Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer

Not an ideal holiday situation but not as bad as it could be. It's not like I have until 8 pm to get the kids on a plane to their father's house 6 hours away. It's a 5 minute car ride.

And so what if we celebrate a day early? Presents are presents! And I am certain that the guy across the street who works shift work for the electric company has had to do this once or twice, and the Nurse Practitioner whose daughter and son are friends with mine has had her share of holidays observed on more convenient dates.

The point is, that you celebrate, and celebrate as a family. Our Christmas Eve tradition started when Charlotte was the only one who was married (not even my parents were anymore!) and the only one who had to try to juggle several competing family traditions and make sure everyone got a peak at Junior on his first Christmas. Our family traditions conformed to her practicalities.

And now, more or less, I ask that they conform to mine. I do not give up my children on Christmas Day by choice. It is something I have to do. It is right for the kids (and right for Lars as if anyone cares) and so so what if I hate it. I have learned to appreciate what time I do have and celebrate moments. And Charlotte and her lovely family help me enjoy them to the fullest, and celebrate joyfully, and in a way that doesn't scream "Wow, the holidays really suck for everyone now that you and Lard Ass aren't married anymore!"

And here is where we detour into the Land of Misfit Toys.

My mother will be making her brief, annual pilgrimage north for the holiday festivities, Bill in tow, their cars laden with packages, their souls laden with baggage.

She will not stay in any of our houses, though my sister and I, like Pavlovian failures, continue to offer every year. They will stay with friends I'll call the Lushes, who apparently entertain with such wild abandon that holiday celebrations in their home take on a quality on par with gravity's pull.

But, (now come on, you knew there would be one) she fully expects that in the visit that will last not a minute longer than two-and-one-half days, and will be orchestrated and choreographed more so than the Nutcracker Suite, she will be afforded a visit of some predetermined length with each of her children and her grandchildren, at a location and setting that meets criteria that not even Aretha Franklin is diva enough to request.

It is precisely at this point in our conversation where I want to hangup and enter the Witness Protection Program.

Here Come Santa's Claws

And with a singular stroke of genius, I somehow moved the conversation with my mother from the fiery bowels of Hell to safer, more familiar territory.

The tactic? I told her to "vote with her feet." A term I use in HR all the time. When people don't like something, like their boss, their benefits, their bonus check - they vote with their feet, and walk away. Find a new gig with an emotionally stable boss, or more robust benefits, or a less measly bonus structure.

I told her that if the ladies of The View were so very offensive, and so universally loathsome, so over-the-top outrageous, rather than sitting there in clutch-the-pearls horror, aghast at the nerve of them, people should change the channel. And if enough tight-assed little old ladies did exactly that, Whoopi and her gal pals would find their contracts going unrenewed and their show off the air. Problem solved without an act of Congress.

This idea seems to get some traction with Estelle. I see a sandwich board and a picket line in her future.

So, having survived the hailstorm of First Amendment Rights debate, but only barely, I was oddly relieved to be tiptoeing through the tripwires of Planning for the Holidays.

Excuse me while I pour a little Scotch into my French Roast.

The holidays are complicated when you are me, and we are us.

We've already established that I am divorced. And have the custody agreement designed by a Special Master who has the sensibilities of a pit bull. This year, the overnight into Christmas morning belongs to Lars, so I only have Christmas Eve, and only until 8 pm sharp or Amber Alerts will be flashing on highways across America, to celebrate with my children.

So Christmas Eve will come and the kids and I will bound out of bed pretending it is Christmas and have a perfectly lovely Christmas morning, one day early.

And since Charlotte and her family always celebrate with our family on Christmas Eve, because Christmas Day is with her in-laws, we've got a lot to pack in in a dozen or so hours.

Normally we'd celebrate at Charlotte's, but I will host this year, so that too much drive time doesn't leave us feeling rushed and cheated.

Simple enough, right?

Don't go betting your Christmas Club money on it.

In Order to Form a More Perfect Union

Somehow a benign discussion about my nephew's hair turned into a speech that could have easily taken its place at the podium on The Mall last summer with Glenn Beck.

Mom is just flabbergasted that people get away with saying the things that they say to each other, and on TV! The disrespect! The foul language! The topics! We need to take a stand. Stop accepting it!

I am sorry. Did I miss the part where my mother became a nun?

She detoured down a rat hole with The View in her cross hairs. Something about Joy Behar insulting someone she respected on TV and what a disgrace that is.

I vaguely recall hearing some right wing ranting on Facebook about the same thing...from some people I'd guessed were in my mother's political and chronological age camp. I really didn't pay it any attention. People are mad at Joy Behar for making a crack at someone else's expense? The last time I checked she was a comedienne. Isn't that kind of her job?

In an attempt to de-escalate, I said, however ill-advised it may have been to have done so, "Mom, it's a stupid TV talk show. Who cares what anyone says at 11 o'clock in the morning when no one is home to hear it?"

"Oh," she says. "So you are accepting it too." The challenging tone in her voice was frightening.

I took on the tone I use when I intend to talk over someone until they've decided they need to shut up because all of their carefully constructed arguments are not being heard.

"Mom who cares what a comedienne on day time television says so only the little old ladies and the pre-schoolers can hear it? It is a talk show, not an election debate! It's The View! It's supposed to be thought provoking conversation among a bunch of women who have - imagine that! - wildly different points of view. On politics and religion and movies and fashion and all kinds of things you may or may not actually give a hang about. Do you care what Joy Behar thinks? Do you even watch The View?"

Of course she doesn't.

My mother may be the only person to get truly rattled by something someone else said they heard.

Or didn't hear. She is also completely incensed that something about Ozzie Osborne aired and surprise, surprise, Gomer, he dropped the F-bomb.

Not that you heard it. It was bleeped out. But you knew what he was saying.

Yes, and I know that all the major league baseball players are adjusting their crotches when I am not looking, too. Knowing it is happening doesn't count as crossing the line of public decency. The FCC would certainly object if it did, long before my mother could.

So it is odd, that my opinionated mother, my mother with a pressure cooker of a head bursting with 1,000 points of view, and my mother with the colorful language, and self-righteous outspokenness about all things, thinks there should be a limit on our First Amendment Rights.

But not really.

What she really means to say is that other people's First Amendment Rights need to be infringed upon. She couldn't possibly mean her own. You can't criticize a sitting president for instance, unless of course it is a sitting President she'd like not to be sitting there anymore. Like our current one. Then he's open season. But criticize Glenn Beck and someone is going to lose an eye.

Mark my words, if this country ever does get to a point where we are curtailing any of our freedoms of speech, my mother will be the first to be arrested, and will be grousing indignantly all the way to the pokey.

We the People

My mother has become a kook.



I was chatting with her the other day, deftly avoiding all the land mine topics like politics and gun control and my brother.



Or so I thought.



I mentioned a funny story involving my nephew and a tradition at his prep school....one that has probably endured for decades and which the administration knows of but is not really in a position to take a stand against, and if it does, it is sort of the same position universities take against hazing. They don't support it, make a public statement against it, but are powerless to prevent it. And there is no kid on the planet who is going to admit having participated, so it simply did not happen.



I am not saying that my nephew was forced to run naked down Main Street carrying a school flag and singing the fight song.



No, the seniors on the football team ambushed him and buzz cut his hair before the last game of the season. They pick a sophomore. They picked him. The artfully disheveled pop-star hair I've mentioned before was an easy choice. If they had to pick a sophomore to buzz cut, it was not going to be the kid who already looked like Sgt. Carter from Gomer Pyle or the wimpy kid who is going to whine to the Head Master. It was going to be Pretty Boy Floyd who has the chutzpah and the swagger to go to school the next day without having been to the barber to fix the amateur cut (that, let's be honest, was not intended to look good - razored to the scalp but left with the long flowing bangs...pretty)



If I were my nephew, I would wear that hair like a badge of honor. It is an honor to have been the one. It is a rite of passage. An invitation to the dance. Initiation to the elite club. Very cool. Even if it does sort of derail his mother's plans to take the family Christmas card photo in three weeks when everyone is home for Thanksgiving...(Hello, Photoshop?)

My mother thinks differently, natch.

And went on a rant that began with the words "I tell you what I'd do! I'd march right up to that school and let me tell you, they would get a piece of my mind! That's just not right. I've about had it with putting up with other people's behavior..."

And despite my attempts to interrupt, redirect and ultimately terminate the conversation, Mom went sailing down the slippery slope of political reason and crashed head first into a hissy fit that went stomping into the mine field that is the notion that we should, gulp, amend the U.S. Constitution to, of all things, limit our First Amendment Rights.

And all I could think was. "Please someone limit Mom's freedom of speech at once, and do make sure that we have curtailed her Second Amendment Rights to keep and bear arms before we attempt to do so."

But that was not to be done.

Ladies Who Lunch

I've discovered something about myself.

I don't like to eat with strangers.

Let me explain (because most of you probably have a little thought bubble floating above your heads which reads "Who does?")

I recently had to have lunch with someone for a specific purpose. We'd never met. And to my mind, since I rarely devote any time at all to accomplishing nothing more than just lunch, and certainly not an hour, I was not particularly enthused about having to do this. So, I psyched myself up for it by treating it sort of as a practice date. Without the flirting, of course. Time to dust off my non-work related conversational skills and re-engineer my automatic tendency to evaluate someone. I had to remind myself that this was not an interview. I was not trying to decide whether this person was a yes or a no depending on what he's accomplished and his fit for the organization. It was not that kind of meeting. I needed to get to know this person as a person. Just like a date.

I am not good at this.

I am admittedly a very intuitive person. I form relationships very easily and quickly and effortlessly.

When I want to. When I am not genuinely interested, not so smooth.

And this is probably why I have historically always dated people who have at first and for some time been my friends. People I've been out with socially and found that I've liked. People whose humor makes me belly laugh. People who, over time, I've found to be clever, and kind, and charming and admirably intelligent. People who gradually start to have an appeal that I can't ignore. Pretty eyes. Nice smile. Melodious voice. Nice shoulders.

People who have already passed the first rounds of interviews and are now pretty close to getting the job.

First dates with people like that are a breeze. There is no awkward Mystery Date quality when he arrives at the door. For either of us. We already know we like each other.

So when I met this stranger, who by the way, ignored a confirmation e-mail and showed up unannounced where he wasn't supposed to meet me, I was a little nervous.

And then annoyed. His cologne was overpowering. He stood a little too close when he shook my hand. He asked me to validate his parking.

I wanted to feign a grave illness or a building fire or a hostage situation.

When we were seated at the restaurant he proceeded to go on and on and on with no end in sight about "the kind of guy he is." The kind of entrepreneur. The kind of image. The kind of husband, father, coach. I stifled the urge to check my blackberry for disaster drill messages.

Every time the waiter came, he began to order for himself and then remembered I was there and let me order.

Oddly, the thing that sent me sailing over the edge of reason was something small. When the food came, and he and I both reached for the pepper at the same time, he took it. I gave him a pass thinking that maybe he'd not noticed that I had reached for it, too. But he had noticed, because when he was finished peppering his meal, he handed it across the table to me.

This meeting was not entirely social, but does that mean everyone gets to abandon conventional social graces?

The encounter was not a total loss. We professionally accomplished what we had met to get done. No harm, no foul. I kept my expressions of horror under wraps.

But for sure, if this were a date, it would not have been followed by a second one.

Work and Work, Well Those Cars Never Seem to Stop Comin'

And what makes some of this upheaval and confusion and waffling so very difficult to deal with, I'm finding, is that other challenges and trials of life keep right on going on about their business and distracting me from the real work of really dealing with it.



And reminding me that I am dealing with it from a position of weakness. The person who has held my hand through thick and thin and stood beside me or behind me or threw himself in front of me is not there to do that. Or even to listen to me whine about it. Because that just wouldn't be right.



Some distractions are good distractions. When I was walking the bed of hot coals we call divorce, I was consistently grateful for the distraction of meaningful work. (To be clear, I am not including the time I was served divorce papers while seated next to the Chairman at a meeting and about to make a significant point about something of considerable import...My ex-husband and his attorney have special reserved seats in Hell for that.)



Work is the type of distraction that makes me feel like things will all work out for the best. For many of us, work is a comfort zone, a place that reaffirms our competence and abilities when we are otherwise feeling as informed and in control as if we've been asked to scrub in to perform brain surgery during a transatlantic flight to Madrid. (Unless of course you ARE a brain surgeon, but you get the point.)



It is the other distractions that send me into a tailspin. The extra things. The things I have no brain space for and not a single unfrayed nerve ending to deal with. The clogged toilet. The kid with the throw up virus. My car having the mirror side swiped off of it at the curb. My mother asking me to run out in all my spare time to get some random thing she can't find in her department store in the south and deliver it to someone else for her. (This is where I swear I am going to buy her a computer and make her learn to use Google when she visits for the holidays)



My brother, Joe, who does not fall into the category of person described above who takes comfort in reassurance and sense of purpose meaningful work provides, has asked me (for what is probably the 100th time in our lives) to re-do his resume.



I need this like I need a tree to fall on my house.



Now, I am not a moron. I completely understand that as the Human Resources person in the family, I am like the queen who holds all the mysterious keys to the secret doors to the kingdom. But really, in his forties, isn't Joe in the best position to describe what he does best (is there such a thing?) or even what super duper impressive things he's been doing since he began his last job and I did his last update? And as such, shouldn't he have included in the e-mail to which his resume was attached, which was written in ALL CAPS mind you, some little blurb that at least included where he is working and his current job title and what a person in that position is supposed to do while on the clock???



And this my friends is the type of distraction I am talking about. So small. So inconsequential. Yet so annoying and fraught with the potential for disaster. And sadly, with just enough heft (you know my mother is behind this...) that it tips the scales to the Dark Side and I am on the verge of a psychotic break. It is the thing that snaps my camel's back in two. The extra plate I've not learned to juggle.

I am one step ahead of a moving train and about to get creamed.

And Now the End is Near, So I Face the Final Curtain

And as with anything extraordinary, some flaws eventually became visible to the naked eye - even with the glare of all the shiny, opulent wonder of it all.

But the honeymoon was long and enduring and kept its foot on the gas. It was quite a ride and it logged a lot of miles before the tires began to bald.

Subtle changes - then gradually more - and then enough to make us question - but only question.

And then question some more - and again. And then again - and soon enough, more often than not.

It doesn't really matter who called the time out, or waved the checkered flag or which one of us was brave enough to close our eyes and say the words no one wants to hear.

But we'd come to that bridge and we had to cross it. Though neither of us got across it without wanting to throw ourselves off of it a few times.

And on the other side now, I flit like a manic hummingbird - frantically going from Pollyanna hopeful anticipation, to Droopy-Dog-grim dread and avoidance, to desperate Stage 5 clinginess, to nobody-loves-me-but-this-cheesecake self pity.

And I endure bouts of self examination...

Do I look too married?

Do people assume that I am?

If I join one of those social clubs will I feel like a loser out with other losers?

What kind of vibe do I project? Desperate housewife? Cougar? Widow? Do I look like a fun person? A bitch? A rare book collector? A lunatic bunny-in-the-pot psycho?

Do I look my age? My IQ?

What do people assume about me?

And while solitude really does have its merits, solitary is not my lifestyle.

But the truth is, even if I were out 4 nights a week surrounded by friends, J. set the bar very high. So high only he can clear it. Or only he can reliably clear it every time.

People are going to have a hard time measuring up.

Is there such a thing as being emotionally overindulged?