My Christmas Letter

The end of the year is here again, with the blessed opportunity to receive dozens of Christmas letters from family and friends. Some are filled with statistics: birth weights, I Q’s, or how many baseball trophy’s their special child snagged during the year. Others are full of doom and gloom: a minute by minute chronology of the symptoms they endured when they contracted the Ebola virus during a family vacation to North Dakota, admitting they set their house on fire to pay off the mortgage, or regaling us about a lightening strike that totaled both their vehicles and cooked the family cat. Still others use the Christmas letter as a means to brag about all the new stuff they’ve accumulated throughout the year: the boat, the diamond studded Iphone, the lifetime membership to Gevalia Kaffe, or the new wife just shipped in from overseas.

So, here goes. My Christmas letter to you. You can decide which version of Christmas cheer I am sending...

Our daughter came home from school this past summer and decided to make it a year sabbatical. She worked outdoors in the summer for a landscape maintenance company—weeding, watering, and sweltering in the heat. She accumulated a lovely farmer’s tan and brought me discarded perennials to replant in my yard. Now she works in a maternity store at the mall, helping pregnant women find pants that won’t make them look “fat.”

Now that she has settled back into the family abode, our son decided he is moving out. I don’t think it has anything to do with her or the fact that we treat her like a princess, but you never know. He leaves us for his own apartment in a couple of weeks. Without the boy/man around I don’t know who is going to eat the leftovers in the fridge, or show up in the wee hours of the night to set the dogs barking. It’s pretty much the only exercise our canine children get at three a.m.

My husband is in the middle of bailing all his clients out of problems with his accounting teaspoon. I’d just let them sink or swim, but he’s much more tactful with people who have million dollar houses and vacation in Italy, but can’t find the checkbook to pay his monthly bill.

We took an exciting trip on our motorcycles to the Black Hills this past summer. Five whole days of butt-numbing fun gave me a renewed respect for cowboys of the old west sitting in the saddle day after day. Of course they could probably doze while the horse kept walking. Sadly, motorcycles still don’t have autopilot or horse sense. We managed to pack lots of excitement into those few days and returned not much worse for wear. For those of you who don’t know—Aspercreme is the poor woman’s massage therapist.

I finished another novel. I’ve been told by a “reliable source” that it’s better than any Ted Dekker book. But the world may never know—because I can’t seem to write a decent one page query letter that would kick the door open to an agent’s heart. I’m still working on it.

Our dogs, Rugby and Willow, are bosom buddies now. She licks his ears out anytime she wants and he lets her do it—or suffers the consequences. She’s the boss around here. If he wants to nap, she wakes him up. If he wants to play, she ignores him. If he wants to eat, she pushes him out of the way and eats all the food in the dish. Willow is a perfect example of feminism running rampant in America. Poor Rugby has lost any manliness he once had. His ego has been shattered. Leon and I take them both for walks in the dark of night, trudging through snow in the woods nearby. Willow runs on ahead, leading the way. But when the owl hoots and swoops overhead, Willow is instantly beside Rugby, expecting him to protect her from the big bad bird. If it were me—I’d let it eat her.

That’s all I got. If you read this blog on a semi-regular basis, you probably already know it all anyway. To all my loyal readers, and even those of you who just showed up accidentally, have a very Merry Christmas!

Conserving the Holidays

The holiday season wouldn’t be special without a warm, crackling fire. So here I am again sitting before our big screen television, watching the Fireplace DVD I got from Amazon. It’s really mesmerizing. This is the second year with a Christmas fire and I quite like it. It’s what you might call an “economy fireplace,” but for the price of a small bundle of wood at the gas station we can have a fire as many times as we like, and no messy ash to clean up afterwards.

With the state of the economy, everyone is thinking up new ways to conserve, reuse, get by with, whatever. Americans are very imaginative individuals. Some people turn the thermostat down in their homes until the dog’s water dish freezes over (I’ve been accused of that), others dig pop cans out of their neighbor’s recycle bins to sell for ready cash. I’m personally stockpiling used plastic containers and Ziplock bags. Just wait—in the near future there will be a ban on plastic manufacturing and it will be worth more than gold to housewives everywhere. How else are they going to keep leftovers fresh?

President Obama is even trying to help out. He’s going to save our economy by word conservation. He doesn’t like to waste words, so he uses the same ones over and over again. Here is a condensed version of all of his speeches: “Let me be clear—it won’t happen overnight. There will be setbacks and false starts, but make no mistake, you critics and naysayers, unprecedented change isn’t easy.”

Hollywood is conserving talented writers by only making movies that have already been made multiple times. I’m still waiting for the “Gone with the Wind” remake. It shouldn’t be long now. They’ve used just about everything else. Tom Cruise will probably play a very convincing Rhett Butler. They both startled women by popping up on couches. (For those who have never watched this classic...lucky you for being ignorant of the storyline. That way you won’t be disappointed when they mess it up.)

Television networks are also conserving. They refuse to pay actual actors anymore, but rely on idiots off the street willing to do most anything to get their face onscreen. Reality shows have become the poor man’s entertainment. Instead of a chicken in every pot, we are promised an idiotic premise for every show and an idiot in every scene.

Banks are definitely being more conservative. Instead of giving away a free toaster for setting up an account with them, they give you the “bonus” option of tsunami insurance. By taking thirty dollars a month directly from your account, they can guarantee you that when that tsunami hits Minnesota you will be completely covered. It’s their gift to you for being a loyal customer.

Regifting is an attractive option this year. We all have presents from in-laws or family members who hate us, that we've never worn, used, or known what they were. Just feign ignorance, wrap it up nicely, and give it back. They'll never call you on it. Well, probably not.

The state of the economy, lost jobs, stimulus debt, and the exorbitant price of specialty coffee, has me thinking it’s time to really knuckle down and learn to live with less. So, don’t expect any presents from me this year. I’m on a spending freeze.

Snow Day! Crank up the Grill!

Snow days are pure magic for school age children. Especially in Minnesota. They seem to have so few, in spite of our robust winters. I’m not sure if it’s because we have the fastest and most efficient snowplow crews in the nation, or that our school wardens (superintendents) are so leery of giving “reprieves.” Maybe if they attached ankle bracelets to each child so they could find them again once school resumed and force them back on the bus to the prison of learning, sort of a revamped “no child left behind” program, then they might let the little inmates out for storms more often.

Snow days are not magical for people with pets. Of course I can understand why the pups don’t want to get up in the morning from their cozy, warm bed and traipse out into a snowdrift with fifty mile an hour winds making their fur stand on end, just to pee. Especially when they can go pee on the soft carpet in the warm house in the corner where it goes unnoticed until someone steps in it and screams bloody murder!

Snow days are nice for work-at-home parents. They can type away at their computers, sip at a cup of cocoa, glance occasionally out the window at the winter wonderland and bask in the fact that they don’t have to bundle up, scrape their car off, and maneuver through salted snowdrifts and crawling traffic. Then reality hits them squarely between the ears as their kids scream excitedly that "there's no school!" and they realize there will be no quiet time working at the computer.

Snow days are very good for chiropractors. They don’t have to advertise for business. Patients just show up on the doorstep, bent painfully in half, a shovel gripped in one hand and cash in the other.

Snow days make it slightly more inconvenient to grill out or Christmas shop. But we’re Minnesotans. A little snow isn’t going to stop us from living life to the fullest: grilling, driving, shopping, or for those slightly less Minnesotan, sitting in the comfy chair and watching a Christmas Hallmark movie.

Have a great Snow Day!

The Perfect Tree

Looking for the perfect Christmas tree can be a long and arduous journey. And it can be costly. As the couple in Medford, Oregon learned when they purchased a permit to chop down their own tree in the State Forest. They drove off with dreams of silver needled birch in their heads, and promptly got stuck in the snow far from civilization or a hot cocoa bar. Two days later, and still without a tree, they managed to get their vehicle out and found their way down the mountain, realizing they had actually strayed into California. Can you imagine how costly it would have been if they’d managed to illegally chop down a tree from the state that harbors the most “save the earth” nutballs in the world? With the state police, forest rangers, and helicopters searching for them, I’m sure Medford’s Boy Scout tree lot is looking mighty good right about now.

Of course if you’re cheap like me, you just grab the first tree on the lot that doesn’t cost more than the presents you plan to place under it. That usually means my tree was cut down sometime back in May and will shed every needle within a week of being set up in our home.

Our current tree would make for fierce competition in a Charlie Brown contest. I feel very protective of my tree, seeing that it’s on its last legs—or last needles, as it were. We did what we could with it, added lights, bulbs, tinsel, and water, but the needles keep falling as Christmas carols play softly in the background, and I wonder if it will make it till Christmas.

Artificial trees are certainly more perfect in symmetry. They make decorating a cinch, especially those with lights already in place. But where is the smell of pine, the slop of water on your carpet, the brittle needle jammed into your foot as you daringly walk by wearing only socks? The senses are just not alive with an artificial tree. It’s a poor imitation of nature. A little nature in your house always makes you more grateful for civilization: scented candles, Swiffer mops, and hard-soled shoes.