The holidays make me a little nutcracker

And the stress/happy/family-filled season is off! Thanksgiving was almost a marathon event with having Thanksgiving dinner with one family on Thursday and with the other family on Friday. We drove in to Mississippi Thursday morning and left Mississippi Friday afternoon. I miss being in school, where you have an actual weekend. I never thought about it until I didn't live in the same vicinity as my family, and now I feel I spend holidays in the car. And Smitty has been balking lately about letting me sing on road trips, so I don't get to get all that anxiety out in musical form.

Heard at Thanksgiving by my 91-year-old grandmother:
"When people here die, they move to Oxford."
"I guess I'll see y'all at Christmas, I might be at the nursing home." (the same nursing home on whose waiting list she's been since 2002)
"I thought I was going deaf, but the volume on my phone is just turned down."

I also found a cookie that had been living on the floor of my mom's kitchen God knows how long, uncovered leftovers in the refrigerator, a block of cheddar cheese you could use as a doorstop, and ants in the dishwasher. Ah, familia.

On another note, I set off the damn security system at home yesterday when I selected "Stay" on the key fob instead of "Off." Apparently, we set a code I forgot about, and while a mean little timer ticked down 60 seconds, I punched in every combination of numbers I could recall, and then "WAH WAH WAH," so that I had to call Smitty while this was happening to have the phone immediately disconnect so he could give me at least 3 combinations before I found the right one. Emergency averted. Alarm, one. Emily, zero.

I love online shopping. Oh, dear God, how I love it. I can remember being in college and literally buying my last two presents on Christmas Eve. I don't know why, but it used to make my mom so mad when I'd come in to spend Christmas Eve with them and have to spread out all my wrapping paraphernalia because I also hadn't wrapped anything at all. Now, I'm also a huge fan of gift bags, which require no wrapping and therefore, no mockery at my crumply, 5-year-old-esque wrapping job. I always liked to think it was charming and homespun to look at my wrapping, but is decidedly less so as I'm approaching my mid-30s.

My only holiday issue now is decorating. Smitty is out of pocket working a lot this season, so decorating (or not) is left up to me. I'm thinking of only putting up a few things, like the Christmas "manuh manuh" Muppet, and the stuffed dog that barks "Jingle Bells," stockings, and the glass lighted tree that we call the Dr. Seuss tree. That way, I still feel festive, but not like I'm sitting amid a sea of the inflatable Nativity with dark thoughts surfacing due to that super-loud noise they make. Does anyone put inflatables inside their homes? I really don't like them at all, in any capacity; I think because they look cartoon-y and speak to my weird phobia of exaggerated features, but I just wondered that.

The thing is, I like the holidays, really I do, the actual fire-burning, cheer-filled, kids being excited, fudge, OH MY GOD, fudge, that warm, fuzzy feeling Christmas gives you, and the times you look at your family and remember why you didn't kill these people when you were young and are thankful that you married into a warm, embracing family...and fudge.

"A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of Hell."
George Bernard Shaw