Christmas Is Making Me Mad

My husband is a great gift giver. I have trained him well. Ever since that year back when we were first married and he gave me a can of tuna and a chocolate bar for my birthday and then followed it up with steak knives and a cork screw for Christmas (true story) he has never went wrong.

Apparently, the absence of a holiday hummer along with an angry wife who chucks sharp pointy objects (re: steak knives and a corkscrew) at your head in a fit of hormonal rage (I was a tad pregnant) is enough to scar a man for life and remind him to put some thought into what he buys for gifts.


He's never again rushed to Canadian Tire an hour before the store closes on Christmas Eve to redeem his Canadian Tire money and find something to stuff into my stocking.

However, I've created a monster. A competitive monster who is determined to out-do me every damn gift-giving occasion. And he does.

I hate losing. But the problem is, I've bought him every cool gift out there I could think of and he still shows me up.

I give him golf clubs, he hands me a digital slr camera complete with an assortment of overpriced lenses.

I give him a Wii system, he gives me diamonds.

I prance around nekkid and get down on my knees while he's stroking the new and expensive tool I know he was secretly coveting and he presents me with keys to a new car.

Well, not really, I only wish, but still, you get the idea.

Dammit, I want to be the one to hand over keys to a new car. Christmas is about giving, after all, not getting. Even if I have twisted the theme into some sadistic, grim competition that barely resembles the jolly sentiment it was supposed to.

I've tried everything, from setting price limits, to nixing presents all together and all that does is compound the problem. There I am, sticking to a fifty dollar limit and he hands over a gift worth hundreds. While he sits there, smiling like the evil little elf he has morphed into.

I've cajoled and argued, explained our financial limitations to the man, but still he remembers that corkscrew sticking out of his left bicept while ducking from the knives being hurled at his head.

This year, I'm determined to win. Because we all know Christmas is a competition to see who gets bigger bragging rights at the family get-together. I'm tired of everyone oohing and aahing at Boo's thoughtfulness and awarding him with the crown of supreme gift giver. I want that crown dammit. Even if it is invisible and just in my head. I want them to ooh and ahh over me. And not just cause I'm drunk and stumbling through my jolly rendition of 'Twas the Night Before Christmas.'

So I hit the stores hard and scoured the internet. I talked to his friends, called his boss, discussed matters with his mom. I made lists and I checked them twice. I can feel the laurels of victory wrapped around my shoulders. I know I hit gold when my son watched me wrap his father's presents and a tear of happiness marked his cheek.

You know you've hit the gift-giving jackpot when a ten year old boy covets his father's gifts.

I couldn't help it. I had to brag. I can almost taste the sweetness of victory. Finally, after years of trying and losing, I have finally ensured my husband will have a better Christmas than me.

Except the little bastard champion gift giver just giggled when I told him he's going down this year. His reign as supreme and thoughtful gift giver has come to an end.

He was calm. He was casual. He was unconcerned.

Dammit. He's got something big up that freaking sleeve of his. Why is it I can feel my victory slipping from my grasp?

And what the hell is wrong with me that I'm going to be disappointed to get the best gift ever this year?

Merry facking ho ho ho.

Magical Christmas Concerts

'Tis the season to be merry. Or so someone once said. Obviously said person was never forced to sit in an overheated school gymnasium with three hundred or more hacking, sniffing and slightly suspect people while a high school band assaults your ear drums with it's rendition of "The Little Drummer Boy."

My ears are still ringing.

I used to love the kid's school concerts, especially the one at Christmas time. What is more merry than watching a horde of five year olds scan the crowd, pick their noses and sing off key? Inevitably, there was always one girl who tried to pull her dress over her head while she fidgeted and one boy who fell off the back of the bleachers while poking his buddy standing beside him.

Usually they were my kids.

Now that Fric and Frac are older the concerts are decidedly less entertaining. It's less about scanning the crowd and waving wildly to their over-proud and camera-wielding parents and more about remembering the words so they can get back to their classrooms to watch an inappropriate video while getting hopped up on sugary treats while their poor abused parents are stuck listening to the next off-key and badly produced rendition of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" and hoping for some sort of distraction so they can sneak out of the auditorium unnoticed and go stick pencils in their ears.

(Or maybe that's just me.)

How boring.

Fric and Frac have now transferred to the big school which means they no longer share concerts with the cute five year olds and clumsy eight year olds. Now they perform their concerts with students all the way to the ninth grade. Teenagers. A brass band. Sneers and eyeball rolling replace the cheerful nose picking and wild waving of their younger days. Now when their mom or dad stands up to take a picture and whistle out of parental pride those damn teens pretend they don't know the aging geezer making an ass out of themselves in front of the local town.

I kept catching whiffs of someone smoking weed all night long. Betcha that would make the concert less painful and more fun for whichever random FOURTEEN year old who was burning herb behind the teacher's lounge.

Instead of watching the wiggling and giggling of some overexcited and freshly lacquered six year olds, I was stuck watching the wiggling and giggling of a pack of scraggly, unkempt stoned grade niners. It just wasn't the same.

Fric and Frac, were great, of course. Frac must have sensed my sadness and made crazy faces at me the entire time his teacher forced him and his class to perform like trained monkeys while sporting elf hats. I was a tad saddened to see he can now simultaneously sing, poke the kid next to him and make faces at me and while still remain firmly planted on the back bleacher. My baby's growing up.

Fric blew her french horn like her little life depended on it, and while it still sounded like an elephant grunting in orgasm, together with the rest of her class band, "Jingle Bells" never sounded finer. She was the prettiest girl on the stage with her golden locks and shiny brass horn. It won't be much longer before her poor daddy is going to have to find a big ass stick to beat those boys off.

As I sat with my fingers in my ears and huddled in a dark corner so as not to have to talk with anyone and watched this confection of Christmassy delight I marveled over how quickly these kids of ours grow up.

Just last year it seems, they were yanking pony tails and forgetting the words as they smiled with glee under the bright lights and loving gazes of their parents.

Soon, they'll be sneaking out back and puffing on their whacky-tabaccy while lamenting on the lameness of their teachers for forcing them to look and act like dorks just so their parents can have a photo op and a Christmas memory.

When next year's concert rolls around, I'm packing ear plugs and bringing a flask. Just look for me. I'll be the one standing next to the back doors hoping to get a contact high.

What it Costs To Listen To Your Husband

I love my husband. But there are days when I love him decidedly less than the day before. Yesterday was one of those days.

It started like any other Sunday morning before: The kids running around going batshit crazy while forgetting to let the damn dog out, the birds squawking, and me sporting a giant pillow over my head wondering why, God, why can't my children be like regular preteens and want to sleep in until past noon?

When I finally dragged my still-very sleepy arse out of bed I noticed it was a tad chilly in our home. No big deal, I just turned the thermostat up and went to grind my morning coffee beans. We have a wood stove that I had lit the night before so I tossed in a log while I waited for our furnace to fire up and warm the entire house.

Then I noticed the dog left me a nice brown present at the front door. The front door where he must have sat and whined for someone to let him out until his poor little sphincter could now longer hold the dam shut. I got busy cleaning up the mess, yelled at the kids, let the dog out and felt a modicum of guilt for trying to sleep in instead of getting up and being the responsible adult I was supposed to be. He is my dog after all. (As Fric and Frac pointed out when I tried to get them to pick up the poop.)

Life continued and suddenly it was lunch time and my house was still rather chilly. Not freezing, just in need of the damn furnace to blow on. Had it kicked on and I hadn't noticed? No, I don't think it ever did.

So I started fussing with the thermostat and still the furnace wouldn't start. Trying to be a big, independent girl who could solve a problem without a man's help, I scratched my head and wondered what the problem could be.

Aha! We must have run out of fuel! I thought. Except the only way to know for sure is to run out of fuel because the damn gauge is broken and I keep forgetting to nag my husband to fix it it hasn't been replaced.

Screw it, I thought as I dialed my husband. Enough with the female pride, we're getting cold.

"We're out of heating fuel and you promised we would have enough to get through to the new year," I accused the moment he answered his phone.

"Wh-, uh, gar," he breathed, not quite fully conscious.

"We are freezing to death, there's not enough wood to heat the house properly and you obviously didn't order heating fuel like I asked you to before you left," I enunciated in slow, deathly quiet syllables. I suppose I could take care of phoning the delivery service between feeding and caring for our two children, maintaining a house, being an accountant, acting as a gate keeper for our families and running a taxi service amongst all the other things I do. But if I did everything myself, what do I need him for?

"There's enough fuel, I checked," he yawned.

"I don't think so. The furnace won't kick on and it's cold out. I realize you might not be all that concerned as you are snug as a bug in a rug in your toasty warm rental, but your children are slowly turning blue."

"Well there is no way we ran out of fuel," he insisted. "There must be a problem with the furnace," he asked while stifling a yawn.

"Our three year old, brand new and highly expensive furnace?" I asked rather skeptically.

"Yep."

"I don't think so. I'm thinking we ran out of fuel and the broken gauge you never fixed isn't reading accurately."

"Nope. It's the furnace. I know it. It's what I do. Besides, I checked the fuel level," he emphasized.

"Fine. I think you're wrong but whatever. I'm just a girl. Who lives here. And actually knows how much fuel we use daily. But what do I know? So what do I do to fix the furnace? Is there a switch I can flip or do I just kick the furnace in a certain spot to get it to work?"

"Um, no. That would be bad. And don't touch any switches because with your luck you'll fry yourself. I'll call a heating specialist."

"It's Sunday. That's gonna be expensive," I argued.

"It's either that or I get fired from work to come home, fix it myself and then sit on the couch eating Christmas cookies while you worry about money and nag at me to get a damn job," he reasoned.

"Fine. Call someone. Call the fuel dude because I'm positive we ran out."

"You're a woman, what do you know? This is my thing. If the computer or the phone break, that's your thing." I do believe he is trying to imply something. Jackass.

Three hours later there was a knock at my door. A plumbing and heating specialist from the city sporting dollar signs in his eyes and rubbing his hands together with glee when I led him to the furnace.

"Baby's gonna get that pony for Christmas now," he muttered. Great. Might as well just hand over my debit card and call it even.

He fiddled and tinkered and banged around. He asked a million questions and then disregarded my answers because what do I know, I'm a woman. After about an hour he stood up, put the cover back on the furnace and announced he was done.

"Is it fixed?" I asked as I tossed another log into the wood stove.

"Yep. Good as new," he said as he started writing out the bill.

"What was wrong with it?" I politely inquired while worrying if I was going to have enough money to make the mortgage after he fleeced me.

"Not a damn thing. Turns out you just ran out of fuel." No shit. "Did you check the gauge?" No. I never thought of that.

As I handed over a check for an outrageous sum of money, I pictured all the ways I could torture my husband for this. Then I called the fuel delivery company. Like I should have done in the first place.

The joy of being right while sporting a uterus was overshadowed by my money loving tendencies. There was no happy jig and no 'Booyahs! In your face pretty boy!' shouted when I learned I am right more often than I'm wrong. My joy was deafened by the sound of the heating dude singing about 'suckas' as he skipped down my driveway.

Still, I was right. And I am a woman. Boo's gonna hear me roar.