Dark Meat
That's it. We're surrounded. They're approaching from all sides. Our supplies of food and water are running short. Our hardy band of rebels is getting punchy from lack of sleep and the unyielding sense of inevitable doom. Any second now the fort will be stormed and we'll all be forced to succumb to a fate worse than death.

That's right. The holidays are here. No prisoners will be taken.

I wanted to get one more post in before the blogosphere goes dark for the Semi-Secular Festival Of Government-Mandated Gluttony tomorrow. The only people sitting in front of their computers tomorrow will be the sad, the lonely, the forgotten, the unloved, the really really lucky bastards not burdened with the gift of family. May God bless you all more than he already has.

I think somewhere along the line I've forgotten the True Meaning of the holidays. It's not that tragic post-teenage pose we all affect at some point in our lives, like "Hey man, Thanksgiving is just a celebration of genocide with a side of cranberries" or "Hey man, Christmas is just a dressed-up pagan winter solstice festival perpetuated by retailers and advertisers to make us all spend compulsively." I did all that. But then when I realized I wasn't the first person to come up with those particular bitches, I moved on.

The holidays get confused once you have kids. It's like being asked to work back stage at Sesame Street or something: it's a whole lot less magical when you're the guy who has to lug around the 150 lb. top half of Big Bird between scene set-ups.

I've been told by people who I have on good authority are not stupid that the holidays after you have kids are the most fun, the best time. In my experience thus far however, kids still whine, they still soil themselves, they still throw cutlery no matter what time of the year it is, only now I have the added pressure of making all their toy-related dreams come true one night a year on Christmas.

Whee.

My lack of enthusiasm is shameful when I consider the history and sacrifice behind the first Thanksgiving when Jesus landed on Plymouth Rock, bringing bunnies to the New World who would then lay eggs in peoples socks and... something to do with turkeys...

Over the last couple of days I have made some progress, though. Honestly, I do think I've figured it out this year. I'm finally able to reconnect with the True Meaning of the holidays, the thing that makes this time of the year the most special: time off.

That's right. It was a concept that has been missing from my life for the last 5 1/2 years since I started staying home playing house-boy, a job with either 100% time-off or 0% time off, depending on how you look at it. Either way the lack of variety tends to dull the great, longed-for burning-sensation of Holiday Joy one expects to feel this time of year.

But now that my oldest son is in school and I'm once again a slave to the alarm clock, I really think I'm going to get in to the Thanksgiving and Christmas spirit this year as I laze away the early morning hours not waking up or driving anyone anywhere. It's a feeling I haven't experienced since I left grad school or, say, that time I got mono from the drinking fountain at Six Flags. If that's not something to be thankful for, I don't know what is. It's the best thing ever. Except for maybe porn. Or Coca-Cola. Did I say porn already?

Yes, it's going to be magical once more.



This post on the Narcissus Scale: 6.9


Pops


PS- And people don't forget to spend more money than you have on people you don't particularly like this Friday. If you don't, the terrorists win.

- posted by Pops @ 2:33 PM