Grinches Get Stiches

It feels like the holiday spirit is hard to tap into this year.

I feel like i make this statement every year.
 The Herrband is sick, and this means the world stops for a little while.
He's a good man, but when he gets sick it literally shuts him down. He holes up on the couch and doesn't move. I shudder to think of when we have a little one and he realizes the days of being sick and getting left alone are entirely over.
I'm probably a jerk because, whenever I get sick, I refuse to stop. I got a sinus infection the first week of november and it took me two weeks to go to the doctor, and by then it had gotten so bad that I could barely hear out of one ear and I kept keeling into people like a drunk because my balance was shot.
It's not a competition, but if it was, I would totally win.
Anyway, so because of the holing up in sick fortress central, we couldn't go get a tree today, and we won't have another day off until next tuesday, which GASP is a week before Christmas and only about three days before Yule.
Okay, so I probably sound like I'm bitching about now, and I realize that, but it's okay.
I take lots of long sparkly walks at night through the twinkly diamond crusted snow and look at all the beautiful Christmas lights on the fancy people's houses and generally feel super pixie about everything-
Wait a second...
It's been fifty degrees for the last four days? Fifty degrees and raining off and on? WHAT THE HELL? Global warming is seriously putting a damper on my Holiday vibe.
Okay, now I know I just sound retarded.
So in an effort to be a rockstar sugarplum of my own creation, I am going to my sister's apartment tonight and I am going to drink a fuckload of wine and make about seven different types of Christmas cookies.
YES.
This sounds like a great plan that will inevitable result in me with a basket of beautiful goodies, bundled up, oh so adorably, traipsing about the neighborhood and giving away parcels of lovely, warm treats.
I know.
I'll probably just end up drunk on her kitchen floor rolling around in red and green sanding sugar.
I'll still twinkle, right?

You know, as I was leaving this morning with that very same sister to hit up the corner diner for our weekly Compound breakfast date (yeah, how do you like this run on sentence?), we almost tripped over the sweetest, white haired little old lady raking the foul mountains of dead leaves off our porch.
We exclaimed over her kindness, and she explained that she was just hanging out with our 95 year old neighbor, Mary, waiting for the delivery of her enormous Christmas tree, and she thought she'd give our flower beds a tidy.
We thanked her and asked if she'd like a coffee or anything when we came back from the diner. She refused politely, but asked that we just dispose of the piles of leaves that she worked so hard for.
"You can't have Christmas if it's still all covered up in Fall leaves, can you?" she said brightly.
We shook our heads in agreement, thanked her again, and went to breakfast a little shamefully.
You bet your ass I can find time to bag up those leaves tonight, and I think there's a nice lady next door to me who deserves some cookies.
Oh yeah...
there's that holiday spirit.

The feeling of twinkles and snow crinkles and warmth and smiling rosy cheeks and crisp cold is all there underneath the surface as close to spilling over as water tension on a bead of eggnog. Nutmeg spritely crown and all.

You make your own.