To move things along next year, I want to invent a product called Christmas-Be-Gone. Perhaps an aerosol spray or tins of loose scrub powder. Not sure what the fragrance would be. And it certainly couldn't be guaranteed since Christmas is like the damn flu and return:s each year. I'd like it to be a product you could spray around the house and no one would bring you awkward presents or heart-burn cookies or worse insist you visit a church. That shouldn't stop us from visiting each other or enjoying the seasonal lights, the concerts, or the beauties of winter. ---- BUT if only it would stop me from revisiting the follies of gift-giving disasters past. Take this year's: which I could easily title "My Pathetic Christmas Day."
This year Maize declined to have people in and instead asked for a particular present - a trip to the Mohegan Sun on Christmas day. Not for a show, just for a little slot machine action. It's not my idea of fun, but she doesn't drive, and my gift then, is to take her there and back which is two plus hours each way.
Christmas morning came under a dead-pan sky and we were on the road. A planned stop at O'Rourke's in Middletown was kiboshed by the fact they were not open, or not open for breakfast at any rate. So we just drove on. We arrived, had sweetish food-court muffins and java, then Mazie sat with the slots and I sat reading a book, 3rd Degree from the Woman's Murder Club Series by James Patterson. I felt it was pure formula pulp. The characters seemed flat and the prose sort of blah. (I couldn't get the voice of the TV actress who played the lead character out of my head and I think that was problematic somehow, oh well.)
Then after an hour and a half Mazie abruptly announced she wanted to go home right away and didn't want to stop until we got there. (It might be she was out of sorts from eating Xmas cookies the evening before.) On the way back I got a bit lost (flummoxed again) used the gps which routed me some odd way of just highway driving. When we got home, naturally I felt compelled to finish the book I wasn't enjoying. And so it was I gave a dud of a present on a dud of a day, and ended up reading a dud of a book (at least for me), and driving for 5 hours mostly on highways. We decided it was not a plan we will ever repeat on any subsequent holiday.
Then after an hour and a half Mazie abruptly announced she wanted to go home right away and didn't want to stop until we got there. (It might be she was out of sorts from eating Xmas cookies the evening before.) On the way back I got a bit lost (flummoxed again) used the gps which routed me some odd way of just highway driving. When we got home, naturally I felt compelled to finish the book I wasn't enjoying. And so it was I gave a dud of a present on a dud of a day, and ended up reading a dud of a book (at least for me), and driving for 5 hours mostly on highways. We decided it was not a plan we will ever repeat on any subsequent holiday.
Bring on the middle of January.
