort of slides away a bit and you end up having to tilt your head to the side while you listen to it. It hurts. It makes you feel tainted - yet kind of sparkly, somehow.

It beats the pants off "Sleigh Ride."

So this is not the most promising start to the holiday season, though I still have hopes. I only wish people wouldn't keep pushing to get started earlier and earlier, because that just means everybody gets sick of it and takes everything down when Christmas proper isn't even over, and I'm the only person I know who leaves up the lights and decorations until Twelfth Night, and I absolutely will not take them down a moment sooner.

And if the neighbors give me dirty looks for it, I'll sic my cats on them.

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*It's important to have several, because this increases the odds that one or two of them might turn out to be straight.