Need a little Christmas now

It’s the holiday season. A lot of people are grinches and self avowed Scrooges. The holiday season can be overwhelming. Stressful. Costly. It taxes both the person to be perfect and the wallet to stretch beyond its means.

Yep, I admit all that.

Me? I’m one of those people. Those people who just get filled with holiday spirit and run through the season…well, merry and bright. Yep, I’m one of those.

I love the holiday season. Everything about it just fills me with anticipation.

I watch holiday specials until my kids are sick of them. Peanuts, Alivin and the Chipmunks, Rudolph, the Muppets, Santa Claus, Nestor, Heat Miser, Cold Miser. I’ve spent time with them all. I had a Christmas VHS tape that I taped from TV with all the Christmas specials I could cram on it. *long suffering sigh* it’s given out. I played it too much. The simple message of a Charlie Brown Christmas has always wowed me with Linus telling the story from Bible in such an earnest quiet voice. One of my favorite all time Christmas specials is a Muppet Family Christmas. I’ve watched it in July. The music is awesome and who can resist the Muppets, Sesame Street, and Fraggle gangs all getting together. Not to mention an appearance by the man himself, Jim Henson, at the end.

I cram in as much holiday music as I can as long as I can. I love the traditional carols and songs, yet I also get a kick out of new songs and parodies (think Bob Rivers and Al Yankovich). I couldn’t name a favorite song if you paid me, though I admit a certain reverence for Snoopy’s Christmas, which I can remember listening to on Christmas Day when the AM radio station would play Christmas music for 24 hours. My kids are already groaning because I have the radio planted firmly on a holiday radio station and won’t change it.

I’ve been called tacky in my decorating style. I’m not offended, it’s my style! LOL. My display has been growing every year. I don’t have enough to make any tacky tour list but with the kids help, maybe I’ll make it one day. I do enjoy simple decorations like wreaths with red bows. This morning, it snowed and someone’s evergreen tree had the white lights on…it was so gorgeous. I have snowmen, a Snoopy, an inflatable Snoopy, three deer, a polar bear, and a penguin. I’d really like an entire polar bear family but one of my polar bears broke last year. Oh, and I will cry when inflatable Snoopy, who is after the Red Baron on his dog house, finally meets his maker.

My tree is decked out fully in lights, garland, and ornaments. I love the big lights, all blinking at different rates. I get lost in the symmetry of it. I’ve loved to lay under the tree and look up at it since I was a kid. There are so many ornaments that have meanings behind them, from the “First Christmas” ornament that commemorates my marriage to the ornaments we made when we were first married and had no money to a Star Trek shuttlecraft to ornaments commemorating the pets and births of children to the ornaments the kids have made each year. It’s not decorating a tree, it’s a walk down memory lane. Yes, the tree was brought home in a convertible on a cold December night because it was the display. LOL yes even the tree has memories.

I think the holiday season invigorates my imagination. I know it gives my soul a little something extra. I need the holiday season to function the rest of the year. So please…roll your eyes at my cheery all you want, but I need a little Christmas now.

Santa did come early this year, thankfully. I had a release from Liquid Silver yesterday! That definitely adds to my holiday spirit.




Link

When Joel goes to a science fiction/gaming convention, he never expects to meet the woman of his dreams. But when he finds out a gaming buddy he's never met is there, that's exactly what happens.

Sam got tried of being a woman in the gaming communities, so she adopted a male persona to play--only now she has to make that lie up to her best friend Joel, who she's spent many a night chatting with online. She doesn't think anything that happens onscreen could be real but things sure heat up when she meets the man she considers a buddy.

Amidst science fiction regulars and popular shows and movie fans, Sam and Joel try to get to know each other beyond their gaming names and have a wild night together.

When another online woman sets her sights on Joel and is willing to do anything to get him, Sam is caught in the crossfire. Will she ever be able to reconcile herself to geek love becoming real


Mechele Armstrong
www.mechelearmstrong.com