Today as I was backing out of the driveway to drive carpool, the car felt a little lopsided and clunky. My heart sank. There could be only one thing wrong: a flat tire. Sure enough, when I hopped out to check, the wheel's rim rested on the cement while the rubber tire lay squished underneath it. As Charlie Brown would say, "ARRGGH!" Just what I wanted to spend money on the week before Christmas.
(And yes, this is the same car that cost us a holy fortune in October. I think it's cursed.)
Speaking of Christmas, I'm sick of it. I'm tired of stuffing myself with sugary sweets, I'm tired of wrapping presents, and I'm tired of the kids asking to open the presents already under the tree. But mostly I'm tired of Christmas songs on the radio, which no longer cheer me as they did on Thanksgiving weekend when I started listening to them.
There have been times when I've wanted to run screaming from the house upon hearing the first few chords of "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus," which is, let's face it, a song about a kid witnessing his mother cheating on his father with the dude that's supposed to be bringing him presents--only the kid doesn't realize what's really going on. This makes me wonder--was the father wearing a Santa suit on Christmas Eve? Because if he wasn't in costume, wouldn't the kid recognize his father, if indeed it was his father skulking around the dark house? Wouldn't this recognition negate the need to sort out what his mother was doing under the mistletoe with some happy guy in the red suit? And why would it have been a "laugh" if his father had "only seen Mommy kissing Santa Claus last night?" It wouldn't be funny at all. Quite the contrary. This is what years of therapy are made of.
And so I've been thinking about all of this, how the true meaning of Christmas is buried beneath convoluted Christmas songs and flat tires, and I've decided I'm done. I'm ready to take the tree down and start making New Year's resolutions. So I say to you, Merry Christmas already. And Bah Humbug.
