NaBloPoMo Day 10: Carving The Roast Beast

I really know that I should love Christmas more than I do. I love parts of it. I love being around my family. I love Christmas food. I love the party my mother has every year on Christmas Eve, where all of my parents' friends come over when they feel like it and stay as long as they feel like staying. There is just something hilarious to me about all those geriatrics drinking all my parents' good booze. I love being a parent on Christmas. That is by far the best part.

But as I get older, Christmas seems to be more and more annoyingly commercial, and I feel more and more like the Grinch--the original one, not Jim Carrey in that sponsored-by-Pepsi-Cola hot mess that came out a few years ago. Trina's annual rant about inflatable Christmas yard decorations hit home today when Dan and I went to Lowe's looking for a new showerhead and were greeted by a gigantic aisle full of inflatables. It was tacky times infinity, commercial, and plastic. It was everything that sort of makes me dread this time of year.

I wish it could be just the fun parts, you know? I wish it could be the good stuff, without worrying about last-minute trips to the mall and the traffic. Three years ago, Dan and I flew back to Michigan on the 23rd. Our plane out of Detroit was cancelled, as was every other flight. I was thirteen weeks pregnant and queasy, and there were 14,000 people stranded in the airport without a hotel room or rental car or a flight. To make matters worse, they lost our luggage, and we were without any clothes, our presents, or anything else for four days. It made me wish I had never left my house.

I must be a glutton for punishment, because we're doing it again this year, this time with a two-year-old. My mother wasn't really up for taking no for an answer, and she bought plane tickets to Michigan before we really could tell her that we just weren't up for it after all we'vebeen through this fall. I hope I won't be too big a pain in anybody's ass, and I hope by time Christmas rolls around, I've gotten myself together a little, because I'm wishing again I had a good excuse never to leave my house.