God damn Christmas

All of the stockings were hung by the chimney with care;
In anticipation of my fucking credit card statement would soon be here.

I swear to Christ, how do I manage to do it every year? With the shopping and the fretting and bad decision making. And the money. ALL. THE. MONEY. Spent on who (Whom? I never get that right), I ask you?

My list of people to buy for is short by industry standards. I'm not speaking to my asshole brother so he's still on the naughty list. I don't have but 4 friends to exchange with. One set of parents. One boyfriend. One large and hungry cat. How the hell does my budget get blown to smithereens every damn time?

When it's not the holidaze season I'll walk through the drugstore or Target and think to myself, I could find everything for every person I could fathom that would require a gift or 3 from me in this one store in a mere few hours of a shopping trip for a budget that would scarce leave a scratch on my bank account.

But nooooooooooo. Do I do that? Not on your life. My generous budget went out the window when I decided to get up at 4 fucking 30 in the morning the day after Crapsgiving, I went way overboard, my great and wonderful artistic/crafty/yummy/cheap ideas got all jumbled in my head like a bag of marbles, and I went crazy. Again. And once more I fall back on the old standard rationalizations of it's only money, fuck it I don't care, it'll make the people I care about happy, it'll make some needy kids happy, fuck it I don't care. Then I'm poor.

Aww, fuck it.

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Also filed under Christmas: Crazy was my quest for decor. I was mentally consumed with having a Christmas tree this year. I've lived in my condo for 9 Exmasses now and nary a tree have I had, unless you count the 16 incher with the glued-on mini plastic ornaments my mother bought for me a church bizarre fashioned by some sweet old church lady with blue hair and a used kleenex peeking out from her sweater sleeve. It has served its purpose well but holiday cheer shouldn't fit into a shoebox, in my opinion.

I'd been doing my normal obsessive hunting for the perfect tree, going to some stores more than once (read: 4 times), and decided that my picky nature for a tree that looks better than real was not possible this year. And due to my crazy shopping-going since turkey day I just couldn't see myself shelling out $200 + for faux foliage.

During my lamenting about this dilemma I've had several friends suggest I get one on sale after the holiday, which I then give them a look like, "did a bobcat just crawl up your ass and eat your brain, stupid? I want a tree FOR Christmas. Not AFTER. Jeezus."

I'd finally given up on my expedition and felt good about not spending any more money frivolously (hahahahaha, even that made me laugh because, ha, the spending), which in itself is dumb on my part because the money? It goes through my fingers like grains of sand.

I needed to go to Walmart because I like pain. No, actually I've been testing out their online photo-ordering system and needed to pick up another batch of prints, which they fucked to the wall, btw, and I had to wait another 2 hours since their machine had broken. Remind me to call and complain about that because fuck, I pay like twice as much to pick those bitches up in an hour and they're never ready in an hour.

I now had some people time to kill, which let me tell you, is a shear joy. Nothing like wandering around fucking Walmart on a Saturday afternoon in December. I haven't spent much time in any Walmart store since Target is my house of worship so I wasn't fully prepared for what I'm now calling the Throngs from Hell. Because they are. From hell.

I rammed into several slow-moving assholes mosied over to the Holiday Extravaganza area which, oof, the Throngs were thick as thieves. But I wanted one more look at the artificial trees to see if, per chance, I could still pull this off and not feel like I was wasting money on total crap or wasting money in general. I called whitey since I like to share my pain and fuck if he gets to spend all day playing video games while I'm being subjected to random smells and screaming children at a local discount super store by myself.

(Although I do have to thank him for being who he is. He might not give a flying fuck about decorating or sweater choices or which sparkly candles should go where but he'll still have a legitimate conversation about it. Love you, baby. )

Anyway, I saw a stack of small boxes containing artificial trees and a sign posted saying "$19.97." Hmm, I thought, this is probably crap, but for $20 how bad can it be? If it totally sucks we'll chuck it and I'm out an amount less than what you'd pay for a diet coke at the movies.

So, I bought it. I took it home. I done decorated it. And damn if it isn't as cute a bug!

See?



And I only had to run down one old lady and a smelly guy with an eye patch to get it.

Merry Christmas, every one.