I don’t think I am going to do xmas stockings this year. It’s okay. I asked both the beach urchins about it and they were okay with it. I always put a whole bunch of trinkety stuff into stockings and they don’t want to receive a whole bunch of trinkety stuff and I don’t want to burden them with a whole bunch of trinkety stuff. We all have way too much stuff. None of us need any more. But I have always done xmas stockings. Every year of their lives.

I have carried on a tradition that I grew up with. I don’t remember when The Commander stopped giving us xmas stockings. I’m gonna guess it was after The Engineer and Dogmomster got married. They got married when The Engineer was, hmmm, lemme see, 24 years old and Dogmomster was even younger. I had to do some fast and fancy math there but I think that’s correct and yes, they were young ‘uns. At least they were younger than I was when I got married. (But I had the first grandchild. So, na-na-na-na-naaaa-na. Just kidding!) Anyway. I don’t think that we stopped getting xmas stockings because DogMomster joined the family. I think it was just time. You kids are grown up. Time to start forming your own traditions. The nuclear family I grew up in was then in the same stage that the one I have produced is now. Young adult children, no grandchildren (and no one is ready for them, including me, so don’t anyone get the wrong idea here).

I went home to the Great White North for xmas until after Elizilla was born. Except for the first xmas after we were married. That was a *loverly* xmas because I had a *loverly* gastro-type virus on xmas eve. Fun times. (That wasn’t why we didn’t go north, it was coincidental.) Liz was two months old on her first xmas and we drove up there through an ice storm in an old-school Ford Fiesta! We walked in the door at the grandparents’ and I put her in The Commander’s lap aaannnddd the baby gave her grandmother a huge toothless smile. A moment that neither The Commander or I will ever ever ever forget. We had fun up there that time but the weather was awful — rain and freezing rain. No skiing and I had to take precious vacation days. I decided it was time to start spending xmas here at the Landfill on The Planet Ann Arbor. I would rather use my scarce vacation time to slug around on the beach in the summer. And it was time to start our own traditions.

Stockings did become one of my traditions. One year we even made one for the GG. It was full of hot stuff: Tabasco sauce, Screaming Sphincter salsa, a Beanie Baby bull named Tabasco, and I forget what else. Seems to me that was also the day a Bad Aminal glued Mouse to her bed but that’d be a whole ‘nother story. Usually, I just made stockings for the beach urchins. They would open their stockings first, just as the sun peeked over the horizon, and compare notes about who opened what first, since the contents were identical.

If I get some kind of an inspiration, I may still end up putting stockings together. At the moment? Well. We’re coming up on the winter holidays again and, as usual, I am nowhere near ready for them. Last year, on the Monday of Thanksgiving week, I tried to fill a turkey brining bag all by myself, with the result that there was brining liquid all over the kitchen. My already broken old office chair was ruined beyond being usable and subsequently euthanized. This year? For starters, I need to get my you-know-what in gear and call My Dear Uncle Harry to ask him what he wants me to bring (take?) to Thanksgiving dinner this week!

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