Tag Archives: xmas

You got a great rack Lady.

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The last of the men with the little shorts turned up today to deliver the last box of wine that I ordered last week.  So now the sadly neglected wine rack can hold it’s head high again after many months of looking like it belonged to someone who was maybe up the duff and off the drink all because I didn’t make it to the Annual Spring War Wine & Cheese Tour this year.  We’re well stocked for the silly season and emergency presents… no problem!

Does anyone else do that?  I have a box or rather one of those large plastic crates in my closet that I have filled with ‘Emergency Presents’.  These are things that I’ve picked up on sales or have spotted going for good prices that I think would make great gifts for people even though I don’t necessarily have any one in mind to give them to at that point in time.  The Emergency Present Box has things in it that would be suitable gifts for kids parties that the Small Child gets invited to, books and sundries that would make good gifts for SCA friends, lots of toys for girls of varying age groups (I have five neices), a handful of things that make good Secret Santa gifts at office Christmas Parties and various other bits and bobs that would be good gifts for any one of a number of Hallmark occasions that I had conveniently forgotten to shop for.  Or am I alone in my gift giving preparedness???  I love giving presents, particularly when there is no occasion for it so I like to have things on hand.  I should clarify that – I love giving presents except for…

Christmas.  Which is upon us again… already.  As anyone who knows me is aware I fuckin’ hate Christmas.  Hate the Carols.  Hate the rampant shopping.  Hate the ritual Christmas tree nonsense.  Hate the wasteful Christmas card exchange.  Would gladly skip the lot of it.  Why can’t I just have the family dinner and piss up and skip all the rest?

In an effort to spare myself some of the special Christmas torture, I’m endeavoured to do as much of my Christmas shopping online this year as humanly possible.  So I hit the (online) shops today with gusto and I’m pretty impressed with my progress thus far.  If I keep this up, I won’t have to go near the stores for anything except food…. and there will be much rejoicing by the peasants (that’s me) on the slopes if I manage to pull that off…. Ladies 🙂
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Thank God it’s over for one more year.

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So there ’twas…. another year and we’ve all bought into another over commercialized Christmas.  I simply can’t believe the stack of gifts that Angel ended up with this year.  After visiting with the in-laws this morning and him coming home with more new toys than any kid needs, I purposely went and removed some of the things that I was going to give him and will bring them out in a couple of months time when he’s bored.

On the actual day of Christmas my six year old son received…
one Batman Lego,
two boxes of Geomags
three kids DVDs
four Magic School Bus DVDs
five new books
some Starwars Lego
two Mosiac peg boards
one Cosmic Rocket Science Kit
a Cube World Party Cube
a toy Motorcycle,
two jigsaw puzzles
one Spiderman Lego
a funny monkey camp chair
a Crayola Explosion Pack
a Magic Kit
and the much coveted Tamagotchi!…..

……and probably other stuff I’ve forgotten off that list.  And what do you think the Small Child says as I put him to bed tonight after all the day’s excitement?  “Hey Mum, when’s my birthday, I want more presents!”  Yeah, I know… kid needs a little perspective.  😐   Anyway we’ve made it through the holidays safe and sound and all our family members are still on speaking terms with one another so…..  mission accomplished really.

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Fun Christmas meme stolen from Avitable…. I hope everyone had a fun day and thanks for all the SMS messages throughout the day.

1) EGG NOG OR HOT CHOCOLATE?
On Christmas day in BrisVegas? Neither… make mine a Gin and Tonic please… extra ice.

2) DOES SANTA WRAP PRESENTS OR JUST SIT THEM UNDER THE TREE?
Santa leaves stuff in a sack unwrapped at the end of your bed. Presents from the parentals were always wrapped and under the tree..

3) COLORED LIGHTS ON ON TREE/HOUSE OR WHITE?
No lights in the garden, no lights on the house but coloured garden lights on my tree in the house …. go figure.

4) WHO DO YOU WISH YOU COULD SEE AT CHRISTMAS?
Edouardo, preferably without his psycho wife.  MD preferably not to horribly scarred from Pakistan.

5) WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE HOLIDAY DISH (EXCLUDING DESSERT)?
Breakfast of plain muffins with cream cheese, smoked salmon, scrambled eggs and hollandaise sauce … It’s an English thing apparently…. yum. 🙂

6) WHEN DO YOU PUT YOUR CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS UP?
As late as Angel will let me get away with it… record this year they didn’t go up until December 18th, and knowing me they’ll be down again by December 26th.

7) FAVORITE HOLIDAY MEMORY AS A CHILD?
Waking up earlier than my sister and swapping the gifts that Santa left us… that and watermelon seed spitting competitions with my cousins down at Eltham.

8) WHEN AND HOW DID YOU LEARN THE TRUTH ABOUT SANTA?
I have no idea how old I was… but it was Heather from over the back who was a bit older than us who spilled the beans. She was also kind enough to tell us where babies come from when I was about 6 or 7 too.

9) DO YOU OPEN A GIFT ON CHRISTMAS EVE?
Not usually, we spend Christmas Eve driving Angel around to look at the Christmas lights that the local neighborhood looneys have spent so much money to hang all over their houses.

10) HOW DO YOU DECORATE YOUR CHRISTMAS TREE?
I have the anal retentive Chrismas tree from hell… all the ornaments are silver or blue or little mirror balls. Have been told it looks like a department store one. It also has Swarovski crystal snowflake ornaments on it, which cost a fortune, but I seem to keep buying them each year anyway.

11) SNOW….LOVE IT OR HATE IT?
Ambivalent really…. I’m from Brisbane, Australia and don’t have a sufficient acquaintance with snow to have either a love or a hate relationship with it.

12) CAN YOU ICE SKATE?
Don’t make me laugh… tried it once I think… in a moment of madness while dating a Canadian.

13) DO YOU REMEMBER YOUR FAVORITE GIFT?
Don’t know about favorite gifts… but how about some memorable ones –
Snoopy Tennis from Santa when I was about 12
Quiet Riot cassette tape from my Mum when I was 14
An ID bracelet from my very first boyfriend, Cookie.
A ‘here’s $300 go buy yourself something nice’ from useless boyfriend in my 20’s.
This year – some great new speakers and a pair of gorgeous pearl earrings.

14) WHAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING ABOUT THE HOLIDAYS FOR YOU?
Get together, see who can buy the strangest gift (still winning that one with the Windsor castle souvenir teapot I gave to BigSal a few years ago), eat lots of yummy food (easier now that we don’t have to deal with Grandma’s grey boiled-to-death beans) pick political and religious fights with the oldies and raise eyebrows at how much our siblings spend on their kids.

15) WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE HOLIDAY DESSERT?
Everyone used to love my Grandmas boiled fruit pudding, but to be honest… not a fan. Personally I prefer Pecan Pie or maybe a bit of Sticky Date :P.

16) WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE HOLIDAY TRADITION?
Buying a leg of ham that you end up eating for the next few weeks.  Big bowls full of scorched peanuts.  Spending the afternoon playing whatever board games people might have received.

17) WHAT TOPS YOUR TREE?
A whimsical looking angel that I’ve been meaning to replace cos I hate her complacent countenance mocking me for being so angsty at Christmas time.

18) WHICH DO YOU PREFER, GIVING OR RECEIVING?
I prefer to give. Could be that I’m just ridiculously fussy or excessively hard to buy for, but I’ve rarely received an unexpected gift (where the giver hadn’t solicited suggestions) and absolutely loved it.

19) WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CHRISTMAS SONG?
Hate Christmas carols with a passion, and especially hate how they start in the stores in mid September these days. This isn’t my fav Christmas song, but kinda in tune with my usual Christmas demeanour.

20) WHO DO YOU MISS THE MOST AT CHRISTMAS?
Edouardo…. I miss him every Christmas cos his psycho bitch of a wife wont let him talk to me anymore.  And this year MD… but at least he’s safely back from Pakistan.
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Go Santa, it’s your birthday!

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Grocery shopping today… dropped $270 and I’m pretty sure there was scant little ‘real’ food in the trolley.  Mostly it was all just stocking up on holiday snackage.  Now I hate grocery shopping at the best of times, but there’s a number of things that can make it worse…

Christmas Carols playing over the PA system.  Urgh!  From what I understand there’s been significant research done in the field of environmental psychology in retailing and the effect of certain musical stimuli on the customers.  And I have a sneaking suspicion that Christmas Carols must have scored pretty high for them to be hammering them ad infinitum they way they do.  I hate Christmas Carols.  Hate them in the shopping centres, hate them in office elevators, hate them in fucking carols by candlelight bullshit…. they’re so hackneyed and played to death, please stop torturing us this way.

Supermarket brand hogging.  I went looking for smoked oysters today to add to my cheese and nibblies plates for tomorrow, and was disgusted to find that the only brand available was John West.  There used to be several brands of smoked oysters available at my local Coles supermarket… Brunswick Smoked Oysters and Always Fresh Smoked Oysters and a Coles Own Brand.  But now, all we get is the option of John West or John West smoked oysters… which is fucked, cos they were always dearer and for a much smaller package. 

People congregating in the aisles.  I don’t know why, but either people enjoy shopping with a bunch of their friends and relatives or the supermarkets are the real world equivalent of  fucking chat rooms where you can run into a pick up conversation and just decide to be a part of it, but it seems that you’re constantly trying to navigate your predictably dodgy trolley through small knots of people.  What the fuck are they talking about anyway?  Deep and meaningfuls about cheese or something?

Strangers feeling compelled to talk to you.  ‘Excuse me dear, but are these the spinach and ricotta triangles that are on special?”  Well lady, I don’t know do they match the description on the little tag telling you they’re on special?  As if I give a fuck.. oh wait ricotta and spinach huh?  Hmmm they sound good.. I might have some of those.

Everything’s been moved… Again.  Yes, they have to move everything around for the Christmas nonsense.  Not sure why they do this as it seems they have some irregular stuff going on all year round… New Years party goods, Valentines day Chocolates etc, Easter Egg stuff, Mothers day Stuff, and so on and so on.  Why don’t they just have one aisle dedicated to whatever the hell people are being conned into this week, and leave everything else out of it?  Why do they have to shuffle every product in the entire store when they bring in the product lines that are dedicated to what ever is being celebrated at that point in time?  I hate not being able to find stuff  🙁

Check out Boys.  Never!  Never!  And I can’t stress this enough… NEVER line up behind a check out that has a boy working the register.  For if you do, I guarantee you will regret it.  Your dishwashing detergent will be in the same bag as your bananas, your eggs will be packed under tins of dog food, and your tampons will be thrown in with your cheese.  For reasons beyond my limited understanding, boys can’t pack groceries for shit!  Even though I fastidiously separate all my cold things into one section on the conveyor belt, and then the hard items and then the fresh items etc… if there’s a boy working the checkout… forget it.  I might as well let Angel pack the groceries.

So even if you manage to get a trolley that goes relatively straight, and there’s no Christmas carols playing, and a decided lack of strangers annoying you and the store manager was too lazy to move all your favorite products around that week… even under those optimal conditions, grocery shopping still sucks…. prices are up, quantities are down…. and you still find yourself checking the fucking eggs which is a depressing reminder of just how mundane our lives are.

Merry Christmas all… can’t wait for it to be over.


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Christmas is coming

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Small child:    Hey Mom!!!

  Mom:   Yeah babe? What’s up?

Small child:   You should dunk a candy cane in your tea!  It’s really good but if you keep putting it in it kinda shrinks and then it breaks up  and you have to get them out with a spoon. (nods wisely)

  Mom:  Thanks for the tip honey..


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