Holiday Notes And A Birthday
2006-12-15, 13:11

I'm not sure what to do about Christmas morning. Normally we just all get up as time allows, wait until everyone's set up with a hot beverage and then go to town on the Santa loot. And for the mornings when The Boy and The Girl are at their dad's in the morning, H and I had a leisurely time of it until they got home. But this year, we have an extra little problem. What do we do for Laurana? This is her first year that she'll be honestly sentient enough to really be excited about presents. But do we make her wait until the kids get home? Do we let her open up her Santa loot? Everything? A good part of me wants to wait, but that's going to prove hard with a two year old screaming, "Iun... pezzents... mommeee! Iun...pezzents... daddeee!" ('iun' = 'I want') over and over again. What to do, what to do... Maybe we'll just leave the house and go somewhere for the interim. Because there's a whole lot of places open on Christmas Day.

The office has been pumping the local play-xmas-music-24/7 (WDOK for those who care) radio station through the speakers lately, and I have a few thoughts on the 20-30 songs they manage to play twice per workday:

• Dear Christina Aguilera, re: 'Silent Night': dude, if you hang any more ornaments on that tree, it's going to fall over. Lighten up a bit. Maybe if you stop with all the flourishes, one day someone will notice that you have a pretty voice.
• 'Do They Know It's Christmas' is one of the stupidest songs ever written.
• Karen Carpenter still qualifies as having had one of the sexiest voices of the 70's, if not ever. Too bad she skinnied herself to death.
• Johnny Mathis officially creeps me out.
• There are more songs on John Denver and the Muppets than just 'The 12 Days of Xmas', dammit!
• The girl who sang 'I Want a Hippopotamus For Christmas' should be killed in public view, as a warning to others.
• I don't care what some boy's choir or the Trans-Siberia Orchestra did, 'Canon in D' is not for Christmas.

I swear, the whole organization of Christmas is getting less and less appealing every year. I'm making a concerted effort to try and ignore all that nonsense and make the day about family. It makes the experience kind of insular, but maybe that's not a bad thing. Or maybe we should revive Mithras, the sun god, and make it about him. It would certainly add some variety to the day. Then again, I don't think we have any gold coins sitting around to give to the kids. And if I did, gods forbid we should melt them down.

Today is H's birthday. She woke up to a store-bought, heavily glazed, yummy-looking cinnamon bun to take with her to work. Tonight we're going to the local fave Mexican place for dinner. And at some point she's getting her awesome present, about which I will tell you later. Suffice to say, she wants one.

-- End Transmission --