Traditions. Who needs them?

You spend weeks planning, shopping, looking for the best deal, making lists, checking the lists, rechecking each list three times.  You spend hours baking, cooking, cleaning, and wrapping.

And then The Big Day arrives, the kids run to the tree and tear into the presents, opening the next before their brains can even register what they just opened.

It’s all over in the blink of an eye.

Unless you’re me.

Because much like everything else in my life, I fuck up traditions.

When I was growing up, the rule was we couldn’t knock on my parent’s door until 6:00.  We couldn’t go out to the living room to open presents until Dad had plugged in the tree lights.  We opened one gift at a time so everyone could see what everyone else got.  It lasted forever.  And it was awesome.

Much as I wanted that tradition to carry on into my house now that I’m the parent, my girls refuse to cooperate.  They sleep half the day away with zero regard for the fact that Santa came.  I barely put up any Christmas decorations and the fact that I had a tree this year was because I was feeling really generous one day.  It was a cheap Charlie Brown looking tree.  And that was before the cats tore it down.  The first time.  (we discovered the safest place for the tree was in the bathtub.  I wish I was kidding).

So, I have accepted my traditions with the girls are not going to be my parents’ traditions with me.  I’m never going to have that magical Christmas morning moment with them.   Our Christmas looks like this:

The week before Christmas (Usually the 22nd or 23rd) my Dad and his wife come over from Ohio and we do dinner and open gifts with them.  They get a motel room, and the girls have a sleep over with Grandpa and his wife.  We do breakfast the next morning and a good time is had by all.

The past couple of years I have given the girls a set amount of money each so that they can buy gifts for each other.  It’s fun to watch them A)budget their money b/c they want to get the  most for their bucks and B) figure out what their sister would like best.  And it teaches them that giving is as fun as receiving.

This year, after shopping with my dad, the girls and I went home with their goody bags of gifts for each other.  Once home they decided bah humbug who needs to wrap them and wait until Christmas Eve? Let’s just give each other our gifts now.  And in the span of a few minutes they had ripped price tags off and given their gifts to each other.  Christmas magic teenage girl style.

Christmas Day saw me at home, alone, without any presents to open.  The girls had been safely delivered to their dad for the week, and I was home doing everything I could to forget exactly what day it was.  The fact that it was Sunday didn’t help.  I had expected the darkness to swallow me, to just take me away.  The girls were safely at their dad’s and I had already gotten a text from all the family I was going to hear from, all by 11:00.  I had nothing else to look forward to.  And yet, as much as I was prepared for it, and possibly expected and welcomed it, the darkness never really showed up.  I found I made it through the day.

Here I am on the other side.  Still standing.  And that must mean something.

So I am preparing to face 2012.  I am gearing up to changes to this blog, to my writing.  I am going to ramp up the job search.

I came through the holiday, the BMOC holiday and that must mean something.