I’m not even going to bother lamenting about the fact that it’s been almost three months since an update. Excuses are for losers.
The Little Pirate really got down with Christmas this year. She’s all about that Santy-Clause character as she calls him. In fact, she’s still talking about him.
Because Cool Dad and I are stuff-averse, we really went with a minimalist Christmas this year. We started off by debating whether we should get a real tree or a fake tree. The fake tree is a pain in the ass because you have to store it somewhere, and the real tree is a pain in the ass because you have to buy it somewhere. We went with the real tree so we could throw it out when Christmas was over.
I only had 2 ornaments for the tree. One was my Mr. Grinch which I wisely hung up out of the Pirate’s reach. The other was my angel ornament which was ceramic. Note: I said “was.” She was carrying it around the house and just as I finished saying, “Put that back on the tree before it…breaks,” it broke. Into tons of pieces. No more ornaments for you Little Pirate.
We also put out my childhood Rudolph Reindeer for decoration and the Little Pirate ripped out his antlers. Fucking Christ on a stick. Why is this kid so destructive? Rudolph survived 40 summers and winters in my parent’s squirrel infested attic, only to lose his life to a 2 year old.
When Christmas was over, Cool Dad wasted no time in taking the tree outside for it to be picked up. I’m pretty sure the District of Columbia put out two dates on which they would pick up trees. And I’m pretty sure that tree has been sitting outside for the better part of two weeks now because someone was in such a hurry to get it out of the house. The problem is that the trees have to sit on the grassy area between the sidewalks and the street for pickup. And that’s where the dogs go potty.
So for at least 10 days, the Little Pirate has watched as neighborhood dog after neighborhood dog has come by, pissed, then pooped on her Christmas tree. We have a pile of yellow snow on top of piles of dog shit and a Christmas tree. I really feel like Cool Dad didn’t think this one through but then, if I suggested that we keep the tree inside for a bit longer he would accuse me of exhibiting the hoarding tendencies that plague all the generations in my family who went before me. Sigh.
In other news, on the neighborhood message board – a constant source of entertainment, someone posted that their daughter is selling Girl Scout Cookies. They conveniently posted a Google Doc link and said to fill out your order and they would ensure that you got your cookies. What in the hell? Where’s the effort? In my day (yes, I’m that old that I’m saying “In my day” now) we had to go door to door to sell them. This involved skill! You had to convince that batshit old Mrs. Frick that it was worth it to buy these cookies as they were better than those old Chips Ahoy sold at the A&P. They were made by Girl Scouts after all!
In later years, you would see Girl Scouts set up shop outside grocery stores and here in DC (well, Maryland) they sell them at the gas stations. There’s some effort there too. At least there’s a sense of camaraderie as the girls organize to achieve their goals.
But now they are sold by a Google Doc. A “fill your name out here and we’ll get back to you with your cookies” Google Doc. Amazing. Whoever invented the saying “the more things change the more they stay the same” clearly wasn’t talking about Girl Scout cookies. Or pretty much anything else I bitch about here.
