10:34 a.m. - 12.25.2002
A Donner Party Christmas
If I eat anymore....I'll die. I feel like a horse - if you let me, I'll eat myself to death. I've already heard rumblings about getting me a feed-bag for next year. "Gorge" is my new verb. Supposedly, the thing for kids these days is to have a verb. Mine's gorge. What's your verb?
***
I've seen my fair share of TV this holiday season, and one commercial keeps poppin' up. It's an Old Navy commercial where the American Idol rejects are playing Family Feud against Morgan Fairchild.
This commercial amazes me. And not just from a bastardized pop culture standpoint.
How OLD is Morgan Fairchild? I'm not sure why she's famous (whas she in film? tv?) But I do know it's been awhile. Whatever it was. Let's be generous and say she's in her forties. I don't know if the good folks at Industrial Light and Magic make these commercials or what, but something is going on. She looks flawless. Eerily flawless. I think she must sleep in Tupperware with Michael Jackson. That, or somehow during filming they shoot her with a soft lens, and then splice it in to the rest of the footage.
I know, I've given this some thought, but the commercial only airs 15 x's in a 30 min time slot.
Check it out.
***
Have you ever seen the movie Amelie? In the beginning, we learn about the parent's and their guilty/visceral pleasures. One for the father is stripping large strips of wallpaper. Let me just say *shudders at thought* I have just this holiday discovered the cathartic joy that is wallpaper stripping. Since I am relegated to the couch, I'm using the bathroom/laundry room just off the kitchen. When I arrived, some small strips of wallpaper were already gone - in a preliminary attempt at bathroom/laundry room renovations.
While in the room on personal business, I took my que and began tearing off long strips. ...now I'm addicted. It's like popping packaging bubbles...you just gotta do it!
If any of you have the opportunity to strip wallpaper, I highly recommend it - it's so choice! (Ferris Bueller)
***
This morning the nephew, Connor, received a Big Wheel.
I want one.
Remember how cool they were? Especially the ones with a brake. They really need to make these for big people. Forget about the new Sedgeways - BIG big wheels are the way to go. I'd peddle mine everywhere.
***
The forecast here in New Hampshire is for two feet of snow. I haven't experienced two feet of snow, let alone on Christmas, in nigh on 6 years.
Even the locals are scared, which makes me more scared.
I have a plan, should things get Donner Party-bad here, to slice the golden retreiver Cappie open and place the baby Connor inside for warmth and protection.
He's the youngest and needs to live to let the outside world know of the horrors that happend to those of us trapped inside the house.
Just a few minutes ago I caught my own mother drooling with a far-away look in her eye as she oogled a particularly tasty chunk of thigh on me. I've discreetly been combing the hosue and collecting and hiding all implements of destruction.
Unfortunately, there's just too many. A whole house full. Even a frozen turkey could do some damage.
Ah well. I'm young. I'll fight the rest off easy enough. It's just Connor I worry about.
***
I've noticed that I've fallen into a narrative trap of writing my experiences in a way OPPOSITE of how I speak. I use words like "unbeknownst" and "the like" and "nigh on" and other odd sayings of a formality not used in regular speech. I'm doing it now. I realized this narrative trap while watching 24-hours of A Christmas Story on TNT. The narrator of the movie does it as well. And I think the narrator in the Wonder Years does too. A narrative trap I tell you. I mean, you says, "I tell you"?
***
Well, I have more eating to do. Here's wishing you and yours the merriest of holidays!
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