Warning: May Contain Nuts

I like Christmas time for lots of reasons but I have to admit that the movie factor is a big one. There are a few great holiday movies and some that I don’t especially care for, but I’ll give you my favorites here:

In no particular order, I give you

Kim’s Holiday Movie Guide

Elf
If you haven’t seen this (Jenn, did you guys see this yet?), this should be the year. I’m not a huge ‘kid movie’ fan, but this one was legitmately laughable.

National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
This one was just on TBS the other night. I watched it alone, while Jud studied, which is good because I attempted to quote every other line and for some reason other people find that annoying.

The Family Stone
Technically, I haven’t watched this one at Christmas yet and immediately after watching the movie I curled into a pitiful ball of tears and moaned, “I hate that movie” for about twenty minutes. Then, a day or two later, I found myself saying that I loved the movie. And I do. It’s a little predictable and all that, but I liked how everything started out on the surface and not especially meaningful but moved there in the end. I think you’ll like it too.

Dr. Seuss – How the Grinch Stole Christmas
Christmas Eve 1994 was the year that my family actually left the Christmas Eve service while it was still going on in order to watch this cartoon on the Armed Forces Network (unlike here in the States, it was only running once and if you miss it, you miss it for the year). Our favorite character is the dog, probably because he still reminds us of Pogo.

White Christmas
Yeah, it’s a little cheesy, but there’s something about that scene where they are wearing all of those beautiful Christmas costumes that makes me think about my childhood and feel warm inside.

Better Off Dead
Officially, it’s not a Christmas movie, but they do celebrate Christmas and that’s the important part. Have you seen this one? It’s a very 80s teen movie, except it’s unbelievably funny. And the scene with the reindeer costume is sort of priceless. That said, please do not ever purchase this for our child, or I might have to whip you up something that has raisins in it. ‘You like raisins!’

Well, blue I suppose.

Or maybe green.

Of course, there’s always these colors….

(Special thanks to Luke & Kit for the Husker booties! They were our very first present for the baby and we’ve been admiring them quite a bit. Oh, and thanks for the letter too. While I’m at it, thanks to all of you who are sending out Christmas update letters and pictures of your beautiful families. Our fridge is loosing it’s white spots again! Don’t check your mailbox for a letter from us. Just read through the archives. It’s all in there!)

And now for the completely random…
I found this odd little baby with fabric wings while cleaning out my closet the other day and it totally reminded me of the Kinder Ueberraschungen. Anybody feel me on that one?

I’ve been working on a special project. This should amaze you because I am not a craft person. I don’t make things involving thread, stitching, hot glue, neatly punched corners of paper, stickers, pictures or anything else of that nature. It’s just not in me. I don’t really want it to be, mostly because all of those things cost, what I deem to be, foolish amounts of money.

What do I do? This is it. I blog. It’s free. It’s expressive. I can sort of be creative (maybe not right now, or in the last week, month, year or what-have-you. But, you know, if I wanted to be, I could). Yeah, so I write. And I have written something that I was going to share with most of you (some of you, I can’t because I don’t know you….like you, person in Herndon VA whom I’m guessing I have not met, but would maybe like to because you read here sometimes and I hope that means you like what I write. Hi! But I can’t send you my project because I don’t have your address). Then I ran into a ridiculous snag.

Last night, after eating my delicious baked potato with broccoli, onions, cheese and sour cream (I know!), Jud and I packed it up and drove off to Kinkos where I was misled by an employee in training and then scoffed at by a real employee who wanted to charge me $1.25 for each color copy. This man lives in a world where you can’t change prices of things and instead of adjusting one’s price to accommodate a customer who might go elsewhere and thus save the business for your own company, you just encourage them to go elsewhere by saying things like “oh, you can get these a lot cheaper somewhere else.” Yes. Yes, I can. And now, obviously I will. Somewhere like my own house where a printer cartridge full of toner will print off enough of these (and then some) to make me happy and still leave plenty of money in my pocket.

The non-color copies looked really unprofessional. The toner was uneven and a little streaky. There were four machines near my machine that had “out of order” signs on them without a repairman in sight. I’d already been fighting the overwhelming urge to scream, but instead of staying and fighting, I just took flight. To WalMart, where Jud purchased a toner cartridge, some paper and hopefully, a little chunk of my sanity back.

Last Saturday I went to this awesome brunch at Jenn’s place. Her food totally rocked (and she refused help from everyone, so we all showed up empty stomached and empty handed and she filled us to the brim with delicious brunchy treats…plus some (or a ton) of toffee, which totally rocks my face off, every time. It’s THAT good. It’s better than any toffee I’ve ever received in a gift basket or eaten from the mall or any other person’s house (if I’ve eaten toffee at your house and you are not Jenn, I am sorry. I am not trying to hurt your feelings. I do however, think you might want to try this new recipe my friend is going to give me.)) [HUGE DIGRESSION]. So, after all the food and the official polite talking, we inevitably talked about gifts and what we’re buying and whom they are going to, the usual Christmas gift talk.

While we were talking, someone suggested what I thought was a great idea. I could use this idea for a few people. It would be easy! not too much money! fairly personal! and easy! (I thought it bore repeating). So, with much gusto, I asked Jud what he thought. As soon as I got the words out of my mouth and without even turning his face toward me, he said ‘no’. When I pestered him about his ‘no’, he made some really good points and I relented. Back to square one.

I was not feeling too upset about not knowing what to get people because I had one idea for one person and that thought seemed to comfort me. At least I knew what I was getting for _____. Then today I learned that she already has the thing I was going to purchase and now, I am literally back to square one. Not one solid idea.

I’d like to blame the baby for sapping my smarts and creativity and energy, but the truth is that I am just not good at gift giving. I probably never will be and there’s no reason to start thinking things will change now.

While lamenting this problem to Ronke at lunch, she suggested I go here and run some different personality gift giving ideas. So far, I’ve come up with one gift for one person. That’s some progress. If you’re stuck, you might want to check it out. Although, be warned, the gift ideas are not necessarily on target. You should take what they give you and use it as a jumping off point. But at least, you’ll have somewhere to jump from now, some idea of the height from which you stand, some level of the gravity of this endeavor, some importance to lend to the life of another person for whom you care. Maybe that’s a little over the top. Maybe I should just chill out and go to the mall. Maybe I will choose to sleep instead.

Let’s say you and I made a deal. We made an outline of the deal and put it down on paper and possibly had some other people look at it and agree that this was a good deal and that both sides of the deal would benefit from it and all of that. Then, let’s say we both signed the deal and made it all official like.

Later let’s say someone in my family was all “I totally object to this part of the deal!” and maybe “This was a bad deal when you made it so I don’t think I need to honor it.”

What do you suppose the law might say about something like that? What do you suppose I might say about that? I think you are right.

I also think it is time for my side of the family to honor the deal because…

A) You know, that whole legalality of it all thing.
B) I am starting to feel like a total idiot for having to ask you for more and more things to prove that your thing is valid.
C) That family member of mine is really just power tripping and there’s not one thing I can do about it (on this side of the law, I mean).
D) I cannot keep talking about this thing that happened in 2005 when it is almost 2007. It’s making my brain hurt too much.

Or then again, maybe we could all just keep beating this bloated, rotting horse carcass instead of thinking of ways to make next year’s deal more clear and precise. I can see how that might appear to be more fun. I can also see why retention is not as high as it could be. And maybe I could see how nobody doing anything to solve the problem is not really a problem for anybody except me and the other party who agreed to the deal and just a few other people in my family, none of whom have the power to make everyone put down their beating sticks and sit down to work on the future.

I’d speculate a little bit more with you, except that I can see a spot on the horse’s leg that hasn’t yet been beaten. I better hurry.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Wow, I even got phone calls about this cryptic, ridiculous post. It is not about family. It is not about you. It is about some junkity junk junk at work that was really scheeving me out yesterday. It was written through blind anger and possibly baby hormones. You should probably just back away slowly.