Chasing Happy

For Christmas, D’oh gave me: a diamond bracelet

I gave him: A sweatshirt.

Dang it.

And it’s a school night, so we’ll have to make this quick.

So, let me just admit to you now that in honor of my dog’s birthday tomorrow, I went out and bought a digital camera today.

I know.

But, in my defense, we have been without a camera for many months now, and I have been unable to document many important moments of our life. Thanksgiving, our basement makeover, not to mention the recent splinter extraction I performed on my husband. And so, now I will be able to document all our household surgeries as well as animal birthdays.

Plus, I had to do something to make her feel special. I always feel bad for those whose birthday falls so close to a holiday and I certainly don’t want her to feel cheated. Especially since we are abandoning her on Christmas (at our in-laws, not on the side of the road).

Dear Gavin Rossdale,

Merry Christmas! First off, let me say how cute your little family is. I like your kids’ names, especially the new one. The name Zuma makes me think of a little tiny baby running real fast, sort of like a member of the Incredibles, really. I enjoy how much you and your wife seem to enjoy hanging out (even though I have to admit, I think she was just plain getting away with something with that “Sweet Escape” song). And your bacon and eggs Halloween ensemble was super cute.

I hope the New Year brings you many wonderful gifts. Specifically, I hope it brings you the gift of singing a song that doesn’t make me want to take a cheese grater to my ears.

Happy Holidays!

e

Dear People Magazine,

Feliz Navidad! I never ever read your magazine anymore, largely because you devote eleventy-million pages to reviews of music and books that everyone knows are crap, otherwise they wouldn’t be reviewed in People.

Still, I caught your cover today, and I just have to say, if you think that dress Reese Witherspoon wore is ok, then I have to say that maybe the demise of printed media is not such a disaster. You are leading the people astray.

Here’s to lookin’ fine in 2009!

e

Dear people sort of newly related to me,

Hyvaa joulua! (Holla, Finland!) I know we’re sort of new to being related, but there’s one thing you should have guessed by now.

If you provide me with a Christmas list that includes things such as beef jerky and english muffins, please know that I am always always going to laugh at that and never stop. And then I’ll probably tell my family, and they’ll do the same.

You’re getting a book.

e

Dear D’oh,

The next time you sign me up to make something for you to bring to work on a Tuesday, meaning I have to make that thing on a Monday, remember one thing:

You usually fall asleep first.

Fa la la la la!

e

Because I have eleventy million gifts to wrap. Also, today, for some reason, Pocket has decided that it is fun to leap from the floor, over the back of our basement couch, onto the cushion next to me. This would be fine if…well, I can’t imagine a situation where that would be fine. It’s a little annoying actually, because she is quite stealthy and I never really know when she is going to pop up over.

Anyway, D’oh and I just finished watching “The Year Without A Santa Claus,” and I am left wondering two things:

1. Did Mrs. Claus ever come clean about how she sent Jingle and Jangle down there? Because she totally let Santa believe that it was their idea, and that is not cool. Bitches, man.
2. Do you think that the people who came up with the tear tattoos in prison got their inspiration from the “Blue Christmas” segment of this special? Because I think maybe they did.

Today I spent the equivalent of an entire work day attempting to complete my Christmas shopping. Not OUR Christmas shopping, I want you to note. Mine. D’oh has purchased exactly zero presents for any members of our family and as such should receive no accolades for all the awesomeness we are spreading this year.

Even though my family does not provide lists to anyone other than my parents any longer, I usually do alright picking stuff for my side of the family.

(Look away here if you are related to me and expecting a gift)

Basically, this year, everyone on my side, and a lot of D’oh’s side, is getting the same thing this year for Christmas: Books. Now, surprisingly this is not a gift I like to give too often. Partly because I feel like people are thinking, “Oh, really? Books? Real original, LIBRARIAN.” On the flip side, if people don’t like a book I give, then I’m afraid they’re thinking, “This girl’s a librarian? Really? No wonder they don’t charge for their services.”

Also, it doesn’t help that my family is awfully smart and full of people who read books like All. The. Time! And since I have all this library knowledge that I cannot shut off (Do you all dream about work every night? Because I do.) I am unable to just pick up a book and think, “Hey, that looks nice,” and send it off to its recipient. No, I have to read every word of all the covers and flaps, check the reviews to make sure they’re from places I respect, not just from other authors. But then, sometimes if it is just other authors, then I have to wheel through all the information about those authors I have in my head and judge whether I value their opinion or not. I almost always read the first page, if not the first chapter, and then I check the bindings (Why? Still not sure. I just always do it.)

And all this nonsense is just what I do in the actual store, after I have picked up a book. But do you think I’m just randomly picking up books? No. I’ve been reading reviews for months! Writing down titles that patrons ask for, or that come across my desk for other reasons, or that other librarians have been reading. It never ends. I currently have a double-digit amount of booklists going (not including the list of books that I want to read), with obscure notations that I can no longer decipher and initials of the people I think might want to read it. Argh! I’m exhausting myself just writing about it.

I would like to pause here and place a little bit of the blame for this neurosis squarely on the shoulders of my mother and my sister Shannon. They, like everyone else in my family, are ridiculously smart, much to my annoyance, and thus are almost always disappointed with the books they read. This, more often than not leaves me completely paralyzed when they ask for books because no matter how many times my mom shrugs and says she’ll read anything, I know that that is, in fact, a big fat lie. 

So, giving books takes a lot longer for me than does picking out sweaters and scarves and blah blah blah like I usually give. But, my first Christmas shopping excursion of the season involved a really aggressive saleslady and that I do not love, so I decided to do all the rest at a book store where if a clerk got too much in my face I could just pull out the old, “Actually? I’m a librarian. So you can shut it.” Not that that would ever happen of course, I’ve lived the retail life and have nothing but sympathy, I swear. Actually, my sympathy for retail workers was why I couldn’t get away from the aggressive lady. The guilt! It is deadly.

I still am not sure why it took so long. I was not helped in my quest by the crappy, cloudy weather that has been dogging my every move since October. I just don’t get what the point is of all this cloudiness. I mean, if it wants to rain, fine! If it wants to snow, let it! (heh) Just get it over with and bring back the sun because I, for one, am boycotting this whole Christmas mess if it does not make a prompt return.

I have what can best be described as an unreasonable fear of sea creatures. Not regular sea creatures like dolphins (and I don’t believe Tyra Banks really does either) or fish or even whales and sharks. What I am afraid of, is more of the things in the giant squid category. The things that live way down there where I for one don’t think we should go poking at them.

This fear is unreasonable because a.) I do not live to the ocean and b.) my dad is not the sheriff of a small New England resort town.

It is also unreasonable because other than the one episode of the Simpsons where the dolphins come out of the water and kill everyone, from what I can tell, the residents of the deep dark tend to keep to themselves.

The realization that this fear is whack, though, did not keep me from just getting sucked into “Lost Tapes” on Animal Planet, an obviously faked show about potential monsters that exist to prey on us humans even though no one, not ever, has seen any of them. The first episode was about an alleged dinosaur that is still living off the coast of Monterey and knocked a fake lady off a fake boat and ate her. Which is fine. Fake all the shows you want. But I think they should have skipped showing some of the news clips they showed of actual missing sailors.

Because God forbid D’oh was lost at sea and I turned on Animal Planet for a little distraction only to find the story of his disappearance used as fodder for some nutso killer water dinosaur theory. Nothing good would come of that. And since I stumbled onto this show after watching Whale Wars and becoming increasingly skeptical of the captain of that show’s sincerity, I just have to say this: Animal Planet, I am breaking up with you.

* Please disregard the preceding entry. I am currently having an allergic reaction to something that I ate at our holiday party, I think, and thus have no control over my words. I will write each day this month, though! Hives and constant sneezing notwithstanding.

Those are what have been appearing on my desk at work all day long. First, a little tiny box of nuts. Then, a Christmas ornament (from Egypt, no less), then a candy cane, then a very nice bookmark (in its own box!), then a snowflake ornament. I can only imagine what is going to show up next.

This is causing me some consternation though, because I had no idea about this little thing tradition! Now, I don’t know what to do. The little things are a mix of bought and made, thoughtful and generic, edible and not. Should I make something, should I try to find little things of my own to give out? Was this the day, if you’re giving out the little things, to give them out? If I gave them out next week would that be a blatant, “Urr, I give stuff to people, too” kind of thing? Our holiday party is not until tomorrow, but at this moment it is late o’clock and I have neither the energy nor the inclination to scrounge something up that would just be crappy anyway, plus I am still, well, a smidge behind, on my shopping for my own family.

I think, when people start a job, as well as all the necessary information about health insurance (yay!) and sexual harassment (frowned upon), there should be an introduction to the holiday traditions of your workplace. That way, when little things begin to appear, you are not caught off guard, and thrown into a tizzy much like I was today.

However, up until today, little things had been disappearing off my desk. Not normal things that people might borrow like pens or paperclips, but creepy things, like cereal bars out of an unopened box, or one American flag sticker cut off a whole sheet of them. One day my clock was knocked over, with the battery out, and basically I was pretty sure I was going to end up like Brooke Shields in that movie where John Boy tries to kill her…a lot of times (What, you haven’t seen that? Stay tuned to LMN, it’ll pop up, trust me. It is way scary). So, while the little things bring a sprinkle of consternation to my holiday season, they do, at least reassure me that I will not be murdered by a TV farm boy.

If any of you are so blessed as to receive a Christmas card from us, please take the time to note the precise and impressive placement of your address and return labels, as well as the exact alignment of your stamp to the corner of your envelope. Such perfection was brought to you by my own little D’oh, who worked his little heart out making sure that the 90 degree angle was in full effect all over that envelope.

In the effort of full disclosure, I should tell you though, that although he is a heck of a label placer, he also turned to me less than one hour after typing and printing out all our address labels to say, “So, do you want me to write all the addresses on by hand?” Which…I don’t know. He may have been still woozy though from his earlier operation.

Somehow, I’m still not really sure what happened, he stepped on a piece of wood and ended up with a heck of a splinter. Which he then ignored for about four days, so all the skin grew back over it. I, being the foot surgeon we all know I am, managed to extract it today, after (Warning! Gross words ahead!) scraping out all the skin and digging in the bottom of his foot with my tweezers. That is marriage, folks! Jump on in, the water’s icky.

Now we are all sitting in our basement, basking in the twinkly glow of our tree, sweating in the combined heat of my laptop, the furry animal next to us, and our basement wall unit, having a little family bonding while we watch “Scrooged” and pretend that we are going to stay up till it’s over, even though we all know that in reality bedtime is just seconds away.

It may not be the most exciting life, but I like it.

I have spent the last hour and sixteen minutes wading through the movie, “Ask the Dust.” I’m not sure what was going on when I set up this part of my Netflix list. I must have been going through a phase where I decided to watch the movies no one else had bothered to so the little movies wouldn’t feel bad about themselves.

I have no idea what is going on here. Colin Farrell is a writer? or something? And Salma Hayek and him are very fighty with each other. Also, there appears to be a burned lady. Oh wait, there is an earthquake, now there is no longer a burned lady. And Salma Hayek is on drugs? Or something? And they take a vacation? Granted, I have been spending a lot of time while this movie is on in a frustrated and fruitless search for Christmas presents, but it seems that every time I look up someone is either naked or yelly. Or sometimes both.

Now they have a puppy. Poor puppy. Is this going to be over soon? Why did I think this movie was about immigration? Now there’s soccer? No, that’s…football? I hate this movie.

Hmmm…they’re squinting at each other, I guess they’re going to…yup.

Is Donald Sutherland going to be in this movie anymore? Because I never really got what he was around for.

Now he is teaching her to read…and to be American. Oh, she’s going to die. She coughed in a movie. She’s Old Yeller at this point, I don’t need to watch the end.

And so, I should attempt to finish my Christmas shopping, you people have distracted me long enough.

One: Watching one of the Netflix movies I’ve had since SEPTEMBER!!! (And now I officially do not get all the fuss about Sideways, much as I suspected I wouldn’t)

Two: Finally Finally putting the ornaments on our tree. Yes, our tree. The tree I’ve been rambling on about for at least a week. Of course I had to decorate it alone with only the help of one overwrought Australian Shepherd since D’oh apparently does not enjoy hanging ornaments. Or, perhaps he does not enjoy my constantly telling him to move the ornaments, once he hangs them. I should do what my mom does and just move every single ornament once a day until we finally take the tree down.

I tried to think of the other things that I want to do and had little luck coming up with anything particularly interesting. I think I’ll give myself till the end of the year to complete that list.

In other news, today I heard a very loud banging coming from outside. Very loud, yet very rhythmical. Then it was loud, rhythmical, and jolly. Then it was loud, rhythmical, jolly, and seasonally appropriate. Neither Pocket nor I had even one bit of a clue as to what was going on and we went outside to see about four members of a marching band walking down the road behind our house. It very much looked as if the rest of the band had turned right, and they had turned left. They kept playing though, and that is what I call dedication. Separated from your pack with only the bass drummer, the tuba player, and one clarinet chick for company, yet still they persevered. Playing “Good King Wenceslas” no less. Since D’oh was not home when that happened, and none of my neighbors seemed to notice this event, I’m still sort of partly wondering if it actually happened, or if I dreamed it.