I couldn’t think of anything else I should be doing as the Better Half retreated into the bathroom with his Christmas present for the maiden read, so I cleaned the stove.

*****

As time passes, I learn more about myself. I would have thought I knew myself by now, but no such luck.

It seems as though I can only tolerate sitting still if I am the one controlling the conditions. Being inactive because of someone else’s poor planning causes my heart to race, my teeth to grit, and me to fantasize about stabbing hand with a fork to get though the moment to keep my head from spinning three hundred and sixty degrees. These are my issues.

*****

We sat in my mother’s den worshiping the television as older people are wont to do. Though my mother is definitely a cat lady, she IS NOT a crazy cat lady, in spite of her lengthy conversations with the four legged denizens of her home. As she fought the urge to nod off in her chair, her loyal roommates took turns waking her up by gently pawing at her face, head butting her shoulder, and jumping on the seat back in an effort to convince her they were ready for bed.

*****

My sister’s house has more activity than any other place I visit (including airports). With 1 husband, two children, two dogs, four exotic lizards, seven cats, and approximately one thousand meal worms, there are many breathing things begging for your undivided attention. I try to distribute it, but the competition is….fierce.

*****

Colds have strange consequences. It doesn’t matter how great or how minor they are…they always zap my appetite. Alcohol? meh. Chocolate? meh. Spicy sausage lentil soup? meh. Bacon and eggs? I’ll have to get back to you on that.

*****

My cat, the Gatherer might have sleep apnea. He woke me from a deep sleep at 2:30 AM snoring. It was so loud I thought someone was talking outside my bedroom window. Snore Wheeze. Snore Wheeze.

look at the snow (earlier this month)….rather than discuss the rainy conditions that have wrecked havoc for the past two weeks. 4 inches of rain in 24 hours…yadda, yadda, yadda….main road washed out….yadda, yadda, yadda… hairpin road crowded single car passing at turns…yadda, yadda, yadda…flooded basement….yadda, yadda, yadda…gutter guard guarantees are useless…blah, blah, blah.

So I have been left to my own devices for seven days as the Mister has been away on business. This morning my sister was kind enough enough to email me a picture of my crack bracketed between a festive sweater and a pair of “not so mom” low slung pants. I am the ass of Christmas. My SIL only dreams of being the ass of Christmas. I’ll refrain from posting the photo. Crack kills.

My orchid seems to walking softly into the dark night, but the blooms lasted an entire month. And it was under my care! I suppose I’m getting cocky. Maybe I should try growing something else.

The town is getting into the Christmas spirit with tacky lights and static displays.

I’m not sure what to make of the decapitated police officer. Maybe he was in the book of Mathew?

Holiday shopping used to be enjoyable, and not the chore it became after years of monogamy. I want to do something thoughtful for my partner, but both of us have slipped into that phase of the relationship where it becomes increasingly difficult to purchase gifts for each other. Either we purchase things we want as we see them, or we want things that are uber expensive and completely unnecessary to maintain any quality of life. I’ve surprised him a few times, but those instances are rare.

Most years I keep things simple. This year, I tried for even simpler and suggested we get gutter guards for the house. I thought win win. No more getting on the roof with the leaf blower, no combing the catalogs, or searching electronic stores for the “it” gift, and no disappointing him with a pragmatic gift he needs rather than the extravagant gift he probably wants. He wasn’t having any part of it. Gutter guards were not sexy enough for Christmas. He said we’d get them anyway, in spite of Christmas not for because of it. Shit. Shopping.

******

The year we bought our first house, we agreed to scale back Christmas spending for each other. Occasionally pragmatism wins….but this time it won in the form of a foosball table. Not my idea of a sexy Christmas Gift, but I was so elated about not having to shop for something Better Half would like, I eagerly agreed.

Instead of writing a check or swiping plastic, we paid with found money. Found money being a margarita bucket full of loose change and over seventy bucks in one dollar bills. We did have the decency to roll the change…..at least most of it. The poor dude at the checkout, though, took longer to cash us out. Considering he spent his days swiping plastic and verifying checks, he was very patient with our rolled quarters and one dollar bills.

The trouble with brain numbing, time consuming tasks is your mind has to redirect itself, lest one falls asleep while operating the leaf blower. I’ve been considering the source of laziness and I think it might be closely associated with man landing on the moon in 1969. Leading me to conclude space exploration is pure evil, at least in so far as it relates to my ability to get things done.

Because technology exceeded expectation and imagination, my Better Half is constantly looking for a better way to complete tasks, after all if science can permit man the opportunity to walk on the moon, why can’t it create an easier way to: scrape paint, clean up yard debris, pressure wash the deck, pick up tennis shoes, and for goodness sakes, communicate with extended family?

Because of this scientific hiccup, brains become disdainful of actual application, spend hours laboring in front of computer screens inputing search terms, when the truth is, it is easier and more efficient to physically place your coffee cup in the dishwasher, than find a better way online. Of course the best way to solve this dilemma is to either choose your model of spouse very carefully or continue to live at home with your mother until she kicks the bucket.

The other issue with this space exploration thing, is it’s negative impact upon my patience. If a man can walk on the moon, why do I have to suffer an entire week with a sinus infection. Okay fine so maybe the technology that opened the gate to the great space race was the culmination of decades, hell, cumulatively speaking centuries worth, of applied science, big dreaming and a nominal, or maybe even higher than nominal number of failures. So it probably wasn’t easy, and a lot of people lost sleep, and a lot of wives were probably scared shitless for the husbands (because lets face women have yet to walk on the moon, though if Ralph Kramdem had his way….). If scientist have the resources to expend on something as far-fetched as space travel, the least they can do is expend a tiny amount of energy to ensure that no woman faces another yeast infection, and no man has to endure swollen hemorrhoids.

Some blame the full moon, when others lose track of their sensibilities, but why stop there? We’re always looking for someone else to thrust responsibility upon, might as well blame NASA, as well.

Rather than talk about why my hair resembles Lily Munster, how insufferably my cats are behaving, or how I will gnaw off my own foot if I am forced to eat quiche or smoked ribs before 2012, lets talk about how much I suck as a role model. But if my siblings didn’t allow me supervised visits with my nieces and nephews, then technically I couldn’t be a bad influence, so what we’re really discussing is how my siblings suck as parents.

Exhibit A:
My brother paid a visit to my Mom’s while I was there last week and he didn’t come alone. He came with his 13yo, the 13yo’s buddy (because they always travel in packs), and a bag of firecrackers. He also placed me in a supervisory position. Oh the pressure! I responded by cleaning out the refrigerator and filling aluminum cans with jello, and stuffing firecrackers into containers with brunswick stew. To my credit no one lost a digit, and the fridge isn’t the toxic landfill it was upon my arrival.

Exhibit B:
My sister brings her kids for a visit. Like typical kids bored by adult conversation, they go upstairs and amuse themselves by investigating closets, rifling through drawers and looking under beds for anything worthy of amusement. What they find is a collections of shirts I painted as a teenager.

Yet another indicator as to my loser status during secondary education. I painted my own shirts to wear at a public high school. No mystery as to why I was never elected prom queen. Anywho most of the shirts had images of other people’s ideas. Things like album covers, quintessential 80′s movies like, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Less Than Zero, or Some King of Wonderful, or comic strip characters, basically 80′s based pop-culture

So my nephew runs in with a Where’s Waldo? t-shirt, complete with assorted characters, painted front and back. My mother starts exhibiting twitchy behavior associated with having seizures, or seven year olds who can’t sit still. I realize she is dropping not so subtle hints that I should follow the kids and pick out shirts for each of them. Okay dokey. Kid One with Waldo shirt, dilemma solved. Kid Two….hmmmm. Kid Two is eight and will not appreciate the finer points of an 80′s teenage angst movie, nor is it appropriate to send her into a room full of adults with an “I Really Need to get My Ship Together” shirt.

I opted for the Martika’s Kitchen shirt. I picked it because it was bright. i painted the album cover on the back of a man’s dress shirt. Kid One dropped a subtle hint that Kid Two would not be able to wear the shirt to school and I thought duh, of course not, she’s eight and the shirt length violates the dress code. I neglected to consider the bare breast, I mean, Hell I wore it to school when I was a teenager, and I didn’t get sent home. They’re breast, so what? It’s not like people don’t know what knockers are supposed to look like.

After the other adults freaked and laughed, we picked out another shirt, though I’m not sure why we bothered, Kid Two, like me, was completely unfazed.