Holiday schmoliday

As a child, I became your stereotypical only child and demanded certain things for Christmas. No, it wasn't expensive toys or anything, just the Christmas of Norman Rockwell or the made for TV Christmas movies. Hell I would have been alright with a National Lampoon's Christmas - they were more like my family, just more festive.

I wanted tinsel on the tree but my mom sad it would kill he cats. I wanted tinsel garland but my dad said it was gaudy, almost as gaudy as my grandmas metallic fake tree which I had a secret affinity for. I wanted lights on the roof and eaves, windows and trees, but my parents said no one comes to visit so why out them up? I wanted fake snow flocking but my parents said I could enjoy real snow outside. I wanted a turkey for dinner but the one time my mom made some, it turned out blue - a culinary mystery yet to be solved.

Most of all, I wanted to rip into my gifts with an almost religious fervor, paper like confetti and ribbons strew about in a post apocalypse of gift wrap. This was he one time of the year I could do this (my birthday, celebrated often on Christmas, doesn't count).

But my mother, who tries to deny she is the hippy poster child, wanted to save Mother Earth by saving wrapping paper. I had to repress all that was kid, that screamed rip it open now!!! In a whirlwind of gift wrap rain and ribbon blizzard and instead meticulously remove tape, surgically wriggle off the bow, and delicately remove and fold the gift wrap.

Rip it open!!!!

Recycling gift wrap was her way to save the earth (aside from the fact she burned junk mail) and it got so bad that paper wasn't recycled once or twice, nay may. A few years back I recognized birthday wrap from my grand mother (and he. Mom a few times) from the 1990s. The 90s! I vehemently ripped it to shreds.

And now...the holiday doldrums have caught up to me. Sure, the tree is decorated (with tinsel garland!) and their are lights outside, but the advent calendar is stuck on December 11th, gifts are still being shipped in the mail. I'm trying to get into the spirit for my children's sake, to give them that Rockwell scene, but I am failing.

But dammit. My son WILL rip into his gifts like a caveman!

only in california...

If I tell someone I live in California, they assume certain things...I drive a Prius, make millions, am tan, can surf or know surfers, am an aspiring actress, know people in show biz, smoke pot, and that I work at google. I defy all those stereotypes.

My dad is "anti establishment" in that he dresses like a crazy mountain man/hobo/biker because he refuses to dress like a "square" and he refuses to "fit in". A fantastic story teller, he ha spun tales of living in communes and partying with the Stones and the like. He has a name tattooed on his arm, not my mom's or ex wife's, and when I asked about it, he said it was some cool ex girlfriend, end if story. Come to find out, she was best friends with the "bitching biker chick" of my namesake.

A little prodding and the story unfolds. My namesake wasn't a biker but hung with them some times. She was as Californjan as they get, blond, gorgeous, aspiring actress, beach bum, dating a rock star, with relatives in the Hollywood scene. Her boyfriend was a band member for The Byrds. Her best friend, forever marked on my dad's arm, was, as my dad says, responsible for turning him from a jerk to a nice dude. And then, my dad ended up married, jailed, married, homeless, married, a father, and now a grandfather. Life goes on.

It's just weird that one of his most boring stories, "yeah the tattoo is an ex" and "you were named for a biker chick" were real. Not only were they real but kind of cool. I mean, I've never partied with an aspiring actress who was in a few films, who was "in" the know of famous musicians and entertainers. How...dastardly Californian! Now I wonder how many of his far fetched stories are indeed true, and if he has a little Forrest Gump thing going on.

books suck

No...really, books don't suck, yet recently I have struggled to find good boojs, browsing the best sellers and must read lists and being dissapointed.

Hunger Games...I love dystopian fiction and so I eagerly downloaded a free ebook sample. Twenty some pages in, I felt like I was reading a supermarket shelf young adult novel. I just couldn't get vested in the characters and thought, die already! Except, their deaths were just as....banal.

Then there were the Twilight saga books. One day at work, the computers were down and one can hardly aggregate online data without a computer, so I saw Twilight sitting on the 7th grade bookshelf and went at it. A few pages in, I thought, hmm I could care less about stupid vampires (having tried Anne Rice back in 6th grade)  but hey it is written kinda nicely, I mean it has a nice vocabulary. If a book hating kid wants to read this, right on! Sadly, it turned to nap inducing low intensity soap opera drivel. I struggled through 100 pages, unable to retrieve a better book because the 7th graders were testing.

Dan Browb books looked full of intrigue but the first three pages had me saying, and? So what? So I stopped reading.

The Great Gatsby was a book somehow avoided in high school and college, and even my years as a high school teacher. So one day, before it was even a movie, I picked it up. I even read a few chapters. I loved the way Fitzgerald made the characters so real that I could imagine their accents, mannerisms, and persona. He gets a gold star for "words painting a picture". So why did I stop reading? The story line bored the hell out of me. I felt like I was stuck in the hell that was Gone With the Wind. I know, everyone loves that movie but frankly I don't give a damn.

Pride and Prejudice and all those verbose Victorian novels are a no go, too. I respect the prose, it is excellent from an English teacher perspective, just...who gives a f@ck?

Now before you have a heart attack, I do love some decent literature. One of my absolute favorites is The Grapes of Wrath. The character development and story line is so raw and real. In fact, I haven't read it for about five years so I just may have to again. Even the old grainy black and white film was amazing for its time.

Call me crazy

Call so and so...

I had a bunch of things on my to-do list today, and I procrastinated with every excuse in the book, telling myself I needed to do the dishes, my toddler needed a different shirt on, Facebook just had to be browsed again.

I avoided the truth.

I have phone-phobia.

My heart races just at the thought of calling someone, especially someone I don't know. Call the cable company and the dog groomers? Wait is that the dryer buzzing? Huh? The dogs need to go outside?

I can feel the panic build up inside me and that fight or flight feeling blossom, the flight taking shape and beating the drums-my heart- at breakneck speed. My breath gets quick and shallow. I do a nervous clearing of my throat; the more I do it, the more nervous I am, and that makes me nervous because my husband knows about my "nervous twitch cough".

I don't know exactly why I have an irrational fear of the phone. I know nothing bad can happen and that I compose myself quite well over the phone. There's nothing to fear or worry about. But that means nothing.

Maybe it's because my mom often made calls I could have made as a teen, because she made all the calls for my dad who suffers from Aspergers, social phobia., and anxiety.

Maybe it's my personality. I am an total introvert, my Myers-Briggs is INFP, and "HSP" (Highly Sensitive Person) explains me to a "t".

I wish I knew why I am a phone-phobe so that I could address my phobia and conquer it. Until then, I feel like someone jumped out and screamed "boo!" For ten minutes before and after a phone call.

It feels good to finally admit to this, as it is something I have never told anyone. Maybe this is the first step in surviving a phone call.