Bitch and moan, bitch and moan.  That’s all I’ve been hearing.  "I hate Christmas because of the capitalism,"  "They are making us all get HD TV’s in February!"  "I’ve got a terrible case of cabin fever from all this snow!" 

Please, cheer up people.  PLEASE!  Just last night I found my Christmas happiness.  I’ve baked my cookies, and am surrounded by 12 inches of snow.  It’s beautiful and wintery and my son smacks his lips and points when he sees a plate of cookies.  He loves them by the way.  I’m actually having a good time now so I get a little annoyed at people who just REFUSE to even try to see any goodness in this season.  Yes, capitalism has forever fucked up the holiday season in a major way.  I’m not going to argue that point even a little….especially when in October the stores were already setting out Christmas crap.  But you know what?  I got my shopping done EARLY this year.  Lukas’ presents were bought right after his birthday and by November, I was done.  I don’t wait until the last minute like EVERYBODY ELSE so when I do my shopping, I don’t have to put up with the dipshit assholes who think their shopping is so much more important than mine…and I wouldn’t want it any other way. 

Do you question gift buying?  Well I look at it this way, as a Christian, I celebrate Christmas in remembrance of the birth of Jesus Christ.  I know this is NOT the time of year he was born and that this date was used to help get the Pagans on board with the whole Christianity Jig, but it’s all I’ve ever known.  I give gifts to the people I love because it is symbolic of the gift God gave in the form of his son….as does the mythical figure of Santa.  I know that I buy into commercialism by doing this, but I still see it as a beautiful thing.  I have wonderful memories of my childhood and Christmas-time.  I’ve even struggled with the question of whether or not to let Lukas believe in Santa.  I read about it on BlogHer and I really think that by letting him believe in Santa and letting him have that little bit of fantasy in his childhood, I am giving him an enriched childhood.  Childhood is so short and sometimes problems of the real world interrupt that innocence prematurely and if I can give my son a little bit of magic by letting him believe that a fat man breaks into our house once a year to leave presents and eat our cookies, well then so be it.  I don’t see Santa as a lie…not really.  Children grow out of that phase and if he wants to ever come to me and say, "Mom, there is no Santa, is there?"  I’ll tell him the truth.  After a certain age, he may start questioning WHY I let a fat guy break into our house once a year and by then, he’s too old for Santa.

As for the transition in February….I’ve heard this SO much and I find it amazing that people are having a hard time understanding this.  The government is mandating that all TV signals go from analog to digital.  That doesn’t mean that all TV will be in high definition.  That means that if you are still one of THE VERY FEW PEOPLE who use an antenna to get your television signals, you are going to need to get a converter box in order to get the signals.  That’s all.  If you use a tube TV, you’re still ok.  You don’t need to buy a new TV.  Remember about 12 years ago when all cable went digital and all that happened was you had to get a new cable box?  It’s on the same lines.

And a terrible case of cabin fever because of all the snow.  Shut the fuck up.  Seriously.  You know, there was a time when people had to work their hands to the bone and when given the opportunity to be able to sit indoors with their families, they considered it a blessing.  Why do people need to be stimulated so much these days?  Slow it down and relax.  Get a good book, play with your kids, woo your spouse.  Most of all, STOP WHINING!  I live in a place where this much snow is almost unheard of.  Folks, we are SNOWED IN.  I’m loving it!  Jessie is loving it.  We are trapped in here together and we are having a good time.  Is it sad that we are in the minority in that we can just sit inside together not really doing anything and still enjoy ourselves?  Is it sad that Jessie is a rarity in that he LOVES spending time with his baby and wife and would rather be here than at work or with buddies?  I’m not sure, but in situations like these where everybody is bitching and moaning, we are having some quiet time together. 

Happy holidays, everybody.  We all have something to bitch about, as is our right.  See, I just bitched about people bitching.  Let’s try to slow it down and bit and try to appreciate why we are blessed in our lives at this time.  Let’s slow it down and remember what it was that made us fall in love with our significant others, even when they are getting on our last nerve.  Let’s take a moment to remember how lucky we are to live in this country, even though the values are a little screwed up sometimes, we are still LUCKY to have what we have.  Realize why we are lucky to have our families…even if they are dysfunctional, because they helped make us who we are today.  Remember that we should be thankful that we have enough food to make us fat.  It could be the other way around and then we wouldn’t care so much what we look like.  Take some time to look through old photographs and laugh at the memories they immortalize.  (Side note on that, Santa is bringing Jessie a scanner for Christmas and I have some old photos that I will be posting of my dear friends on Flickr.  No need to worry, the scandalous ones will be in my safe.)  So Happy holidays again.  Enjoy yourselves and I’ll be back after with hundreds of pictures of the light of my life opening presents.

Love,

Somer

As we all know (since I’ve made it abundantly clear about a thousand times) I am a HUGE werewolf fan.  I like vampires too.  I read Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles and enjoyed them a lot.  I also really like the grotesque and icky vampire movies.  I tend to get annoyed with the whole romanticized vampire.  Like, what the fuck is all the hype with this Twilight?  When I see that a movie has a following of screaming preteen girls, I tend to shy away, but people are turning totally dorky over it.  Stop it.  Stop it right now and go back to loving the vampires that gnaw on necks and spread their disease.  I like the crazy vampires.  But I digress.  Werewolves.

The movie and book lure behind the werewolf is as crazy and scattered as the vampire.  Are they bipedal?  Do they have a tail?  Is the shape-shifting only happening during the full moon or can it be done at will?  Are they really unaware of their actions while fluffy and canine or do they realize that they are eating the faces of completely nice people?  I love it all.  One of my favorite werewolf movies is Silver Bullet.  It’s like E.T. ,if you never watched it as a child, don’t even bother watching it now because you’ll find it totally stupid.  But I used to watch this movie all the time when I was a kid and that werewolf used to scare the shit out of me.  Well, I’ve been complaining for a very long time that I wish I had that movie on DVD and that I should buy it.  I guess thinking about it so much made me start having nightmares about it.  I had one where I was in my kitchen hiding and right around the corner outside of the sliding glass door, that werewolf was staring into the house.  Then from around the corner, I see Lukas running towards the sliding glass door and BOOM, my eyes were suddenly wide open, but I wasn’t totally awake yet because I was certain that the werewolf was standing behind me waiting for me to turn around so it could eat my face.  It took like 15 minutes for me to get up the nerve to turn over to make sure there wasn’t a werewolf standing behind me.  Let me say that again….I was scared to roll over in my bed, me, a 25 year old ADULT, because I was certain that a WEREWOLF was standing next to my bed.  I’m sure you can imagine how stupid I felt. 

Anyway, I ended up getting the movie from Amazon.com for like $9 and watched it for the first time in probably like 6 years tonight.  Now maybe the nightmares will stop now that I remember that the werewolf looks kind of like a rabid teddy bear in some scenes. 

The climactic scene at the end, the werewolf busts through the wall of th house from the outside and starts busting shit up and beating the hell out of Gary Busey.  At the end, the werewolf is dead and there is a naked dead guy in its place.  Jessie and I were discussing how you’d explain this to the police.  The werewolf came busting through the wall from the outside.  It wasn’t slamming around from one room to another in a trailer.  If you’ve ever lived in a trailer, one of those old ones with the fake wood paneling everywhere, then you know that a hyper puppy could bust through one of those interior walls, but this sumbitch slammed the wall down from the outside.  I mean, how DO you explain that to the police?  Jessie’s answer was so oversimplified, that it had me laughing for like 5 minutes.  If you gave the cops this story, they’d shoot you just for being dumb.

"Well you tell the cops that this crazy shit naked guy knocked down the wall and started beating the hell out of everybody and we had to shoot him."

It’s almost believable, that’s what is so great. 

I said I would post a cheery blog?  What the fuck was I thinking?  Surely you guys caught that bullshit as soon as it hit the screen.  But seriously, I posted the last post, we’ll refer to that as BITCHY HOLIDAY POST on Sunday and then spent Monday morning puking my guts out.  I ate something funky….but it’s passed and I feel much better. 

I’m just really not feeling very festive this year.  I don’t know what is wrong with me.  I’m excited for Lukas to open all of his Christmas presents and I’m excited to see him playing with all of his gifts, but I’m just really not feeling it.  Life just seems to blur all together these days and I just feel that there’s really nothing to look forward to in the short term.  Life is dull and unproductive.  I have no cheer to report to you guys.  My decorations are up….that didn’t work.  My garage is full of colorfully wrapped gifts….that didn’t do it.  I’m being forced to go to a Christmas party and have people stare at me so I bought a pretty and festive outfit, but I’m still not there.  So i was wondering last night when the three ghosts are going to visit me and scare the crap out of me if I don’t stop being a scrooge.  If they don’t come then it’s because I’m making an attempt to actually spread the cheer around here whether I feel it or not.  I’m not trying to hinder someone’s happiness.  But still, where are my three ghosts to snap me out of this.  Where are the dead people who are supposed to tell me that the holiday season is supposed to be a warm fuzzy feeling inside of all of us and is bigger than the individual?  Blah.  I’m just so……blah. 

On a lighter and almost happy note, it’s actually been snowing here.  The ground is covered and it is white and very pretty outside.  Out here, we are lucky to get two good snows a season, so I’m happy.  The one kind of down side is that the state road out here doesn’t budget for making the roads drivable.  They don’t put down much salt and no cinders and when there is even a couple of inches on the ground, businesses close because people are unable to get to work.  It’s not necessarily that people out here can’t drive (even though they totally CAN’T) it’s that the roads actually really do get slippery because there are no attmepts to make them otherwise.  I’m just glad we got all of our shopping done and we are able to hole in for a couple of weeks if we need to, but I’m sure that won’t be the case. 

I remember the first winter we spent here the power went out for 4 or 5 days and since our apartment was all electric, we had no hot water, no way to cook dinner and no heat except for the wood-burning fireplace.  We lived in kind of a ghetto and we were one of the last places to get power back…that goes to show you that people with money have more of a voice over families of meager means.  All the food in our refrigerator and freezer was ruined and we had NO food by the time we got power back.  Luckily, we had a nice supply of Ramen Noodles and a propane camping stove so we could prepare that and some hot tea to keep from freezing our asses off.  Now, whenever we lose power, I freak out a little bit because I don’t know how I would be able to handle having no heat for 4 or 5 days with Lukas.  We have no family or friends out here to go to for a place to stay.  Being far away from everything we ever knew is so liberating at times.  I am so proud of the fact that what goes on out here is 100% US.  Nobody is helping us, but sometimes it can be overwhelming when I realize that we really don’t have a support system. 

I’m going to be baking this weekend…..maybe that will get my ass in some sort of cherry mood?  I don’t even know anymore.  BUT, be looking out for those Christmas pictures of my baby boy opening his presents.  I can’t believe this is his SECOND Christmas.