15 December associations I tend to make

1. December = the smell of pine, which is mildly orgasmic. For me, anyway. Lucky me.

2. December = Egg Nog Shakes at McDonald’s. Other than the Shamrock Shake for St. Patrick’s Day (and the sadly fleeting Arctic Orange Shake, which I haven’t seen since my adolescence), the Egg Nog Shake encompasses McDonald’s best achievement. I mean, other than that whole Super Size Me thing.

3. December = SNOW HATS. Snow hats provide me with infinite comfort and protection from the elements. And by “elements,” I mean, well, everything. Truth of the matter is, I’ve been known to wear a snow hat even during the summer months. Whenever I feel like I need some heavy-duty protecting, the snow hat is there for me. The snow hat does not discriminate by season. The snow hat loves me, unconditionally. I love you, snow hat.

4. December = Andes mints. I’ve been to Peru, but I didn’t see any mint. What I did see, though, were mountains of sheer awesomeness. It is, therefore, no surprise to me that the extensive South American mountain range produces this smoothest of chocolatey-minty decadence all wrapped in a thinly veiled, metallic-green wrapper. One love, Andes. One love.

5. December = A Charlie Brown Christmas. You’ve probably noticed that I’m sort of a Peanuts fan. Pretty much no holiday would be complete for me without Vince Guaraldi’s accompaniment and that spotted beagle jigging around. But A Charlie Brown Christmas takes Charles Schultz’s brilliance to a whole other level: not only do the Peanuts characters make an impressive statement about the over-commercialization of Christmas and holiday depression, but they also take part in this incredible dance number that could put all Dancing With the Stars coaches to shame. For real. That kid in green was doing the Running Man before the RUNNING Man was doing the Running Man! And the mohawked dude in orange had some crazy-@ss double-jointedness happening with his shoulder that remains inexplicably innovative. I mean, you try that sh*t!

6. December = unfortunate and excessive lawn ornamentation (particularly the blow-up variety), which serves as a physical manifestation of the yard owner’s insatiable need to be coddled and also his/her inability to streamline. The result is terrifying and nightmare-inducing. See my previous pog. 

7. December = boots that inevitably make my socks fall down inside of them and, therefore, drive me insane. Thanks a lot, boots.

8. December = homemade Christmas gifts when I’m too poor to buy any. Which I am every this year. I hope my gram likes her homemade family tree this year.

9. December = crazy fabric wreath that my maintenance dude always hangs up on my porch, which leads neighbors (and fellow tenants) to believe that I have masterfully bogus holiday decorating taste, which is CLEARLY not true. I mean, come on. I have nothing against fabric wreaths, mind you. I am all about the handmade. Still, just because I support handmades doesn’t mean all handmades are good. It’s sort of like how, in the past, my family would just buy me anything they saw that had any French language on it. Including a Celine Dion CD. Their logic being: she likes French, Celine speaks French; thus, she must like Celine. Umm… faulty syllogism, family members. Likewise, Maintenance Dude’s fabric wreath has no relevance to anything even remotely pleasing — to the eye, or otherwise. It’s sort of like your old elementary schoolteacher’s tacky holiday sweater barfed a wreath. So, I let the fabric pseudo-creation have its day (or ten), and then I stealthily swipe it off its hook and stash it in the shed… until Maintenance Dude resuscitates the wreath next year. It’s this little game Maintenance Dude and I like to play. Four years and it hasn’t gotten old yet.

10. December = 10.5-hour trek to Ohio to see family and friends for the holidays. Always therapeutic and often amusing (what with my various interpretations of Broadway show-tunes, first in a French accent, then in a British accent, then in a Pakistani accent, then as my mom, etc.), the drive from Boston to Cleveland has become almost automatic by now. Which just seems wrong, doesn’t it? Ten and a half hours of wrongness.

11. December = birthdays. Lots of good friends with birthdays this month. Yeah, Scotty and Denise, I’m looking directly (and accusingly) at you two. I’m sure you’ve gotten the shaft over the years because, let’s face it, birthdays around Christmas pretty much equate to “combined present,” and that just blows. Sometimes quantity is better than quality, ya know? So I feel pressured to get you two separate gifts (or more), and to make them awesome and meaningful, first as a birthday gift, then as a Christmas gift. And it’s so hard to decide which gift equals birthday and which gift equals Christmas, so I ultimately end up in a near-catatonic state, choking on my own saliva. Umm… as opposed to someone else’s saliva? I don’t know. But it’s not pretty. So… thanks a lot. Way to be born during the holiday season. Poor planning. Your parents’ libidinal clocks BLEW. And you can tell them I said so.

12. December = holiday hours. And holiday hours RULE. Not even because I necessarily want to go Christmas/birthday shopping at 10pm, but it’s nice to know that, should the urge pinch me, I could hop in my really loud car, barrel past a ton of scary-@ss blow-up ornaments that have no business infiltrating my field of vision, and go buy my friend a Homer Simpson Chia-Pet. Awesome. 

13. December = my gram. Gram comes to visit us from South Carolina each Christmas. Ninty-years-old, and the woman still mows her lawn and landscapes. In pumps. STEP OFF. Gram is my favorite person in the world. No contest. And I usually see her at least a few times a year, but… Christmastime is always the most special, because it always equates to literal and figurative strolls down memory lane, made even more poignant by the surroundings: my Gram was born in Cleveland, just as I was. I love asking her questions and hearing her stories. Like when she first went out with my grandfather: she was a bookish high schooler, waiting outside her house for a blind date to arrive and pick her up. Only he was late. And the next thing she knew, here came my grandpa, sidling up  in a convertible with a friend of his. He made some comment about how Gram’s prospective date must have been “a real louse” (or some other such groovy term), and that she should get in the car and go out with him instead. And so she did. And they were married four years later. Studs.

14. December = advent calendars, which I will relish till I’m old and decrepit. You should probably check out my other blog for crafty examples of advent awesomeness.

15. December = CHRISTMAS COOKIES!!!!!!!!!!!!! Enough said.