“Happy ‘Helladays!'”

“Happy ‘Helladays!'” Is a post that stems from a chapter in my book, “One More Sip of Whine.” This is an AWESOME time of the year for holiday cooking, decorating, and music freaks like myself. However, when you put the family together for the actual holiday? Yeah, welcome to your “helladay!” The magic ends here. (Insert sound of a record player going tits-up). Birthday parties, family BBQ’s, and holidays = family #$%%$#@*&*#&%$*^$%*# If you can relate to this statement, keep reading below. Cheers! Happy “helladays,” friends! 😉

Happy Birthday to Who, Now? And Happy Holidays to No One

I REMEMBER WHEN BIRTHDAYS, Christmas, Easter and all holidays kicked ass. I more than looked forward to parties and stuffing my face with all of the sugar that my mother would’ve otherwise never let me have. I don’t like soda, and no one in my family drinks it. I have my mom to thank for that. However, when we hosted a holiday at my home, as a child, I got high just looking at a bottle of soda (the ONLY time it ever made an appearance in our home). My eyeballs starting spinning in opposite directions, and my body started tweaking out. As I’ve stated earlier, I was a weird kid, therefore I liked my soda flat. After my extended family would leave, I’d hop onto the countertop and ever so slightly loosen the cap so the soda would flatten, not just because I liked it flat, but mostly because I knew no one else would drink it, and then the rest would all be mine. Mwahahahaaa! I’m not sure if I should be proud or disturbed about the inner workings of my childhood brain. I started doing this when I was about seven. The moral of this paragraph is that I freakin’ loved birthdays and all holidays alike.
           

Now when birthdays come along, I’m decorating the shit outta my house in Thomas the Train décor, and my apartment looks something like Shining Time Station on steroids, with cake imbedded in my carpet and the hired balloon twister pumping out balloons faster than Jenna Jameson can scream, “Fuck me!” “Happy” by Pharrell Williams is blaring so loud it’s almost drowning out the shrieks of children (which is worse?), there are phone calls from lost parents en route whom I can’t hear over the insanity, and just to make my skull start to crack, here come the noisemakers—hands down the dumbest purchase I’ve ever made. I’m starting to think that I might truly be a masochist.

This leads me to think about birthdays in general, the first portion of the word, birth. After all, was it not I who, indeed, birthed that child? Should this day not be all about me? I love me a good party that doesn’t involve little people and caked-up carpets. Then I stopped to think… again. I should really stop doing that (wink). My kid was happier and higher than the downtown druggies on crack. His sugared-up self was jumping in a sea of balloons and noisemakers. So I just drank some more wine and started taking boat loads of pictures to remind myself that, next year, we’re doing the party somewhere other than my home. Oh, and of course, to remind myself of the smiles on my little bugger’s face. Priceless.
           

Holidays are the new “helladays.” My family is growing. Not my immediate family—remember the chapter One and Done? I meant that. I mean, my extended family. My siblings have little ones, and my other ones have partners, etc. Getting everyone together is like solving the world’s most challenging math equation. Why? Because it’s totally impossible. Also people end up pissed. Like I’ve said earlier in this book, my siblings and I live all over the US, and I have many siblings. Now that flying is crazy expensive, especially when you add wee ones into the mix, it becomes extremely frustrating to get everyone together. Plus people want to keep and make their own traditions in their own homes for the sake of the kiddos. If we’re all rotating Christmases, Thanksgivings, Easters, etc., it becomes insane. And I think we’ve established early on in this book that I am trying very desperately to hang on to my sanity. Lord knows I don’t need to deliberately deplete the short supply I have left! Sans kids? We’d all be in Mexico for the holidays, sipping sangria on the beach whilst getting massaged from some buff and tan arms. Oh yeah, that’s what we’d be doing alright. My family is female heavy, so there’s no doubt we’d win that vote! Anyway I don’t want my love muffin to miss out on finding his Easter basket in the house, or waking up on Christmas morning to run to our fireplace to ransack his stocking and then open the presents under the tree next to the piano. I love those little moments, too. They seem calmer without a slew of people, and this year there were NO family arguments, an impossibility if we’re all together. Usually there’s name calling, early plane departures to get the hell outta dodge, frantic phone calls between my parents about which kid sucks and is now switching from mom’s house to dad’s house in a total fit of hysteria, etc. What should you take from this all? What are my words of “wisdom” to you? Start your own traditions at your own homes without the extended family now, mothers! Or enjoy your “helladays!”