Here’s how I know it’s the Christmas season: My jeans are tight, I have a constant sense that there’s something I haven’t done that must be accomplished very soon, and I am the proud owner of a large, fuzzy, remote-controlled tarantula.

 

Let’s talk about the jeans first. Yes, I am faithful to my pilates instructor. I continue to strive for the ability to flip my legs over my head so I can then touch my toes to the floor behind me. This will be big day, and I am getting closer through my twice-weekly personal training sessions. I am not, however, as faithful to Dr. Atkins, and I thank God he was not alive to see the Almond Bark Episode that occurred at approximately three o’clock this afternoon. I am hoping to star in a little feature I call Return To The Treadmill sometime this week, and that will certainly help, but cutting down on the cookies really needs to happen. Really.

 

The office Christmas party this past Friday certainly didn’t help the situation. After stuffing ourselves with all kinds of hors d’ourves for an hour, we then sat down for dinner, and followed that with multiple visits to the dessert buffet. Sure, we danced – a lot – but the army of calories we had consumed sustained only minor injuries from our efforts. It was a great night, though. The company runs it like a big formal wedding. (We spend about $60 thousand on it, and the new CFO at our sister company swears she’s going to cancel it next year. I encouraged her to announce this during the party, to make sure everyone got maximum enjoyment out of our last big party. This would have also given her the added bonus of guaranteeing her popularity.) It’s quite the glitzy event, and it’s fun to see everyone all dressed up and to meet their significant others. The party ends around midnight, and a lot of us generally head down to the hotel bar for an hour or so. This year, we were troubled by a drunken local man attired entirely in green, who occupied the bar stool next to one of our female executives and sat staring intently at her, motionless. I could almost hear Marlon Perkins in the background: “The jackass – er, jackel – watches his prey from the tall grass, waiting to pounce…”  Eventually, he rose and came around behind us on his way to the pool table, dragging his hand across my ass as he passed. Nice! We conferred as a group and concluded he was harmless, but IT Girl summoned her husband anyway – turns out Mr. IT Girl works in law enforcement, is build like a cube (three feet wide, three feet thick) and actually needed to be there, since Drunken Green Guy had starting staring at me and was heading back our way. Mr. IT Girl blocked his path, words were exchanged, and Drunken Green Guy ended up landing flat on his ass down on the floor before they threw him out. I have to admit I took a little satisfaction in that.

 

The next night, I heard the NJ Gay Men’s Chorus sing their Christmas program up in Plainfield. Wonderful arrangements, beautifully performed, and they got me into the Christmas spirit that I had been missing. I’ve heard this group sing a few times before and am never disappointed. They have a website, http://www.njgmc.org, and I encourage you to check them out – it’s always a great event.

 

Around midnight, right after I had washed my face and put on my pj’s, I heard my cell phone play Dutch’s ring. It turns out that he had just returned from a party, saw my lights on, and felt like coming over for a drink. I informed him I was not willing to get dressed but that he was welcome to come over. (Once in my flannel pajamas, I am not coming out.) Upon his arrival, he presented me with my Christmas gift – a remote control tarantula with a body the size of my fist, a head like a golf ball, and eight thick, furry legs to match. Oh, and fangs. The part Dutch likes best is that you can put it on the floor and make it crawl toward people, even when they scream and  climb up on chairs, or try to leave the room, or wet their pants a little.  He says this is part of my arachnophobia therapy program, and that by continual exposure to such a soft, furry friendly version of a spider, I will eventually get over the absolute terror I experience whenever I see one, or think I see one, or see one on TV. I do not have high hopes for this experiment, but I’m willing to play along. I also told him it was really nice that he thought of me while he was out shopping, and the “thinking-of-me” part was what I was focusing on when thanking him for my gift.

 

Otherwise, the holidays are proceeding as usual, which means I am never comfortable just relaxing at home since I am convinced there is always an errand I need to run or an item I need to pick up. Today, in Jo-Ann fabrics (because I need to change the buttons on the special holiday shirt I bought – don’t ask) a nice gentleman asked me if I was in line, and I responded by saying yes and that it was becoming like a second career for me. He smiled and wished me great success with it, which made me really think about it – how much time do I spend in line this time of year? Here are a few memorable experiences:

 

1. The line at Jo-Ann Fabrics

 

Why I suddenly needed to change buttons on a shirt, I can’t even tell you. It seemed like a good idea at the time, and I also found a great wicker basket for someone (bonus!) so I grabbed it and jumped in line. It was the dinner hour – about 6 o’clock – and only a few people were in the store. Unfortunately, most of them seemed to be in line in front of me – and most of them appeared to be related. What we had here was a woman with four children, aged eight to two, two strollers wedged full of merchandise wherever there weren’t children, three rolls of wrapping paper that kept getting loose and rolling around the attractive linoleum floor, a large heavy box holding a worktable, and two sheets of yellow paper on which the woman working back in the fabric area had ostensibly noted measurements and corresponding prices for the fabrics to be purchased. None of this made any sense to the cashier, of course, giving me time to observe the increasingly loud antics of the children, one of whom appeared to be carrying some disease as evidenced by the pink lotion all over her face and other visible skin. I noticed my blink rate increasing as the cashier made repeated phone calls to his coworker in the fabric section with questions about her handwriting. I weighed my need for the wicker basket and the buttons against the possibility of incurring an actual psychological break, then opted to stay anyway. It’s the Christmas season – as the New Jersey natives frequently put it, what are you gonna do?

 

2. The line at Marshalls

 

One thing I will say for Marshalls is that management understands queuing theory – in other words, it’s better to have one giant line that feeds four registers than it is have four separate lines; on average, everyone incurs less time waiting in line this way. Having said that, I must now report that there was, in fact, one GIANT line. I had gone there one evening after work to search for a cream-colored chenille throw for on my bed. (Right before Christmas. Insanity.) The home décor section is in the back of the store, so as I approached the register it only gradually became apparent to me that all the people who I thought were simply clogging the aisle were actually in line. After a few minutes spent calculating my expected wait based on the number of people in line, the number of registers operating, and an estimated time/transaction (I came up with a total of 20 minutes, by the way), I started paying attention to the other people in line. It was a festival of diversity. A woman in a long mink coat sported an expensive haircut and a handful of dishtowels. Ahead of her, a Hispanic family appeared set to have a Very Marshalls Christmas, with a cart full of clothes, toys, towels, pillows, and some candlesticks. The African-American woman in front of me took the prize though – I think she had maybe one shirt in her hands when I got in line, but by the time we got to the register she had grabbed two more shirts, a Kenneth Cole briefcase, some men’s cologne, and an iPod carrying case – basically, her gifts will be comprised of whatever was within reach while she stood in line. Not the way I do my own Christmas shopping, but I have to say her technique wins for efficiency. After some commiseration with the guy behind me (who likened the experience to flying out of Newark, and I heartily agreed) I eventually reached the register. It took 22 minutes – 2 minutes longer than I’d calculated – but I hadn’t factored in a personnel rotation at one of the registers, which required a drawer change, and the Hispanic family’s transaction took WAY longer than my average, so I still think my estimate was good.

 

3. The line at Dunkin Donuts

 

The line at Dunkin Donuts is always long and always moves. At mid-morning, you have a good shot at a shorter line, but it’s amateur hour – Moms with kids, people who don’t often frequent Dunkin Donuts and don’t have a firm order decision made by the time they get to the counter, people who don’t understand that they need to step aside to wait for their bacon/egg/cheese croissant so someone else can get a coffee, etc. Nevertheless, I took my chances and stepped through the doors at 10:00 one morning last week, confident that the Christmas spirit would quell any annoyance I might experience. I was wrong. Though I was fourth in line, which would normally cheer me, the whining of the eight-year-old who was second in line (with her mother) mitigated any mild joy I might have otherwise felt – and swung the pendulum all the way to active aggravation when the whining devolved into a minor tantrum because her mother wasn’t buying the donuts with the red and green Christmas sprinkles, which then caused the mother to start whining back at her daughter but in a really loud voice, as though she was somehow disciplining her child by whining at her (my mother would have taken me by the arm and marched me right out of the Dunkin Donuts, by the way). So basically the mother is yelling at her daughter – “IF YOU DON’T CALM DOWN YOU’RE NOT GETTING ANYTHING!!” but in a strangely whiny tone, and has any child in the history of the world ever calmed down as a result of being yelled at anyway? I don’t know. I got my coffee and got the hell out of there. Argh.

 

4. The line at the gas pump at the Richard Stockton rest area of the NJ Turnpike

 

On my way to my parents’, I stop at a rest area on the NJ Turnpike to get a cup of coffee and a tank of gas. The rest area is packed with cars since everyone’s on the road, so I adopt the Ewe’s parking mantra – “The perfect parking spot is waiting for you” – which, amazingly, usually works, and I head in. The coffee is first, and the whole experience is good – two men very kindly hold the door for me, one calls me “honey” in a nice way, and I get a good Starbucks bold roast and a nice warm holiday feeling. (As an aside, I have this pink coat I wear that seems to inspire chivalry. I’m not sure why, but when I wear it, I get more doors held, assistance with carrying things, etc. than at any other time. I am considering purchasing a whole wardrobe in that color to see if my world changes.) The gasoline purchase didn’t go nearly as well, perhaps because the pink coat was not as visible. The first thing to remember is that, in NJ, you can’t pump your own gas. While this is often just fine with me, there are times when it’s a royal pain in the ass, and here was one. Problem A: The lines were long, and while the pump jockeys were pros, there were only so many of them. Problem B was the SUV in front of me, which for some reason had opted to pull up on the side of the gas pump opposite the location of its gas tank. This necessitated a lot of careful positioning to make sure the pump jockey could get the hose draped over the top of the SUV in just the right way to reach the tank, which for some reason seemed to exasperate the driver. I could have backed up and avoided witnessing this drama by choosing another line had it not been for Problem C, the SUV behind me that, had it been any closer, would’ve been in my back seat. I turned up the volume on the Christmas CD I was playing so we could all enjoy it, and relaxed against the head rest – ho, ho, ho.

 

If Jesus were preparing for Christmas, He might say something like “the lines are always with us.” Ironically, He was never really involved in Christmas preparations.

 

I’m happy to say I’m almost done, just one or two little things to go, so I can actually chill for a while and enjoy the celebrating. I wish I could slow down time to really enjoy the rest of the season. We’ve got another office holiday party this week, Mom’s doing the children’s party next Sunday, and Dutch and I are planning to go into the city some night while the decorations are still up, so there are highlights yet to come. I really doubt, however, that anything is going to top the experience of cuddling a giant, vibrating tarantula to my chest while reminding myself to breathe – because isn’t that what Christmas is all about?

 

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