For years I prided myself on being a hyper-organized neat freak. I’m not talking about the years of early adulthood. The ones where I had my first apartment, or even the ones during my first few years of marriage. No, those years were mostly dedicated to surviving. It was all about scraping together enough money to pay our utility bills, rent and tuition.

Those years were ugly. And well documented with hundreds of pictures of bad hair. My house was in a constant state of disarray, my babies were lucky if they were clothed and I couldn’t see past the mess I was living in.

But slowly, I pulled myself and my household out of the gutter, got a better hairstyle and managed to find a way to survive the early parent, young marriage years.

And I became the uber wife, super mom prodigy I like to mock nowadays.

For about seven years, I had my shit together. I did my Christmas shopping in the off season when I found sales and I carried a list with me where ever I went. There was none of this wandering the grocery store aisles while hungry, randomly filling my cart with whatever I hoped we needed because I forgot to make a list before leaving home, like I shop now.

No, come December first every year, the gifts were all purchased and lovingly wrapped in carefully coordinated wrapping papers and strategically placed bows. I’d laugh at all the suckers who ran around at the last minute trying to score good deals as they purchased their holiday gifts and goodies.

I was obnoxious, really. But I was obnoxious with a ridiculously clean house and a stick up my arse most of the time too.

Ya. I was a total jackass.

And then things changed. I don’t know if I grew up a little more or if what had seemed so important to me before no longer was a priority once my son died. But suddenly, I’m satisfied if the inside of the toilet bowl isn’t brown and there is at least a path to navigate in between the dog fur, the dust bunnies and the kids discarded socks.

Oh how the mighty has fallen.

And once again, I am sorely unprepared for Christmas. I’ve picked up a couple presents for a few people but the reality is, if I don’t get my arse moving soon, there isn’t going to be much under the Christmas tree for anybody. I’m woefully ill prepared for the holiday season. There has been no Christmas baking, no gift wrapping, nothing.

I’m just lucky I managed to throw a couple of loads of laundry into the wash and sweep the floor before falling down in exhaustion. The idea of Christmas is completely wearing me out. I don’t know how real grown up people with real jobs do all this. Because I’m completely faking it.

Oh ya, I’m a holiday faker. But at least I managed to get my Christmas tree up. Small victories.

Between Jumby’s complex needs, boys basketball, girls basketball, club volleyball, musical theatre, broken in-laws, an absent husband and blogging, I don’t have much time to do anything but drive, write and scatter some dry cereal around for the ferals to eat. I used to think I was busy when I had two toddlers and a baby. Apparently I didn’t know what busy meant.

So when my husband called to ask me what I wanted for Christmas, I blanked. Apparently he didn’t like my suggestions in the post I wrote for him. He’s got some personal rule against buying me dead stuffed animals or pots I will never use.

When I couldn’t come up with anything he deemed reasonable he was hard pressed to believe I haven’t spent time crafting a very long wish list like I have in years past. (Because the best way to ensure you get what you want for Christmas, I’ve learned, is to write down very specific items including locations in which he can purchase said goodies. Works like a charm every year I tell ya.)

Without my Christmas wish list I’ve apparently spiralled my husband into the depths of Christmas misery alongside me.

Welcome to the club sweetie.

So I got to thinking. What do I really want for Christmas?

The list? It’s not pretty.

I’d like a set of boobs that don’t flap around like tube socks. But I don’t want to have them surgically altered. I want them magically fixed. It’s less painful that way.

Speaking of boobs, I’d like the none whiskered variety. Because nipple hair? It’s not attractive on any one. Especially on a 36 year old woman. And I’m tired of plucking.

I’d like the waist I had back when I was 20. Before children. You remember the one. It was narrow enough both of your hands could fit around it and touch. I miss that waist.

I’d like a butt. I miss having one. And I’m too lazy to exercise to get one. I hear they make padded underwear. Sounds fantastic to me.

I want legs I never have to shave again. And toe nails that never grow. Because the current set I own of each require me to bend over to trim and shave and to let’s be honest, I’m too lazy for that type of maintenance.

I want a car that fuels itself and never needs an oil change.

Children who don’t require feeding. Or driving. I’m so tired of driving.

I want floors that don’t have a rip in the linoleum or scratches in the laminate.

How about some extra cupboards so I can store the zombie head cookie jar I’m coveting?

I want socks that never get dirty and never need folding. Shirts that make me look like I’m actually trim and fit and pants I can button up with out sucking in my gut and then having a lovely roll of muffin top hanging over the edge.

I’d like a self-cleaning refrigerator.

My best friend to move back to Canada. Preferably next door.

How about a job for Boo that doesn’t require him living under a different roof?

I’d like my back pain to be cured, my dad’s rheumatoid arthritis to go away and for Jumby to be able to sit independently.

But what I really, really want for Christmas?

I’d like someone to come and finish all my Christmas shopping for me and then wrap everything so I won’t have to. Because at this rate, I’m seriously considering wrapping up potatoes and frozen bags of peas in old newspaper for everyone and calling it a day.

Happy shopping Boo. I hope you have better luck with your Christmas shopping than I am mine.

You know that feeling when your stressed and it seems like life just keeps piling up more crap to get stressed about and you want to just roll over and play dead with a blanket over your head until life finally forgets you exist?

I’m totally playing possum right now.

Under my roof I currently have a quadriplegic child with a raging skin infection. His cheek looks like it’s about to fall off. I have a husband who has a broken ankle and is hobbling around like a geriatric one legged bum. And then there is Frac who’s abdomen is being held together with tape. Tape! Not stitches. Not glue. Just little steri-strips that are threatening to fall off so that the wound reopens and his innards fall out.

Add to that and I can’t stand up straight because of my crippled back and we have one healthy member of the family. And she’s currently trying to kill herself by taking volleyball shots to the head.

And my dog needs knee surgery.

Life is awesome.

I should tell you, before you invest any more time reading this post, that I have absolutely no point in mind as I type this. I’m rambling.

That’s Fric. Dressed up for Halloween, as get this: Me. She’s wearing my grade nine grad dress and styled her hair and makeup after some of of my junior high pictures.

I’m still laughing.

Also, I guess hanging onto that dress (that my mother made for me) all these years finally served a purpose.

Ah, to be 14 with a corsage once more…

It’s sad when you realize your 15 year old daughter makes for a better version of your 14 year old self than you ever did.

In other news, I’ve joined iVillage Canada and their team so that I may spread my inane ramblings even further. My first post is live and I’d love if you would go check it out so that the powers that be that hired me actually think there was some merit to bringing me aboard. Click here to learn whatI have in common with a rat farmer in Alabama.

Over on Babble Voices I’ve been busy with my blog Hogwash From a Hoser. I wrote a post about teenaged hoodlums. I know all about teen hoodlums because I was once a hoodlum myself. Not that I’d admit that in a court of law or to my children’s faces. Ahem.

I also wrote about my hatred of Halloween and how this one particular holiday keeps kicking me in the arse. Between dead kids, exploding appendixes and people who refuse to give disabled kids in costumes any candy when they are trick or treating I’m giving Halloween the bird. And not the nice type of bird if you know what I mean.

Now, if y’all excuse me, I plan on spending the rest of the day surfing the net, laughing at Lindsay Lohan and eating enough ice cream that I’ll eventually grow udders and moo.

In other words, I’ve got work to do.

What my daughter’s future looks like. Poor thing.

Five years ago when my husband decided to leave me, er, I mean, work away from home, I told myself our situation was only temporary and I’d see him soon. I told myself the quantity of time we spent together didn’t matter as much as the quality of time we created.

Five years ago I may have been a bit of a raging dumb arse.

Half a decade later and I’ve decided I want quantity of time over quality. Because, frankly, I’m tired of solo parenting two teens and a disabled boy while being singly responsible for having to change the bed sheets every time my dog decides to barf on them. Which happens about every other night.

The upside to my husband’s continual and seemingly perpetual absences is that I’m saving a truckload of money on razor blades. Personal grooming has flown out the window and our heating bills have been reduced. When one grows a yeti-like coat of fur one tends to stay warm. My glass is always half full.

Still, I’d rather have him home, zoned out beside me watching documentaries on insects or war (his two personal favourites) or lost to the cyber world of online gaming than 600 km away, where he has his own personal housekeeper/chef and the luxury of yak-free dog vomit-less sheets.

I’m petty and selfish that way.

I shouldn’t complain really. I mean I just saw him a week ago. For three whole hours. 3 hours after not seeing him for 31 days.

Three hours.

You know what we did in those three hours? Nothing fun, I can assure you. He sorted through the rubble of laundry for clean clothes and I yelled at him that his sprained foot wasn’t sprained but actually broken. “Why haven’t you gone to see the doctor??”

“I did! Three weeks ago when I fell! They said it was sprained!”

“They’re morons! You don’t have to be a trained medical profession to see your damn ankle bone is practically popping through your skin! Get to the damn hospital!”

So he did. And what do you know? The ankle is broken.

The sad part of this tale, besides the fact my husband now requires orthotic surgery and is hobbling around on crutches on a painful break, is the fact I wasn’t even able to lord it over him that I was right. Because he had to go back to work.

His damn job is robbing me of my gloating privileges.

Never mind that it allows us to put food on the table, a roof over our head and a computer for me to whine to the internets.

So when my husband called last night to tell me he’d be home this Tuesday night, I was a little giddy. I started to mentally prepare a honey-do list to hand to him the moment he walked through the door. His presence would mean I wouldn’t have to be responsible for getting our daughter to a volleyball tournament half way across the province, the garbage would get taken to the dump, and I could sleep on freshly laundered sheets that I wouldn’t have to change.

“Um, don’t get too excited there Tanis. I’m only home for 7 hours. And then I am gone again.”

Wait. Whaaa?

“Did you forget? I’m going on vacation. I have to leave at 3 in the morning to catch my flight to Vegas. Remember? My annual boys trip?”

Curses. I can begrudge the man a lot of things, like having a housekeeper/chef/ample free time but I can’t begrudge the man his annual man’s trip. Every person, regardless of his or her sex requires some good old-fashioned friend time.

“Seven hours?”

“Ya, and that’s if traffic is good and I can get home quickly.”

I mentally tabulated the amount of time I’ll have spent with him before I actually get to see him for a whole day again.

“You realize that means in 62 days we’ll have seen each other for 10 whole hours?”

Silence.

“That kinda sucks dude.”

“Ya, I know. I’m sorry.”

There is no reason for him to apologize, not really. We’re lucky he has stable employment and we’re even luckier that we have managed to remember that we still like each other through all the absences.

But still.

10 hours does not leave a lot of time to scratch things off the old honey-do list or allow for me to comfortably gloat that I am always right.

“I’ll make it up to you. I’ll bring you an awesome souvenir.”

“Oh goody. I like things that sparkle. Or that are named Siri.”

“Oh. Well then I guess I won’t bother with that key chain I was planning on.”

Good idea Boo.

Aim higher. Or at least spring for a matching tee shirt.

Either way, I’m totally not going to bother shaving my legs.

See? My glass? Still half full.