My Clusterf#uck of a Tree

All year long my children and I said we weren't going to go through the hassle of putting up the xmas tree.  In fact, we were all in agreement that we weren't even going to celebrate xmas.  Our thinking was that if we wanted to buy gifts for one another, we would just go out and buy them whenever and waiting until xmas was a moot point since we are all self-proclaimed heathens.  *gasp, i know...*

Well then Thanksgiving came and went and I started thinking of my dear Grandmother who died at the age of 93 in 2005.  Prior to that she made each of her grandchildren a handmade ornament every year and then continued the tradition with all her great-grandchildren.  I thought it would be a shame to leave them in a box and not honour her memory AND I wasn't so sure that my son was really for the "no present" deal.  I was all for it, but putting myself in his shoes, I don't think I would have let my parents get away with that shit.

So, we decided to put the tree up. What a nightmare.  My mother who is always so generous gave me her "prelit" xmas tree a few years back when I got in a fight with my old one. I was trying to take it apart and it wasn't working, so I angrily dragged it through the snow to the curb and threw it in with the trash.  (That is another clusterf#uck I should write about sometime...)  So, back to this prelit bitch.  Whoever thought prelit trees were a good idea is a complete moron.

We get it set up and plug it in only to see that half of the lights were working. Oh joy!  I just remembered why I  love xmas so much.  Do you think the light outage could have been located in one central area?  No, that would be entirely too easy.  It was out in different sections. Although, I suppose it is at least in a pattern of working, not working, working, not working, and working... and I guess that should make me feel better.

At this point, I am now running around the house trying to figure this out because the last thing I want to do is go to the store and get more lights.  I didn't want to put this MF'er up in the first place. Ah... I find a string of 'candy corn' lights from Halloween!  Bingo. And on the tree they go.  I found a string of purple lights I had.  Yep, those go on it, too.  We're getting somewhere.  Scratch that.  No, we aren't.  When I stepped back after this entire fiasco, it is just one big CLUSTERF#UCK!  You can't even tell I added lights to it to try and hide the clusterf#cked parts.  Looks like this one will be dragged out to the trash, too, lights and all.  Two weeks and it's gone.

  I'm not sure I can even call this a Charlie Brown xmas tree... It's just even more sad than that.

And yes, I'm sure I could go to the store and buy some more lights and add them in, but I really just don't even care at this point.  How sad is that?

They Are All Shmucks - From Birth Until They Move Out

After attending my son's middle school xmas band concert last night and that being at least the 12th xmas band concert that I've had to endure between both my kids, I've come to one conclusion: Those mothers who have older children who go around telling other mothers who have younger children that they should "enjoy the time they have with their precious little ones because they'll miss it later" are just outright psychotic.  Oh please...

I will never miss sitting through "Jingle Bells" by 20 violinists who are all out of tune playing at the speed of zero light.  But this goes much further than just ear-bleeding, middle school band/orchestra concerts.  This comes down to my son coming home yesterday screaming at the top of his lungs that the white shirt I bought him last spring just disappeared off the face of the earth and now two hours before this band concert he has nothing to wear.

Now mind you, I asked him the day before if he had his required black pants and white shirt in which he replied "yes" with confidence.  So I then heavily suggested to him to reconsider his option of looking in his closet that he hasn't cleaned out since he was two.  I also reminded him that white shirts don't just get up and walk away by themselves, although, if I were his white shirt sitting in that closet, I probably would.

So, the little effer stomps out of the room huffing and proceeds to slams his door like I'm the a$$hole here.

Ten minutes pass and the door opens...

"FOUND IT," he yelled.  (mmmm, yeah, I thought so) 

I said, "Don't you think you owe me an apology?"

"I'm sorry," he said.

"For?"  I asked raising my eyebrow.

He half smiled, "For yelling at you?"

"And...," I motioned for him to keep going.

"And for slamming my door," he half laughed.

"And because I'm always...," continuing to make him suffer.

Now being quite irritated with me, he rolled his eyes, "Right." 

"Good.  Glad we had this intelligent conversation," as I rolled my eyes back at him in my much more experienced manner.

And there are mothers out there that will miss this?  I do not miss changing diapers.  I will not miss this age and I haven't missed anything in between.  I am looking forward to the first day of college and beyond when he's old enough to buy me a bottle of wine, have a good job and support me. 

Does that make me a bad mother? (rhetorical)

No one says it, but it's what everyone is thinking...

Oh Goody For Goodys

My daughter and I have this thing for going to cheapo restaurants to have coffee and catch up with each other.  The original plan is her phoning me and saying "Hey, do you want to go get coffee?"  And then what happens is she talks about her boyfriend who is currently hiking on the AT (That's "Appalachian Trail" for those of you who don't know and the only reason I know is because she has told me 9238792837493847923847 times) and then she'll continue on about how she can't wait to leave her dear ol' mum to go back on it to hike again herself.  However, what usually happens on our little excursions is that some sort of debacle takes place and I end up paying (literally).

We recently discovered a new place called "Goodys" not too far from where we live.  We tried it out and loved it.  We went there the day after Sandy hit and it was nice.  It is a very quiet, clean place and our breakfast came out within 5 minutes of ordering and the coffee was delicious.  Oh, and our waitress was friendly.  BONUS!  That day wasn't too much of a debacle, surprisingly.  In fact that's the day my daughter got a call at the table while we were eating and won her "free vacation", but I'll save THAT debacle for another day.  As far as the service and food went, I think the restaurant gawds were on our side this round.  We had gone to Perkins a week before and after an hour of waiting for our food, I had taken one bite of my omelet and discovered a long, black hair in it. MMmm!   I don't want to discuss that at this moment.  I can feel my gag reflex kicking in and we really don't want that.

The second time we went to Goodys was just a few days later and it was just as good as the first time, but we had an over-zealous of a waitress who apparently smoked a bit too much crack that morning.  Now this might not appear to be very amusing to you as it was to us, but she had a slight obsession about refilling our coffee pretty much after we took one or two sips.  After about 10 refills over a five minute period, we began to wonder how much crack did she smoke that morning??  Are you catching my drift here?  OKAY WE GET IT... YOU LIKE TO GIVE REFILLS  ON COFFEE!  This wasn't a bottomless cup, it was a topless cup of coffee and things were getting creepy fast.  Stop filling my f#ucking cup, lady.  Seriously.  I felt rushed, like I was in a coffee-drinking contest.  Good gawd!  Although, I suppose if this was our biggest debacle of the day, we were doing pretty well.  And yes, I love the word DEBACLE.  Could you tell?

My daughter left for a two week trip, but will be returning in a few days. We've talked on the phone pretty much every day and all we've been talking about is how we want to go to Goodys.  We love Goodys!  We are both pretty laid back and we seem to appreciate our little debacles. Of all the things I get to do, spending time with my daughter is my favourite.  She makes me laugh and we have the best memories.  I can't wait until she gets home so we can go enjoy a topless cup of coffee together.  Something always goes awry when we go out and it's always a blast!