Tag: holiday madness

The Toenail Dialogs

If you ever want to find out what the real priorities are, on your to-do list during the holiday season, give yourself about 30 minutes less time than everything will actually take to do, and don’t figure in the unexpecteds, such as a daughter having to go to the doctor to get a strep throat swab (it was negative, thank goodness), and eldest son’s flight arriving 20 minutes early. Let’s just say, pedicure was one of the first items crossed off the list. It was interesting to watch my mind, trying to spin how to handle the chipped, grown out, faded sparkly blue polish now only about half on, my nasty toenails:

Pollyanna voice in my head – Hmmm, well, you could do your own pedicure really quick. Saves time and money! 🙂

Bitchyanna other voice in my head – Are you kidding?!? That will look even worse than how trashy it looks right now, you slobby fool. Why don’t you french braid your hair while you’re at it – ha!

Pollyanna voice in my head – Well, you can just make it a point to only wear boots, clogs and sneakers for the entire Thanksgiving break, therefore no one will know, that you aren’t so perfectly coiffed.

Bitchyanna – Sure, the kids won’t think that it is strange (and secretly start worrying about your mental health) when you are donning boots with your robe, at breakfast, and what are going to do, wear cowboy boots to the beach? You live in Florida, for goodness sake! You used to make fun of the Floridians who wear Uggs. Now YOU look like an Alaskan Inuit any time the thermometer drops below 63 degrees. Ridiculous!!

Pollyanna – Well, your priorities are in the right place. It’s good to show the kids that it is not necessary to be the picture of perfection. Love, family, turkey (and definitely stuffing) – that’s what matters.

Bitchyanna – You know dumbass, you are almost 50 right now. Learn to manage your time better. Maybe start by spending less time in your head, having a wacky dialog between two fake personas, about your damn toenails. Just a thought . . . .

Me (with my personalities, all integrated back into the reality of the moment) – OMG! I have to get to the airport now. Stat. What’s the next, non-necessity thing that I can take off of the list?!? Can I cover up the mildew smell with Febreeze on the damp clothes in the washer if I don’t put them into the dryer until I get back?!

Pollyanna and Bitchyanna – Well, here we go again . . . .

As the Mother Goes

“I hope this year has a good ending.” – FofF (Twitter)

Me, too. On a side note, I love the author’s pen name, “FofF”. Our wonderful lawn maintenance guy is named Ed. His business is called Ed’s. Whenever we need him to do something extra in our yard, I love to say out loud, “I need to call Ed of Ed’s!” It just cracks me up for some reason. I even look for things for Ed to do, so that I can say out loud, “I need to call Ed of Ed’s!”

This weekend I got a little friendly reminder/kick in the pants from a girlfriend on a text chat. We were all ranting about everything that we have to do for the holidays. Now this friend has been mothering for about a decade longer than I have, and she even has a grandchild. She is very wise. She said something to the effect, “Ladies, we only get so many
Thanksgivings and Christmases in our lives . . . . As the mother goes, so does the holiday.”

It’s so true, isn’t it? Who can’t relate to the saying, “When Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy”? Perhaps focusing a little less on what needs to be done and more so, on who needs to be loved (including ourselves), would make the holidays even more pleasant and memorable for everyone. Of course on that same chat, another friend quoted an article that was discussing a study that showed that socializing with extended family and friends makes the average person long for peace and quiet within 3 hours and 54 minutes.

So while socializing this holiday season, after about 4 hours or so, (a little less or a little more, depending on how introverted or extroverted you may be), here is my prescription for you (and for me). Go to your special place, by yourself, ideally outside in nature, but perhaps you can just conjure it up in your mind. Take some deep breaths and take ” . . .time to step out into a season – something to do with what John Muir called ‘washing your spirit clean.’ ” (Robert Genn) I think that taking the time to “washing your spirit clean” would be an excellent gift to give to ourselves and thus, it naturally becomes an extended gift, that of being of clean spirit, as we spend time over the holidays, with the people whom we love and cherish.

*****FYI, from Wikipedia:

John Muir also known as “John of the Mountains” and “Father of the National Parks”, was an influential Scottish-American naturalist, author, environmental philosopher, glaciologist, and early advocate for the preservation of wilderness in the United States of America.

All I Want For Christmas

With the holidays approaching, I am guessing that many middle-aged women like me are silently cursing Normal Rockwell and Martha Stewart.  I suspect that many of us are starting to wish for the same thing that we wish that Santa would bring us every year.  The item that we would like, as a very extraordinary Christmas present from Santa, is a very specialized magic wand that would magically make all of the players in the holiday season behave in their best easy-going, kind-hearted, thoughtful, understanding, non-confrontational way – the very way that we would like for them to behave.  This magic wand would magically turn our spouse, our children, our children’s significant others, our children’s friends, our parents, our siblings, our nieces and nephews, our in-laws, our extended family, our friends, our neighbors, our colleagues, our pets, the UPS delivery person, the store clerks, the other people in the stores, the credit card companies and Amazon Prime, into everything that we would like for them to be, in order for the holidays to go smoothly and swimmingly.

With all of the advances in artificial intelligence, this technology may not be as far off as we think.  We could have a little button on the wand that would put everyone and everything into “happy, congenial, helpful, smooth-going” mode.  And if the players aren’t behaving in their best holiday spirit, we could press the pause button on them, like a technological time-out.  It would be like the sci-fi show Westworld, only it would be Christmas World.

Of course, the Catch-22, that we controlling, stressed-out, middle-aged female heads of households never think about when fantasizing about these fantastic magic wands, is that the players in our lives would very much like to use them on us.  When I get a little too frazzled, I imagine those who love me most, would love to put me on “pause” and shove me in the corner for a little breathing space for all parties involved.  Wow, if these magic wands did exist, and everyone was using them, would everything just be frozen in “pause” mode throughout the entire holiday season?  Would we all just look like a Christmas village display, frozen in time?  Maybe the answer isn’t the magic wand with a pause button, after all.  Maybe it’s just coming to a healthy acceptance that during the holidays, the messiness of life comes into acute focus. The family shenanigans, the money worries, the reality of everyone’s frenetic schedules, trying to stay healthy and eat right through temptation, the feeling of grief for loved ones passed, all come to a messy crescendo during the holidays.  And when things are messy, many of us middle-aged mommas go into “extra-mode” trying to cover up all of the messiness with ribbons, and bows, and tinsel, and sugar cookies.  We try to make it all appear like perfection.  Perhaps if we just accept that the messiness is there, and that it is okay that it is there, and it is not our duty to fix it all, we can just let go, and relax.  When I’m relaxed, I tend to be more easy-going, kind-hearted, thoughtful, understanding and non-confrontational.  When I look at all of the holiday madness through my relaxed lens, things look more charming and beautiful, maybe a even a little Norman Rockwell-ish or Martha Stewart-ish at times.