The Procrastinator’s Countdown to Christmas

Think you’ve got all the time in the world to get your Christmas crap done?!? Think again…

 

First Weekend in November:  You smirk at all the Christmas lunatics who have: (a) already started their shopping, and (b) started putting up their Christmas decorations. Don’t these seasonal sickos have lives? Sit back and relax – you know you’ve got plenty of time.

Second Weekend in November:  Briefly you toy with the idea of getting started with your shopping—but why rush things—so you decide to stay home and watch TV, but every other channel has on a Christmas movie. Tossing your remote in disgust, you glance out the window and notice your neighbors are erecting what can only be described as a Christmas mini-golf course in their front yard. “Festive fools,” you mutter under your breath.

Third Weekend in November:  You have every intention to start shopping, but unexpected guests drop by who stay the whole weekend. In great, giddy detail they gush about not only being done with their shopping, but that their halls are decked as well. You consider decking them, but force a gracious smile instead.

Fourth Weekend in November:  Everyone in the house has come down with the flu.

First Weekend in December:  You finally start Christmas shopping on Saturday, and plan to spend Sunday decorating. However, you spend the entire weekend looking for that toy your child’s been begging for, only to realize it’s no longer available anywhere. You’ve got zero shopping done, and accomplish zilch in the decorating department. Slight panic begins to set in.

Second Weekend in December:  The biggest blizzard known to man or arctic beast blows into town. You decide it’s no big deal; you’ll just shop online for that elusive toy, and try to get in as much other shopping as possible while you’re at it. Yet as soon as you sit down at the computer the storm cuts the electricity. You move on to decorating, but it’s a bit difficult without any light to see what you’re doing.

Third Weekend in December:  On Saturday your child has a Christmas play, a Christmas pageant, and a Christmas party to attend. On Sunday you get to go visit your in-laws.

Fourth Weekend in December:  You have sixty-eight million things to do and only two days to do them in. You head to the mall to find everything pawed through, ripped open, and stampeded upon. You buy the least offensive stuff you can find, rush home, wrap it, and throw it under the tree. You notice the tree looks like someone put it up in the dark—oh wait, they did—but there’s no time to fix it now as you’re having a dinner party in three hours and haven’t even been to the store yet.

Later during the party, you confess to one of your guests that you haven’t found that toy your child wanted. She smugly looks down her seasonally satisfied nose at you and divulges that she bought it for her child back in early November, when it was available everywhere. You smile your best fake smile and make a mental note to never speak to her again.  Just then the lights on the tree blow out. You explain to everyone that it’s because they were last year’s lights, as you didn’t have time to buy new ones this year. Under her breath, you hear that same rotten woman mutter “Unfestive fool…”

The Moral of the Story: If you’re going to be a fool at Christmastime, it’s far better to be a festive one than the alternative.

 

http://www.authorbonniedaly.com/

https://www.goodreads.com/BonnieDaly

Advertisement

When Halloween and Christmas Collide

Nothing beats walking into your local mega-mart the first of October—on a day when it’s 87 degrees out—and being accosted by the results of Halloween and Christmas throwing up all over each other. Never mind Halloween’s almost a month away, but can’t they at least wait till children break in their back-to-school shoes before being forced into choosing their Christmas stockings?

This time of year, massively confused holiday sections display everything from fiber-optic reindeer, to choirs of motion activated angels, to moronically huge, inflatable snow globes parked directly in front of cheesy cardboard Halloween backdrops of haunted houses, dastardly pumpkins, and chainsaw wielding murderers on the lookout for their next unsuspecting victim.

Call me crazy, but seeing piles of Christmas stuff out this early, joining forces with a plethora of Halloween paraphernalia—when it still seriously feels like beach weather—is just wrong. It’s also bizarre to see folks shuffling by in their flip flops with eclectic combinations of candy corn, fake Christmas wreaths, and sunblock filling their shopping carts.

The stores also supply everyone’s eardrums with a wide variety of confusing holiday music. While children peruse the costume aisles, trying to decide what to go as for trick-or-treat, “Jingle Bells” rings out to one and all. When their mothers find themselves lured into the Christmas card aisle, “Monster Mash” is drilled into their brains. No wonder so many people just say “Happy Holidays” these days; no one’s quite sure what’s being celebrated when.

I’m not really one to talk, though. There was once a Halloween night several years ago that I still feel really bad about. First just let me say that Christmas decorating takes weeks at our house, and I was just trying to get a good head start—the day before Halloween. At the time I saw nothing wrong with it, but my son Cameron, who was five at the time, was far from impressed to see a three-foot tall Santa lurking in the living room next to a huge light-up ghost. Not to mention the animated nutcrackers looming over the jack-o-lanterns, while “Silent Night” played softly in the background. The poor kid’s still not fully over it and will probably need therapy till he’s twenty-three.

From that moment on Cameron put his foot down, and made me swear I’d never, ever again start decorating for Christmas until November. I reluctantly agreed. I do admit it was kind of weird to see Saint Nick and the Ghost of Trick-or-Treat Present making awkward small talk with each other. Maybe they could’ve found a way to bond if they’d only gone shopping together in their local mega-mart in the beginning of October.

“When Halloween and Christmas Collide” is an excerpt taken from my book, Christmas Madness, Mayhem, & Mall Santas: Humorous Insights into the Holiday Season, available through all major online bookstores.

http://www.authorbonniedaly.com/

I’ve Got it Covered

 

We have dogs. We have a tapestry couch. Imagine how that tapestry holds up to dog toenails and you can further imagine why I felt it’d become necessary to buy a pet couch cover.

If you’re even part perfectionist when it comes to what your house looks like, the dreaded term ‘pet couch cover’ brings great fear into your heart. You know exactly what I’m talking about. It’s also admitting your couch is nothing more than one big dog bed. Usually these things resemble a cheap sheets used as dust cover in an abandoned, haunted house. Sheets so cheesy in fact that  no self-respecting ghost would ever dream of using one as a spiritual fashion statement. They also never stay in place when you plunk yourself on top of them–the couch covers, not the ghosts–and crumple up into a wrinkled heap if you even consider sitting on them. But I was desperate, so I bought one and it came in the mail yesterday..

Thrilled to report it looks nothing like I imagined it to be, and actually enhances the beauty of the couch. However, the real test was sitting on it. So last night two dogs and three people sprawled all over it in every conceivable position AND IT ACTUALLY STAYED PUT. I couldn’t have been more surprised if a whole host of ghosts did a jig in the middle of my living room.

This morosely mundane post about the joys of my new couch cover uncovers the fact that I seriously need to get out more.

http://www.authorbonniedaly.com/

 

 

Tis the Season of Ghouls, Goblins, and Styrofoam Gravestones

 

The Halloween season will soon be in full swing. Lawns will be scattered with scary scarecrows, wandered upon on by wicked witches, and covered from corner to corner in creepy cobwebs. Some yards will set the stage for a happy haunting while other  will look like Halloween threw up.  Excited children will try to decide what to “go as,” while perplexed parents craft costumes late into the night and acquire an overabundance of candy.

I find the ever-increasing amounts of Halloween decorations available to the general public to be both amazing and scary—scary in more ways than one. While many displays are brilliant, there are others that look like someone ransacked a dumpster out behind a Halloween store,  and flung the contents all over their yard just before a hurricane hit. Not only are these displays trip hazards for unsuspecting trick-or-treaters, but it wouldn’t surprise me to ride by these places and see prison inmates—complete with orange jumpsuits and shackles—performing state appointed clean-up duty. Who knows, maybe my perfectionist nature just isn’t allowing me to see the artistic beauty of it all.

However, the Halloween costumes of today are far better than the lame ones available when I was a kid. I remember wearing pathetic looking plastic masks that always had a cheap, cheesy, stretched out string across the back, meant to hold the mask in place but never actually did. The masks’ material didn’t breathe, and neither could I when I wore them. These days, the masks are form-fitted, breathable numbers that look like something out of a Wes Craven flick. Not only are they ridiculously realistic, but almost scary enough to make you pass out while you’re passing out candy. At our door we see everything from precious little girls in intricately detailed princess costumes—which I’m sure their moms slaved away on for weeks—to the late night teenage ninjas who show up on the doorstep, not in costumes, but in hoodies—with blank, stares being the only things masking their faces—and say nothing while they hold out their grungy pillowcases waiting for you to add to their stash.

Most costumes are store bought, but there are many mothers who make their little monsters—I mean darlings—homemade costumes. There are two possible reasons for this: (a) they’re wonderfully creative women who can lovingly craft an award-winning costume that their children, and their children’s children, will rise up and call them wonderful for, or (b) their kid couldn’t make up his mind about what he wanted to “go as,” and when he finally did, the stores no longer had it. Any time I’ve ever made my child a costume, I’ve fallen into the latter category. But either way, moms will lose sleep, lose feeling in their fingers, and lose their minds as they sew, super glue, and staple their nights away leading up to All Hallows’ Eve. Hopefully, at some point during all of this, the moms will remember to head out and get some choice candy before the stores are all out of that too.

When all is said and done, no matter how messy your yard looks, how wrong your child’s costume went, or how stale that off-brand candy you bought tastes, Halloween is a magical time of year for our kids. So don’t wish it away, because as soon as it’s over you’re going to have to not only deal with decorating for Christmas, creating costumes for your little devils—I mean angels—Christmas pageant, and baking a whole heavenly host of holiday cookies, fudge, and fruitcake; but you’ll also have to shop till you drop, wrap till you weep, and feed  your family an endless supply of festively fattening feasts.

https://www.goodreads.com/BonnieDaly

http://www.authorbonniedaly.com/

Please check out my latest YA fiction novel: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32733457-surviving-gretchen