It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year
The holidays are a busy time.
Come back! I swear I have a better lead than that.
I can’t wait until I’m rich enough to hire a cleaning service. As evidenced by the numerous picture posts leading up to Christmas, I was insanely busy preparing for the holidays. I had dinner ingredients to procure, pies to bake, and a filthy bathroom to ignore on top of my usual childcare duties. That explains why the stains
Many chores slid behind the proverbial kitchen table like so much collected junk mail in preparation for our joyous day of presents and feasting. It was worth it in the end as I spent an entire evening sitting at the dinner table engaging in gluttony and sloth while the grandparents took over the childcare duties.
Of course, the household chores still accumulated while I was idle. Dishes were dirtied, floors were cluttered, and clothes were muckified. Our Christmas dinner was before Christmas, so I was able to spend Christmas Day joyously scrubbing dishes, separating leftovers into consumable quantities for freezing, and picking up several trees worth of wrapping paper.
Yesterday I had just started to poke my head above the holiday chores. All I had to do was transform the kitchen back to a usable condition, vacuum the floors, and remove the layer of toy-based perma-crud that had formed on the floors so I could vacuum. Yesterday was the day after Christmas, though, and I’m obligated to hit the stores for clearanced holiday goods. I mean it when I say “obligated” since Ellie played hooky from work to get us out the door sooner.
Most guys seem to hate shopping, but I find some enjoyment in it, especially when the word “clearance” is involved. I don’t like dealing with large crowds, especially with three young children tagging along, so I needed to leave right after breakfast before the lazier shoppers could get in gear.
Our first stop was the mall-based big box store where empty parking spots were surprisingly easy to find. Our efforts to escape the house early paid off. Inside the store was sparsely populated, or at least it was until I found the holiday merchandise. Those aisles were a sale orgy of retired women and housewives with zero to one children in tow. There were a couple other men there, but they mostly looked like guys lucky enough to have December 26th off work, but unlucky enough to be drug to the mall by their also off-work wives.
I used the stroller to ram my way through the throngs, making sure Abbie stayed at my side lest she be swallowed whole by the mass of shoppers. The holiday merchandise was plentiful, but disappearing quickly. I cruised the aisles as rapidly as space allowed, picking up several things for next year such as cards, lights, and a couple boxes of four-foot tall candy cane shaped yard stakes that I had to balance on top of the stroller after Tory refused to hold them.
Next we hit K’s Merchandise, the store referenced a couple months ago that’s going out of business. They slowly dropped their prices as Christmas approached, but now that the gift-giving season is gone, I expected the floor to fall out. I was right, as all remaining heavily picked over merchandise was at least half-off. I used this as an excuse to buy that new television we’d been longing for. I got a great deal, and I didn’t even have to take the floor model.
Finally we stopped at the grocery store. This stop was at the weird grocery store that has closeouts on oddball generics and name-brand goods with hard-to-read expiration dates. I knew they had toys before Christmas that would now be half-off, and, against all better judgment, I bought one more toy for the kids: A box of building blocks. It doubles as a storage box, though, so really I’m saving space.
We returned home with too much junk in the car and a couple little men ready for their morning nap. I set them down to sleep, turned the television on for Abbie, and started work on putting away our new purchases. I grabbed a couple bags from the car, brought them into the kitchen, set them on the counter, and discovered I had too much stuff piled on the counter to hold any shopping bags. Cleaning the kitchen immediately jumped to the top of my post-Christmas chore list.
Come back! I swear I have a better lead than that.
I can’t wait until I’m rich enough to hire a cleaning service. As evidenced by the numerous picture posts leading up to Christmas, I was insanely busy preparing for the holidays. I had dinner ingredients to procure, pies to bake, and a filthy bathroom to ignore on top of my usual childcare duties. That explains why the stains
Many chores slid behind the proverbial kitchen table like so much collected junk mail in preparation for our joyous day of presents and feasting. It was worth it in the end as I spent an entire evening sitting at the dinner table engaging in gluttony and sloth while the grandparents took over the childcare duties.
Of course, the household chores still accumulated while I was idle. Dishes were dirtied, floors were cluttered, and clothes were muckified. Our Christmas dinner was before Christmas, so I was able to spend Christmas Day joyously scrubbing dishes, separating leftovers into consumable quantities for freezing, and picking up several trees worth of wrapping paper.
Yesterday I had just started to poke my head above the holiday chores. All I had to do was transform the kitchen back to a usable condition, vacuum the floors, and remove the layer of toy-based perma-crud that had formed on the floors so I could vacuum. Yesterday was the day after Christmas, though, and I’m obligated to hit the stores for clearanced holiday goods. I mean it when I say “obligated” since Ellie played hooky from work to get us out the door sooner.
Most guys seem to hate shopping, but I find some enjoyment in it, especially when the word “clearance” is involved. I don’t like dealing with large crowds, especially with three young children tagging along, so I needed to leave right after breakfast before the lazier shoppers could get in gear.
Our first stop was the mall-based big box store where empty parking spots were surprisingly easy to find. Our efforts to escape the house early paid off. Inside the store was sparsely populated, or at least it was until I found the holiday merchandise. Those aisles were a sale orgy of retired women and housewives with zero to one children in tow. There were a couple other men there, but they mostly looked like guys lucky enough to have December 26th off work, but unlucky enough to be drug to the mall by their also off-work wives.
I used the stroller to ram my way through the throngs, making sure Abbie stayed at my side lest she be swallowed whole by the mass of shoppers. The holiday merchandise was plentiful, but disappearing quickly. I cruised the aisles as rapidly as space allowed, picking up several things for next year such as cards, lights, and a couple boxes of four-foot tall candy cane shaped yard stakes that I had to balance on top of the stroller after Tory refused to hold them.
Next we hit K’s Merchandise, the store referenced a couple months ago that’s going out of business. They slowly dropped their prices as Christmas approached, but now that the gift-giving season is gone, I expected the floor to fall out. I was right, as all remaining heavily picked over merchandise was at least half-off. I used this as an excuse to buy that new television we’d been longing for. I got a great deal, and I didn’t even have to take the floor model.
Finally we stopped at the grocery store. This stop was at the weird grocery store that has closeouts on oddball generics and name-brand goods with hard-to-read expiration dates. I knew they had toys before Christmas that would now be half-off, and, against all better judgment, I bought one more toy for the kids: A box of building blocks. It doubles as a storage box, though, so really I’m saving space.
We returned home with too much junk in the car and a couple little men ready for their morning nap. I set them down to sleep, turned the television on for Abbie, and started work on putting away our new purchases. I grabbed a couple bags from the car, brought them into the kitchen, set them on the counter, and discovered I had too much stuff piled on the counter to hold any shopping bags. Cleaning the kitchen immediately jumped to the top of my post-Christmas chore list.
posted by Matt at
11:49 PM
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