merry christmas.

i've been in kind of a funk this year throughout the holidays, and i can't really put a finger on why. i am usually super excited about decorating and shopping and wrapping presents, but this year is totally different.

i don't have a tree. for the first time in my life, there's not a christmas tree in the place i live.....in fact, i don't have a single decoration...and i've tried finding one, even if it was a super tacky and stupid one, but i just couldn't get into it this year. i just feel detached from it and there's no real excitement tied in with it. i'm happy to be going home to spend a few days with my family, and i'm excited about christmas dinner (deviled eggs and fancy bread, bitches!) but other than that, i'm just pretty "eh" about the whole season. i've done the shopping and the whole shebang, but i sit here as i type this, staring at a box full of unwrapped presents, and i can think of about a million things i'd rather be doing than tying bows around packages...and that was something i used to look forward to at christmas time.....

i apparently have no christmas spirit.

now christmas is what? 2 days away....i was one of those people who got my shopping done about a month ago, and only actually set foot in a store maybe twice throughout the shopping process...i've become a firm believer and lover of online shopping, and while maybe there are moments of missing the experience of actually touching and seeing what i'm buying BEFORE i buy it (not the mention the instant gratification of having it RIGHT THEN), that's all quickly eclipsed by the knowledge that i didn't have to stand in long check out lines, or deal with the anxiety of them being out of what i wanted, or fighting crowds, or countless hours lost in traffic and circling stores just begging for a parking spot to open up...ugh i want to punch a wall just thinking about it....

i'm still having to deal with the traffic on a daily basis - like, even just going two blocks away to get food takes an hour when it should take just a couple of minutes - and i am getting a little road-ragey and start doing crazy stuff like screaming obscenities in my car as loudly as i can, but i just try to remind myself that these are all mothers and fathers trying to get that "perfect" gift for their kids.....or boyfriends trying to find whatever it is their girlfriends want (HA!)....or son who waited til the last possible minute shopping for their parent's gifts (because, ya know, daughters got on this stuff WEEKS ago).

anyway, the point is, i'm done, and i feel for all of you who aren't for whatever reason. I had to go to target to buy wrapping paper (which i could rant about ALL day - seriously - i spent like, $70 on WRAPPING PAPER! can you believe that? when did it become such an investment to purchase stuff that was created with the sole purpose of being ripped into shreds?!?!?!?) and wanted to rip my eyeballs out just wading through all the crazed people to the back where the wrapping stuff was. i can only imagine how frustrating it would be to have to find multiple, specific things and fighting over them with all these other people....i mean, seriously, they are NUTS - i made the mistake about a week ago of walking into toys r us on my lunch break to look for something, and you could actually FEEL the tension in that store. parents were walking around with these looks on their faces that just said to me that these weren't people you wanted to mess with - they all seemed to have very clear missions that none of them were willing to fail at, and i suspect, just by the crazy looks, that things were harder than they thought they would be. i saw one woman look at another woman's list over her shoulder and then she proceeded to follow her quietly around the store to see if she actually found any of those items while she dispatched her husband to go around scanning shelves for one of those creepy zhu zhu hampster things.

anyway, i hope everyone has a super christmas, and hopefully by now you are all just safe at home staring a tree with lots of wrapped packages under it and laughing at the thought of all those poor, unfortunate souls out there fighting over the last pair of UGG boots, or flipping off the guy who just stole their parking spot......

MERRY CHRISTMAS, Y'ALL.