I’m letting the little things get to me these days. Me! I’m sweating the small stuff with gusto. The thing that is bothering me the most isn’t actually that my dog thought it’d be fun to eat a tiny corner of our beautiful living room rug, our priceless rug that’s been in my family for a decade, THANKS, DOG.
Actually that’s pretty bad, yeah, okay, that’s the worst thing.
NO! It’s not. It’s that I’ve lost my Christmas spirit. It’s like it rolled under the rug sometime in October and I didn’t even notice, but here we are on December 6th, by which time most years I’m longingly dragging out the hot cocoa and the sparkly decorations, and I just don’t care. I actually longed to be Jewish the other day so I’d have an excuse. I thought, we don’t really need a tree this year. Or any hoopla at all.
And the thing is, it’s not like I’m OKAY with this total grinchbug attitude. I’m not! Christmas is my favorite time of year. We just moved to this beautiful home, this home that’s itching for garlanding and twinkling lights in the windows. What’s wrong with me! But I look around at the living room and all I see is needles everywhere that my dog will eat, where do we put the tree because Nano’s crate takes up half the room, man, lying down to water the damn thing? And we’re too poor for a lot of presents anyway so the tree is going to be all depressingly bare underneath. Plus there’s only two weeks left!
But this depresses me, all this niggling lazy grinching. I don’t want to be a lazy grinch! I want to twirl through the snow with my baby and drink cider and listen to songs and wrap lights around the tree! Except that I’m broken! I am definitely broken. I have a beautiful house and a wonderful husband and dog and it’s Christmas in New York! What’s wrong with me. BROKEN.
I think perhaps the solution to this is some immersion shock therapy. I think I should meet Stuart after work in Union Square and look at all the pretty things in the holiday market and get some cider from Starbucks and buy ourselves a little, manageable potted tree and some fresh pine garland and come home and eat a warm dinner and decorate and listen to songs and connect. And resist the temptation to wrap nano in christmas lights.
Maybe that’ll bring my Christmas spirit out of hiding. What do you think?

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