The Madness of Holidays

Once again, another year has flown past us & here we are at the holiday season again. Didn't we just do this? I swear, it can't have been a year already. But alas, it has been. And so, the madness begins.

I have a love/hate relationship with the holiday season. I love certain things about them & hate other things.

Things I Love About The Holidays

• Halloween. I think this has always been my favorite holiday. What's not to love? Costumes, candy, scaring the crap out of little kids with our scary house, haunted houses, Fright Fest at Six Flags. Did I mention candy? Plus, this year was the first year the Little Tyrant picked out what he wanted to be (Batman) & went up to the door to knock by himself & say "trick or treat!" *sniff* My little guy is growing up so fast.
• Thanksgiving. Well, let me clarify. I love Thanksgiving food. There is nothing better than overeating lots & lots of delicious food. Especially when you get to share with your family. (As long as no one eats the last of something I wanted...then I might have to carve somebody open like a turkey, because I'm just evil like that. Especially over pecan pie.)
• Christmas. Mostly, I love decorating for Christmas. And baking all kinds of sweet goodies for me other people to eat. I love the look on my son's little face when he tears open the paper & sees his presents. I love egg nog & our family's tradition of opening gifts on Christmas Eve because my gramma is from Czechoslovakia & that's what her family has done for generations.
• Spending time with our big family. Fate made sure that I married into a family that I fit right into & I love hanging out with them. This year is the first year we've had a large combined family gathering with my in-laws & my parents & cousins. It was awesome. (Mostly because I didn't have to cook very much for our 30 person gathering because I took Pajamas & Coffee's advice on how to add some fun to a dysfunctional Thanksgiving & made everyone bring something. And used paper plates & plastic utensils, which meant NO DISHES!! MWAHAHAHA. WIN!)
• I love the fall colors. It is the beginning of December & there are still beautiful leaves on the trees to get into a car wreck watching gaze upon while safely on my porch. Autumn was lovely this year--very mild, windows-open-all-day kind of weather, which was a heavenly break from the 90 days of 110+ degree drought of this summer. Living in The Middle of F***ing No Where does have its benefits. Such as having to take long drives through the gorgeous wide-open countryside to get anywhere. I wish I was a painter because there are such beautiful scenes to be had around here & while I wish there was a way to capture them on camera, I decided that it probably isn't safe for me to do while driving.

Things I Hate About the Holidays

• Black Friday. I detest the idea of spending all night out shopping with a mad pack of hyenas shoppers, fighting over who gets the best deal or the last item on the shelf. I saw on the news that there were several incidences of pepper spraying & macing over such things. Not to mention the poor fellow who was shot in the head & died after some geniuses idiots decided that instead of waiting it out in the lines legally, why not just camp out in the parking lot to rob people of their purchases? Because Black Friday loot is totally worth the Murder 1 charge & the time you're going to spend in prison. The only way you'd ever catch me Black Friday shopping is from the comfort of my recliner, in my jammies, from my laptop, which is safely in my own house.
• Holiday Traffic. I hate traffic in general, but holiday traffic is the worst because it seems like every idiot on the planet is out operating a vehicle while swerving off the road because they've never heard of the hands-free setting on their cell phone. We made the hour & a half long drive down to Texas to go to my in-laws' Thanksgiving lunch & were almost killed not once, not twice, but THREE TIMES during said drive. Ridiculous. Makes me glad I have a Honda with such awesome safety features.
• Speaking of holiday travel, WTF is the deal with jacking up the gas prices? I cannot stand the gas prices anymore. It makes me feel old because I can remember when I was in high school, $10 would fill up my ginormous gas tank. Maybe it's because I'm cheap, but it makes me cringe with agony when I have to fork over almost $50 to fill up my tank now. However, again, thanks to my Honda for having such awesome gas mileage. I <3 you, car.
• I hate the complete spaz that my husband turns into when we're trying to make it somewhere on time during the holidays. I just assumed that everyone shared my belief that you're excused for being a few minutes late during the holidays (especially when you make as long a drive as we do) because what really matters is spending time with your family. But no, he turns into a trainwreck when we're 30 seconds late. And we bicker & b***h at each other the.whole.time. (In fact, by the time we finally get home around 2 am, I am always almost certain that if I had to spend one.more.second in the car with him, I would rip his voicebox out b/c I am SO tired of listening to him complain)
• I hate cramming our many, many family festivities into one (or 2, if we're lucky) days. It sucks. We live just far enough away that the drive is a huge pain in @$$ & like I mentioned before, my hubby gets spaztastic over being late. Which we always are, of course. We both tend to get cranky when we're away from our home for too long. And I dare you to try NOT to be cranky with the Little Tyrant in the backseat, repeating everything eleventy gajillion times (our names become one in the car: "MOMMYDADDY,LOOKLOOKLOOKLOOKLOOK!DIDYOUSEEDIDYOUSEEDIDYOUSEE?!"), randomly bursting your eardrums screeching, & then proceeding to have a meltdown about how he's stuck buckled in his seat. Oh yeah, and I forgot that our radio is also totally random in its choice of when to stop working & then when to start working again. So sometimes, this trip has no soundtrack either. Which is a big fat FAIL for me & the Meat Man...it's almost physically impossible to drive that far with a toddler with no music.

The madness of the holidays around our house is always compounded by the fact that, starting in September & finally tapering off in June, we have birthdays out the wazoo! I mark birthdays on our calendar in purple Sharpie & every month during this time, we have no less than 3 (sometimes as many as 8) birthdays in a given month. But being a part of such a huge, close-knit, loving, crazy family is amazing. And I really shouldn't complain. So I'll stop. Happy holidays & here's to hoping we all make it through this crazy time with our sanity intact.