Since we happen to do our grocery shopping at the Holy Grail of Awesomeness (read: Target), we always spend the last half of our shopping extravaganza perusing all of the cool stuff Target is trying to convince me that we need. This includes their 8 mile long stretch of wares that I affectionately refer to as Christmas Row. Included in Christmas Row is an aisle I have always blatantly ignored: The Wrapping Paper Aisle.

Now, just as I am neurotic with Christmas Cards, I have always been slightly less so, but still neurotic about my wrapping paper. My brother and sister-in-law have always spent an insane amount of time and money procuring The Right Wrapping Paper, and while I have admired them for it, I simply can’t get behind spending my life’s savings on something that someone may briefly enjoy, then throw away.

I love cheerfully wrapped packages, but so long as the paper doesn’t come in a 6-pack with cheesy looking Santa’s, or stupid messages of holiday cheer, I’m fair game. Although I have admired the really funky textured metallic stuff, I simply cannot get behind spending $6.00 on 10 feet of paper. The volume of gifts that I have to wrap simply precludes this.

But because my family has grown exponentially over the past couple of years, I have notice an alarming trend: I have found myself increasingly excited about thoughtfully wrapping gifts (which you would think would be opposite, especially considering that I alone wrap the Christmas gifts. Even my own. Does that sound depressing to you?).

This year has even FOUND me perusing the Aisle of Wrappy-Goodness. Yes, I am admitting here and now to The Internet that I willingly (cheerfully, even) spent AT LEAST 20 minutes examining all of the cute doo-dads that one can use to wrap gifts with. I’ll probably never be crafty enough (she’s CRAFTY!) to make my own doo-dads out of ordinary household objects, but I may begin to pick them up here and there.

Sometimes, I take a step back, examine myself and wonder who the hell I’ve turned in to. I mean, I used to wrap gifts in newspaper or whatever was lying around (birthday paper at Christmas? WHO CARES?), or better yet, I used to bribe my mother to wrap my gifts for me.

So, it’s YOUR turn, you crafty souls out there. I’ll never scrapbook (although I did get some supplies, before I impotently decided that although I made my wedding invitations, I’m just not that kind of person deep down), knit, or crochet (even platitudes!), but I know that other people do this sort of thing willingly.

Any suggestions?

And Aunt Becky is dying to know what YOU do with your gifts? Are you anal about them (oh, the search terms on this one)? Do you care at all about what your gifts look like, or do you subscribe to Aunt Becky’s School Of Why Waste Money On Something People Will Throw Away?

In case anyone wants to email me, which is totally rad by me, even if it IS to tell me how stupid I am, my email is currently down. Which includes my address book.

Thanks to my trusty geek, however, the situation has been immediately rectified. I have a brand-spankin’ new address to be immediately filled with spam (why YES, my girlfriend IS sad because my penis is too small and keeps slipping out! Thank you for noticing, spamalot!)

If you are someone who I regularly email (and even if you’re not), you can assume that I do not have access to my address book. This makes me sad. What if Don Msurhstasthey @ supercolon blow cannot access me? WHATEVER WILL I DO THEN???

Please, PLEASE, for the love of Baby Jesus, email me:

becky (at) dwink (dot) net

I will love you for ever and ever and ever if you do.

And you can put THAT in your pipe and smoke it.

Now that my father is home from the ICU, resting comfortably and finally in real clothes again (which means that he has stopped accusing me of trying to look up his gown), I can focus my neurosis on more meaningful things.

Like the loss of my sunglasses, which I have had for over 3 years. And I am ridiculously, oddly, and oh did I say ridiculously? upset about. I can’t begin to understand how this loss is breaking my heart so thoroughly, but inexplicably it is.

And in spite of their insane cost, I plan to go out tomorrow, ice storm or not, and replace them.

I don’t get this sudden need for THOSE EXACT SUNGLASSES to be replaced NOW, NOW, NOW. It was all that I could do to NOT go out tonight, sheets of ice on the roads be damned (it honestly appears as though Swarovski has set up shop in my front lawn. EVERYTHING has been crystallized, including the dog poo. If only Swarovski was in the market for crystallized dog poo, I would TOTALLY CORNER THE MARKET).

I think I may be going insane.

My obsession started innocently enough, with Christmas Cards. Being 21 during the first Christmas my son was alive, I had never even CONSIDERED writing Christmas Cards each year. I mean, what the hell did I have to say to anyone before then? I lived at home, was going to school, and partied like it was 1999, but somehow I don’t imagine those sentiments would translate well into holiday cheer:

(Dear Aunt Mary,

Love + Rockets, Man,
Becky)

But once Ben was born, and I got the first in many ridiculous holiday portraits taken (we did those yet again last weekend! Man, oh MAN is that exhausting. I need to do them in like March, when the photo place is not filled to the brim with other tantruming, but nattily dressed children and their bedgraggled parents), and I realized that many people would, in fact, enjoy seeing my infant son in a Santa costume. I knew that I would (plus, the Humilation Factor is high here, which brings me no end of joy. If I still pee my pants when I sneeze, I can humilate my children when they are small, right?).

So I set out to find Christmas Cards, which is no easy feat for me. Despite the prohibative cost, I refuse to do the econo Box ‘o’ 200 from Walgreens, because they are printed on what I believe to be wax paper, their corny sentiment misspelled (I shit you not. On the first year I was married, I sent cards to all of Dave’s extended family, for which I purchased the ultra-religious (and cheap!) tacky cards. The message inside was misspelled, which made me giggle).

I am exceptionally picky when it comes to (most, really) these sort of things. Although I may like something that can be described as sparkly and colorful with some doodads thrown in here and there, I MEAN THIS SPECIFICALLY. You could never go out and TRY to do this for me (which is what makes me a total pain in the ass to buy for), because you’d be guarenteed to fail (even after spending an insane amount of time trying to find the perfect card). Honestly, the only person I know off the top of my head would could ACTUALLY be called upon to pick something out for me would be my best friend, Ashley (which is not to imply that we have the same type of taste. I am delightfully tacky yet unrefined, but she is not). She gets me.

Being the forward thinker that I am (really, I am just a complete sucker for a bargin You say “half off,” I say “lemmie at ’em,” even if it is as exciting as socks), last year I picked up a couple of boxes of cards for half price from World Market. But apparently, I am not forward thinking ENOUGH, as it became extremely clear that I hadn’t purchased enough. So, in order to distract myself yesterday, I dragged my sister-in-law to Target to pick up some additional Christmas Card-y Goodness.

What’s interesting to note, which also makes me sound like a freak is that I have gradients of awesomeness when it comes to Christmas Card appraisal:

I have the people that get what I call Goes To 11! (the people who might care that their card has been excruciatingly chosen and say “That was a great card”), the people who get the Just Awesome ones (the card is cool, but not the Coolest, sent to the people who MIGHT care if they have a nice card) and the people who get the Meh Cards (I don’t hate these cards or anything, they don’t have any pictures of the baby Jesus on it or anything, but they are not the best cards I have. These are mainly reserved for family who don’t send me cards at all, or if they do, it’s completely clear no thought went into choosing the cards. These people shop the dollar bins and buy their cards in massive bulk, caring more about the cost of cards than the actual Awesomeness factor.).

My friends all get the Super Awesome cards, whether or not they send me a damn thing, mostly because I assume that they will care the most (this is a false belief, I’m sure). My family gets the Awesome-Meh gradient depending on where I believe their level of Cares About Quailty lies (I just can’t spend $2.00 on a card for someone who won’t care a bit about it, and possibly question why the hell I send cards at all).

(If I had it my way, I’d buy everyone THESE cards, which I consider to be the Pinacle of Awesome. I’m not feeling quite plucky enough this year to do this, but I may do it next year. There is very little in the world I love as much as swearing, but it seems a bit un-Christmas-y)

I was trying to (badly) explain myself to my sister-in-law, who ALSO loves cards (actually more than I do), and she looked at me as though my neck had sprouted a second head that had begun to sing to her in Pig-Latin. So great was the divide here that I actually STOPPED TALKING about it (which never, ever, ever happens) and left the conversation hanging mid-sentence (oh LOOKIT, a BLUE CAR!).

This left a bad taste in my mouth, as I figured that she of all people would understand (Dave couldn’t care less. I’m not even sure that if hard pressed, he’d have any idea if I actually sent Christmas Cards at all.) my neurosis. Since she does not, I’m turning to you, Dear Internet, to tell Aunt Becky how nuts she is about her Christmas Card Gradient (or anything really), AND to tell me about the things that YOU do that no one else would understand. Aunt Becky, she probably understands, you know.

It’s fortunate, in some ways, to be the sort of person who, when faced with a crisis, can deal with things completely head on, without bothering to see the forest for the damn trees. In spite of how I may appear on paper (blog), I rarely am overtaken with emotions, so I am not reduced to the puddle of excess emotional goo ruining your nice shag carpet (nice shag carpet sounds oxymoronic, doesn’t it?) until much, much later.

I’ve spent each and every day since Thursday taking care of the most bizarre things: my Christmas shopping is completed, I’ve written and addressed about half of my Christmas cards, the house DOES NOT look like a tornado ran through it. But each thing I do is a semblence of what I would normally do. I’m like a bundle of nervous energy flitting from thing to thing to thing, attention to details thrown by the wayside in favor of trying to do about 1,797 things at the very same moment.

It seems easier to focus on the superficial motions of TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS than on what has just happened to my father.

But, as all good things are wont to do, it has come to an end, and I can feel every single horrible emotion welling up from within. I am now paying back with 99.9% interest everything that I have repressed. My throat is lumpy, and against all odds, it feels as though my right eyeball has just come back from a wicked battle, so much so that it now hurts to blink (I am not even pretending to understand this).

I’m fine, I will BE fine, because I am as predictable as a tax bill: I am always fine, even when I’m not.

My father himself would like to express his gratitude for all of the well-wishes and prayers that the Internet has offered (he called all of you his “second daughters” which is a high form of praise for him). Although he doesn’t specifically know about my blog (It seems easier that way. It’s not as though he wouldn’t appreciate parts of it, but I think I would feel weird knowing that my father has heard me tell the world about my vagina.), he knows that there are people out there who care about his well being, and that is what matters.

I’d try and be funny right now, but it would seem more forced than I care to be, so I’m just going to leave this as it is and not pretend to suddenly feel jolly and witty and annoying. I’m fairly sure, as I’ve been down this road before, that by tomorrow morning, I should feel far better, and will return with more hilariously stupid crap that I do.

My father is fine, my family is fine, and suddenly, I am no longer fine. I guess this is why God invented Jack Daniels, eh?

Tentatively, so far so good.

My father has undergone his second surgery, and is recovering well, despite having an occlusion in his great vessel that “looked like a bomb had gone off” inside(whatever that means).

I am slowly exhaling. And am now completely exhausted.

Last Sunday, after taking our cheesy holiday pictures at the mall (they are actually so adorable that I wish that I had a scanner to show you), in spite of my exhausted and openly weeping 6 year old son requiring a nap STAT, I was determined to procure an actual Christmas tree. We’ve never been able to have one before (due to various reasons), and it was on my Allmighty Schedule, and by God, we were going to do it. Dave snickered into his puffy gloves as I crazily launched into my diatribe after he suggested that we might want to do this another weekend, you know, when we were all better rested.

“I think you’re all fucked in the head. We’re ten minutes from the fucking Christmas Tree Lot, and you wanna bail out! Well, I’ll tell you something, this is no longer an option . . . it’s a quest! It’s a quest for fun! I’m gonna have fun, and you’re gonna have fun! We’re all gonna have so much fucking fun we’ll need plastic surgery to remove our Goddamn smiles! You’ll be whistling Zip-a-dee-doo-da out of your assholes! I’ve got to be crazy! I’m on a pilgrimage to see a tree! Praise Santa Claus!”

Dave has mentioned before that when I get a bee in my bonnet about something or another, he can always tell, not because my voice is shakingly raised or I begin openly weeping, but because crazy things begin to pour out of my mouth with alarming frequency.

This, of course, was one of those times.

Even the baby felt chastised and stopped chirping merrily until we dutifully pulled the car into the lot and embarked on our journey to get a Motherfucking Christmas tree, smiles stretched fakely across our cheeks. Since I cared only about getting a Christmas tree, any Christmas Tree would suffice, so I allowed Ben and Dave to pick it out, while Alex and I went inside to talk to the parrot that lives on this farm.

(Nothing cheers me up like having a conversation with this parrot, who is in love with me. Now, the conversation revolves around saying hello to each other in various tones, coupled with some laughter, and rounded out with his completely accurate immitation of my cell phone ringer. Then he’ll fan his tail at me, and we’ll start over at the beginning with our hellos. It’s like having an extremely colorful baby.)

(as all of my animals have been rescued from extremely sad and/or bizare situations, I am anxiously awaiting the day that I am given a parrot or another exotic bird to adopt. They are so amazingly awesome, and I am completely dying for one, but I cannot in good conscience go and buy one.

Not only because they are really expensive, but because my own bleeding heart tells me that I should not do this, as these animals were meant to live in their natural habitat. Which I am pretty certain is not a suburban street outside of Chicago, Illinois. Call me nuts, but even on the best days here, the avian life that I come across is more like a cardnial and a couple of finches, not a scarlet macaw or parrot.

So I wait for my exotic bird, just like I waited for my comically large bunny and my geriatric gecko.)

I’m pretty sure they were both more than happy to be allowed to escape the supreme pleasure of my company for awhile (Lord knows why), while the baby was stuck with me for the long haul (to be fair, I am the one who is stuck with HIM all night, every night). I have a feeling I was pretty frightening, because they both began addressing me in their most respectful, sweetest voices, suggesting I relax and maybe eat some McDonalds (yes, they are well versed in knowing the way to my heart well).

When we got the tree home, we realized that the mini tree lights we had gotten had (gasp!) white cords, which looked much stupider on the tree than you’d imagine. So, my mission (less stupid than Mission: ManBand, however) for the week was to pick up some lights with green cords. I bought about twice what I needed so as to avoid future mini Christmas light-less moments (because those happen all of the time, right? Right?), and because I have inherited my father’s OCD need to have backup’s and replacements FOR EVERYTHING.

Yesterday evening, the lights were finally placed on the tree, and today we decorated it. It was afterwards, when I went down to the basement to grab the rest of the Christmas decorations, when I realized that we had several boxes of mini lights down there. And wait! In that bin, there are even MORE lights. And THERE, in the corner, EVEN MORE lights!

It appears that my OCD habits of purchasing mini Christmas lights has spanned the four Christmases that I have celebrated with my own family (completely in spite of the lack of Real Live Christmas Trees, which is even more hilarious, when you think about it. At least to me. Who has had very little sleep these past days. So really strange things are uninentionally hilarious). My friends, I could easily open up one of those fly-by-night Christmas shops that you see in the strip malls with all of the unopened boxes of mini lights that I now own.

With the 27 or 28 boxes of unopened lights that we now own, it all but assures me that I will not have to purchase mini lights for the next 45 years or so, at least until the technology evolves such that my husband will be completely unable to resist the pull (But BECKY, it has a REMOTE and INTERNET CONNECTIONS! WE NEEEEEED THESE LIGHTS, BABY!).

But now I am trying to figure out what on Earth to DO with these lights. I mean, I’m past the days where I feel like mini lights really accentuate a rooms decor for 365 days a year, what with me no longer being a college kid. And it’s currently too snowy for me to string them up outside, lest I get an electrical shock or blow a fuse or something.

I guess I could try to rest easy, knowing that all of my mini light needs will be completely fufilled for the next several decades. Or I suppose that I could donate some to a frat house where I am certain they will be put to good use. The baby loves cords and lights, but I’m thinking with the new lead paint warnings displayed prominently on the label that maybe allowing him to play with those is probably not an option.

Any suggestions?

——————-

Thank you everyone who has kept my family in their thoughts during this time. It means more to me than my ickle black soul can possibly express. My father will be going in for surgery again on Monday morning, and assuming that all goes well, should be home by Wednsday or Thursday (or whenever his insurance company boots him out).

It will be then when I feel like I can breathe again.

I have my father’s eyes, which I passed down to both of my sons.

Since I was a small child, I’ve always been known as Daddy’s Little Girl. All of the best parts of who I am are directly decended from him. My tastes in music, my (terrible) sense of humor, my ability to let most things roll off my back, those are all his traits. My brother had my mother, I had my father.

We went to see him again today up in the ICU, where I was afforded a seat directly in front of the station which his vitals blipped intermittently. They were perfect. He remains in the ICU, flanked by (much) older patients, suffering from far worse fates. The guy next to him with VRE on a vent? Not so good. The lady on the other side, catatonic and covered with decubitus ulcers? Probably not in such good shape. He is there only because the rest of the hospital is full.

One can only remain in crisis mode for 5 or 6 days before they break down. As I slowly start to go about my day, with the crisis winking merrily in my rearview mirror, I am overtaken by the horrible thoughts of what could have happened.

The thrombus that was causing the intermittent angina pectoris, waving jauntily from his great vessel could have dislodged itself, and burrowed somewhere far graver. It easily could have killed him. It didn’t, but it could have.

I try take greater comfort in knowing that for now, for right now, he is sitting in the dimly lit ICU, likely eating the candy bar I bought him, and flipping casually through my copy of The Atlantic (and likely NOT the Tiffany’s catalogue I brought him, to pick stuff out that he could buy for me). The monitors from adjacent rooms are probably occasionally alarming, while the fresh snow accumulates outside his window.

To others, those monitors probably evoke the ominous terror of yet another thing going wrong with someone they desperately love and want to be well again, while to me, they echo endlessly “could have been him, could have been him.”

…well, as comfortably as one can in Critical Care.

He had two blockages in two of the great vessels, and one has had a stent placed. The other stent will be placed on Monday, once he has recovered more sufficiently from his myocardial infarction and his heart becomes less irritable.

Thank you very much to everyone who has kept him in their thoughts. My dad is very, very special to me, and his illness is seriously one of the worst things I can imagine. If I were to lose him, I genuinely do not know what I would do.

It appears as though my mantra only works to fend off would-be murderers.

My father has had a heart attack and is currently in surgery as I write this.

If there is anything other than that to say, I don’t know what it is. For once in my life, I am stunned into silence.