Dust off your X's - Xmas is coming!

 

Your love is like   prune and prawn cocktail

Ladies and blog readers: we have no time in our lives for people who say 'OMG' out loud. These people need Internet Lessons at a special camp for a few years.

I'm at that point again: forced vacation. This is when I have to take my accrued vacation days or I'll lose them. Since I like to work, I have a few vacation days left (last I checked, 137 days). Ok, I'm kidding - 37 days. Last year and all the years before it, I didn't bother planning so I wound up taking December off, plus every Monday and Friday or so. Definitely every Saturday. Since I only waited til Halloween this year, I managed to not take any full months off, even though my appearances in December are still pretty sparse.

I mention this because I'm not like other people. No, really. Like other special people, I require structure. At home there's no structure, so unless there's something interesting to do (or Wife is screaming at the top of her lungs), I kinda default to my comfy chair [PUT HIM IN THE COMFY CHAIR!]. Very little gets done, and that's the crux of the biscuit. For some people, this is not a good thing. I am one of them. But sit I do. I need to read the news to find out which of our mortgage or credit card companies has been breached this week (by a vulnerability that has been known about for months). 

Plus you never know how it will go if I get bored. It could take me all the way to the deep end and I'll do something unthinkable, like clean. Or I could get up to Mischief. I had to cut down the mischief after Mrs. lefty took up martial arts (although I prefer marital arts). Now I get her input before Mischief, and only commit it outside the house.

So I'll be reporting: Updates from the Chair

I will be 'politely requested' to do some home chores [I WANT THAT NEW FAUCET IN THE BATHROOM BY END OF WEEKEND or you don't eat] or take the car out for a wash [why do you wash a car - it only gets dirty as you drive out of the car wash - like making the bed]. I'd vacuum but out of the 14 vacuums making up our Vacuum Graveyard, only half of one works, and that's waiting for someone to take a second look at it (with a flamethrower, to clean out the dirt). Strangely, the only one that lasted more than a few months was the tiny, cheap, plastic, pull-along thingie. It's red. Vacuums frustrate me, like many things. They tend to clog up, but only in places where I can't find the clog. Or in the brush: between 2 people and a dog, there's enough hair in the brush to make up another 2 people and a dog. But mostly it's clogged so we can hear it but not find it. The little red vacuum (that couldn't) has no complex path for dirt, so when it clogs, as it is now, you can't find a single thing wrong with it. As I wait for Mrs. lefty's expert opinion (I always wait for the 2nd one, because the 1st one is invariably 'buy a new one'), I notice the household dust and dirt has gone past the 2" EMERGENCY mark and my guitar cords not only move, but something's speaking to me and it ain't the normal voices.

Soooooo I won't be vacuuming on forced vacation. I won't be shopping, as I hate people even more during the holidays. The mall around the corner has enough parking spaces for the entire city, but during the holidays, you can't find a single one. Little children are pulling their parents along, apologizing for the parents' behavior, the sales aren't, and you can't swing an unloaded flamethrower around without hitting people. And why would you carry an unloaded flamethrower around anyway? 

Besides - the mall is missing all functional shops except Victoria's Secret and Cinnabon. The pop-up Halloween shop is still there, with all costumes 10% off. One must run the gauntlet of foreign-born men trying to squirt you with stuff you hope is perfume, and most of the 'stores' are 'kiosks'. At 10pm, everybody in the mall stops what they're doing and says, "God, I am sorry for whatever I did to deserve this punishment. I am shopping online starting tonight."

People are so frazzled, the 4 restaurants left in the 'food court' make tasty food, except for Chik Filet, which isn't open on Sundays and any other day with 'day' in it. I don't want to say this mall is past it, but Starbucks closed and ran away screaming. I don't want to seem totally negative about Starbucks - their caramel crunch is really good, when the machines aren't broken. I suspect it doesn't have any actual coffee in it, so be sure to get a shot of espresso with it. But since the mall still has a Cinnabon, get a mochalotta chill. It's the best thing to drink with your cinnabons (or without them, heaven forbid).

So I won't be vacuuming OR going to the mall on forced vacation. I will also not be going caroling, even with all the great carols I know

• Since girls, single girls, going all the way
• [drummer boy] I'm hasidic, baruch atah tah
• I saw daddy kissing Santa Claus
• Mommy got run over by an armored personnel carrier
  
• Oh Tanenbaum, oh Birenbaun, oh Cohen and Slutzky

I tried caroling once. One thing I never considered before caroling was what people would think, opening their doors to me. Suffice it to say that it didn't go well, kinda like Gaza. You just don't want to see me at your door singing Christmas carol parodies... except that one guy, but I don't think he was listening to me singing and I didn't like the way he was looking at me. It's ok... Mrs. lefty got me out of there in time.  I couldn't picture myself mounted on his wall. Or in his living room. I will never understand why gay men like me so much. Sure, I'm gay-friendly, but not that friendly. If only women looked at me with that kind of leer..... Mrs. lefty would kill me.

So I won't be vacuuming or caroling. Or a partridge in a pear tree. I have never seen a partridge, or a pear tree, so I couldn't make it real enough. It looks like my default: sitting. I do it well. And often. And playing the guitar - I do that decently and not often enough. And sex... I do that decently but not often, and usually by myself.

I could frolic in the snow, but it hasn't snowed much and I don't really like snow. My frolicking days were over years ago.  I could give out presents to kids, but they frighten me. Best to give out presents to their mothers.

It turns out that after doing the Science, real and fake xmas trees are the same: neither do a thing until you do something. They both sit there in an uninspired heap until or unless you put them up. They both stay there for months after xmas unless you take them down. That's more responsibility and work than I'm happy taking on at the end of the year.

So if I find anything to do over Forced Vacation that isn't sitting, I'll be sure to report it here.

Meanwhile, here is a carol I'm composing as I type... just in case you're wondering what to get your favorite blogger (or me) this year...

On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: Vanessa Hudgens

On the second day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: a 1958 left handed Stratocaster

On the third day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: blogging lessons

On the fourth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: more true loves

On the fifth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: 5 Sports Illustrated Supermodels

On the sixth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: an Alexander Howard Dumble amp

On the seventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: a non-cancerous cocker

On the eighth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: a car that won't break or get hit all the time

On the ninth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: a house that won't demand my salary

On the tenth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: a wife in no pain

On the eleventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: world peace

On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: Linda Fiorentino  (and Vanessa Hudgens, not in a tree, on alternate days)

I'm not supposed to know, but my wife wants to get me a jam session with my favorite guitar players, Jeff Beck and Jimi Hendrix. They're dead, so...  Ohhhh, I get it.