The Season of Giving

It's the season of giving.

In the spirit of the season, I've decided to give myself the week off.

See y'all next week.

Last Minute Gift Ideas

Christmas is next week, and we’ve reached the point where the questions “What do you get for the person who has everything?” and “Where do I get something that looks like I put at least a little bit of thought into it but is still relatively cheap and easy?” start to enter the minds of those of you who are perpetual holiday procrastinators.

You’d think you’d have learned by now, but you never do, do you?

Actually, if I think about it, what you’ve learned is that Amazon has same-day shipping.

We really are headed for those future humans in floating chairs from Wall-E, aren’t we?

I can’t say I’m surprised.

Any old way, if you’re keen to actually put a little more thought and effort into your gift giving than pressing the ‘Buy Now’ button, I have some ludicrous ideas for you.

For the Animal Lover:
The zoo provides all sorts of opportunities for gift giving! Whether it’s a membership, something from the gift shop, or an actual alligator you’ve wrangled out of the exhibit, the animal lover in your life is sure to appreciate your thoughtful present.

For the Office White Elephant Exchange:
An actual. White. Elephant. 
You can pick it up while you’re wrangling the alligator.

For the Foodie:
Hire Gordon Ramsay to go to their house and shout at them while they try to make a casserole. Trust me, they’ll love it.

For the Friend with Ten Thousand Children:
Earmuffs.

For the Music Lover:
iTunes gift cards and season tickets to the symphony are all well and good, but do you know what your fourteen year old nephew would really love? A drum set, so he can bang out his puberty-fueled frustrations in the garage--and drive your sister-in-law ‘round the bend at the same time!

For That One Relative You Only See at Christmas and Have No Idea What to Buy:
Um...an ugly sweater? (Yeah, I don’t know, either. They’re a total mystery, aren’t they?)

For the Bibliophile:
Go to the used bookstore. Buy as many books as the trunk of your car will hold. Visit the bibliophile. Build a fort around them with the books. Make sure to leave a hole so that someone can pass them the cheese plate from time to time during the day.

For the Crazy Cat Lady:
See ‘Bibliophile’, but replace books with cats.

For the Small Human(s):
SUGAR. Lots and lots of sugar. Make sure to give it to them about half an hour before they’re scheduled to leave the party so that their parents receive the full effect of the sugar rush--and the inevitable crash tantrums.

For Your Mother:
A lanyard.

For Your Asshole Über-Right-Wing Family Member:
A place on every Democratic candidate’s automated call system list, plus the Greenpeace and Planned Parenthood mailing lists, just because. Better yet, make a donation in their name.

For the Gearhead:
Some actual gears. It doesn’t really matter where they come from.

For Your Teenage Niece Who is Always ‘Going Through A Phase’ According to Her Parents:
More black nail polish. It doesn’t really matter what phase it is that she’s going through; if she’s between the ages of 13 and 17, black nail polish covers all your bases.

For Your Boss:
Anything that makes you look good. As long as it keeps you in their good graces, it’s the right thing. Booze is almost always a good idea. Or coffee. Or both. Possibly to be used in tandem.

For the Relatives Flying In From Far Away:
Something that is impossible to pack. Hey, if they can only be bothered to show up once a year, they deserve the headache.

For the Friend Who’s Always Late:
A watch. For the 16th year in a row.

For the Hypochondriac:
Plushie microbes!

For Your Pet:
Anything they want. They’re the true love of your life, after all.

And finally--

For the Vegetarian:
A cauliflower.

(Yes, that was a niche joke. The intended audience know who they are. But really, how funny would it be to slap a bow on a vegetable and just be like, “Here. You like these, right?”)

Happy holidays, you big bunch of doofuses! I love you all. Here, have a meme of Spencer Tracy as Richard Sumner in the film Desk Set (1957), misremembering the names of Santa’s reindeer.

We need to talk

Yes, I’m going to rabbit on about brains again. (No, not in the zombie movie way.) I’m having a particularly difficult time with my rabid brain weasels at the moment, and that seems like a good enough reason for a lecture on the topic of Outwardly Being On Top Of Your Shit But Really Not So Much.

I have four officially diagnosed mental illnesses on my charts:

• Dysthymia/Persistent Depressive Disorder
• Depression
• Generalized Anxiety Disorder
• Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

The thing is, I’m what’s unofficially classified as ‘high functioning’, meaning that if don’t signpost my illnesses, it’s unlikely that Joe Schmoe off the street would know they existed. I get up in the morning, I shower, I go to work, I get everything done. I have friends. I have activities. My bills get paid and my car is in full working order.

My ‘public face’ gets quite the workout, let me tell you.

In all honesty, most people who know me on a very basic level have no idea that there’s anything going on with me at all, and some people who know me a bit better and might know that I carry these things around with me don’t necessarily know just how far into me they’ve got their claws.

“Dude, she’s got her shit together. Look at all this stuff she does!”

Yeah, okay, but all that stuff I do? It wears me the fuck out. I can last a workday, sure. I can be perky and efficient. And then I go home and make it about as far as the sofa and just can’t seem to get myself to do much of anything. Because I’m tired. I’m always tired. Life is exhausting.

And you wanna know what makes it worse?

STRESS.

Like most people’s, my job is stressful. Mine, specifically, is stressful due to the fact that we’re a small company and we run a very lean operation. I am in charge of HR functions for the entire company. In addition to that, starting earlier this year, I was allocated a monthly project which used to be an accounting function. It takes over the first 5+ business days of each month and requires me to work a significant amount of overtime to finish it--and take care of everything else I have to do, too. This project is always ‘A-1 Top Priority’, and it has to be accurate and finished on time or else. Accuracy and deadlines are my bread and butter, but this project is monumental insofar as completion time is concerned, and since it’s something that was created ‘in house’, it is very, very manual. Is it difficult? No. But there are so many intricate, moving parts that one little mistake in one place creates a ripple effect which throws everything else off.

In a normal month, there are enough people around to double- and triple-check this stuff, but at the moment, two of the most important ones are out and very busy welcoming little bundles of joy into their lives. Obviously, nobody begrudges them that, and we want them to take the time and enjoy their new small humans. We’re holding the fort as best we can.

But we’re only so many people, and individually we already had the work of one, or two, or three people.

It’s a rough time all around, and I’m not the only one who’s struggling. My symptoms are manifesting physically at this point. I spend most of the day feeling like I’ve got something sitting on my chest. Several times in the last two months during the week of this project, I’ve had actual anxiety attacks. Not big ones--the kind where I sort of leave my body and pace and push myself into walls and flap my hands like I’m trying to shake everything off of them and get tunnel vision and can’t breathe properly--but little ones, where I’ve got the palpitations and the rapid breathing but am still somehow (miraculously) able to focus enough to get stuff done. I just sit there with it. It’s awful.

I do what I can. I drink water. I have a snack. I breathe deeply. I get up and walk around a bit.

It doesn’t always help.

And, because I’m so good at masking it, no one knows unless I point it out with a giant neon sign.

What I’m getting at is this: not all illnesses are visible. The invisible ones are just as valid. I’m struggling right now. It’s hard to tell, but it’s happening. It’s really, really happening. I am not okay. I don’t know when I’m going to be okay. But guess what? I’ll keep getting shit done--because I have to. I’ll keep getting shit done, and then go home and stare at the idiot box and zone out. I’ll keep getting shit done, and then I’ll sleep because I’m exhausted, and it’s easier than trying to sort the feelings out.

But nobody is going to see it.

PLEASE ADMIRE MY RESTRAINT

Christmas music and I have not always been friends. Lemme ‘splain.

My mother is a musician, and made her living teaching music. Every year in mid-October for the first eighteen years of my life, the Christmas music started. No, not recordings being played.

Worse.

Children. Piano-playing children. All of them plunking out Jolly Old St. Nicholas from October the 15th until just shy of the Christmas holiday. We Wish You A Merry Christmas before we’d even gotten through Halloween. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer served up with your Thanksgiving turkey. Jingle Bells as far as the ear could hear.

It was enough to drive even the most Christmas-loving person to drink. And I wasn’t even old enough to drink yet.

At some point around age twelve, I declared war on Christmas music. I had suffered enough! It wasn’t even as though we were particularly invested in the holiday as a family. We stopped bothering with an actual tree* and decorations by the time I was seven or eight. I was never too bothered about the whole Santa thing--I went along with it at school because it was just what you did, and when I was very small I’m sure we did the whole ‘milk-and-cookies’ bit, but I don’t recall ever having been under the illusion that a fat dude in a red suit actually came down my chimney every year. I was too clever for that. Magic, schmagic, people--I’ve seen up that chimney. Ain’t nobody comin’ down that thing, no way, no how.

Why yes, I was born middle aged, why do you ask?

But I digress. The point I was making was that Christmas music and I were not friends for a very, very long time. I mean, can you blame me?

Of course, it wasn’t as if I could avoid it terribly successfully. I danced. I could escape the carols, but only as far as the ballet studio, where it was Nutcracker** season. At least in that I was a willing participant. The rest of the holiday cheer was foisted upon me in the most unceremonious manner imaginable.

Two notable caveats: choir in high school and, of course, the annual carol singing party hosted by my mother’s BFF from college. Classic carols and anything sung in parts with a decent level of panache got a pass from me because I detested them less than the mainstream garbage.

Any old way, I was a ‘for-real’ grown up before I got over my case of the Humbugs, and living in my first ‘for-real’ apartment with my first ‘for-real’ grown up boyfriend. That was the year the appeal of the holiday season returned to me with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. We bought a tree***. We decorated the front window. We went cuckoo bananapants with presents for each other and our families etc. It was a big to-do, and somewhere in there I magically got over my abhorrence of most Christmas music.

Not all of it. There are still songs that make me switch the radio off.

But that’s not the point. The point is that nearly ten years ago, I decided that I could deal with Christmas music again, and this year, it was a struggle not to switch it on until after Thanksgiving. I think what it really boils down to is the fact that I’ve managed to find my niche vis-á-vis holiday tunes. Give me the Rat Pack and I’m a very happy bunny. There’s a fabulous recording of Bluegrass goddess Alison Krauss and world-renowned cellist Yo Yo Ma performing my personal favorite, the Wexford Carol. And, a couple of years ago when I discovered English folk singer Kate Rusby, I also discovered her Christmas albums. There are five of them as of last week, and they are a delightful compilation of the traditional, the original, and even a few of the less offensive (as far as I’m concerned) contemporaries.

Oh, and the Muppets. Because who doesn’t like the Muppets?

No, really. Hands up if you don’t like the Muppets.

Because I’m going to bonk you on the noggin, that’s why.

In any case, I could spend ages here stuffing my yuletide playlists down your throat, but I shan’t. I will, however, link you to Straight No Chaser’s 12 Days, because it is SO VERY CLEVER.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Fe11OlMiz8
 
You’re welcome.




*Once the tree stopped happening, we started designating a houseplant every year. We had a Christmas Houseplant. Merry happy.
**To this day, I start marking choreography at the first three notes of any part of the Nutcracker suite. DAMN YOU, TCHAIKOVSKY!
***Four feet tall, pre-lit, white lights. It’s nine years old now, and it still works.