Your Weekly Antics, The Three Days of Christmas Edition...12-21-23

Well kids, we’re in the final days leading up to Christmas. Some may sing about and celebrate the 12 days of Christmas, but here at The Antics, like the Drummer Boy, we like to march to the beat of our own drum; we will be celebrating the 3 days of Christmas. You looked up this week and realized you must’ve blacked out sometime after Thanksgiving because you have minimal time left til Christmas to get it together. All this lolly gagging and procrastination, trying to remove the devils plastic from those candy canes before dropping them in your hot cocoa, has caught up to you. You think you better get a move on or you’re really going to be screwed. Exhibit 1, Santa sighting at Sue Miller's, drinking on the job...

Here’s what I’ve got…

1. You check your notes app on your phone b/c you had promised yourself you were going to keep better track of what you bought for who, so not to over buy and/or forget someone all together. You realize you still suck and didn’t keep up with that list – okay, so you never started that list. You will now have to wing it. It’s okay, you’ve got this - you do a mental review of purchases and hop online. What can you buy, even if under normal time efficient circumstances, you would not consider – a gift that will in fact arrive before Christmas with enough leeway to allow you a little bit of cushion to give you time to wrap. Flashlights and batteries it is. You order 10, just to be sure. You tell yourself that everyone's needs and wants a flashlight...these will be handed out to your dearest friends and relatives.

2. You hit confirm order. It dawns on you hours later that you were not in fact a complete slacker and did order gifts for those particular people in your life. You look in your secret stash and of course can’t find those gifts. You dig through your emails looking for order confirmations and pat yourself on the back when you have written confirmation that items were purchased. Well aren’t you fabulous, you’re like one of Santa’s number one champion Elves after all, but now to find where you put them. Your house isn’t that big, they must be somewhere. You dig through every closet and place of storage you have, not finding any of these missing items - you now have closets to clean because you have opened Pandora’s box and there’s no going back – there is stuff everywhere. You start second guessing yourself and the Amazon and UPS delivery guys you have been on a first name basis with, and wonder if they were actually delivered and made their way in to the house. Did Gibson got a hold of them and bring them out to the yard? You go outside to look around because this is a very real possibility, stranger things have happened. Perhaps the missing gifts are in the yard somewhere with the missing coffee pot lid, work phone charger (sorry Jeff,)  and glasses. No luck, but you do find an empty dismantled Amazon box. Just enough evidence to plant that seed of suspicion in your mind that gifts may have actually found their way in to Gibson's belly. You remind yourself to keep an eye on the yard and what may or may not make their way through Gibson's innards. You check your mental calendar to determine if his next vet visit is coming up, or if you should be proactive, assume the worst, and schedule a vet visit in the event that otter box you bought for one of the kids doesn’t find its way safely out of the dog.  

3. While barreling through the closets looking for the purchased and lost gifts, you come across a gift you bought months ago that you promised yourself you’d get in the mail in a timely manner as it needs to get itself across the country by Christmas. This gift naturally was supposed to be combined with other little gifts you were going to wrap up with care and put all together for that special and personal touch, and now three days left, the gift recipient will be lucky to lay eyes on this package by the New Year. You are reminded you do this to yourself annually. You mentally kick yourself in the head for not having the gift mailed directly to its recipient who would probably not have noticed those little things that add that special and personalized touch in the first place. You mentally chastise yourself for being an idiot, again.  

4. You locate the gifts that you've been ordering and finally open the packages. Why would you have opened them when you received them to make sure they are what you ordered? You find that you've ordered one of your kids four of the same thing. Same size, same color. You are reminded why you should not allow yourself to shop on line in the middle of the night.

5. You wrap that gift that needs to get across the country or who the hell knows where by yesterday. You throw it in a box; a box similar to one it could have easily been shipped in with free shipping, by the company you purchased the item from. You tape it all up, address it, congratulate yourself on a job well done, take a look to your left and see all those other small gifts that were supposed to be included in that box that has been secured with an entire roll of rage filled packing tape. So much packing tape, you're sure the recipient will need special equipment to open. That same gift you could have saved yourself all this trouble over had you just shipped it directly from its place of origin for free. You take those smaller items, consider setting them on fire, tell them to go F*&^ themselves and their uncles, and head out the door to the post office to pay three times the amount you should have to get that stupid gift in the mail and to its recipient by Christmas. While standing in the line 18 people deep, you secretly hope your package spontaneously combusts before it gets to its final destination because you now have an irrational hate towards the gift for messing with you and not mailing itself. While in line behind the mouth breather, it dawns on you that you left the house in such a huff that you failed to grab that pile of F%$&^%G Christmas cards, another $50 well spent. You have concluded that if that gift and all its packing tape does get to its final destination successfully by Christmas, the item won’t work and require returning. Of course it will, that’s just the way things go. You say screw those cards, they're out to get you too...you hope for the best, it's now in the hands of the U.S. Postal Service. Good luck and God speed.

6. You put off the wrapping. That’s what the wee hours of Christmas morning are for because it’s always fun to wrap after you’ve over indulged in Christmas cheer via shots of Jameson and spiked egg nogg.

7. You realize all those crafting projects you started to make for those special people in your life - a one of a kind hand made gift with love are still incomplete. You have no back up plan gift to give them to hold them over until those projects are finished. You think, that’s okay, I’ll give them a bottle of wine that I have stashed for safe keeping before you realize two things. 1., One of your gift recipients is only 9, so that’s not acceptable and 2., you once again remember that secret stash was plowed through last night when you were stressing about what the hell you were going to wrap up for some of these people.

8. You remember you forgot poor Aunt Edna and her cousins brothers half- sister and decide, wine - but wait, that's a no go because you drank all the regifting wine as mentioned in #7. You dig through the cabinet anyway in the off chance there's an extra stray bottle way in the back when you vaguely recollect tucking in to that last and final bottle earlier in the week. It may have been Tuesday or Wednesday when you were having a break down that you had less than a week to get your shit together to pull off the merriest of Christmas’s. Fa - la - la - la frickin la - Now you’re looking at old glasses and dishes you received as wedding gifts 25 years ago you’ve never used, convincing yourself you can pull off, passing them off, as brand new gifts to give to Edna’s cousins brothers half- sister. You make sure you scrape the Service Merchandise stickers off the side of the box that you discovered when wiping off that thick layer of dust. You wrap said gift in the only wrapping paper you could find that smells like the attic, or is that the gift that smells like the attic? You again pat yourself on the back for a job well done. You - are - awesome.

9. You can still put off the wrapping, you’ll get to it. After all, you just proved to yourself and everything Christmas that you are still a superb wrapper and once all gifts are located, it'll take you no time to get everything wrapped and under the tree. This may be the alcohol talking. You pull down the attic stairs to take a gander at what the hell you've got going on up there and if you can in fact locate all that discount wrapping paper you purchased last December 26th. You re think your life's decisions as you try not to fall out of the attic. Oh look...there's all the Easter decorations. Maybe you should take those down from the attic now...save yourself the trouble later.

10. It's now Christmas Eve...you think of all those parents with little ones who are home assembling those big surprise gifts that only come from Santa. You think to yourself, those poor bastards – They’re home right now learning the hard way they should've read the fine print which indicates to all rookie parents that Santa may bring the big gifts, but that lazy bastard and his useless elves don’t assemble a thing. Thank goodness that’s not you this year, you've got your own problems. There you sit, contemplating wrapping the remaining gifts with inside out TJ Maxx and grocery store paper bags because you’re the moron who can’t find the wrapping paper you swore you bought an abundance of last year - that paper you purchased at 75% off is doing you a lot of good hidden somewhere in the abyss that is your house. You have concluded that you are now in fact, one of those people who buys things in advance for next year and then lose them. Should you run out to the 24 hour CVS? Are they open on Christmas Eve? You decide not, you're not doing it, just out of principle. In the Christmas spirit you keep on swearing while changing the tried and true lyrics to every Christmas song being played while looking for more paper bags and markers because you can't find the gift tags either. All located gifts are wrapped and tossed haphazardly under the tree and you scramble off to catch a few hours of sleep before you are up and at it spreading Christmas cheer. While doing so, you trip over the bag of wrapping paper that is sticking out from under your bed, of course you did - again, because that's just how things go.

And last but not least...may you all have a carefree and fun Christmas full of all the wrapping supplies you need! Have a great weekend!