Holiday Desperation

For many years I have endured the violation of the peaceful holiday season I once enjoyed in my youth. This is primarily due to getting married and fitting in the numerous, and sometimes superfluous, family parties that my wife’s family holds. My Christmas 10 years ago was as follows:

Christmas Eve:
4:00 pm – 8:00 pm Dinner and presents at my family’s house

Christmas Day:
1:00 pm – 3:00 pm Lunch at my aunt’s house

Peaceful and simple, right? Oh, how I cherish those holidays. Now, we find ourselves in a mad-rush, running from party to party, trying to see how many events we can go to; thereby avoiding the creation of inevitable offense against family members.

Here’s a recent sample of my Christmas:

Christmas Eve:
4:00 pm – 7:30 pm Dinner and open presents at my family’s house
8:00 pm – 12:00 am 2nd Dinner and open presents at Laurie’s parent’s house

Christmas Day:
7:30 am – 8:30 am Open ‘Santa’ gifts and stockings at Laurie’s parent’s house
9:00 am – 11:00 am Breakfast with Laurie’s Grandma
1:00 pm – 3:00 pm Lunch at my aunt’s house
3:30 pm – 5:00 pm Dinner at Laurie’s other Grandma’s house
5:00 pm – 8:00 pm Party at Laurie’s aunt’s house

With a schedule like that, how can you possibly remember where you are? The potential for calling a rarely-seen relative the wrong name is great. And how stupid do I feel when I thank the wrong person for the wrong gift?

This year, I put my foot down. I declared to my wife in the most authoritative and manly voice I could muster: “There will be no more running around in the bitter cold, wasting gas. No more losing our sanity as we cope with the shock of moving from one family environment to another.” I am serious. I would rather sit at home, enjoy being with my little family and spend some good time with each other. Besides, I want to start our own traditions in our house.

My sweet wife just gave me that maddeningly condescending smile. It’s a smile that is common in many women. They use it when they are trying not to scream at their spouse or children in protest of what they have just been told. I am sure that In the back of her mind, she was probably saying something like: ‘I own you, slave. Your requests are in vain. You will never have any rest on holidays as long as my family lives.’

Does anybody know of any good jobs on the East Coast, or Europe perhaps?

Flurer Lexicon

I recently spoke to a good friend and used some words that he was not familiar with. This is because I used words that are specific to the little piece of geography we call 'Our Home'. Some of the words are just plain silly, but they are used frequently in our home. Some of these words/phrases include:

Trout: used in place of the word 'throat' when describing the symptom of an illness that causes one's throat to be sore or swollen. For example; 'I have a sore trout'.

Dime-ma-maria: used in place of the word 'diarrhea'. Since 'diarrhea' is a funny word anyway, we thought we would add a little more silliness to a word that really describes a miserable condition.

SBE: this word was inspired by the acronyms that people use when text-messaging each other over phones or using an Instant Message program online. SBE stands for Sudden Bowel Emergency and is used when one experiences a sudden cramp in the bowels, followed by an insatiable need to evacuate one's intestines.

Cruck-Cruck: this phrase is derived from the sweetly innocent language attempts of our two-year old. He is utterly obsessed with trucks. Whenever he sees something that pleases him or that is exciting, he exclaims 'Oh, cruck-cruck!' We now use it in our house when we are excited about something.

Cry-hole: a term that became very popular when our boy was born. He would often cry or scream, as babies do, and as I placed a binki in his mouth to pacify him, I would say, "Stick this in your cry-hole". We use the term when someone is whining. For example "Shut your cry-hole"

Plogged: a hybrid word that crosses plugged and clogged. If one is stuffed up with an overabundance of mucus in the sinus or chest, we say that we they are ‘plogged’

There are many others, but these are some of my favorites.

The Holiday Mob

Thanksgiving is drawing near, and the Holiday Season has begun. The Holiday Season has some great memories for me. Unfortunately, these memories are tainted by my recent experiences with the Holiday Season.

People, who are otherwise rational, kind and generous, turn into literal monsters. They abandon their good virtues and start practicing evil behaviors. Their elbows and knees become destructive weapons. They selectively lose their hearing and forget all traffic laws.

It must be the result of the tension of buying gifts, getting the right ingredients for that perfect meal for the in-laws and dragging the kids around for their various holiday events that makes people crazy.

One year, I made the mistake of going shopping on the day after Thanksgiving. I was lured to the store by some phenomenal prices. After I was done shopping, I lost all faith in humanity. As I followed the herd of shoppers into the store at the brisk hour of 5:00 am, I was almost trampled under the feet of the horde. When I approached the areas where the good deals were found, the scenes reminded me of those jackal feeding frenzies you see on nature shows. Everyone was pushing, shoving, stomping, grabbing, biting and clawing just to get that stupid forty dollar T.V. I let go of the fear that gripped my heart and approached one of the feeding frenzies with cautiousness. At this point, I merely wanted to observe this anomaly in human behavior; however I was pushed in by an aggressive woman who looked like she could have been a kindly grandmother. I was buffeted by arms and elbows. In fact I took a good hit to the nose and it started bleeding. Out of spite, I started blowing my bloody nose on the members of the maniacal crowd. I was sucked into their bastardly behavior and started strategically throwing my own limbs around. My hands gripped the sacred item that everyone was willing to kill for. Then the pain really started. People stepped on my feet, kicked my shins, elbowed me in the head and stomach. I fell and crawled out of the group, my hands retaining a kung-fu grip on the package. An item that I really didn’t want or need was now a precious object that the mob desired.

After escaping the clutches of the blood thirsty mob, I brushed my clothes off and ran to the nearest check stand. I wiped my bloody nose on some kid’s hat as I jogged up to a poor cashier. She was stunned to see my gushing nose and commented on my swollen eye that would later turn into a beefy black eye. I made my purchase, and ran out of the store like a man who is being chased by rabid, zombie lions.

I was not feeling the peace and love that is supposed to accompany the Holidays. I hated every person in that store. I was soured for anymore holiday shopping and refused to enter any store until after the New Year.

So, my wife and I are committed to having our shopping for the Holiday’s done before Halloween rolls around. If we don’t get what we need by that time, we will just hand out cash. There are ways to avoid the Holiday mob and enjoy a warm and peaceful season.

Children Ruin Everything

Many of my friends and coworkers are pregnant. I swear that there is a new baby born every .10 seconds in Salt Lake. Everyone wants a kid, until they have one. They imagine that they will be able to enjoy time together with their new baby and patiently teach them all of the wonderful wise things that they have learned. Parents-to-be also vow that they will raise their child better than their parents raised them.

What new parents don't realize is that their lives are ruined as soon as that first child escapes the warm comfort of the womb and screams forth into this world from it's mother's vagina
Technically speaking, parents live. I mean we breath and blink and eat and poop. However, the life that was once filled with lazy Saturday mornings of sleeping in, going to movies at the drop of a hat and having long nights of steamy sex is dead. You will never recover that.

I will admit, I love my son and wouldn't trade him for anything. But parents only live to help their child(ren) survive, that is unless the parents are completely selfish a-holes.

When you become a new parent, be prepared to shed your playful, carefree days. Your life is over. You now begin a new life in which you function only to help your posterity survive. I hope that your marriage is strong enough to survive that change

Kill a Friendship: Join a Direct Selling Company

Nothing ruins a friendship faster than direct selling companies. In general, companies in the direct selling industry share a business model that requires its ‘independent sales representatives’ to recruit more ‘independent sales representatives’. These companies encourage you to recruit your family and friends.

One day, your brother, sister, best friend, neighbor or other close acquaintance is going to knock on your door. You open the door and there they stand. Perhaps they are accompanied by some goofy schmuck who is there to ‘support’ them, or perhaps they are going solo. Either way, you can tell that they have come for a purpose. For the next hour or two, they pitch a company or product. The idea is always the same: Pay for a starter kit and then go and bother your family and friends to recruit them. They profess and testify of the great riches that you will attain by joining their company. The entire time that your friend or relative is presenting, all you can think about is how you are going to let them down without ruining your relationship – and that’s the kicker.

As soon as you drop the bomb on your friend or relative, they are hurt. Because you don’t share their enthusiasm and conversion in their wonderful scheme, you are now persona-non-grata. This arrangement causes a great swell of anger to form in my gut towards any direct selling company. Thanks for ruining my relationships, jerks.

Direct Selling companies prey off of desperate people who need money to bring in their profit. Here’s how they take advantage of you:

1. They pay you a commission based on the number of recruits you sign up. This commission is a percentage of the outrageous fee they charge for their starter kit and for their product.
2. They call you an ‘independent representative’ or ‘consultant’ or any other euphemism to make you feel like you have support of a large company and network of people. In reality, you are a customer who brings in more customers.
   If you are good and brining in more customers, then you may make money. Remember for everyone that you bring recruit, the morons ahead of you will also get a paid.
   If you are not good at recruiting others, then you just contribute to the wealth of others.
3. Because you are not an employee, you get no tangible benefits. You don’t receive health and welfare benefits, vacation days, disability insurance, or any other group sponsored benefit. If you happen to be a healthy person, this may not be a big deal for you because you can get individual insurance. However, if you are unlucky enough to have an illness of any kind, no insurance company will touch you.
4. Their product is not unique. I was at a convention for direct selling companies in which I received free samples of face moisturizer from a few different companies. Each of these moisturizers smelled the same and when I tried them, felt the same. I also compared these free samples to a face moisturizer I purchased from my sister in law, who happens to be a ‘consultant’ for a direct selling company, and I found it to be undistinguishable from the other face moisturizers.
   
   There are other examples, but these are the biggest infractions that these damnable direct selling companies perform.
   
   Don’t join a direct selling company. Don’t allow friends and family to ‘present’ to you. Even if they say that they don’t mind if you say no, they really do mind. You will regret sitting through the presentation and will mourn the loss of your relationship.