Warming Up to Christmas, Scrinch -Style

I am just warming up to Christmas-Holiday-ish stuff.
It's not that I'm exactly a Scrooge, per se, but I haven't caught up with all the festivities because I like to bathe in my sense of smug, condescending pah-tooey at all the consumerism and what-not. Oh, that's pretty much the complete description of Scroogery, isn't it?

Sorry. Female Grinch was the closest pic I could find to the me-Scrooge reference. Work with me, huh?



I had some identity crisis in my youth. Conflict of beliefs: Christian vs. Non-Christian, and then I was seriously traumatized to wait up all night for Santa and not discover that he was not real, but that he had skipped us. With all the carols claiming he wouldn't bring presents if you were bad, and then waiting up all night for him to appear and him being a no-show, I naturally assumed I had been very, very bad. So on Christmas Eve 1979, my Christmas Spirt meter took a nose dive, and never quite recovered, especially since Hannukah Harry left no gifts, either.
The next morning, there were pajamas. Socks. Underwear. Oranges and walnuts in stockings. No Princess Leia double bun-wig. No Strawberry Shortcake lipgloss. It was all very anticlimactic and the bitter seed was planted. I joined the forces of the Grinch [except I hated him for yanking poor Max around].

Now that I have a Wee One, I decided to break all the rules. I let her plunge into Christmas as far as she wants while I buck The System. Determined that she should not suffer the cruelty of dependence on self esteem from Santa, I told her early on that there wasn't any Santa. That people pretend-believed for fun. 
Her response was that I was completely out of the loop, she had someone on the inside, who had phoned Santa directly. We've argued about this numerous times, I've pleaded with her, even told her that I am Santa. All to no avail.

So my other semi-stick-it-to-da-man Christmas thing is that I buy presents from Thanksgiving through December 17th and put on my Santa hat and give them to her along the way. She's usually right there when I buy them, too. This makes it fun because I am the kind of person who can't WAIT to give presents, plus I hate wrapping! On her end, she gets the cool stuff that the other kids all have to wait for, which makes her kinda zoomin'. Zoomin' in grade school is very important, if you don't remember. I made that expression up just now, but I think it works. [Dec 17th because she always flies out of state for Christmas. That's custody stuff].

Anyhow, here's a review I wrote of one of the toys she just got. If you're thinking of buying the Barbie Secret Password Journal, consider this:


Good luck getting your child back into the diary once she closes it. Despite saying the correct password roughly eleventy jillion times in different voices, at different distances, at different pitches, the snooty British double oh seven voice repeats "Password does not match. Please enter your password." The second time you fail, annoying sirens blast and something to the effect of "New intruder!" narcs on you, even though you're just trying to help a seven year old open her journal full of super secret heart doodles.
Whatever technology they have employed here to protect such secrets as "Bubble gum is my favrit lollipop," rest assured that it is safe. Hackers beware, Barbie is no dumb blonde when it comes to security.
Protectors of liberty and leaders of the western world, Barbie is on to something here. Perhaps a meeting of the minds is in order. A lunch at the Pentagon? Our freedom may very well depend on the superior cyber-steel password technology known to Barbie.
In the meantime, we'll be sitting here, resisting the urge to throw the journal against the wall to break it open and shut up The Voice.
P.S. It wouldn't hurt to take a look at Ken, too.

When is it Time to Disown Your Uncle?

Sometimes it has to be done. Tonight the decision was clear for me. I will never see that uncle again.

I could forgive the annoying trangressions that built up over time, things that seemed to heal with a little distance. But it just never got better. I heard it put something like this: Anyone can get survive a crisis; it’s the tiny, everyday ankle biting that will get you in the end.

So while there was nothing fatal with this uncle, tonight was enough, because he tampered with my food.

In the past, it was irritations like when I went hungry because he locked me out of the kitchen after ten p.m. It was “too late” to eat.

I forgave him when he ran up my credit card over what we agreed on, chalking it up to an innocent mistake.

It made me nervous, but I let it pass when his gang barked at me in whatever code they had, mocking me, I’m sure. They would pretend they couldn’t understand me, and stole my money when I tried to pay for food.

All under Uncle Jiang's direction.

On to tonight: Dinner.
Chicken Chow Mein. Exhibit A:

Uncle Jiang's Chinese Take Out

Chicken Chow Mein does not consist of a few spindly shreds from an anemic chicken (? somewhat suspect) smothered in onions. See the two bright orange threads there? Those are purely for medical reasons. They exist only so that the diner can rest assured that she has not suddenly gone color blind from the lack of real green chow mein vegetables.

On the other hand, Uncle Jiang may have been looking out for my best interests, knowing the wicked ways of men, perhaps he filled the chicken chow mein exclusively with onions to keep single men at a kilometer's distance. Oh Uncle Jiang! Have I completely misread you?

Exhibit B:

Egg Foo Young

Yes, that dark brown ca-ca on the upper left is the egg. Yes, I was so hungry that I hurried and ate some, lest Uncle Jiang chase me out of the kitchen at ten o'clock. Yes, my stomach is doing some Chinese martial art on itself.

See the brown "gravy" stuff? Egg Foo Young traditionally comes with a light brown gravy, thickened with a bit of cornstarch, and the barest hint of black pepper. Good gravy gives American style gravy a run for its money. This? Is sloppy, lazy bottled hoisin sauce poured into a styrofoam cup. You think I don't know, Uncle Jiang? You think you can pull the wool over my eyes and finely tuned palate? I have the taste buds of a thousand generations of picky eaters.

I think we're done here.