Christmas Comes Whenever It Wants

Christmas comes early and often for the Ewing family.  Santa forced his chubby butt down our chimney in the wee early morning hours this Sunday and he's coming back on the 25th.  Its two solid weeks of Christmas revelry.

We've kept him unusually busy over the years for the simple reason that we're not afraid to sidle one of the holidays out of its normal spot if it serves us - we make them work for US, not the other way around. 

I believe it was about 1989 that Dad got sick of hauling wrapped presents all the way to Macon, unwrapping them, then loading them all back up so, Mom just up and moved Christmas.  Does that mean we get an excessive amount of Christmas booty and we should be ashamed of our wanton destruction of Christmas and its substitution with a day marked by the expression of greed in its purest form?
No, of course not. 

But it was unprecedented.  No one in our family knew what to expect.  Could Santa still find us? "Was he even ALIVE?"; a question Uncle Robert casually intoned into the keyhole of the coat closet where he'd locked me to think about it.

1989 was an emotional year, full of uncertainty and doubt. Would I get everything I wanted like a good American always should?  "Did Santa allocate gifts in direct proportion to the size of your house (small houses - small gifts)?"  "Was "Santa" really an anagram for "Satan" and was I certain "Santa" didn't take anything when he "broke into" our house?"  - all questions thoughtfully posed by Uncle Robert.

No one seemed to have the answers, but my cousins and I agreed - smoking one last Carlton Menthol purlioned from Gma's purse would be the least of our naughty-list worries.  Plus, we knew she'd fib for us if we got nabbed by humorless parents and do-gooder aunts; staunchly claiming she "gave us" a few Christmas cigarettes and not to worry, "they're ultralights" - just to keep us out of trouble.

It was my older cousin, Seth, who executed a perfect smoke ring from his perch on the highest peak of Gma's roof and sagely suggested that Santa was like God and Granddad - immortal and always watching.  Then, he stubbed out the glowing coal on an asphalt shingle and casually flicked the butt high over my head. Impressed with his technique, I watched it fly across the roof rapidly losing speed and falling in a perfect arc -straight down the chimney.  It disappeared from sight; immediately thereafter (we were told) to drop two stories straight down, bounce twice across the hearth and roll to a stop in the center of the den floor - right in front of the television.

We didn't know we were pinched until we heard Granddad's voice bellowing up the brick flue "I'VE TOLD YOU TO STAY OFF THE ROOF. YOU ARE GOING TO BURN THE HOUSE DOWN AROUND MY EARS AND I AM GOING TO HAVE TO KILL YOU."

It's a good thing Christmas comes twice.

I Wish I Could Draw

I find myself in need of a better form of graphic communication than I can personally produce. I’m constantly in situations wherein if I could just DRAW a picture of what is actually going on compared to what I see in my mind – you would understand.

Instead, I'm forced to resort to snapping poorly-framed photos of things on my crummy blackberry thing. Now that I think about it - I wish I could use my Blackberry to take a photo of how crummy my Blackberry is right now, but I believe that’s a thought loop; isn’t it? Now I’m thinking about Eternity and what it feels like to know that you can’t die and now I’m thinking about what I’m going to look like dead, but alive in eternity. I hope I look like my 20yr old self. Now I wonder what dog food is made of, exactly, because its definitely not all meat even though dogs are carnivores.

That’s me.

But usually, instead of a good thought picture – you get junk photos like this:

That’s my special little deer hunter, dead asleep in a deerstand leaning against my left leg and completely destroying my circulation.  When the pins-and-needles got to be too much - overcoming my entire being in waves of shrieking dead-limb sensation - I shifted. Slightly.

"Ack! Quit jittering around" she said. "I'm trying to sleep!"

Ok. What about this:

If you have to stamp “DELICIOUS” in italics on the outside of your food packaging – I immediately know it tastes like toe joey poached in dishwater.  Get it away from me.

No amount of italics or “Delicious” or “Scrumptious” wording is going to fool me. You could say EAT THIS AND EVERYTHING YOU THINK OF WILL TURN INTO AN ASTRONAUT MADE OF CHEESE and, even though that would be fascinating and I would LOVE to go to and fro throughout the earth creating astronauts made of cheese; I wouldn't touch it. It's communist. It’s communist packaging. This company is telling you what to think and you better think its delicious OR THEY WONT GIVE YOU THE ANTIDOTE.

Classic case of communism at work.

How about this one: Gunbearer Newest Ewing in a Glock hat toting my custom deer rifle out of the woods:

YES.

GO TEAM AMERICA!! She was not pleased about this picture.  Tough lighting apparently.

She also generally refuses to be photographed around weapons or dead animals; but at the same time she is physically incapable of not grinning for the camera - a very exploitable trait.

Or this:

This appears to be a tough night out on the hot Macon, Ga street scene for some young hellion - sure to be followed by an exciting morning spent plumbing the depths of that porcelain-no-man’s-land at the front of the toilet with his chin bone. I hope the concert was GREAT because it has almost certainly left a mark. I also bet you dont know where your car is.  Yes you do. It was impounded wasn't it? Again.

I just cover too much ground in a week of being me to get it all down in crayon.