Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Annual Xmas Rant 2009

Don't get me started on Christmas! Bring the boxes up. Unpack the boxes. Untangle the lights (that takes a couple of hours). Plug 'em up. They don't work. Spend another hour trying the find the screwed up bulb. Give up trying to find it. Go to the store & start cussing because they don't have the same type of lights this year. Of course my wife wants the lights on the tree to all be the same so I spend $25 on new lights. Go home & one of the kids will step on the string, breaking some of the bulbs. Not enough replacements. Go back to the store & they don't have any replacement bulbs. Buy another string plus one string for spare. Go home & get the ladder out. Cuss again because my hands are turning blue in the cold. Plug 'em up. Blow a fuse. Can't find the flash light because the kids/wife have used it & didn't put it back. Get the power back on. Start putting up the millions of things wife has collected over the last 20 years. Watch her cry when she breaks a couple of 'em. Fusses at me 'cause she is in a bad mood over taking so long & broken ornaments. Kids are starving. Run & get some fast food & spend another $20. Get home & finish the decorating. Put on the Christmas music & wife wants to take pictures for "memories." No film or batteries. Go back to the store for both. Store doesn't have either. End up buying 2 disposable cameras. Fume some more. Get home & everyone has eaten everything, including my dinner. Take enough pictures to compile a National Geographic pictorial for a year. Wife fusses at me for being grumpy --- spent the entire Christmas budget in one day, starving, & smoke coming out my ears. Dog & cats get in the tree. Tree falls over. More broken ornaments. Use bungee cords attached to the stair railing to secure the tree. Wife cries some more over more broken ornaments. I retreat to my desk to get away from the very tired but wound up kids. Wifey yells because I have to put up the now-empty boxes. I put up the boxes. Family sits around & admire the decorations. I'm still fuming. Take Pepto. Sleep on the couch.

Don't get me started on Christmas!!!!!!!!

1 comment:

Gene S said...

Glad to see you back hitting the keyboard again.

I LOVE this one--my sentiments exactly. A decorating fend wife can mess our usually sloppy man's world all up!

It remids me of a group of men who called themselves "Men's Night Out" in Rocky Mount, NC. Basically is was an excuse to go to a place in the woods beside the Tar River. Get away from wives for some "man time." It started some 20 years ago.

Man time is usually defined in RM as:

Beer drinking
Dirty joke telling
Flatulance
Beer drinking
Telling lies
Talking about crazy wives
Beer drinking
Flatulance

Us guys pretty well know the above is just the start before climbing into the tent for a night of snoring.

THEN THE WIVES GOT INVOLVED!!

Now MNO consists of:

Social arrogance as to "who gets invited"
A name band and selling tickets
Permanent booths people can visit
Who has the "neatest" booth this year
What we will do to get ahead next year no matter what the cost

Again, us men know the rest of the deal.

Keeping it simple is my idea of a great Christmas. Hey, I work hard all week and it's no fun to spend hours / days getting those blasted things down. We are in a small house now and the blamed tree obscures my vision of the HDTV. Outside of my wife dressed in a filmy negligee (which might happen every 10 years if I'm lucky), nothing is more lovely than Georgia Tech beating Clemson in HD!!! Go Jackets!!!!