Searching for Santa and my Sanity

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I woke up feeling really good today. Like, unreasonably good for December 22nd. The shopping is done, my work as “class mom” for preschool is over until the New Year, the kids have just started their holiday break… THE WORLD IS OUR OYSTER! We have the most valuable commodity to me right now, time! We are so busy in our normal day-to-day we never have any time to do anything that isn’t scheduled. And now we have no schedule for 19 days?! Bring on the fun. Bring on the lunacy. Bring on the crazy festivities.

“Let’s go have our picture taken with Santa!”

Is wasn’t until I had all three of my children, dressed in red polo shirts and khakis (holy shit, they look like Jake from State Farm), in the car before I thought, “Shit, this might be a very stupid idea.” Hindsight people, hindsight.

It was a very stupid idea.

We ventured off to the Bass Pro Shops who advertise a “Santa’s Wonderland”. The hubby and I took the kids to this last year. I was 30 weeks pregnant with my youngest son, and we had a really nice time. There was barely anyone there. We walked right up to Jolly Old Saint Nick and got a picture (for free). The kids played with the carnival-like set up that had a “Paul Bunyan” theme. We aren’t really the outdoorsy-types (read: we don’t like to kill our own food) so most of those things were lost on the children. But it was effortless last year. So I ventured the trek to Bass, 30 minutes away from home.

As we parked the car I discovered things were very different this year. The place was PACKED. We approached Santa’s Wonderland with more fear than wonder and ventured to the line to meet Mr. Kringle. This is Heavy B’s first Christmas… we needed to get this picture. That is when a store employee handed me a card that said, “Come back at 12:30”. It was only 10 a.m. Apparently, the rest of Florida had caught wind of free Santa pictures and he was in high demand. WTF are we going to do for 2 1/2 hours at the Bass Pro Shops? We attempted to go play some of their “holiday wilderness games” but my kids, apparently, aren’t the biggest assholes running around town. Watching my 4-year-old patiently wait on a line for 20 minutes just to have his turn absconded from him by a 40-year-old with a neck tattoo is not my idea of festive family fun.

Sidenote: I have NO PROBLEM with anyone with tattoos. This bitch just happened to be an asshole, and have one, on her neck. Glad we cleared that up.

So, in the spirit of the holidays and the fact that I thought it might be a mistake to go Red Ross on some chick in front of all 3 of my kids, my practicality kicked in, “Well, I guess the Santa picture just isn’t meant to be. Let’s go home.” Unfortunately, I had already placed the thought in their little kid heads and the 4-year-old looked at me with the big puppy-dog eyes, “Please Mommy, we have to see Santa. My brother needs his first Santa picture, and I want to smell him.”

He wanted to SMELL Santa?! How adorable… and disgusting. Fingers crossed he didn’t smell of beef and cheese.

“Okay! Santa it is. We’ll go to the closest mall.”

Just like that, I piled my children back into the family truckster and ventured to the local (but 40 minutes away from our town) mall.

While driving, the little voice in my head (the one I barely listen to anymore) said, “But you don’t go to the mall. And you’d never go to the mall 3 days before Christmas.” I should listen to that voice more often.

The mall was the exact scene you would except from a suburban mall 3 days before Christmas. It was a hot-fucking-mess. Crowded, everyone trying to go, go, go. A nightmare. My kids looked really small there, among all those strangers. The older boys held hands, navigating behind me while I pushed the stroller. We asked a mall employee where we could find the big man and navigated to his Christmas village. I think the 4-year-old started to run. He was very excited.

That’s when we saw the sign: Santa will return to the North Pole at 12:45.

Are you fucking kidding me? It was 11:30.

We discussed leaving. We discussed putting a flame-thrower to this awful plan and going home. We tried. We failed. No picture with Santa. That’s when the 9-year-old chimed in, “Well, now we just have to do it. We’ve gone too far to go back.” I knew exactly what he meant.

We went to the food court in the mall. The kids ate sandwiches from Subway while talking about Santa. The baby slept. We walked the long trek back to the North Pole and arrived just as it opened, 12:45, to find 25 families ahead of us.

The boys had more patience than Mommy. Of course, the baby’s diaper was about to burst so I changed him while on-line in his stroller. I’d rather the whole mall see my baby’s junk then have him piss all over a mall Santa.

It was finally our turn. Santa asked the boys if they were good and what they wanted for Christmas. Then he told them where to sit and made some cute jokes. I never really saw the monkey attempt to smell him, but he didn’t report any bad smells afterwards either, so that’s good. Right?

We left the house at 9:30 and arrived home at 3 p.m.

Next year, I’ll let my Mother-in-law take the kids to have their picture with Santa.

I need a drink.

P.S. The picture is fucking adorable.

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The Problem With the Happiest Time of the Year

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It happened slow, like that snail crawling from one side of my patio to the edge of my pool. I watched him for a while, not realizing the metaphor that was dragging before my eyes.

When I was a kid the holidays came. We ate turkey or ham (a canned one: especially if we were at my Grandma’s house). We opened gifts and sang Hanukkah songs, or Christmas carols. We watched Frosty the snowman, It’s a Wonderful Life, and White Christmas. The older people drank spiked eggnog and ate rum balls, I may have snuck a couple. It was Hanukkah, it was Christmas, it was New Years Eve. It was over.

Now it starts while they are selling Halloween costumes. There are pre-lit Christmas trees in the store while you kid decides if he’d like to be Pokemon or that 32 bit Minecraft head. We buy pumpkin spice all-the-things all through November and once the turkey has been carved, people leave their dirty Thanksgiving dishes in the sink to shop for the best deals. The morning after black Friday the tree is anointed in all it’s glory, the lights are strung on the house and we are at 1.21 gigawatts of power for the whole month of December.

In comes the Elf on the Shelf, the Advent Calendars, the Mensch on the Bench, and the build up that is the Festival of Lights or the Birth of Christ is now at warp speed. It’s everywhere on social media, “Oh, I forgot to move the elf,” or “Look,did you see what my Mensch did? He’s in the hot tub with Barbie”. We aren’t trying to one-up you, we are trying to one-up ourselves. Bigger is better, even if cleaning up the Elf’s mess takes time away from all the things you like to do. We still do it.  Every time your kids get together they have a holiday party: in school, in religious school, at sports. And parents are baking and frying and having to supply food for these get-together’s for the whole month of December.

We aren’t even keeping up with the Jones’ anymore. Wonder Woman couldn’t keep up with the Jones’. We’ve set the bar higher than it ever needed to be set, higher than anyone asked us to set it. NO ONE ASKED US TO MOVE THE BAR! And for what? The memories, the “OMG, I don’t want to be left out, have my kid feel like he got less, like I am less,” memories.

The problem with the happiest time of the year is that we’ve made it less happy time, dragged out over a longer period of time. Sure, the holidays still fall on the same times of the year, but after doing the Elf, the Mensch ,the advent, the kids forget about the holiday spirit and it’s now about all the things, only the things.

We raised the bar because we remember the holidays were so much fun as kids. My Grandma used to set up her tree on Christmas Eve. Not on December 1st. That adorable tree was put up on December 24th, the night of her marriage anniversary to my Grandfather, and It was the best memories of our lives!!!! Of. Our. Lives. And why? Because it was short and sweet and filled with family and friends. But now we’ve stretched that feeling into months of planning, months of running around like headless chickens, which has only given everyone involved an emptier feeling when it’s happening and a straight up “what now” feeling when it’s over.

Each gift needs to be over the top. What do you get for a 10-year-old who already has a laptop nicer than your own?  Holiday meals must go beyond the amazing meal you had last year. My Grandma’s delicious canned ham has turned into a turducken overnight.

I’d like that ham back please. Grandma always put pineapple rings, cloves, and maraschino cherries on it just for me.

And I never felt empty.

I was always full.

Update on the Rantings of a Dissatisfied Customer

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Five days ago, I took to my blog to voice my extreme dissatisfaction with Toys”R”Us. You can find the post here. Well, the entry was viewed over 600 times that day and by the time I went to bed I’d received an email from a reporter for ABC.com about my situation.

To say that I was surprised would be an understatement. This reporter wanted to contact Toys”R”Us directly and attempt to get a statement from them regarding my predicament. Why had they placed orders from Cyber Monday they couldn’t fulfill? Why were they standing by their “no cancellation” policy for internet orders? I was very interested to see what she uncovered. I sent her the information regarding my order number and my name on Friday at 4 p.m. By 6 p.m. that evening I’d received a phone call from Toys”R”Us corporate in New Jersey.

Mind. Blown.

The woman I spoke to was very sweet. I explained to her that I’m not a psycho-bitch with a chip on my shoulder, who has it out for Toys”R”Us (or anyone for that matter), but that I found the fact that they couldn’t fulfill the order nor would they allow me to cancel it under those circumstances to be very unsettling. While she was a very pleasant person, all she was able to tell me was the same information Toys”R”Us previously shared in their email to me. That, “while they were working on fulfilling my order, they couldn’t give me a definite ship date, time, or even confirmation that I would get my shipment before January 9th.”

That was still unacceptable.

But, this Toys”R”Us employee told me she would be checking in on my order daily and trying to get it shipped to me in the appropriate time frame to arrive for the holidays. I told her not to waste her time. In a week, I would already have repurchased the items elsewhere and she should really dedicate that time to the multitudes of other customers who were in this same pickle with Toys”R”Us. It was the truth. We exchanged pleasantries and ended our phone call.

And that was that.

Until last night.

Last night I received an email from Toys”R”Us stating that my full order had shipped and AMAZINGLY… it would be here today. On Tuesday.

I didn’t pay for shipping, let alone one-day shipping. I hadn’t found the time to buy the items again yet. I was no longer screwed and put-off, now I was in pretty good shape.

So??? The million-dollar question… how did Toys”R”Us find these goods in 5 days after telling me they probably wouldn’t have them in 30 days?

Maybe they ordered them from Amazon?

Rantings of a Dissatisfied Customer

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I could spit nails right now. Or fire. Or nails and fire.

When I was a teenager I had an after school job at a national pizza joint. The job was the pits but I did get to work with my best friend so there was one silver lining. We were told repeatedly that the customer is always right. It was drilled into our little teenage brains. You wouldn’t believe how furious some people would get over a fuck up in their dinner order. The whole place was run by kids, what did they expect? And while a dissatisfied customer would be spewing venom in our faces, we’d have to smile, take it, and apologize profusely. Refunds? Sure. Free Pizza? Constantly. Anything to make the customer happy. Because the customer is always right.

Unless you are Toys”R”Us.

On Cyber Monday I sat in front of my computer in yoga pants and a 10-year-old Ani DiFranco t-shirt, steaming hot coffee in hand, clicking all over the interweb getting deals for the multitudes of children I have in my life. My sons, nieces, and nephews would have that awesome shock-and-awe on Christmas morning, and I performed all this magic in the comfort of my own home. It was lovely.

Now I’m sorting through confirmation emails and deliveries. Sure, I still have some shopping to do, but the big stuff had been taken care of. Until I received this e-mail from Toys”R”Us this morning.

toyrusblows

My first thought was, “Well, that blows.” and my second thought was, “I’ll just cancel the order and buy these things somewhere else.” I mean, what’s the point if they get here on January 9th? These are Christmas gifts. Shit, January 9th wouldn’t even make them New Years gifts, if there was such a thing.

So I called Toys”R”Us to cancel my order and that’s when I got the biggest shock… you can’t cancel an order with Toys”R”Us.

Wait? What?

Yup, you read that right.

When you place an order with Toy”R”Us, you have a 45 minute window after the placement of the order to cancel. After that, you CANNOT CANCEL. Even if they can’t fulfill the order, YOU can’t cancel.

In this digital age we live in, Toys”R”Us has managed to make themselves the Fred Flintstone of the internet. By this comparative scale it would make Amazon the freaking Jetsons. With Amazon, my Cyber Monday orders arrived on my doorstep Tuesday afternoon… and I didn’t even pay for shipping.

I was told that my only cause of action is to wait until January 9th for them to cancel the order OR if the order ships before then (they don’t even know if it will) I can return the items to my nearest Toys”R”Us store. Doesn’t that kinda defeat the purpose of Cyber Monday??

The scary part was, the customer service agent I spoke to said she’s been having this same conversation quite a bit. Lovely to know I’m not the only person getting shafted by Toys”R”Us, but still completely ass backward.

So THANK YOU Toys”R”Us! Thank you for your ridiculous policy which proves that you couldn’t give a shit about your customers. Thank you for running specials on Cyber Monday without knowing if you could honor the deal, thus tying my hands and forcing me to buy these gifts twice.

You have now given me an excuse to never shop with you again.

Good riddance.

 

Santa is Greater Than Everything

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NOOOO!

“You’re not Santa… you smell of beef and cheese… you sit on a throne of lies.”

 

This past June I was driving by the mall with my preschooler….

“Hey Mom,” he said, “Know who lives there?”

Oh no, not this again, “Calvin Klein, J Crew, Macy’s…”, but I knew what he was going to say…

“Nope, Santa Claus! Santa lives there! I sat on his lap with Grandma, remember? We brought you a picture. He promised me the toys I wanted,” I snickered, “Oh he did, did he?” but the 4-year-old was steadfast, “Yup, and he was right, I got all the stuffs.”

Ugh, way to set the bar. Because Santa is greater than everything.

He was right, Santa got him all the stuffs – which we all know is secret holiday code for, mom and dad broke the bank. But beyond that, it’s amazing that he, his brothers, and his cousins, were able to celebrate the joy and wonder that is the holiday season.

Once you have kids it becomes even more important for it to be all about them. Making sure they are taken care of mentally and physically is what we do as loving parents to the best of our ability all year round. But to a 4-year-old, holidays are all about the “stuffs” as he puts it so eloquently.

The craziest party of the holiday situation is that I am Jewish and I’ve married a Roman Catholic. We are the epitome of what a mixed faith marriage is. Our kids are being raised Jewish, because I am a Jew and the Jewish faith recognizes my Jewish upbringing no matter what the faith of my spouse, but we also celebrate the large Catholic holidays together, as a family, because we love and respect each other and our kids should be educated in the ways of our religion from both sides.

Because Christmas is a part of our holiday tradition, our kids don’t usually get the “good stuffs” for Hanukkah. The miracle of Hanukkah around here usually yields 8 nights of socks, underwear, and school supplies. Last year we tried to spice it up with iTunes credits and video games, but we played it all wrong as we hid the cards in shirts and dress pants. I know, Santa would have flown to the house with his reindeer in tow and bestowed gifts like a rapper making it rain at a titty bar.

We screwed that up royally.

What we did was more like Hanukkah Harry. And Hanukkah Harry ain’t nothin’ if you’re not Jon Lovitz with a thin gray beard.

Hey, we tried. But try as we might getting the kids pumped about Hanukkah the way they were about Christmas was just a joke.

“Look, kids, we had oil that was only supposed to last for 1 day but instead burned for 8 brilliant nights!”

“But Mommy, you just helped us hang a huge beautiful tree with halogen lights that will last longer than you. And they twinkle on and off and they have magical color changing proprieties because they are made with fiber-optics!”

The kids are right, Eat that Maccabees. I was completely smitten with my children’s reaction to the holiday season. Who cares if Santa kicks everyone’s ass? He does. He really, really, does. But then, the unthinkable happened.

My 11-year-old nephew started to ask the holiday question that every parent dreads… “Is Santa real?” Initially, his parents started out with the legit, parental answers, ” Of course he’s real. You get the toys don’t you? You told him what you wanted.”

But nephew was too old for that shit this year, and he wasn’t about to back down. He hounded and hounded and mentally broke his mother who was pregnant with her third child and finally had nothing else to say but, “Okay, you really wanna know? No, Santa Claus is not real. Your Father and I leave those presents for you. ARE YOU HAPPY NOW?”

Come to find out, my nephew was not happy. He couldn’t believe he’d been scammed and lied to all those years. He wanted to get to the bottom of this shit and promptly Face-timed his Grandparents (my in-laws). When they answered that call they found a sobbing 11-year-old yelling at them…

“How could you?” he shirked,

“How could we what?” the poor Grandparents had no idea my nephew had been let in on the big adult lie that is Santa Claus.

“How could you make me sit on a complete strangers lap and tell him all the toys I wanted? He could have been a crazy man, a psycho? And you made me tell him …. secrets.”

Lighting some candles and getting some socks seems a lot less innocuous now.

The Time Bandit and Blowing Out Candles

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I made the insane 50 yard trek to the mailbox the other day and collected the shitstorm of mail that awaited for me. I. Hate. The. Mail. Everything I really need to know, I find out electronically nowadays. Kim K’s naked again… yup. Light bill is due… yup. Babies born, marriages started, marriages ended… I got you interweb. Thank you for being the most amazing form of paperless currency in my life. No mess, no stress. Yay me.

So, back to my shitton of mail: American Girl catalog… no girls here, Pottery Barn… you’re 10 years late on my income, Tax Collector???? What? I’m reading this shit. Oh, wow, it’s time to renew my registration… really? Wonder why? Then I looked at the date, and I realized that my birthday is less than 5 days away. What.The.Fuck?

My birthday? It feels like we just celebrated that? If memory serves we went to that yummy Japanese teppanyaki place. You know, the one where they cook in front of you on the table? And the kids were super adorable and well-behaved that night. The 3-year-old shared fried rice with me, he had just learned to use chopsticks too, pretty well I might add. The 9-year-old ate EVERYTHING on his plate, including scallops. And the baby? What did the baby do? Hmm, why can’t I remember? OMG, because I was still pregnant. The last time I celebrated my birthday I was STILL PREGNANT!

That’s how fast it all goes. Whoosh, a year! Over. Leaving me sitting here to scratch my head at the sheer speed of it all. Mind. Blown. I really have nothing against ageing or birthdays, as far as I’m concerned getting older is much better than the alternative… being dead. Yet, it’s so hard to believe that a year ago we weren’t yet a party of 5, because I feel like we’ve been our completed family forever, but the time bandit and that damn calendar has reminded my old brain that it’s wrong.

Sometimes, on a Sunday afternoon, when my kids are being utterly ridiculous with their, “I’m bored,” and their, “There is nothing TO DO!” bullshit, I think to myself, ” I didn’t sign on for this,” but I did. I really, truly did, I just hadn’t read the full job description when I accepted the position.

So this year, when I blow out my birthday candles I’m going to wish for the ability to breathe in the good things, the little things they do that make me proud and happy, joyous and in awe of their little souls, and the ability to cast away the annoying parts, the stupid behavior they pull when they are hungry or tired or just mad. Just maybe, maybe, if I can do those things I won’t be as surprised when the County tax collector reminds me of my birthday next year.

Most importantly I’m giving myself a fabulous gift this year. The gift of self forgiveness. I am my worst critic, and I really need to cut that shit out because it only distracts me from enjoying my life. No one gets all of this mom-shit right all of the time. That’s just a fact I have to keep reminding myself of.

Wonder where my birthday dinner will be this year?

I really don’t feel like cooking.