Holiday Humbug

We’re not hol­i­day peo­ple. I like to think that I’m a hol­i­day per­son but in real­ity I’m not. When it comes to Hal­loween, I think your lit­tle Pump­kin or Gob­lin are adorable, but find­ing cos­tumes for my tod­dlers and get­ting them dressed when I’m not going to let them eat candy feels like too much work. Yes, I love the trap­pings of Christ­mas but I’m loathe to actu­ally do the work to get them. If you have bought a tree I may even help you dec­o­rate it if you ply me with Christ­mas bak­ing but this year we couldn’t put one up because the kids cer­tainly would have destroyed it. Basi­cally right now I’m ignor­ing hol­i­days using the excuse that my kids are too young to enjoy them. They may not remem­ber but I will remember.

Valentine’s Day was just a few days ago. I don’t con­sider this to be a kid friendly hol­i­day. In school I remem­ber mak­ing the lit­tle mail­box to hang off my desk. I remem­ber whin­ing because my mom had bought the wrong cards, I had wanted Scooby Doo and instead I got generic cards. I recall watch­ing the other stu­dents as we went around the room drop­ping off our cards, try­ing to count to see how many cards I would get. Even though we were sup­posed to give a card to each stu­dent there were those that got extra spe­cial cards. I would get so dis­ap­pointed to see that my mail­box only con­tained cards that has hastily scrib­bled names; not see­ing the irony that all the cards I have out were filled out under duress as I sat at the kitchen table rush­ing to fin­ish so I could watch Dukes of Hazzard.

As an adult I find myself torn as to the sta­tus of this as a real hol­i­day. Flow­ers are ridicu­lously over-priced and I don’t want to eat cheap heart shaped choco­lates. I have stopped buy­ing gift cards all together because I think it is a waste of money to buy them only to glance at them, chuckle at the car­toon and then throw them away. But I do want the romance that I think goes with this hol­i­day. I want to be wooed. What I’m miss­ing is that I’m wooed every­day. Each time I find my phone fully charged or come down in the morn­ing to find my cof­fee made, the cof­fee he doesn’t drink, I’m being wooed. It is there, but I want more. A fully charged cell­phone is nice but I want some­thing a lit­tle more roman­tic. I blame the movies for my unre­al­is­tic expectations.

Sat­ur­day I asked if we could go out for din­ner and we ended up going to our favourite Mex­i­can place. We went early so we wouldn’t have to wait. We got the kids seated, we ordered and the waiter dropped off the chips and salsa as well as some crayons and paper. The kids were engrossed in colour­ing and nib­bled away on chips but there was no romance. It is hard to have any kind of adult con­ver­sa­tion when try­ing to keep the kids from eat­ing crayons instead of chips. Or keep­ing them on the chairs when the wants to run around the room and check out the kitchen. This restau­rant only has one high­chair and it was being used. We went through the trou­ble of putting our high­chairs in the car but once we got into the restau­rant my hus­band thought it would be fine just let­ting the kids sit on reg­u­lar chairs.

The restau­rant was packed and it took a while for our food to show up. The kids were done with colour­ing and chips were no longer hold­ing their atten­tion. Our food arrived and I got to sit and eat with a squirm­ing girl in my lap, try­ing to keep her from knock­ing over my drink or burn­ing her­self on the plate. I really didn’t know why I thought that this would be a good idea. The hus­band see­ing my mount­ing dis­tress took the girl on his lap while I rushed to eat my food. This is so not what I had in mind. I sit here writ­ing this after the fact and I waf­fle between whin­ing and admon­ish­ing myself. What did I think was going to hap­pen? It is my own fault for tak­ing the kids out to eat. All I wanted was a nice din­ner out, is that too much to ask? They won’t be this lit­tle for long and there will be lots of time to have din­ner out. Waaaa!

We sur­vived the din­ner, it wasn’t a cat­a­stro­phe, just not what I wanted. I wanted a lit­tle bit of magic. I’m real­iz­ing that I need to make my own magic. I could have picked a dif­fer­ent restau­rant or I could have arranged to have my par­ents watch the kids while we went out. I need to stop wait­ing for the Hol­ly­wood romance to mag­i­cally appear, I make it hap­pen if it is impor­tant to me.

I’m not nor­mally into Easter but I think that it could be a lot of fun for the kids. I have great mem­o­ries search­ing for eggs and munch­ing on choco­late and I need to be the one to make that hap­pen for our kids. They deserve to have a those mem­o­ries too. I need to make the magic hap­pen instead of wish­ing for it. My refrain at work is that “I’m a tech­ni­cian not a magi­cian” but I’m real­iz­ing that I need to work on my magic skills. Not just for the kids but for myself too.

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