'tis the season

'Tis the season for Mochy, our 10 pound (and at her more svelte, 9 pound) miniature pincher to overindulge.

It happens every year. One year on Christmas Eve we came home to find that she had eaten her way through 2 boxes of chocolate covered cherries.

Last Christmas I think it was M&Ms...

This year it was the Wilton red candy melts. The kind that are super easy to melt and you can use them for lollipop molds (which I did) or for drizzling decoration (which I also did.)

Or you can use them to eat yourself to the point where vomiting is the only viable option.

Which Mochy did. All over the living room. On our kinda new cream colored couch.

This is also the season for missing the whole point of all the hustle and bustle and it becomes essential to take a breath (have a bottle- I mean, a glass- of wine) and take a few extra minutes at bedtime for us four girls to snuggle in and sing Christmas carols in the dark.

Otherwise you end up like the woman at the Augusta Walgreen's who I had the charm of interacting with on Saturday. They were having an H1N1 vaccine clinic and there wasn't a space to be found. She saw fit to pull her car so that it straddled two spots. I waited for her to exit her car and VERY politely said, "Excuse me. I was wondering if you might move your car over so that there would be an extra space?"

She turned back to her car, accessed her crappy parking job, and then turned to me and said, with spite and true nastiness in her voice, "Nope. I'm not gonna do it."

I smiled and said, "Okay then! Merry Christmas!"

I reminded myself not to get lost in the busy, the doing, the running around. After all, if you can't open you're heart at Christmas time to make a spot for your neighbor, when can you?

(And...are the people in Bangor simply nicer than the people in Augusta?)

'Tis the season as well to drink warm cups of tea, stoke the fire hot and stay up late wrapping presents.

It's also the season to eat gingerbread houses for breakfast with your kids.

Don't ask. I can't explain.