Tag: New Year’s

  • ODDS and ENDS: Christmas Has to Go, Can You Believe It, Must Win, and Serious

    (It’s a trip… it’s got a FUNKY beat. And I can bug out to it!)

    This is the weekend that we are taking the Christmas decorations down. Normally, we do this on January 1st, as a sort of cleaning the house for the New Year. And I think you can read between the lines there and see that the wife and I have passed the days of staying up late and waking with a hangover. But this year, we didn’t get around to it. We put it off. Not that we had a good reason to do that, other than we wanted to lay around and not doing anything on New Year’s Day. The end result was that we got an extra week of Christmas, which has left me feeling like the holiday has over stayed its welcome. I like Christmas, but I really like it when it lives tightly between Thanksgiving and New Year’s.

     Sometimes I find it hard to believe that we live in a world where the movies Cocktail and Road House exist.

    And I need the Cowboys and Tottenham to win this weekend. Simple as that. If it doesn’t happen I will be heartbroken and disconnected from the universe.

    Some evenings, late at night, when I am alone on the couch while my family sleeps, I start to believe that the core of me is a very serious person. Alone and in the dark, I am confident in this pronouncement. And I say these things to myself when I am normally watching a terrible ninja movie, or something awful by Bert I. Gordon. That is when I know that I am a contradiction at all times. A silly one at that. I like walking funny and talking in goofy voices. I make up songs about doing mundane tasks. And I’d rather laugh than cry. I’d rather make you laugh; Try to make you happy through humor. I still attempt to rob an honest melancholy tear from people… but… I have never felt sure that’s what I’m best at. Yet, honestly, I have never felt sure about anything. And if I think too hard about that, I might start to wonder, worry, and then cry. Which is why I’d rather laugh. Hold it off, at bay, for a little while longer.

  • The Year End Marathon

    I can’t believe that Halloween is next week. We have all of our costumes ready to go, as this will be our first year of doing a family theme. We sort of tried that a few years ago when the kid went as Dee Snider from Twisted Sister. The kid had a teased-out blond wig, make up, and spandex – she looked awesome. The wife and I went as “roadies” but to be honest, we just looked like our normal selves, so it wasn’t the theme we were going for. This year, we are all locked in with clear characters, so there won’t be any mistaking, and I won’t tell you what it is. I don’t want to ruin the surprise.

    I don’t know if this is the same for you, but in our house, once we hit Halloween, the marathon to the end of the year starts. Halloween leads to Thanksgiving, which leads to Christmas, then New Years. Four big holidays in a row, with the kid being off from school, and shopping, cooking, and family traditions, so when we get to January, we just want to recover.

    I’m not complaining about it. This is the time of year when we have fun together, and as the kid gets older, the holidays take on a new meaning, not only to her, but us as well. One thing that will be different for this year is that the kid wants to cook a dish for Thanksgiving – like have one dish that is her responsibility for her to prepare. She wants to be actively a part of the meal, and not just passively eat. Though, if I could go back to passively eating and drinking on Thanksgiving, I bet I would have an even better time.

    Because everything changes and nothing stays the same. What worked last year might not work this year. And that’s okay. Just taking each year as it comes.