Sonja Foust, Romance Author

Once upon a time, a girl asked a guy, “Will you marry me?” The guy said, “No,” and the girl lived happily ever after and went shopping, dancing, had friends, drank martinis, always had a clean house, never had to cook and farted whenever she wanted.

The End.

(I wish I could take credit for this, but it was one of those annoying email forwards that are occasionally funny. And, BTW, it’s not ENTIRELY accurate. I’m married and I fart whenever I want. In fact, I fart more now than in my unmarried days because now I’m forced to defend myself.)

And it doesn’t even involve rum!

Yes, folks, I’m proud to say that the Christmas spirit has finally struck me. And so, to celebrate, here are pictures of our lovely home, fully decked in Christmas crappery.

Our front door:

Our dining room:

The view from our living room through our dining room and into our kitchen (we have an open floorplan):

Our stairs:

Our bedroom:

And, lest I forget, our Christmas tree:

Our stockings, all hung with care:

The Christmas village:

Merry Christmas everyone!

For your holiday reading pleasure, here’s my favorite Christmas story.

One particular Christmas season a long time ago, Santa was getting ready for his annual trip but there were problems everywhere. Four of his elves got sick, and the trainee elves did not produce the toys as fast as the regular ones so Santa was beginning to feel the pressure of being behind schedule. Then Mrs. Claus told Santa that her Mom was coming to visit; this stressed Santa even more.

When he went to harness the reindeer, he found that three of them were about to give birth and two had jumped the fence and were out at heaven knows where. More stress.

Then when he began to load the sleigh one of the boards cracked and the toy bag fell to the ground and scattered the toys. So, frustrated, Santa went into the house for a cup of coffee and a shot of whiskey. When he went to the cupboard, he discovered that the elves had hidden the liquor and there was nothing to drink.

In his frustration, he accidentally dropped the coffeepot and it broke into hundreds of little pieces all over the kitchen floor. He went to get the broom and found that mice had eaten the straw it was made of. Just then the doorbell rang and Santa cussed on his way to the door. He opened the door and there was a little angel with a great big Christmas tree.

The angel said, very cheerfully, “Merry Christmas Santa. Isn’t it just a lovely day? I have a beautiful tree for you. Isn’t it just a lovely tree? Where would you like me to stick it?

Thus began the tradition of the little angel on top of the tree.

Author Unknown

Grouchy holidays

Upon further consideration of my bahhumbuggery, I’ve come up with several reasons, albeit pretty shallow and selfish ones, for why I’m being such an anti-Christmas grinch this year.

1. My dog died on Thanksgiving. That puts a bit of a damper on the holiday season.

2. Our heater broke. It’s not so much the fact that we were without heat for 3 pretty darn cold nights. That I can handle. The thing that bums me out is that we had to buy a new one. I know talking about money to complete strangers is crass (heck, it’s even crass if you talk about money to your friends, IMO), but allow me a bit of a moment here. We were this close (imagine me holding my index finger and thumb a reasonable distance apart) to paying off the credit card. That meant an extra bit of money every month that we could have been saving for a nice little cushion in our bank account, or extra principal-only payments on the mortgage, or even a vacation. Now, however, we will be paying off the credit card until at least this summer, which sucks. Sucks sucks sucks. I know it’s just money, but life is sure a heck of a lot easier if you, you know, HAVE SOME of it. Like I said, these reasons are a bit shallow and selfish.

3. Even before our heater broke, we were bordering on a dire financial situation. So Christmas presents this year are way not as cool as I would have liked. Someday when I’m rich, I’m buying my whole family iPods. Mark my words.

4. I didn’t finish NaNoWriMo in November. In fact, I haven’t even opened the file since sometime the week of November 20 or so. This makes me feel like crap, more because I know I’m truly capable of finishing a 50,000 word novel in a month because I did it last year than because I didn’t finish this year.

5. Work has been grueling the past few months. I know, whine whine whine. I really do have a fairly easy job. I start at 9, I leave at 5, and I usually don’t do any of it at home. But the thing is, the entire day is CRAMMED with stuff and I am so drained when I get home that I just sit on the couch like a freaking zombie. I haven’t finished reading a book in months because I’m just so wiped out all the time.

6. I haven’t finished reading a book in months. This is almost MORE disheartening than the fact that I didn’t finish WRITING my book last month. I mean, reading is EASY.

7. I’ll take the low road and blame my malfunctioning thyroid. I might as well, right?

8. It gets dark at 5. I see sunlight for maybe 45 minutes a day, and that’s if I can get away to take a quick lunch. No wonder Scandanavians are stereotypically depressed all the time.

9. This is probably the most dysfunctional reason of all. Ready? My bestest buddy, as mentioned earlier, has to have surgery Wednesday. While this doesn’t directly affect my holiday, I feel a particularly strong sense of empathy for her. Surgery is never fun, especially at Christmas especially right after your birthday especially after you’ve just started dating a really cool guy.

Ok, so now that that’s out of the way and you all know what a whiney little grouchy moron I actually am, tomorrow I’ll list everything that’s make this holiday season NICE, so as to counteract this really yucky post about why Christmas stinks.