Deep cleansing breaths.

The Bandit “wrapped” this present.  The object inside is 1/2 the size of the wrapping.  There is approximately 22 feet of tape used to seal this package, and yet there are still whole sections loose as you can see.

I love my children.  I really do.  Beyond a shadow of a doubt, I’d lay down my life for them.  But this help with wrapping is going to do me in.  I’m sure of it. 

I have heard all the advice under the sun.  It doesn’t help.  I’ve been told to wrap them when they are asleep, but that’s too easy.  When they wake up, they’ll be crushed that I did it without them.  And quite frankly, I have greatly tired of being “the meanest mom in the world”. 

What it comes down to is this: I love wrapping and they’re ruining it for me.  And the thing that makes me the most upset is that I’m upset at all.  Really, it shouldn’t bother me.  I really hate facing the fact that I’m being a total bitch about it.

I’m going to have to get back to yoga or something.  Obviously, this is my penance for snooping in all those wrapped presents.

This came from the Dumbest Things Ever Said or Done calendar.

Strange Customs: Nineteenth century Italian Princess Christine Belgiojoso had her lover mummified after he died.  She kept the fond mummy in her kitchen cupboard.

So we’ll all agree this is weird, yeah?  I felt compelled to look her up based on this little snippet of information. 

She seems like a perfectly lovely lady.  It’s hard to tell someone predilections from a photo – or in this instance – a painting made in 1832.  According to Wikipedia, she was instrumental in Italy’s struggle for independence from Austria.  She was also a fairly well known writer and journalist.

And, apparently, she kept a mummy.  In the kitchen.  Next to the spices you think?

This is the best “Someone must be reading my mind” line of the day:

“Some years when I see a live nativity, I relate to the irritated donkey. This year, I’m hoping
to feel more like the oblivious cow.” – Allyson

Seriously, I’m thinking the exact same thing.

Sassy and The Bandit “helped” me wrap Christmas presents.  Sassy shamed me into it.  Much of the experience sounded like this:

“Wait.  Wait! WAIT!  Please don’t waste all that paper.  WAIT.  Just be patient, for a second, alright?  DAMMIT.  I SAID WAIT! No, once you put the tape on the paper it has to stay there.  See, I said wait.  Now it’s torn.”  Deep sigh.  “Alright, we’re done wrapping.”

We got two presents wrapped.  But, we sacrificed 73.4 feet of wrapping paper, 97 sheets of tissue and 2 rolls of Scotch Tape.  1 Desk chair was broken, the table was knocked over, and 1 mother is now drunk.

Some of you will ask me tomorrow after you read the above list if it’s really true.  All of it except the drunk part.  I wish I was drunk but I don’t have the energy to go uncork a bottle of wine.

While we wrapped, we watched the Wizard of Oz on television.  My mom will testify in court how well I know the Wizard of Oz.  I love this movie and can recite whole sections of it from memory.  I know the words to all the songs and even impressed my daughter by knowing the steps to the dance they do down the Yellow Brick Road.  My mom once called me up in the middle of the night in order to figure out a trivia question: What was Dorothy’s last name?  I knew it of course – even mostly asleep.

I was a film major in college – absurd but true.  I am a walking encyclopedia of classic movie knowledge – both on screen and the lives of the classic movie stars off screen.  And by association, I am pretty fluent on the literature of the 20s – 50s.  I wanted to name The Bandit Dashiell after Dashiell Hammett the brilliant creator of the “hard boiled detective” Sam Spade (as so brilliantly played by Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon) but My Honey soundly vetoed it.  That is why I quickly vetoed all of his famous musician names when he offered them up for consideration.  (It took me a minute to figure out why I would refuse James Marshall, but then it came to me.  I am not naming my child after Jimi Hendrix – even though he was completely brilliant.  It’s just the way it is.  No Dashiell – No Jimi.)

This evening Sassy said to me, “You know this movie is actually pretty good.”

Deep sigh.  And Gone With the Wind is just a movie about the Civil War and Casablanca is just a so-so love story about World War II.

Grandma, Sassy and I made Christmas cookies today.  We didn’t finish, but we got a heck of a start.   The best part is that we didn’t burn any and then have to argue over divvying them up.

But today’s activities reminded me of another Christmas that didn’t go so smoothly. 

That year, My Mom and I must have been hexed because everything burned, came out flat, fell apart, or just plain fell.  It was a miserable baking day.  I came home that night with a zillion, naked, cut out cookies.  The kids got it in their heads that they MUST be frosted and their hateful father supported them in this desire.  Begrudgingly, I agreed to make colored frosting and we all decorated the angles and trains and stars, etc.  It took forever and I was completely fed up with baking all together by the end of it.

When they were all beautifully decorated I placed them all in ziplock bags and laid the bags in the oven for safe keeping from the dogs.  At that time, we had REALLY large dogs.  Much bigger dogs than Roscoe will ever be.  We had a Newfoundland named Sophie and a Rottweiler/Great Dane/St. Bernard mix named Hugh.  Sophie was 185 lbs at her biggest

and Hugh was tall enough to steal food off the kitchen counter by merely turning his head.  In fact, he ate an entire fillet Mignon one Valentine’s Day. 

The next evening was my turn to make dinner.  For quite some time I couldn’t figure out what smelled so awful until I realized that the blasted plastic bags full of cookies were preheating in the  oven.  When I opened the oven door, the plastic was dripping off the rack and onto the heating element and the cookies were coated in a layer of plastic.

My Honey came running into the kitchen at the sound of my screams and a 4 year old Sassy came running after him.  I stood there sobbing at the loss of the cookies.  I took it very hard.  After all the work and how everything had turned out so badly.

My Honey jumped into action, trying to save the day.  I just stood there weeping piteously and Sassy, getting right into the spirit of the holiday, stood at the oven door and screamed at me, “You burned the cookies! YOU RUINED CHRISTMAS!”

I swear it’s true.  I have witnesses.

God bless My Honey.  He put the kids to bed that night and stayed up with me until 2 or 3 that morning.  We rolled out dough, cut out the cookies, baked them.  And then he frosted every single one of those freaking cookies.  And no one had to die that Christmas.  He’s a good man, My Honey is.

I was thinking about getting this dog house for Roscoe, but I changed my mind.  It might be confusing for the mail man if his house looks exactly like mine. (hahahahahahahahahahaha).

But really, I can’t let the dog have a better house than my own.

I’m psychic.  It’s true, Ava.  Wanna know how I know I’m psychic?  This evening we were coming home from the mall.  My Honey decided that I’d been much too happy lately so he wanted a family portrait done.  He made me wear a dress and smile.  It was horrible.  Having my picture taken makes me hostile.  Seriously.  And then he gets angry at me when I don’t like any of the pictures.  Because I’m in them.  Why is that so hard to understand? 

We also saw Santa.  The very same Santa that promised Isabella’s Bean a turtle.  I offered to deliver a message to the Jolly Old Elf for her, but when I heard the message I politely declined to relate it. 

Tangent Girl has struck again. 

ANYWAY, we were on our way home from the mall when we pulled up along side a pickup truck that was painted with cowboy graphics.  It was really cool – at least from the point of view of a 4 year old cowboy worshiper.

“Daddy, that is so cool!” the Bandit said.  “I could paint that.”

“Yeah, someday maybe you could paint my truck like that,” My Honey agreed.

“I’m a good painter, Daddy.”

Are you psychic, too?  Can you see into the future and imagine a day, not very far in the future, when My Honey walks outside to see his beloved Dodge painted with the loving strokes of an inspired preschool artist?

I looked at My Honey through the dashboard enhanced darkness.  “You understand that he thinks you’ve given him permission to paint your truck.”

“When you grow up and get a job you can paint my truck.  A long time in the future.  Some day far, far away,” My Honey said emphatically, trying his best to qualify his “permission”.

He’s telling this to a boy who thinks that Christmas is still a life time away.  I don’t even need a crystal ball to see what’s coming, and he has no one to blame but himself.  God help us.

Who would like to come over and wrap my presents for me?  Usually this is one of my favorite tasks, but over the last several years my passion for it has dwindled.  I have always enjoyed the precision of gift wrapping.  I like aligning the paper so that the pattern meets up just right.  I savor tucking tissue paper into a box and giving it a precision fold to fit the dimensions  exactly.  I take delight in a crisply folded corner that closes just so.  I appreciate a finely crafted bow out of brightly colored ribbon. 

However, when you wrap presents with short people “helping” what you get is a hunk of wrinkled paper wadded around a box with 57 pieces of jacked up scotch tape placed randomly around the outside and a stick on bow that will last 13.9 seconds under the tree.

And I feel like such a heel, because all they really want to do is help.  But, God perserve me (the God who invented foil paper and wired ribbon) I just want to make my masterpieces by myself.  Is that too much to ask? 

If I promise not to get frustrated when they want to “help” make cookies, can I have this one little thing to myself?

Some more non sequiturs from my brain – these with a Christmas theme since that is the all consuming passion with the short people at my house. 

The Bandit has discovered the joy of singing in the shower.  He usually opts for taking a shower by himself and, if given the option, will always choose his father’s shower because “that’s the boys bathroom.”  As far as I’m concerned, they can keep it, too.  The “boy’s” shower is tall and enclosed with a glass door so there is a really great echo effect.  I keep the bathroom door open so I can monitor his activities in there – he is only 4 1/2 after all.  Lord knows what kind of mischief he could get into in there.  It makes my wallet hurt just thinking of it.  Anyway, his current favorite is Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer – at the top of his lungs.  “…as they shouted out with glee – YIPPEE! – Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, you’ll go down in history – LIKE COLUMBUS.”

I would like to thank Sassy’s first grade teacher yet again.  Not only did she bring the joy of Tikki tikki tembo-no sa rembo-chari bari ruchi-pip peri pembo into our lives, but on Friday she gave the children reindeer food to bring home.  “What pray is reindeer food,” you ask?  Oh it’s just the most lovely concoction of dry oatmeal and glitter in a zip lock sandwich bag.  This substance, when liberally sprinkled on the couch and living room carpet, is more insidious than Christmas tree tinsel and Easter grass combined. You think it’s all vacuumed up and then you plop yourself down exhausted in a chair and the angle of the light changes and lo, there is freaking glitter everywhere.  So thank you.  Thank you very much.  Expect coal in your stocking.

My boy will never have a life in a major crime family.  Or even a minor crime family.  He wouldn’t last five minutes.  I know you faithful readers think that he’s headed for a life of dubious honesty.  I disagree – perhaps if cowboys still roamed the west and he could join a gang of train robbers or something akin to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, then yeah.  He’d be Butch by the way – he’s definitely a mastermind.  However, he’s never going to make it in the mob.  The boy can’t keep a secret to save his life.  He very excitedly announced to his father and the entire tools department at Sears that we bought him a new Maglight flashlight.  It’s red, he said with glee.  His sister is apoplectic over it.

But it’s not always the boy that’s the problem.  Christmas has made them both a little extra “jolly”.  You can blame it on the sugar, or the extra toy commercials, or just the knowledge that Santa is 10 short days away.  Either way, they’re completely manic, and sometimes they annoy each other as much as they do their father and I.  Yesterday Bandit looked balefully at me and said, “My sister’s a pain in the ass.”  I couldn’t agree more little man.

Tis the season to be jolly, Fa-la-la-la-la  La-la-la-la