post christmas

So how was it, my little elves?  How was your Christmas (Christmases? Christmasis? Christmas'? Whatever.  I'm going on my fourth week of eating nothing but sugar, fat, sugary fats, fatty sugars, and the occasional slab of meat.  Don't judge.  Also, in my quest to have cute bohemian type hair (drat you, pinterest) I've been wearing a purple plaid headband all day to go with my disheveled ponytail and I'm pretty sure I've cut off the blood flow to my brain.  We have blood in our brains, right? I mean, ideally we do, right?  Again, whatever.)  Where was I before my addiction to parenthesis took over?


Christmas.


It came.  And now it's gone.  And I'm left with that terrible let down feeling that only comes once a year and can only be relieved by a steady diet of pie.  It starts earlier every year.  The let down feeling, not the pie.  Well, sometimes the pie.  This year my sadness at Christmas being over began the second I woke up on Christmas Day. Which seems a little premature.  


It was a lovely day, but it's always the anticipation of the lovely day that is the loveliest for me.  The Jolly Old Elf, as usual, bit me in the tush.  Gianni was determined to receive a particular Lego brand fire truck with dalmation.  He wanted this more than life itself, more than a cup of sugar, more than a day in his underpants, more than world domination.  I tried to talk him out of it but that always makes me feel like the scene in Miracle on 34th Street when Kris is so appalled at the thought of gently urging children to request certain toys that he clangs Mr Nail Biter Mustache Guy on the head with his cane.  Well, he had other reasons, but that was certainly one of them.  Anyhoo, I planted many a sub-conscience thought in my Pooky's head that maybe he'd like something better, something less expensive, something more practical, something like play dough or a glow stick, but no dice.  The Pooky is very one-track-minded, which is evidenced by the squillion rounds of Monopoly Deal he forces me to play each and every day.  He wouldn't be talked out of it and so I haunted several toy aisles in several stores looking for the magical dalmation/fire truck Lego set and finally found it at Toys R Us.  Me being me, of course, I left without buying it, thinking cheerfully to myself that I would drop by in a day or two if I hadn't talked him into play dough and buy it then.  Of course when I dropped back by two days later (a scant one and one half day before Christmas) they were sold out of Over Priced Lego Dalmation Fire Trucks.  Naturally.  My honey bunny being the dear that he is, managed to buy it on the Site-to-Store Walmart thingamabob.  All I had to do was go pick it up.  One and one half days before Christmas.  I don't like Walmart one and one half days before St Patrick's Day, much less that close to Christmas, but I figured my procrastination served me right and I fully deserved to be pepper sprayed, trampled, and maced by people in their pajamas and sports bras.  


Oddly enough, none of that happened and the purchase was a success.


Christmas morning arrived and Pooky eyed the gift with a ponderous look on his face.


That's the wrong one, says Pooky.


He was quite enthralled and delighted with the bag of Cheetos in his stocking though.  


Oh, I haven't shared a recipe with you recently, so here's a good one I just discovered.


1 cup scalded milk, cooled to bath temp 
1 stick butter 
sprinkle with yeast
add: 3/4 honey, a tablespoon salt, 2 eggs
Add 4-5 cups flour


Let rise.  Shape into beautiful rolls.  Let rise.  Drizzle with butter.  Turn on oven 375.


Leave house to go see a movie.


Come home to Homemade Coal for your stockings.  They'll be black and hard as rocks.


This may seem like a lot of work and expense for lumps of coal, but nothing says Christmas like homemade.


Maybe it's the headband.  Maybe it's the toy shopping.  Maybe it's the sugary fats.  But I seem to lose brain cells this time of year.  You?