Stressember

Tomorrow it starts.
Well, it started sometime in late September: that's when I heard my first Christmas carol of the season, and they're in full bloom now over the satellite system at work. I got my Christmas cookies well before Hallowe'en and saw the first Christmas lights go up on our street sometime in early November. Ridiculous.
I've always considered the first of December the official kickoff to what is--surely sarcastically--referred to as the "holiday" season, no matter how early retailers try to get the jump on it. In my world you wouldn't be allowed to even mention Christmas before December 1. Or better yet, retailers would be allowed one month of festive orgy: if they chose to start it on the first of November, all traces would have to be removed by close tonight.
Oh, to be a kid again. Remember that? When the "holiday season" actually meant two weeks of holidays? When the only Christmas stress was felt on Christmas Eve, waiting for that jolly fat guy to arrive?
The older I get, the more I view this time with trepidation. Oh, I still love the dinners with family and friends, the giving and recieving of gifts (mostly the giving, at this point, I must say...it's nice to get stuff, but it's nicer to watch someone's face light up when they see the stuff I got them). And I don't mean to get all bah-humbuggy. Christmas is still a lot of fun. But it's stressful. You're not supposed to say it or show it, of course, but there it is.

So when the going gets tough, the wusses like me retreat into the past.


Christmas Memories (I)

I was really young. Not sure how young, but young enough not to have spared the slightest thought of how heavy Santa's sleigh must be, how beastly fast he must move that thing, or indeed how he knew whether or not I was a good boy.
Christmas Eve. Late. And warm. (Contrary to popular belief, we had warm Decembers in the seventies, too...just not quite so many of them.) I simply would not go to sleep. This was the one night of the year I rebelled against going to bed, for obvious reasons. My mother was at the end of her chimney. She managed to get me into my pee-jays, and thence into bed, only by telling me that Santa avoided all the houses where children were awake. (Gullible kid, me.)
So I laid awake in bed, trying very hard to go to sleep, trying even harder not to go to sleep, when I heard a pitter-patter on the roof.
"Mommy!"
"Yes, Kenny?"
"What's that noise?!"
Whereupon my mother said the most spectacularly wrong thing, at least if her goal was to get her little kid sleeping.
"Nothing. It's just rain, dear."

*******

Work is driving me mildly batshit. While this new system undoubtedly has advantages, they're rather heavily weighted in favour of Head Office, at least at this point. We seem to have taken several giant leaps backwards in terms of functionality at store level, and nobody wants to hear about any of it, much less communicate when it will be fixed. To offer one small example:
Before, when I ordered something and it didn't show up, I got reasons. "Out of Stock", the invoice would say, or "Discontinued Item", or "Supplier Short", or "Q/C Problem", or occasionally "Item Scratched"...which simply meant the picker couldn't find the damn thing in the warehouse.
Now some of these reasons beg more questions than they answer. "Supplier Short" always irked me, particularly if the item in question was on special that week. And "Out Of Stock" isn't very helpful...both I and my customers would appreciate knowing when it will be in stock.
But at least they're reasons, and I can see them and work with them. "Sir, there's a quality control problem with this orange juice. I'm not sure what it is, but they can't sell the batch they've made. Sorry about that." Customers are remarkably understanding when that's the reason their orange juice isn't on the shelf.
I don't get any of that any more. If I order something and it doesn't show up...and lately a whole hell of a lot of things fall into that category...I see: Ordered: 3 cases Frozen Banana Guacamole. Shipped: 0.
As in zero. Zero information.
I hate that.
Nobody seems to want to tell me when this will be fixed, or even acknowledge it's a problem.
I hate that even more.
I'm one of those strange breeds of people that function on information. I'd rather hear something horrible than nothing at at. I have cancer? TELL ME! Then at least I'll know what I'm up against.
I won't say anything more--I've heard of too many cases of blogs functioning as career suicide notes. But I will say this: The reason I'm upset is not because I don't care but because I do.

Christmas Memories (II)

I usually made it up to the winter wonderland that was (and is) my dad's place sometime around Christmas, but only once do I recall getting to spend an actual Christmas Day up there. I think it would have been either '83 or '84. He lived on Laird Drive in Parry Sound then, and it was the only green Christmas the town of Parry Sound had seen in the twentieth century. Ten degrees Centigrade and sunny for most of the day. By evening the clouds had rolled in and a right jeezly mother of a cold front was rolling in with them; we woke up Boxing morning to a windchill of minus ten or so...and three feet of snow.
Anyway...on Christmas morning, sometime between 4:30 and 5:00, I bolted into Dad's bedroom to get him up and start the cavalcade of presents rolling. That was S.O.P. down south: most every year the presents were open and breakfast was eaten before the sun had even thought about peeking over the horizon.
Up north: different world. Dad told me not to wake him up until eight o'clock.
Eight o'clock! That was, like, a whole different day! How I'd make it until then I couldn't even imagine.
I didn't.
Somewhere amongst Dad's collection of roughly ten squillion pictures, there's one of me conked out on the living room floor, arms stretched out towards the television I had on and tuned to the local cable outlet...the one that showed the current time. I think it was 8:30 or so when Dad snapped that pic and woke me up.

*********
So tomorrow it starts: Stressember the first. My work is going to get progressively busier as The Day approaches. Eva, drawing closer and closer to year-end, would prefer not to think about the monster awaiting her. There's so many people to see, every one of them important, and a bunch of important people we simply won't be able to see, and tons of Christmas shopping to do and...and...and...at least this year I'll have four whole days off. There's been many a year I worked Christmas Day.

Christmas Memories (III)

As I probably mentioned somewhere, I used to have trouble sleeping on Christmas Eve. The tradition in our house was for Santa, disguised quite convincingly as my parents, to deposit my stocking into my bedroom late at night, where it would sit until, oh, 4:30 or 5:00 Christmas morning.
That's what they thought.
I had a better idea, one that didn't involve waiting quite so long. I'd feign sleep until the door clicked shut, wait about twenty seconds for good measure, click on my desk lamp (angling the beam so it didn't cast much light anywhere besides the Sock O' Stuff)...and dive in, unnoticed.
That's what I thought.
So one year they crept in, dropped off my stocking, and crept back out. I concentrated on keeping my breathing even the whole time. Thought about manufacturing a little snore and decided against it. My eyes flitted open as the door closed and I started a slow count to twenty.
When I got to ten I decided I'd count the rest off by fives.
CLICK!
Man, that light's bright...angle it, angle it, Ken, you don't want them seeing a telltale glow under your door, now, do you?
I noted with interest that they'd given me the Giant Sock O' Stuff this year...an actual winter legging type sock that was reserved for days of absolute zero or below. It went almost all the way to my waist and itched like a bitch if I didn't have another pair of socks, not to mention joggers or something, underneath it. But at this particular moment I wasn't at all concerned with itchiness. I was concerned with capacity. They could have stuck most of the presents under the tree into this stocking. Probably the tree itself, too. Look at all the lovely bulges and protuberances.
So thinking, I plunged my arm into the sock up to the shoulder.
And sucked in my breath to scream.
The door opened.
A camera strobed.
My loving parents had taken the Ginormous Sock, stuffed it with rocks, bits of balled-up paper and slats of cardboard...then filled it almost to the brim with shaving cream.
Oogy. Just plain oogy.

*********

May your ooginess be kept to a minimum this holiday season.