My Bah-Hum-Bug Holiday list

     It's December! Not quite sure when that happened but here it is. I absolutely LOVE the holidays. I like the twinkling lights, the glitter, shiny ornaments, bright, big bows, the crackling of a fire place (I dont have a fire place, but I'll pretend I do), and especially that whole magic of Christmas feeling where everyone is more giving. Even that seems to be dwindling as the years go on though, or is that just me being a Debbie Downer?
     Agh, but I digress. The magic of the season isn't all that magical. In reality, I always get anxious around this time of the year. I hate the feeling of needing to fill the tree with lots of shiny wrapped gifts. I hate the holdiay's hustle and bustle in the stores where people are cranky and pushy and all ready to fight over a "deal". I know I'm coming off sounding a big Grinch'ish but I assure you I love the holidays. My husband and I always go all out decorating both inside and outside our home. It typically takes us 3 full days to get all of our outdoor lights set up and running in a manner in which we are cautiously optimistic that we wont blow all the fuses in our home to power them up. Still, there are things about the holiday season that I am just so not a fan of. So here's my grown up holiday bah-hum-bug list.

1. I'd consider myself to be fairly charitable and giving and I still do readily pull out change for the bell ringers, hand a $10 bill to a person in need, donate to charity and fundraisers for non-profit organizations. However, every year it seems like I'm digging deeper and deeper in my pocket for money I don't really have to give to others. It's like I'm being asked left and right for money. Example, just in the past two to three weeks I've been asked to give money to this or that at least 6 times. I'm not rich people! But then I feel terrible by saying no. I almost feel like I need to learn some stealth moves or at least some good excuses to get out of these monetary donation requesting situations. And this is the first year that I've actually felt annoyance towards the bell ringers outside of the stores. Do I need to feel guilty for buying hair bow ribbon at Hobby Lobby when I dont give any money to the Salvation Army? Because I do...and that aggravates me.
2. I'm gonna be honest here, I abhor wrapping presents! I'm terrible at it. It's probably my own fault because I'm not patient enough to really look at the package and figure out how much paper I need before I go about cutting the paper and find myself ending up 2 inches short and stuffing a make-shift wrapping paper patch over that spot. Packages are pretty and wrapped under the tree, but I hate the hours spent wrapping all of this nonsense.
3. Pet peeve...and this is an OCD pet-peeve (that was your warning): When people put a hodge podge of holiday lights up outside. If you're gonna do multi-colored lights then commit to that. I hate seeing a string of white lights here, and then a string of multi-colored flashing lights there, and then you have your snoopy dog house and a baby Jesus and a couple of strands of blue lights that are half burnt out on a bush. What is that?  Why go through all the trouble of putting lights up if you're just going for this hap-hazard craptastic look?!
4. "Tacky and irrelevant"-yep, that's a lyric from one of my old school favorites, Taking Back Sunday. And, it applies so aptly well to those ridiculous lawn decorations I've begun seeing over the past few years. What does a blow up carousel with little animals in the seats have to do with Christmas? Since when does Santa Claus fly in an air plane? Why the heck do you have Smurfs characters wearing scarfs on your lawn? In general, I'm not a fan of all those inflatable, overly obscene decorations but at least the ones that are like snow globes or a snowman make some sort of sense. I still think they are obnoxious but i'll give you points for at least avoiding the irrelevant aspect. This past Christmas I told my best friends and across the street neighbors that I got the shitty end of the stick. When I look out my window I see their multi-colored light reindeer and inflatable snowman (that looks drunk because the wind keeps blowing him sideways) while they get to look out their window and get to see the traditional and timeless beauty that is our holiday setup of white and red lights all perfectly lined up on the roof, along the drive, and the perimeter of our yard. You're welcome Beck family. 
5. Speaking of my best friends, (Robbie will be highly annoyed if she ever finds my blog and reads this-in which case, please know that I adore you Robbie and you go on being you and doing you, but I still had to post this.) Robin is one of "those" people. The people who like to put a big red ball on the front of their suv and reindeer antlers on each side. Oh good gracious! I don't mind a holiday bow attached to the front of the vehicles grill, but why are we dressing our vehicles up like elves and reindeer now? I'm not an advocate of car accidents but it would be a sight to see an elf vehicle having collided with a reindeer vehicle! This elf and reindeer car dress up habit is almost as obnoxiously tacky as those beyond ridiculous car eyelashes some people are cracked out enough to put on their vehicles!

     That said, to each their own. As Grinch'ish as I sound, I do love Christmas and the spirit of giving. I like cold nights where you can see your breath curl out in the air in front of you. I love dark skies and the twinkling lights, pajamas and hot cocoa. I love celebrating the birth of Jesus and sharing in the excitement each day brings as Christmas comes closer with my lil's. 

Merry Christmas All (even those of you on my tacky offenders list)!

Always,

Amy

Stop making it so difficult to stuff my face Starbursts!

     So this may be obnoxiously random but as I was finger picking through my kiddo's left over Halloween goodies and collecting all of the Starburst candy-I came to the realization that those Starburst candy making people are assholes! Of my total candy consuming time, I spent far more time unwrapping each of the fruity, juicy candies than I did in actually delighting in their chewy-sweet goodness.  There HAS to be an easier way people!! Why must each piece be individually wrapped? Couldn't they just stack the tasty, blocky goodness in the foilized (yeah, I made that word up) wrapper and call it good? Does anyone else ever stab the skin under their finger nails when they try to pry back the waxy wrappers on these bad boys? I can not be the only one that has done this....several times. Shouldn't this be a health and safety concern?

A busy October

     October was crazy. And, I'm glad it's over. That being said, my little doll Miss Emme turned 3! Birthday party plans went completely ka-put for her but it all ended up working out. We had lots of family here, our closest friends, and Emme doll was spoiled all weekend long. Quite honestly, it made me wonder what the heck I'm supposed to get her for Christmas.
     Shortly after Emme doll's birthday I graduated with my BA in Behavioral Science. Man, it was a long road and took me way longer than I had envisioned but it's done and TOOT, TOOT (that's my horn blowing), I graduated with honors as a Magna Cum Laude with a 3.89 gpa. So, the plan was to stay home with Emme doll after graduating until she enters school. In the meantime I was going to do my Master's degree and then start working. But, life is expensive and it's always been hard for me to be a stay at home mom and not work or go to school so the job hunt has ensued.
     I hate job hunting. I hate job hunting in a town like this one which makes work opportunities very limited. I don't like job hunting...but I think I mentioned that. Anyhow, the hunt for a career worthy job that makes it even worth putting Emme in full time child care has proved elusive thus far.
     October also included all the events I had coordinated for the stables. Good gracious those events make me really grateful that October is over. They all went well and had a good turn out but by the time I got through them I wanted nothing to do with Halloween festivities and felt I'd cheated my own kiddos out of some of the general Halloween fun because I was too busy being a crazed event coordinator for a "job" that doesn't even pay. I am so glad October is over!
     We wrapped October up by celebrating our 9th wedding anniversary which was spent with Dustin working and then at our sons school performance in the evening. No cards, no flowers, no gifts because we are broke...or at least, I feel broke. My financial anxiety always mounts this time of year because we have to manage to get through both kiddo's birthdays, halloween candy (that shit is expensive!) and costumes our anniversary, the costs of thanksgiving day, before we can even begin thinking about putting gifts under the Christmas tree!
     Anyhow, I'm really glad October is over. Not sure if I relayed that thought clearly.

Old-Sweater Friend-an open letter.

Dear old-sweater friend,
     Why can't we just do what is best for ourselves without it having to be hurtful to someone else?  Being nice and letting it go over and over again is beyond frustrating. I never signed up to be your scapegoat. I never asked to assuage the constant weight of your animosity and internal issues. It's okay, we all have issues of some sort. I could list and categorize my own.  Spend your time trying to work yours out instead of wasting time packaging them up with defensive body language, wrapped in angry words, and thrown with hostile one-liners. You keep walking away from me, leaving all this crumpled-up, stained and torn, dirty laundry at my feet, in piles. You never come back to collect it. You never wash it, fold it, and place it neatly in a box for donating. You never pick it up and throw it away. You just keep leaving it piled up and walk away.

      It's okay for me to care about you-I considered you a friend after all, but it's not okay for you to expect me to continue to accept and subject myself to your own insecurities and uncertainties. All the negativity you
assign to others only turns into a projection of the self you keep trying to bury yourself under, to cover-up, to disguise and hide away from yourself. You're hostile and angry but I don't believe it's others that make you feel this way. Maybe you're angry with yourself for feeling this way. Maybe you're disappointed because you know the truth but don't know how to fix it. Maybe you think if you pull at one thread, you'll become completely unraveled. And maybe you're right. And maybe, just maybe it's time to change that sweater that you've cuddled yourself in for so long. Maybe it's time for a change.  
     I care about you, but I never liked doing laundry, and I don't want to borrow your sweater.


                                                                                                  

I know I can't, but I want you to believe I can.

     So yesterday evening I turned into a raging lunatic. Nice way to start a blog post huh? Well it's true. In the midst of trying to write three different papers for school, contacting other military spouses whose husbands are gearing up for a deployment, attending key spouse meetings and squadron briefings, and getting an event up and running for my work...I decided to just completely lose my shit. I realize I could write that in a phrase that's less graphic, but it wouldn't do justice to my raving out of control at my husband, and becoming completely overwhelmed by my daughters fussiness and ability to create a mess in her room for the third time that day. And my son, well I guess he's seen me go into one of these modes before because he simply stood back and when he did come forward it was to kindly ask if he could help me. How embarrassing right?  What's worse is that it was all kicked off simply because I couldn't find some used horseshoes that I had brought home from work (I work at an equestrian center) a few months prior and needed for above mentioned event for today. 
     Guess what, the event at the stables ran smoothly and the fact that I didn't have the horseshoes to give away as prizes failed to cause any concern or event a mention among the families that attended the event. So my whole screaming, stomping, and door slamming, over-grown temper tantrum only managed to make me look ridiculous, scare my kiddos, and hurt my husbands feelings. Good job Amy! After my perfect display of how not to behave, I rushed off to a pre-deployment meeting I had to attend and came home to find my children happy to see me and my husband completely willing to forgive my antics. I'm a lucky girl, and I apologized later to my husband and to my children while I was tucking them in and kissing their cheeks. 
     This isn't the first time I've lost my cool and let's be honest, it probably won't be the last time. It gave me flash backs though of times in my childhood when my own mother would come home in a sour mood and we all walked on eggshells to avoid the wrath. Thats not to say every day of my childhood was spent like this. My mother and father did many things right in raising us and I'm thankful for the childhood I had. It got me thinking though, how many other moms have these kind of moments (or maybe even husbands) as well? I'm not sure about husbands because mine doesn't behave that way at all. For me, it comes from being overwhelmed and it's usually my own fault because I often put too much on my plate and I don't like to share.  Meaning, I hate to leave things up for someone else to do. Call it a control freak, blame it on my obsessive-compulsive tendencies; whatever it is-it's become an interference. Why do we as moms think we need to do every thing? I know I'm not the only mom that feels this way. Why do we think we must always be up to the standards of other moms? We have this uncontrollable need for approval by other moms, but whose to say they're doing it "right" or doing it any better than we are?  Couldn't it be just as likely that despite whatever outward appearance they present, that they themselves are just looking around to others for approval as well? How many of you moms out there completely lose your cool like I did over the smallest thing? 
     A few years back I went to a counselor to address some issues. I'll save those for another post one day perhaps. Anyhow, after maybe two or three months of sessions the counselor told me something so profoundly insightful yet utterly obvious that I think I wasn't able to pick my jaw up off the floor for at least a few days. What was this profound revelation?  She told me that I have a need to put on a show. In everything I do, I want others to view me in a certain way. I can't show others that I can't handle it, that I can't do it on my own. I can't show that I'm stressed or overwhelmed because that would just suggest that I couldn't in fact, handle "it". I can't show others that everything isn't just peachy keen. And that counselor of mine, well, she was absolutely right. Unfortunately counselors can help you see things but that doesn't mean they wave a magic wand and suddenly that broken piece of you is magically fixed. So here I am, lets see...5 years later, and still having this same issue. I don't need people to see me as perfect, or to think things in my life are perfect. Which really is a good thing because it's too obvious that things aren't perfect-because they aren't perfect for anyone, it's an impossibility. What I do need though, is for people to think I can handle everything. Pile it on gals, I've got this! And on top of that, I'll be smiling, friendly, and bring some cookies for the kids too! Yep, that's me. 
     And this whole realization only makes me look back at other times in my life where this same trend presented itself. This isn't something new. I remember crying at my desk in junior high during math tests because I knew I was going to get a problem wrong. I was in an advanced class, and as far as I remember I received A's and B's for the class but what stands out is always feeling like I was failing. I always felt one-step behind, grasping to catch up to some imaginary person who was just ahead of me doing it all, and doing it all well. I'd do the same at home. Huddled in my room over homework and becoming completely overwhelmed and frustrated with an assignment that I didn't completely understand. I'd work myself into such a fit that I'd be bawling and pulling at my hair. 
     Sometimes this trait of mine has been a good thing. I'm detail oriented and organized (I love making list's just to cross things off!). I hate to do anything unless I do it well and always want to take it just a step further. I like that everyone told me my OCD tendencies about my homes cleanliness would go away once I had children and I still pride myself in proving those people wrong. See ya'll, I have two kids and go to school full time and do this and that and the next thing but my house is still clean! So, I wonder-do we ever grow out of this? Is there a point where I can be comfortable just "being" and not having to work towards an image of what I want myself to be? Is it something that lessens with age? Is there a point in life where we realize that no matter what we do or how we appear, there's no award for creating an image of who we are? 
      ...............................if there was an award, I'd want a perfectly pressed ribbon, not one of those tacky, plastic trophies that are over sized and eventually become flecked from the cheap, gold paint flaking off.