While we can't share gifts with each other this season, we can share some memories.
My favorite Christmas was in mine and Mr. Cracker's first apartment. It had no heat in a typically freezing Tallahassee winter, and the fact that plumes of frosty breath would come out of our mouths when saying things like "Pass the salt" was endlessly hilarious.
His mother was less amused by it when she came up to visit and went out and bought us a kerosene heater, which was also delightful.
I can't say I've ever had a bad Christmas. Even the Christmas that we were deploying to Saudi for Desert Shield, though full of long, tiring days, held an underscore of excitement. Perhaps I could have done without getting woken up with a kick to the head for sleeping in front of the warm air blower in the Frankfurt fest tent that was our last stop before getting on the C5, but I was indeed being a heat hog and since it has proven to be the only chance in my sheltered life that I've ever had to receive a good head kick, on second thought I'm glad I didn't miss out on the experience.
A Merry, Merry Christmas to all of you.
Posted by floridacracker at December 24, 2008 11:07 AMI'm a dedicated heat-hogger myself, so I would have no problems punting somebody else's head across the room for blocking the warm-air blower. lol
Okay, a scary-merry memory:
I was about seven and staying with my (unofficial) foster mother Gloria with a bunch of her grandkids and various other small relatives. She had a son named Ernie who was in the army. He was due home but we didn't know exactly what day. Well, on the night before Xmas Eve, we heard somebody moving around in the living room. Gloria got scared and herded all us kids into her bedroom with strict instructions to be very quiet. She couldn't decide whether to call the police and stay put or go and see what was going on, but finally she decided to go downstairs, and took a baseball bat down with her. We heard her going down the stairs (trying to go quietly but she was quite heavy!) and we were all hanging onto each other scared to death. All of a sudden we hear this shriek of astonishment and Gloria yells "Ernest William!" So we all came piling downstairs and there's Ernie in a Santa suit! He'd left his return date vague on purpose, borrowed the costume from a friend and surprised us. So that was pretty amazing. I'd also say he was lucky not to get clobbered with that bat. :)
And a Xmas memory for this year: we (Dustin and me) have two cats, Buddy and Layla. Buddy's four years old and Layla's just a few months old. My mother sent us a Xmas box that we got yesterday, and in it were presents for the kitties: treats, toys and a catnip mouse each. Layla went wild over her catnip, and apparently decided that any wrapped package equals catnip. She then proceeded to tear open every wrapped present she could find yesterday while we were out doing some grocery shopping. She made a hell of a mess and we had to rewrap everything.
Needless to say, I'm keeping a close eye on her and I've got a squirt bottle ready to zap her if she so much as bats at a ribbon on a package. See, recreational drugs are not good for cats either!
The worst present I ever gave...
I've got two granddaughters the same age that spend a lot of time with me. So, one year I bought a kitchen set with a little stove.
At first they shared opening the gift, but then one nudged the other to turn the knobs, and the crying started, then, the other pushed the other to open the oven... more crying.
The misery grew and grew, until it finally ended with both girl's little toddler fists locked in each others hair, and pulling each other down to their knees screaming.
Oh no! that was bad! As they say, there's room for only one queen in the kitchen!
A worst present I ever got: I was seventeen and my mother got me this... I guess it was a bust of Santa Claus. Hollow cardboard underneath, but the thing was probably at least $40. He had one, instead of the red suit, a robe thing made of gold lam`e trimmed in white woolly stuff. His hat was the same gold material. He was the ugliest thing I have ever laid eyes on. I think Santa Claus is gross in general anyway, but changing his red clothes to shiny gold? Ugggghhhhh!
Fortunately everybody else that was there when I opened it was grossed out too so I didn't have to try and act like I loved the thing. I was so disappointed I could've cried, because there were an awful lot of things I really needed, and some trashy tricked-out Santa bust was NOT one of them! My mother has very questionable taste at the best of times and sometimes she gets carried away with it.
Merry Christmas Donnah!
Your cold-weather Christmas story reminded me of my own, ca. 1982:
It went down to 8 degrees F here in Atlanta during the night of December 24-25. My wife and I lived in a tiny house with 2 little kids. The house had no insulation but did have lots of large steel-framed casement windows[think "massive heat loss potential"].
Despite running our furnace at full blast and keeping the fireplace going all night long,it got so cold inside that all the houseplants had frozen solid by dawn on Christmas day. We opened presents wearing our heaviest winter clothes and wrapped up in blankets. It felt miserable at the time, but we still enjoyed a "good Christmas"; made much better for me when my brother in law suggested we go duck hunting down in Montezuma GA (150 miles away).
The drive down to the Flint River was great (due the car's heater actually warming us up!). And the duck hunting was the best I've ever had (all the river swamps were frozen solid; this kept the ducks out on the main river). It was so cold we had to stop at a sandbar and build a fire to thaw out the boat's frozen-solid gasoline line. But I have never, ever shared a better bottle of cognac: straight from the bottle, which the four of us passed around as we stood next to that little camp fire out on that little sand bar in the middle of nowhere.
Stay warm, and Merry Christmas!
Carl
Posted by: Carl in Atlanta at December 25, 2008 05:47 AMCORRECTION: the year was 1985, per Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta#Climate
Posted by: Carl in Atlanta at December 25, 2008 05:56 AMDang Carl beat me to it..I had just run over to Wiki to check his story out.. HA HA !
Well...Donnah, I already told you what I got for Christmas.. ;)
I recall my second wife and I closing in on our first Xmas..and it was 24Dec88, and no tree.
So.. I slid down to Winn-Dixie and grabbed the last
special on the concrete and dragged it to the house.
We decorated it with oranges, and Snap-On sockets, and even popped some corn and used some
20# Stren to hang it with.
She fell asleep laying down in front of it.
I DID get a rather nice surprise this year, I think it apropos to let Donnah and Shiloh and that other mutt in on it.
Mama has been listening to me in my sleep again, so I am now the proud owner of a beautiful German Shepherd named 'Josey Wales of the Ridge'. She is a B&T with a silver sliver around her neck.
Her past two generations have both been working K-9's, so I am just tickled.
In fact, her granddam is the dog that the officer in Mulberry recently let die in her car.. :(
Starla got a MP3 player! *does happy-dance around the room in her flannel pj's with the pink flamingos on them* La la la! It's amazing how good the sound quality is on something that is smaller than my container of dental floss! So cool! Holds 500 songs but of course I haven't had time to put in but a tiny fraction of that number.
Posted by: Starla Darling at December 26, 2008 09:24 PMA belated Merry Christmas to everyone!
I got the best Christmas present ever this year, a new job after 10 months of not being employed.
I wish everyone a Happy New Year to! (got that in early ;p)
Posted by: Gmac at December 30, 2008 04:56 AMCongrats, Gmac! That's fantastic news!
Posted by: Donnah at December 30, 2008 06:51 AMGood Christmas present to you, G, and Happy New Year to you all.
Posted by: nancy at December 30, 2008 08:59 AMCongrats to you, G! I know the feeling. I was laid off for several months and just at the beginning of this month I finally got a job. (I'm an injection molder at a place that makes metal and plastic balls for various industrial uses.) It's great to start drawing a regular paycheck, isn't it?
Merry xmas, everybody!
Congrats is right. Jobs are getting pretty scarce these days.. My work has all but dried up, but I'm a gonna fix that pretty soon.. ;)
I wish you the best Gmac, and Happy New Year to all, also..
Posted by: csason at December 30, 2008 04:17 PM