Getting Through The Holidays

Hello everyone, and Happy New Year!!!

I’m back after a short sabbatical. In case you were wondering where I was, Mike from EG?? I needed time to get through the holidays.

It was harder than I thought it would be. It’s behind me now and I’ve accepted that I will never be okay with the every-other-year holiday, “sharing of the children” schedule, but I’m learning to live with it — it’s a process. Here we go:

Thanksgiving, 2011

It was quiet, too quiet for my likening. Not even my dead-relatives were around harassing me at night to write about them. Don’t worry, they’re back stronger than ever with their opinions, beliefs and predications for me in 2012, that’s my next post. Hint ... Uncle Mario showed up on New Year’s Eve at a party that I was attending — enough said.

Back to Thanksgiving, which I spent with my five pets (minus one now) and my friend’s dog that calls me Auntie Wara (she really does say that when she barks). Don’t get me wrong, I did have a lot of Thanksgiving invitations from friends, but believe me it was better for everyone that I stayed home alone.

You see, I was going through “Getting Through Your Divorce: Stage Four Being Angry at the World.” Let’s just say, I was not in a happy place during the holidays. When one of my friends invited me over for dinner, I began to envision that when it was my turn to say what I was grateful for around the cozy-not-my-family’s scratched dining room table, I’d say (after downing two bottles of wine):

“My daddy is dead — gone — poof, I drive a trashcan-on-wheels for a car with a BB-Gun dent on the passenger’s side, my children are not with me, and I’m the star of my own play called I Hate You and Your Stupid Family Stories.

Then I’d tell my friend or her mother, sister or aunt … that the turkey is dry and really sucks. I would then ask my rental grandma sitting across from me, who has a creepy-crawler mole on the left side of her face, to pass me another bottle of vino — I’m up to three now. You can see why and most likely agree that it was better for everyone including me to stay home; otherwise, I would not have any friends after the holidays.

Okay, so after my children left at 8 a.m., I watched the Macy's Day Parade with my pets, drank too much eggnog, ate half chicken potpie from a tin, and looked up at the clock for the hundredth time to see it was only 9 a.m. 

At 10:04 a.m., I got up from the party and changed some locks inside my house. I'm getting better at it; I walked around the house several times in a circle (having a little OCD never hurts anyone), straightened a picture on the wall for the fiftieth time and drank more eggnog. When I came to, I looked up at the clock and it read 10:05 a.m.  

I read somewhere standing in the grocery line that “Vocal Therapy” is beneficial for people who are going through a divorce, so I gave it a whirl. I went outside on my front lawn. By this time, mind you, I had graduated from eggnog to Wild Turkey shots.

My first melody I sang 23 times: ”Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall. All you got to do is call, and I'll be there, yeah, yeah; you got a friend.” 

My next selection of uplifting songs, that I belted out several hundred times: “Scattered pictures of the smiles we left behind; smiles we gave to one another of the way we were.”

I sang this classic while hanging upside down from my oak tree’s half-broken limb (a result from Hurricane Irene) — what a rush! The singing really helped lift my spirits but as soon as I was feeling giddy the police stopped in front of my house and gave me “the nod.” I got the hint and walked inside, fast, really fast.

What a sight inside my home. My dog was crying on the kitchen floor, the cats were meowing in fright, and my friend’s dog had Skyped its family in distress. If that was not enough drama, my cuckoo clock read 11 a.m., and that little birdie I swear called me a loser, when it popped out from its nest. At this point, I called it a day and a night—it was 11:04 a.m., and I had had enough.

Christmas, 2011

Let me start by saying…my collection of “Going through a Divorce during the Holidays" books recommends starting new traditions, promoting "you get two Christmas’s" to your kids, and pretending that everything is "Holly Jolly.”

Look, I gotta tell it to ya straight, being without my children on Christmas day was hell. Again, I had plenty of invitations but I declined. I value my friendships too much.

During this Christmas season I sat around my “Holiday — Fake White — Tree,” and pretended to be “Holly Frigging Jolly,” until I heard THE SONG; for the umpteenth time. That SONG! You know what I mean, the one that goes like…

“Sir, I want to buy these shoes for my mama. It’s Christmas Eve and these shoes are just her size. Could you hurry, Sir, Daddy says there’s not much time. You see she’s been sick for quite a while and these shoes would make her smile. I want her to look beautiful if my mama meets Jesus tonight,”

That song got to me this year and I had enough. 

Then I thought ... what about the daddy, huh?? Why can’t his daddy meet the big guy on Christmas Eve instead of his mama? That’s when I wrote my own version of the song and it goes something like ...

“Sir, can you help me please. I want to buy my almost-dead daddy a tie. He’s been drinking for quite a while; Mommy says, hopefully, pickled-Daddy will pass tonight on Christmas Eve. Mama and my new “Uncle” George are planning a trip as soon as Daddy goes. Please sir, the life insurance man is at my home, Mama wants to sign a form, and I’m running out of time. Daddy wants to look nice when he meets?? (We really don’t know who pickled-daddy will meet when he dies) tonight.”

I kept it together until 12 p.m.

After my children left at 12:01 p.m., I rearranged the house for the billionth time, watched the Duggar’s Family Holiday Special, ate the other half of the Thanksgiving Day frozen chicken potpie, inhaled a pumpkin pie, and embraced my new Xmas traditions while dreaming of elves. Good times.

In addition to all my Christmas fun, the little birdie in my cuckoo clock died. I’ll give to you straight, I had a part in its death. My memory of the incident is a little sketchy but I do recall watching the movie “Liar, Liar,” and on the hour I heard that little birdie say to me, “Hey loser, get a life. Loser. Cuckoo, cuckoo. You’re a loser.” I knew then I wasn’t imagining that little birdie talking trash to me, it was.

I waited patiently until the next hour when little birdie came out from its hiding. Tick-tock ... little birdie came out of its nest, opened its mouth, tick-tock, and looked at me in horror because I had a hammer hanging over its tiny head. I looked at its puny eyes and said, “Who’s the loser now cuckoo? Coo, Coo, ca-choo to you little birdie, wo, wo, wo. You’re gonna visit pickled-daddy tonight. Hey, hey, wo, wo.” Let’s just say ... little birdie never felt a thing; he did not suffer, that’s what I remember, I think.

After the little birdie debacle, I called it a day. And night. At 3:21 p.m.