Christmas -- It Isn't Always As Fun As It's Cracked Up To Be, Especially When You Forget the Tree

So, it seems you expected me to write something celebrating the new year of 2014. Or, you know, have written something by January 1st, and then you looked at my blog and realized there was nothing new. I know this because I'm magical and psychic. Or maybe I just have a report on the amount of views I get, and they spiked on the first of January. 

This holiday season has got to be one of the weirdest I've had in a very long time. I'm trying to cope with that and the loud hammering noises currently bombarding the house while I write this post, massaging my healing wounds and trying to figure out if I have anything due on Monday when I go back to school.

I'll start at the beginning.

In late September, we got a kitten. I honestly can't remember if I told you this or not, but there it is. You'll see why it's relevant in a minute, trust me.

Fast-forward to early December, when my sister and I asked our parents when we'd be getting our Christmas tree. Most people had already gotten theirs the day after Thanksgiving, and it was getting closer and closer to Christmas -- surely we'd stop by the local tree farm any day now.
Imagine our surprise when our parents told us that we wouldn't getting a tree this year at all.
We asked why they had decided to break such a tradition; as Oregonians, it's a given that we had to go cut down a real tree.
"It's the new kitten," said our parents. The kitten, by now, was actually seven or eight months old. She wasn't a newborn when we adopted her. "She's going to try to pull the ornaments off the tree or drink the water or climb the tree or try to eat the branches. And that's not safe."
"But," we argued, "Those same problems applied when we had our old cat! And we still got a tree every year! When there were problems, we found ways to fix them, like hanging mint teabags from the branches. Can't we do that same thing this year?" (Camilla, our last cat, had lived to be 21 years old. She died of extremely old age. She was often mistaken for a kitten, because she was so tiny, had a habit of puking on the floor at least once a week, and hated mint,)
But our parents weren't having it. At one point they stopped arguing, and we thought we had them, but one day we came home from our grandparent's house for our yearly "cookie baking fest" (which also has a story behind it, but I'll save that one for later) to find that instead of a tree in our living room there was a string of lights pinned to the curtains, shaped sort of like a tree if you looked at it right.
"Isn't it a cool tree?" my parents asked.
"Yeah. It's pretty awesome," said my sister.
"Mmm," I mumbled. I walked up to my room, which is not outside of habit, but I could tell my mom knew I was disappointed.
Our enthusiasm after this incident towards Christmas was lackluster at best. We didn't even break out the ornaments or Christmas music until the day before Christmas Eve. Yes, you heard me right -- we put ornaments on the tree made out of lights. No one bothered to wrap presents until the day of Christmas Eve, wherein we all took to our rooms and relished in secret solitude, instead of our usual group effort. Even the party at my dad's mom's place lacked the usual gusto from our side.
On actual Christmas day, we all slept in by about two hours, which is especially out of character for my sister and I, and forgot to start playing Christmas music until after the presents were already opened. My parents didn't even try the "What did Santa bring?" bit, and when it was time for breakfast we realized we'd forgotten to buy the ingredients needed for our traditional orange-frosted cinnamon rolls. Specifically, the rolls themselves. No sugary, school-bus-breakfast for us.
We arrived at my grandparent's house, that much followed tradition-- as did the unwrapping of presents at their house, a nice change of pace.When dinner was finished at 4:30 (Early dinner at my grandparent's, always very early) I tried reading a book I'd gotten as a present, but failed at staying awake -- I felt like an idiot. I'd already gone to bed on time(ish) and slept in that morning, and there I was, falling asleep again.
I woke up at about 6:00- 6:30. Just in time to head home.

New Year's was fun, though not necessarily all that celebratory. I went to hang at the neighbor's, where my sister and parents shortly followed, and the parents chatted in the kitchen, drinking their wine at the dining table, while us kids, all four of us, played video games, drew pictures, and listened to our own music. We were hanging out in the living room-- we never left the living room, actually -- and one of the two resident friends got up to go do something, presumably use the bathroom or something. I was just drawing some more, and I looked up, and I suddenly realized that it was midnight.
"Hey, guys," I said, "It's midnight." The parents all got up and walked out onto the balcony to watch the fireworks that other people always set off -- fireworks that are technically illegal in Oregon unless you have a permit, which I seriously doubt everyone in the neighborhood had one, but hey, it was New Year's -- while I sat there wondering where my friend was. Eventually I got up, too, and when my friend returned, most of the fireworks had died down. But she didn't seem to care much, so we went back inside and started up a game called Five Nights at Freddy's -- a horror game filled with tons of jumpscares, animatronic bears, and creepy laughs, and will never let you see Chuck E Cheese's the same way again. Let's just say this game was a sort of tribute to a string of murders that happened after hours at a Chuck E Cheese's restaurant. And therefore is creepy as heck to think  about.
We each took turns, and after my friend's brother died (in-game, not literally), I tried and failed, and we were about to hand it off to my sister when our parents called to us to pack up to leave. It was past 1:00 AM, and gosh darn it, we were going to sleep tonight, according to them.
FYI: I slept just fine. Five Nights at Freddy's doesn't terrify me nearly as much as it does my friend's brother. He jumps out of his skin every time something moves. My sister freaks out when she actually sees something, and my friend just sort of stares at the screen with a worried look on her face all the time. I, on the other hand, have entire conversations with my friends while playing the game, and greet the jumpscares with a polite, "Hello, there!" It'd be rude not to, in my opinion, since everyone else just screams at them.

And there you have it: My not-so-exciting holidays. Part of the reason I never published something like I promised.

Oh, hey, this whole time, my parents have been building a room in the garage, because as of three days ago, my mom doesn't have a cube at work anymore. They forced her to get a home office, or lose her job, and since she's been working out of the same building since 1993, she really didn't want to have to find another job. Of course, we don't have a spare room, so she's building one in the garage. Right now we don't know where anything we used to store in the garage went, and I can't go in there without wearing shoes because of the only partially existent floor. Construction: fun stuff.

Also, about a week ago, one of my sister's friends stopped by the house, like she does every day, and I picked up the cat, like I do multiple times a day, so that she wouldn't sneak out the door. She's a black cat -- hard to find outside, especially at night. But she seemed especially interested in outside, so while maintaining a good-but-not-too-tight grip on her, I walked out onto the porch, just so she could smell the air. I was half-listening to the conversation my sister and her friend were having, when someone started a lawnmower. I don't know what they were doing; the grass is always wet during the winter, and according to my dad, you don't mow the lawn when the grass is wet. Whatever reason they had for doing it, it didn't matter-- because the cat totally freaked out, clawing at me to be let down. She raked her claws across my right shoulder and across my chest, and confused by this sudden burst of pain I dropped the cat, who immediately ran inside the still- open door. I myself ran inside, trying to asses the damage. It wasn't as bad as I thought, but man, did it hurt, and she drew blood, too.


So that's been my life currently. There's a lot more stuff, but hey, look, it's late. If you would like more stories about my life over the break, let me know, and I'll see what I can do.

Oh, I almost forgot! I did this concept drawing thing for my story, which I really need a name for by the way, but that's beside the point. I hope to get my drawing scanned in and posted before Monday. We'll see how it goes.

Thanks for reading, and being willing to read this stuff. I didn't really think about how much people liked this stuff until I came across my mom laughing hysterically at something on her laptop, which turned out to be my blog. It was a real eye-opener: I make people laugh, without trying to be funny. Which is something I used to only dream of doing, so thanks. And I know this isn't really all that funny, but it's my life, and if there's anything I've learned, it's that all my fans out there really like the stories about my life.

I hope you like this one, too.

       ~Polar Farina


~Two days later~

Wow, I can't believe I thought someone would find this entertaining. It sounds like me telling the story of a Christmas gone wrong, almost. But not in a funny way.

It wasn't actually as bad as this post might lead you to believe. It was just weird, and everyone around me was radiating all this happiness that I didn't necessarily feel myself. That doesn't mean I was sad or anything. My mode of thinking was kind of like this: Hey, today's another day. And look at that, we're opening presents. How fun.

It didn't really feel like Christmas. The ambience just didn't quite make me believe that it actually was Christmas. If that makes sense. And then after it was over, THEN it dawned on me that it really had been Christmas, and I felt frustrated that I couldn't realize that it was there when it was happening.

This is a feeling I've gotten before, by the way. The first time was Valentine's Day, back in third grade. Every time I left the classroom, I'd wonder why I felt so happy. And it was because it was Valentine's Day -- back then we got a ton of candy and stuff from our friends -- But I'd actually forget that it was Valentine's Day. I had to keep telling myself about it every single time I left the room, which was often back then because I was part of the Talented and Gifted group. TAG for short. I got to leave class a lot of the time to do fun stuff instead of "learning" the boring things I already knew.

This update was going somewhere...

Suffice to say, better and more funny material will be heading your way soon.

Thanks for reading this. It's really been quite an ordeal, this post. Sorry about that.

       ~PolarFarina (again)