MY Christmas Story

The holidays are over and my pants don't want to fit. The state is under a good deal of snow which means my family gives me a daily schedule to drive them so they don't risk a wreck. Evidently the TV news warnings of DO NOT LEAVE YOUR HOUSE UNLESS OF AN EMERGENCY had a tag line that said "or if your Dad can take you." What is worse is Mrs. Cris keeps producing a new grocery/Wal-Mart list every day!

Yes Wal-Mart. The one store you want to avoid the day after Thanksgiving and the day after Christmas. You DO know that all holiday decorations, paper, bows, bags, inflatables, lights, toys, gift sets, and overstocked items will go on sale the day AFTER that most holy of holidays... don't you? So every redneck within 50 miles charges to the store with Christmas cash to get new tree skirts, next year's greetings cards, and the best lights left over from yesterday.

Now I too have been known to rush to this sale. A few years ago I got not one but TWO new tree skirts. They were things of beauty. See, over the past three decades we have collected a vast assortment of Christmas do-dads and trinkets. If we wanted to set it all out we could land jet airliners in the driveway and the house would make even the gaudiest of shopping center malls claim we "over did it" a bit. In fact, we had so much that I had to have an outside storage building created just to hold the Christmas stuff. OK, to be fair there are like three boxes of Halloween and one Thanksgiving box of decorations. But still the building is about 80% Christmas decor and we do not have big outdoor decorations. Nope, it is all indoors baby!

So yeah I don't mind a bargain. So like I said, I bought a couple of great tree skits a couple of years ago. I came in and we all marveled at MY brilliance at finding something pretty that nobody else wanted in a timely manner. Then I gave this freshly found treasure to Jr to put away in a storage bin for to use next year and many years thereafter.

Next fall, when pulling out the Halloween Decorations I found those Wal-Mart sacks where they had been tossed inside the door. Not in storage containers. Not protected from field mice or pack rats or any other vermin that inhabits sheds that only get opened for three months out of a year. No I found the last vestiges of rat torn and chewed rags that untold litters of rodents had crapped and procreated upon.

Hell Yes I stood there in that dank smelling environment desperately wondering if I could find a corner of the round skirt I could turn to face the living room and salvage my once great find. Alas I had to admit defeat and we returned to the old rust stained skirt we had been using for the past 15 years.

BEGONE FOUL MEMORY! GET THEE BEHIND ME!! For today the little Mrs and I ventured unto Wal-Mart where I got a fiber optic tree angle and Mrs C got a new tree skirt. Soon we will take down the tree for another season. We will put away the decorations, both old and new for another year. Then, as tradition dictates I will tell Jr to put the storage bins back in the shed because I am too freakin tired and too freakin fat from all the overeating during the holidays. And then 9 months from now we will see the job he performed and most likely the cycle will continue to turn.