tacky Christmas

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like (Tacky) Christmas, and a License for Bad Behavior

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I knew my pink skeleton from Halloween could become a year-round decoration!

I adore tacky Christmas decorations.  I like the nice ones too, but I can identify with “decorate with what you can find.”  A discarded Bud Light bikini bimbo cardboard display from last summer’s beer promotion at the drive thru can be made festive, if that’s all you have.   Some rednecks up in the west side of Marion did that one year and I’m still kicking myself in the ass for not having a camera handy to capture that moment.

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Just hang some tinsel and beer cans off of her (like pasties) and you’re all set!

Dad absolutely loathed the holidays when we were growing up, and because we were poor, he waited until the last minute to begrudgingly allow us to put up anything.  One year I stuffed a left over live Christmas tree from one of those tree lot sales after it had ended (on December 23rd, because there were no decorations in the house) in my ’72 Super Beetle and brought it home and set it up.  Dad didn’t like it, but I think he let me go ahead and do it just because it was so much fun for him to watch me unload this nice, crooked, sappy, spiky tree out of the passenger’s seat of said Super Beetle in the middle of an ice storm.  He has a sick sense of humor too.  The tree ended up a bit less than five feet tall and resembled a Charlie Brown tree- but it was free.

Now I have an artificial tree, and it’s pink.  Jerry is afraid that a real Christmas tree is a fire hazard (coming from Mr. Let’s-Drink-a-Fifth-of-Wild-Turkey-Then-Start-a-Fire-in-the-Fireplace-with-Gasoline) so I decided to humor him.

small pink tree

Tastefully tacky?

Jerry can be quite the asshole with absolutely no provocation or logical explanation at all, but any kind of holiday is a sort of license for bad behavior for him.  If he can show his ass, get me upset, or otherwise make a Drama Queen Scene, that’s when he will do it.  Every holiday.  Especially Christmas.  I’m better off to go to 12 Noon Christmas Eve service at church, and then get out of town for the next 36-48 hours.  Guaranteed.

holiday-badattitude

He wonders why on every holiday I beat feet and go somewhere else to wait it out.  Holidays are the few times a year where going to my oldest sister’s actually is a more attractive option than staying home.  This is even taking into consideration her obnoxious in-laws (and I thought mine were raised by wolves) and the fact that she beat the hell out of me every day for the first thirteen years of my life.

Yesterday (Thanksgiving) was no exception to his holiday angst.  I figured if I was out of the house by 8 AM I would be OK.   He had gotten really shitfaced Wednesday night so I figured he would still be sleeping good when I took off. Unfortunately he had set his alarm (?) for 6:30 (he doesn’t get up that early when he has to work) so I got the full “Where’s my breakfast?” and “What did you do with my pills/smokes/underwear/any other item that I normally never touch?” rant.  I was in no mood for his little tirade, and I basically told him he could shove his smokes up his ass and eat shit for all I care.

brat tantrum

56, going on 2.

I’m still waiting to see if he has the locks changed today and/or if he throws my shit out on the lawn.  That wouldn’t surprise me, because Jerry is the poster child for conditional “love” if that’s what you call it.  I stopped believing in the concept of romantic “love” many, many years ago.  As long as I run and fetch and kiss his ass, he claims to “love” me.  But the minute I assert any type of resistance to his constant shit-slinging, he goes on and on about how I don’t do anything for him, ya-da, ya-da, just like a brat child who doesn’t get his way.  I put up with his shit mostly because I’m old, and for the sake of the dogs.

I don’t understand why this brat child in a geezer’s body, who would have absolutely no clue how to do more to maintain himself than the most basic of personal hygiene, wants to threaten me.  That’s not very smart on his part.  Before you tell me to get out, be careful what you wish for.  You might just get it- and when I am done, I am done.  Just ask my ex.  Only this time I won’t show nearly as much mercy, and I will get a better attorney.  You don’t want me to channel my inner ruthless bitch.  Trust me on that.

forgiveness

I guess I just have to forgive stupid, because I can’t fix it.

Sometimes I wish I could just go from Halloween and skip to about May 1.  I am not a terribly big fan of the holidays, mostly because of Jerry’s bad behavior.  I know I need to sincerely examine why I put up with it because my tolerance of it defies logic.  On one level I’m smarter than that, but on another level, I am letting my emotions govern my behavior. “Following my heart” and showing mercy have always gotten me into trouble.

I’ll see how he behaves tonight.

Tacky Christmas Begins at Home, Leave Me Alone, Dammit, and Holiday Angst

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I said I was going to put it up and I did.  What a delightully tacky pink tree, complete with all the Hello Kitty ornaments and so forth that I could scrounge. I know Jerry hates it but (unlike his normal whiny self) he’s not really making a point to protest, even though it is in the picture window where God and everyone can see it lit up from the road.   I have been so unfailingly, maddeningly busy that it’s been an effort to keep up just on survival things like eating, bathing and personal landscaping.  I am surprised I did this much decorating.  It’s sad because I enjoy Christmas for the most part, and this year I am not dead broke like I normally am this time of year.  The trade off is that I don’t have time to do anything extra, so whoever doesn’t enjoy their check and bag of little goodies can go blow.

I think the most frustrating part of the holidays is dealing with crowds.  I detest shopping and traipsing about amongst the unwashed hordes anyway, but from about Halloween to January 15th or so, it’s like perennial Welfare Day at the grocery in every store you have to go in.  

Then the stores compound the problem by having limited time specials.  The Kroger Marketplace ran an interesting special where you got points to buy non-grocery merchandise based on your spending, which was cool, except that the entire Central Ohio area had exactly three days to redeem their points.  Those three days (Dec. 1,2,3) would normally have been “avoid the grocery at all costs” for someone like me already, because the 1st being a Friday AND Welfare Day means the place is going to be a farking zoo.   But my greed got the best of me- since they owed me $90 worth of non-grocery merchandise and I wasn’t going to pass that up- and I ended up getting folded, spindled and mutilated all the way through the Kroger store to get a vacuum cleaner.  Granted, it was a free vacuum cleaner, and the way I burn through them because of the dogs, I wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity despite my claustrophobia and borderline agoraphobia.   I just don’t understand why on God’s green earth that a store would run a limited time promotion on days when they are already going to be insanely busy to begin with.  Why not do something like that at the end of February when nobody wants to go anywhere or do anything and the stores are pretty much desolate?

If it were up to me Christmas would be in August.  Nothing else happens in August other than it’s bloody hot, but there’s a lot more daylight available for all that traipsing about in the stores.  I don’t like wandering through miles of parking lots at night trying to seek out my car.  It’s dark and there is usually at least one form of precipitation going on too which makes the whole process all the more miserable. 

I am delighted that relatives generally don’t come to stay with us.  Jerry alone is like cleaning up after a horde of hogs.   Being invaded by house guests at this point in my life would drive me positively apeshit.  I don’t mind going to other people’s houses for holiday functions, etc. because I can leave when I’ve had enough.  It’s harder to throw people out when you’ve had enough of them, and truth be told most people wear on my patience very quickly.   The good thing is, not too many people want to stay in a house with three large dogs, especially when two of the dogs only like a very select few people.  Sheena pretty much likes anyone with a pulse who will pay attention to her, including kids.  Clara’s approved list is pretty short.  Lilo’s is even shorter.  All the dogs love Steve-o and Hannah, and Bob and Debbie, but beyond that, there aren’t many people who can come in the house unsupervised.  I like it that way. 

It sounds pathetic to most, but I would genuinely enjoy a few silent sanity days to myself.  If I could do the ivory tower get away for awhile I would- three or four days of silence and contemplation would be a dream, but it’s probably not happening anytime soon.  I’ve not even had a chance to start on the Stephen King novel I’ve had for a month now. 

Jerry has taken it on himself to get into the zombie movie genre.  I’ve always enjoyed the classic ’80’s slashers but the only zombie movie I really got into was Shaun of the Dead.    Go figure, as it’s British humor.  I get to see enough real life zombies every time I have to fight my way through the grocery store at the beginning of the month.

Go zombies.  I saw this one in the grocery store parking lot on an old Crown Vic: