Anyone else know that song by The Waitresses? You should… Pretty much every year they play it for a good month on every radio station in the US.

When I was in my early 20s, I worked as a secretary for a small computer company (this was in the mid 1990s). They had just hired a new secretary, a bit older than me. She was really sweet… but she was a bit weird when it came to music. One day, an Al Stewart song came on the radio, “The Year Of The Cat.” She told me she didn’t like that song because she hated the way he pronounced the word cat… What the fuck?! And if that’s not bad enough, when Christmas came and they started playing “Christmas Wrapping”, she told me she hated the song because she hated the line, “You mean you forgot cranberries, too”… Who the fuck judges a song based on how a word is pronounced or one goofy ass line?! Well, apparently she did. I think about her every year when I hear this song and laugh at that memory.

I know… That was totally random and meaningless. But it’s been a part of Christmas for me ever since that day…

I’ve been really busy since Thanksgiving, which is part of the reason I haven’t written a blog entry in quite some time.

The house won’t decorate itself, ya know… It takes a long time to drag all the shit up out of the basement, decide what I want to put up and what I don’t, what I have room for and what I don’t… I’m sorry to say, I didn’t have room for all my nutcrackers this year. I also didn’t have room for my beloved music box that plays my favorite, “White Christmas”… It was enough to get the damn tree together. And even though nothing has changed in this area from last year, I swear this fucking tree took up more room than it did before (not counting presents). I love my tree, I really do… I bought one of those Balsam Hills trees several years back (the midpoint realistic ones) and I’m so glad I did. It’s easy to put up and it’s beautiful. But… it’s so big it literally swallows lights, garland, ornaments… What you don’t see is that the part of the tree facing the corner has no ornaments. It took 1100 merry midget lights to cover this fucking thing… And it takes forever for me to put the ornaments on. I’m so fucking picky, it takes hours for me to finish because I’m always looking to find the perfect spot for each ornament. Is the look worth it…? Meh… I guess that depends on how you look at it…

Another reason I haven’t written a post in a long time is because I’ve been suffering from this horrible, deep rooted depression…

I won’t lie, part of that is due to this fucking weight gain… I had an appointment with my cardiologist at the beginning of the month and I don’t even want to tell you what the scale said. I had already had an emotional breakdown before I went and knowing that number just made it so much worse… But at least he listened to me, which is not as much as I can say about my other doctors. Granted, as he told me, he’s not a nutritionalist, but he did make some suggestions as to what the issue might be. Did you know you can gain weight if you’re not eating enough protein despite how well you eat? Yeah, I didn’t, either… So his suggestion was to eat a certain amount of lean protein (which is the only kind I do eat) with my salads and eat breakfast because I don’t.

Despite how it might sound, I don’t drink often… Once in a while I like a glass of wine with dinner and on veery special occasions (like New Year’s Eve) I can pound it down with the best of them. What do you expect? I’m Gen X, we pretty much grew up being hammered, hahahaa!

I know they say alcohol is a depressant, but I’ve always found it makes me slap happy. I’m not surprised… I’m the same way with meds that should make you dopey; they hop me up like I’m on speed. And some wine helps me get through some rough times, like having to deal with my sister’s off-putting boyfriend, my mother and her boyfriend and the million other stresses that come with the holidays. Don’t lie, I know some of you drink your way through the holidays, too. You kind of need to in order to deal with your family, haha! Who among us doesn’t have some annoying, overbearing relative they just want to throat punch at the dinner table…? And where there are obnoxious relative, there’s a nice Cabernet or Chardonnay to help us get through. And for those really annoying relatives, there’s a bottle of Jim Beam and some ice cubes in the freezer.

Listen… I don’t promote or condone alcoholism… However, I do endorse saving what little of your sanity you have left during the Christmas season. Decorating, shopping in crowed stores, dealing with the public, wrapping… You deserve a break, at least from those relatives. right?

Speaking of presents…

My sister is so hard to buy for… She’s a nurse practitioner and her boyfriend is a doctor. Whatever she wants, she just buys herself. She doesn’t need anything or want anything. And she has horrible taste…

So every year, I go out and try to find the absolute perfect gift to suit her, which you’ll never see displayed in her house anyway because the boyfriend seems very particular about those things (yeah, he’s an ass like that). One year I bought her a journal that the cover was a 3D Han Solo frozen in carbonite (she’s a Star Wars fan and loves Harrison Ford). I figured she’d at least find it useful. Another year, I made her an abstract painting. I’d never done one before, but that’s what she has in her house and she’s never hung up my landscapes where people can see them, just those fugly ass abstract pieces of shit. One year I got her a gel candle in a wine glass (she likes wine) that actually smelled like wine. I thought maybe she’d like that but nope… What a pain…

This year, my mom had bought me two nutcrackers to paint (because she knows I love to do that). One is this ceramic guy right here. I know my sister loves the ballet as much as I do, so I thought I’d paint it for her the match the depressing grays with a splash of yellow she has in her house… I had talked to my mom about this idea and she was as concerned as I was as to whether or not I could pull it off. I think I succeeded… Sadly, they didn’t have any more of these to paint one for myself. Oh well…

Not that any of this mattered…

Last week I received some stressing news I didn’t need. I can’t really talk about what’s going on… Just know I’m healthy (just fat). This is another issue that’s a huge stressor, which is not something I need right now. Worse, it’s so bad that I fell to the bottom of the depression pit. I’m down so far that I don’t see light when I look up… This started a few days before Thanksgiving and peaked last week. I went spiraling down faster than you can imagine. I stopped caring, stopped watching Christmas movies and listening to Christmas music. I haven’t even watched The Nutcracker (yes, I bought one of the versions of the ballet). I was seriously considering taking everything down and putting it away because it depresses me more to look at it. I’ve never been so fucking low as I am right now and I hate it.

To add to this depression, I also have the added depression I face most years, Every year, the only thing I really want is a white Christmas. Even if it’s just enough to cover the ground, I want to wake up and see the world blanketed in snow. We actually had some significant snow falls already, but as is usual with the rejected state I live in, it got really warm last week. My yard turned into a swamp from all the melted snow and rain. It was going to be a shit Christmas all around… But today we got a little snow. With how warm it’s going to be, I doubt it will last…

But here I sit, laptop on my lap, writing a blog post with a lot of holiday pictures to try and get you, dear readers, as well as myself into the Christmas spirit… Is it working for you? Because it’s not for me…

However, this little gem here just might…

I went to the wine and spirits shop to get a bottle of Moët & Chandon for New Year’s Eve and to get a bottle of wine for my sister’s boyfriend. He’s Jewish, so he doesn’t celebrate Christmas, but I get him a bottle of wine so I can give him something. The best was the first year she was with him and I found a Lego type dreidel that came with a mini figure of a Hasidic Jew, hahahaa! He’s not Hasidic, but he found it funny nonetheless.

Anyway, I couldn’t find the bottle I wanted after walking around the entire store, so I went to ask one of the employees. Turns out he was doing a wine tasting… Hey, free wine is for me! He had four to try and, after I tried this amazing port, I knew I had to have a bottle! From what he told me, they don’t get them in often, so I’ll have to check in every now and again to snag one so I can keep it on hand.

I have yet to crack it open, but I’m thinking I’ll do that tomorrow afternoon…

You may be wondering why I would plan to get hammered so early in the day on Christmas Eve. Well, let me tell you… Every year my mother comes to do Christmas with me Christmas Eve (Christmas Day is reserved for the apparently better daughter). If you’ve been a reader for a while, you know I have a kind of a love/hate (mostly hate) relationship with my mother… She’s an odd woman as anyone who has ever met her will tell you. And if you think I can get through a holiday celebration with her without being sloshed…

Yeah, I didn’t feel I needed to finish that sentiment. You all know what I was getting at…

Despite my being down in the deepest pit of depression and being unable to climb out and bother with this holiday… I do wish all of you, dear readers, the Merriest Christmas and the Happiest New Year. I do hope it’s better than I anticipate mine will be…

And when you sit down to dinner, questioning you judgement when you decided to have said dinner with your crazy family, think of me and have yourself a tall, stiff drink for me; you’re going to need it, hahahaa!

Now stop reading and get your ass to the liquor store before they close up for the holiday… Seriously, why are you still reading this?! Go! Get some alcohol to make Christmas merry and bright as your nose will be!

Happy Holidaze! ❤