Showing posts with label bayberry candles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bayberry candles. Show all posts

Friday, December 17, 2021

Christmas in Flyoverland, 2021

Pronounced, fly-over-lund 

                                          Image by Nita Knott at pixy.org 


This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids — the Stickies — eventual selves to advise them and haunt them after they've become grups and/or I'm deleted.   

Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating intersectional meltdown.  
Glossary 

Erratically Appearing Hallucinatory Guest Star: Dana — A Gentlereader  

"Once again, we come to the Holiday Season, a deeply religious time that each of us observes, in his own way, by going to the mall of his choice." -Dave Barry

{Shouldn't that be their own way and the mall of his/her/their choice?}


Dear (eventual) Grandstickies and Great-Grandstickies (and Gentlereaders),

The good news is that two of the Stickies, the (formerly) evil step-twins (with help from Willamina, who's a sorta/kinda Sticky) have taken it upon themselves to hang Christmas lights all over the inside of the house this year. 

While I have bemoaned the paucity of exterior Christmas lighting here in Hooterville in previous Christmas columns, I have to admit that I'm a hypocrite. Casa de Chaos, as usual, has no exterior lighting. 

I'm too old, my son-in-law works six days a week to keep the wolf from our door (and that's enough), and my daughter acknowledges the fact she inherited her mom's gift for accidental self-injury, a disability her oldest stepdaughter, Asparagoose, has apparently inherited osmotically.  

The only Sticky I'd trust on a ladder lives elsewhere and is currently dealing with a deep-dip on the emotional roller coaster of he and his "partners" relationship. 

I doubt she'll read this, but I wish her and her's, a Merry Christmas anyway. 

{What's the bad news? Who are the (formerly) evil step-twins?}


The bad news is that all sorts of people in Mr. Cranky's neighborhood continue to believe that despite the wild temperature/barometric pressure fluctuations (and the occasional neighborhood miscreant) Northeast Ohio is subject to, this will be the year enormous, lighted, inflatable Christmas characters in their front yards will stay inflated for more than a day or two before collapsing.  

Whereupon they will set upon restoring them a couple, three times before giving up.

Mommy! Mommy! There's a giant dead and desiccated Santa Claus in Mrs. Mcgillicuddy's front yard! 

{You have to admire their, optimism?}


The (formerly) evil step-twins — don't call her Bug anymore, and Duuude — are now16. They...

{16! Are you sure? You must be even older than you ...}

Harumph! Everyone knows 68 is the new 39, Dana.

They met when they were barely two years old when Casa de Chaos was created out of two blended families. We briefly had to hire security so that mom could take an occasional nap without having to chain them to their... beds? Cribs? I can't remember.

Seemingly normal toddlers most of the time, if left alone for more than half a minute their souls would meld together and then be temporarily possessed by a nameless demon. 

For example, once, when mom was on the phone in the living room speaking to dad, who was on his lunch break at work, she got up to investigate the source of giggling and shrieking at the other end of the short hall that connects the front of the house to the back. 

The refrigerator door, the handle of which neither of them could reach, was open and they were running back and forth from the kitchen to the dining room and emptying out the contents of various containers, including ketchup, mustard, and the like on the kitchen and dining room, the carpeted dining room, floors.

Dad, literally left holding the phone, could hear mom screaming expressing her frustration and was about call 911 when she got back on the phone and explained it was just another day, love ya, gotta go. 

Fortunately time, and a do-it-yourself home exorcism kit from Home Depot, eventually solved the problem. 

{What's that got to do with Christmas?}

Nothing. But you asked and I realized that I don't think I've ever specifically mentioned the evil step-twin phenomenon in a column so I've recorded this story for my gentlereaders and posterity. Also, it was part of a devious plan to mention all of the founding members of Casa de Chaos in my annual Christmas column without anyone noticing. 

For the record, they're both fine now. She's a budding scholar, he's a budding weight lifter who will be starting tech school next year.


My room smells like Christmas smelled in my house in the late 50s/early 60s. 

I've been threatening to buy a bayberry candle for years, and, we had real Christmas trees in our house except for the time my old man brought home an aluminum one (but that's another story).

But now that I think about it... it seems unlikely we had bayberry scented candles when I was a kid. But to me, bayberry and pine are what Christmas smells like and since lived experience (as sometimes opposed to ones' actual experience) is a thing, I'm a stickin' to muh guns.

Anyways, my daughter and son-in-law surprised me with an early Christmas present, pine-scented and bayberry scented candles a few weeks ago. Merry Christmas to me...and to all my gentlereaders as well. 

Poppa loves you,
Have an OK day

P.S. R.I.P. Michael Nesmith and Merry Christmas to my favorite lesbian. 


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