It's A Holly Jolly Blog Post

Bear with me guys, I'm attempting to write this from a Nook. I'm being dead serious.

So, for all of you that follow my Instagram (which would be a whopping zero), you may know that I don't have a Christmas tree. This isn't for lack of holiday spirit, or whatever, so much as I live with a fat bastard named Bob.

Destroyer Of Worlds.

Ok, now it's a full day later and I'm on a PC because that Nook b.s. just wasn't working out.  Fuck you Nook.

But, back to the issue at hand, my lack of tree.  I lack a tree.  Because of that fat fuck up there.  Instead we opted to go with a wreath, suspended over the exercise bike on a lighting mount meant for a small stage.  Because The Fixer is also The Builder.  We'd call him Bob The Builder, except that El Gordo Fantastico, pictured above, is Bob.

Just don't tell El Santo his secret identity.

Wait.  What?

Here, I'll walk you through some of the highlights.

That would be the Starship Enterprise.

Ecto-1.  Jelly yet?

We had to choose between the Delorean from Back To The Future I and Back To The Future II.  We went with part II because it's the one I got a paperclip on the fastest.

And then there's Precious Moments Sheriff Woody.

Of course, as a stand in for an actual tree, I had to include the sentimental ornaments.  Stinkbug's first ornament is up there, as well as an ornament My Lady Mother (In-Law) gave to The Fixer and me.  You know, one of those "couple" ornaments.  I've also got a couple of metal stars with bells that I found at the 99 Cents Only store.

I should mention that it is now three days since I started this blog entry.  And since it's taking me so fucking long to write this thing, I might as well make it my magnum opus to The Holidays.

Yesterday I got to spend way more time than I'd have liked to figuring out what the fuck The Fixer did to our bank account in a misguided attempt to buy me a Christmas gift.  I appreciate that he wanted to get me something awesome, and that he wanted it to be surprise.  But then Amazon had to go and ruin it by making me have to sign in under his account to fix whatever the fuck happened.  I'm still not sure I understand, except that he's devastated that my gift is no longer a surprise and that I won't actually be getting said gift.  At least, nowhere near in time for the actual day.  I'm ok with this, plus I'm terrible with surprises.  One of the reasons that I don't cope well with subscription boxes is because I'm bad with surprises.  I oscillate between dread that whatever it is will be awful, and I'll have to pretend to love it, and hyping whatever is in the box so much that I convince myself that it has to be a pigmy tyrannosaurus  rex, and why the fuck aren't there air holes in that box?!?!?!?!  YOU'RE GOING TO KILL IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hey guys.  Hey.  Have you seen this?

Yeah, this.

I have been seeing this clog up my Pinterest and Instagram for two weeks.  For fucking real.  No one I know actually does things like this.  I think at some point in the 80s my mom would have given it a go, but I mean....  So of course, I did my own.  Interesting (questionably so) point:  I don't have ANY cookie cutters in those shapes.  Not even plastic I could wrap in aluminum foil.

I have moose and squirrel.

If you didn't read that in a bad Russian accent, we just can't be friends anymore.

It's actually pretty simple, which if you clicked the link on the original ornaments you'd see.  But I don't do simple.  I do stupid.  I make life - and crafts! - harder than it needs to be.  I didn't have a good name-brand cooking spray on hand, I didn't have a store brand from a major retailer.  I had garbage from the 99 Cents Only store.  That shit was mostly water, but weird slime water.  I also don't have any parchment paper.  I thought for sure I was going to destroy the cookie sheets, which would be only fair since they aren't mine.  They belong to ML(MIL), and turnabout is fair play.  She made brownies in my pan, took said pan to work, and left it there.  Six months ago.  She now claims I never had such a pan, that she never made brownies, and even if I did own said pan, then I must be the one who lost it.  Because I leave the house so much!  I don't know if she fully understands the life of a shut-in.

Lucky for her, I found one of those silicon mats for baking cookies.  It actually worked very nicely, with pretty much no sticking.  My final product peeled off nicely.

I initially bought some star mints from the 99 Cents Only store, then decided that they looked kind of glassy.  I didn't want a stained glass effect, at least not right off the bat.  I wanted to recreate the solid, minty wonder of the original ornaments, only Canadian themed.  I've decided that moose and squirrel are strictly denizens of Canada.  I know squirrels aren't, but shut up.

I then wandered over to the Albertson's for an actual name-brand mint.   From this point there's just going to be a bunch of pictures.

Jack-pot!  Red and green!

There was some...spillage.

 

I had only one real complain, at this point, and that was that my cutters weren't flush to the mat.  I spent a lot of time with a butter knife trying to remove that mess before it hardened.

Over-excited candy.

 

My photography skills are excellent!

While I was rummaging around for Moose and Squirrel (they're proper names now, deal with it) I came across another cookie cutter that was large and mysterious.  I couldn't figure out what the fuck it was supposed to be.  A deformed clown?  A...deformed clown?  That was literally all I could think of.  I wondered who in fuck bought a deformed clown cookie cutter and when that person planned on killing the rest of us.  With the cookie cutter.  Thank Baby Jesus, it wasn't a deformed clown.

It's a choo choo train!  Sort of.

The red and green mess of a train segued nicely into the red (and therefore Communist) Moose and Squirrel.  For continuity of a theme, I named the Boris and Natasha.

You may have noticed that there's another misshapen train.  I decided, unwisely, to attempt a stained glass train with leftover Halloween candy.  What matters is that The Fixer appreciates all of my "art" projects and it now hangs at his desk at his office for all of his co-workers to be totally jealous of.

That's love, of which they got none.

Of course, this moosey bastard had to go and assault me with a deadly weapon.  His ass.

That's not red candy, that's the red red kroovy of my dismembered thumb.

******

I don't know about you guys, but Christmas isn't really such a big thing for me.  I mean, I enjoy some of the decorations, I enjoy the foods, giving gifts to my family, so on, so forth.  But, and I really can't stress this enough, I'm not religious.  And when I say "not religious" I mean "not Christian." This shocks a lot of people because they assume that everyone is.  I've somehow found myself surrounded by a lot of people who won't hesitate to rip your face off if you dare to utter a "Happy Holidays" in their presence.  Because Jesus is the reason, or whatever.  Because there aren't other religions.  Because they're the only people who matter, and when they carry on about peace on earth they really meant only for them.

I wasn't initially planning on ending this on a soapbox, but seriously guys.  Unless you're obviously Hindu or Muslim or Buddhist, I don't know what you are.  I live in an area heavily populated by Latinos and Asians.  Some of those Asians are Catholic.  Some of those Latinos are Muslim.  You think I know?  You think I'm going to take a fucking survey, just to make sure I'm greeting someone with the correct holiday reference?  Fuck you.  You're lucky I'm not burning your house down because you think Sunday night is fucking All-Night-Karaoke-Night.  People work on Mondays, you tool.  If someone is going out of their way to be pleasant, which is hard this time of year if bitches in festive holiday sweaters with cars outfitted in Rudolph antlers trying to kill me and my son as we cross the street are any indicator, then fucking appreciate it.  They aren't making a political statement (probably).  They don't know what's safe to say anymore, because you've got nuts who flip the fuck out when you say "Merry Christmas" and you've got nuts who go extra bonkers if you say "Happy Holidays."  But if someone says either, I say "You too!"  If someone says “Hanukkah Sameach!” I assume that they are feeling festive and joyous.  That's fucking awesome, and my Hebrew is atrocious, so I say "Back at'cha! And a Happy New Year too!"  because people being happy this time of year is so fucking rare anymore.

And, for the record, it's taken me an entire week to write this fucker.