It's getting easier

Surviving the hectic holiday season is getting easier. Gone is the torture of deciding what to buy my wife. After 57 years of marriage we’ve run out to things to buy each other and refuse to get each other another kitchen item….I cook and love to eat. Marge’s jewelry box holds enough items to pass on to the girls and no one will really want my stuff anyway, so our gift giving has been made easy, we buy each other nothing. Unfortunately or fortunately we’ve begun to reward ourselves with more expensive stuff…..trips! This year a Caribbean cruise, we decided to escape the snow for a week or so. Although we haven’t joined the “Snowbirds” after last year’s ugly winter we decided to escape for at least a few days and get a taste of some tropical weather. Additionally a trip to Oregon in June is also on the calendar. Yah, I guess Christmas gifts would be a lot cheaper.
Gifts for the grown ups has also been solved, $25.00 grab bags. Grandchildren’s gifts no longer present any major problem since it seems that most of them already know what they want and pass that info along to their parents. Besides that, the older ones like the ideal gift, that green folding stuff.

Besides our gift solution I’ve finally convinced Marge that we have no need for a large Christmas tree, real or artificial. Replacing them is a small lighted ceramic one given to me 39 years ago by my secretary. The box it’s in even has the old newspapers I use to protect it. Once a year I take some time to read the 39 year old news and advertisements. It sits on a table in front of the picture window waiting for the oohs and aahs from passerby’s ……..lol. Even my cooking requirements have diminished. Now that the holiday celebrations have been taken over by my daughters and daughter-in-law my culinary skills are now limited to making the traditional family Polish mushroom soup.

While all these things have reduced the hectic nature of the season I can still find things to bitch about, most of them the results of television. Commercials: Just how many times to we need to watch that silly woman prepping us for that wonderful day, no not Christmas but “Black Friday”. Where and when did that ridiculous phrase come from? And how many times do I have to see mom and pop drive away and their son’s new Auidi? And speaking of commercials, does it appear to you that the breaks are getting even longer. I’m able to go upstairs, make a coffee, grab a cookie, take a quick pee and still get back in time to not miss a minute of the show. What are they charging for them these days? Is it like one of those super market things, buy one get three free? Oh well, they “got us”, there’s no escape. The days of looking out at the neighborhoods and seeing all sorts of antennas on every roof are over along with the days when we had no remote in our hands to click away wearing put batteries making Eveready richer. Three channels were all we had and we actually got up to go to the set if we wished to change the station.

Well, I better put and end to this one before I start boring you with all that nostalgic stuff you so often get in your emails. Before I sign off I do want to wish you all a very “Happy and Healthy” holiday season. I think it’s a politically correct greeting.