"Deck the halls with boughs and folly..."

Um... quick question. How in the hell did Christmas sneak up on me this year? Seriously. I just looked at the calendar and apparently, it's like four days away. You know, if it hadn't been for the fact that the mister and I finally got around to making solid holiday plans, I get the feeling that we would've woken up at noon on tuesday and not even remembered that it was Christmas until we flipped on the tv and were confronted by It's a Wonderful Life marathons on six different channels.

Coming from a holiday-mad household, I never realized how incredibly easy it was to entirely skip out on Christmas. This year, with every penny earned being stashed away for diapers, or doctor's bills, or a breast pump, it was pretty obvious that we'd be scaling back on the holiday festivities. But what was amazing was how fast we went from "scaling back" to "what's... Christmas?" It started out simple enough. No tree. Trees mean moving furniture and buying lights and ornaments and one of those stupid tree skirts and all the rest of the crap that comes with it. And as I'm not one for frugality, there would be no 99 cent store waxy faced angel on top or some sorry assed Charlie Brown tree to put it on. So, skip the tree, save a wad of cash. But no tree begot no wreath. No wreath begot no house decorations. No decorations begot no holiday parties... and on and on and on it went until just like that, we had about as much Christmas cheer as the local Jewish Community Center.

Of course this slow crawl towards grinchdom was not entirely without incident. You have to understand, I come from the kind of family that felt it was not only appropriate, but entirely necessary, to festoon every square inch of our home with as much tinsely, shining, sparkling, cinnamon scented decorative schmaltz as was physically possible. We sang Christmas carols from 12:01 am the friday after thanksgiving until the tree finally got lugged out to the trash at the end of january. We sent Christmas cards by the dozen and made spiced cider by the gallon. Not only do I know what figgy pudding is... but I have eaten it, my friends. So it is entirely understandable that I actually wept a few silent tears when I found out that the mister didn't even know the words to Deck the Halls (see: the title of this entry). And that I've secretly been reading The Night Before Christmas to the squatter, lest a general apathy towards the holidays is genetic and he's got his father's genes. But besides a few mini meltdowns in the face of the Williams & Sonoma holiday catalog and nearly every Kay Diamonds commercial that comes on... I think I'm handling it pretty well. Or I was, anyway, because now even without stockings hung by our chimney with care... I'm having a proper Christmas!

That's right, my darlings, the mister's gift to me this year was a pair of round trip tickets to new york so that I can have the holiday I so richly deserve-- I mean we. We so richly deserve. Anyway, the hubby, the squatter, and I fly down on Christmas eve, the mister flies home alone on Christmas night (quelle tragique), and then I follow him about a week later on new year's eve. The only thing that could make this whole plan better would be if the mister didn't have to rush home 24 hours after we get there to be at work the next day. But "the man" that's keeping him down is also "the man" who's paying for our mini vaca.

Shit! I wanted to wrap this up all cute and tidy and say happy holidays to all and whatever, but there's a pound of fetus doing a little softshoe routine on my bladder and i have got to--