December

Truthful Tuesday — Holiday Plans

Fandango4 Comments

Frank, aka PCGuyIV, is our host for Truthful Tuesday. The idea behind this prompt is for us to respond to the question (or questions) Frank asks and to be 100% truthful in our responses. No glib answers, no funny business, no fibs. Just raw honesty.

For this week’s Truthful Tuesday, Frank wants to know…

Regardless of the holiday you celebrate, do you have any special plans for this festive time of year?

My honest and truthful answer is bah humbug!

If I could, I’d avoid December altogether. It’s during December that I wish I were a bear and could hibernate the month away. Why? Well, for one thing, I spend more money in December than I do in any other month and it is mainly for gifts. Christmas gifts, Hanukkah gifts, and birthday gifts. Not only does this include gifts for family and friends, it includes gifts for people I hardly know: the newspaper delivery person, the mailman, the woman who cleans our house every other week, the guy who tends to my landscaping.

If I had it my way, I’d hand out gift certificates and be done with it. But my wife won’t permit that. She says they are too impersonal. So she spends hours and hours searching the internet for gifts tailored for each individual. Then she gets angry with me because she is spending all this time searching for “just the right gift” while I’m blogging. That pisses her off.

And then there are the holiday get-togethers. Spending time with in-laws and with friends of whoever is hosting the party is not my idea of a good time. Because my hearing is so bad, even with hearing aids, I miss out on a lot of conversations, so mostly I just smile and nod and hope such gestures are appropriate for whatever other people are talking about.

Bottom line: I can’t wait for December to be over. And that’s the truth.

(Except my name is Fandango, not Edith Ann.)

Where, Why, and What

Fandango10 Comments

Ally Bean (aka The Spectacled Bean) published a post yesterday in which she asked:

Who doesn’t like a visual representation about some aspect of their life?

Then she proceeded to post a somewhat bizarre-looking, angular map of the United States that showed each of the 50 States plus four American territories that color-coded each state based upon whether she lived in the state, stayed (presumably at least one night) in that state, visited, stopped, or passed through that state, or if she hasn’t yet been to that state but wants to go there.

If you want to see her results, click here. I completed the map for my domestic U.S. travels, which is displayed at the top of this post. What it shows is that I’ve lived in nine states plus the District of Columbia (aka Wahington, DC).

That reflects two things about me. First, my family and I didn’t take vacations, we relocated. I do have a confession to make about noting that I lived in Louisiana. I did live there for six months while serving on active duty in the Army for basic training, but I never declared residency in Louisiana as I did everywhere else I said I lived.

Second, I traveled a lot for my job. And when I say I traveled a lot, I mean a lot a lot. As a result, I visited and spent at least one night (and in most cases, multiple nights) in every state in the union. The only state I stayed in that wasn’t for my job was Alaska, and I stayed there for a week visiting my son, who was working up there.

Anyway, if you want to make your own personalized bizarre-looking map of the U.S. with your own state-by-state accounting, go here.

And now for something completely different

In this same post yesterday, Ally let us know that she will be taking a break and, as she put it:

I’m bugging out of blogland for the month of December.

Then she asked two random questions which I have decided to answer herein.

If you have a personal blog, what is your reason for writing it?

Mostly it is simply because I love to write. But I also have strong views, perspectives, observations, and opinions about what is going on in the world around me and I leverage my blog and my love for writing to provide a soapbox to express myself.

What are you looking forward to doing, or not doing, in December?

I’m not going to go into it here, but bloggers who follow my blog know that 2023 has been irrefutably the worst year of my life. So during the month of December, I will be counting the hours until the clock strikes midnight on December 31, 2023, and I can start the new year doing everything I can to ensure that 2024 will be a better year than 2023 was. Or I’ll die trying.

Fibbing Friday — Christmas Fibs

Fandango17 Comments

Frank (aka PCGuy) and Di (aka Pensitivity101) alternate as host for Fibbing Friday, a silly little exercise where we are to write a post with our answers to the ten questions below. But as the title suggests, truth is not an option. The idea is to fib a little, a lot, tell whoppers, be inventive, silly, or even outrageous, in your responses. Today is Frank’s turn to host and here are his questions.

1 – What does it mean to “come a-wassailing”?

It’s an invitation to go out onto the bay in a sailboat, get drunk, and post a YouTube video of everyone saying “Wassup?”

2 – What was on Little Jack Horner’s thumb when he pulled it out of his Christmas pie?

He pulled out a long, brown hair that his mother must have let fall into the batter when she made the pie. It caused Little Jack to upchuck.

3 – According to the song, what was it that “My True Love gave to me” on the 8th day of Christmas?

Divorce papers. Turns out she wasn’t really his true love at all.

4 – What is the purpose of a Yule log?

It’s what ends up in the toilet after having taken a laxative to finally unblock your bowels after drinking too much eggnog while decking the halls with all that holly.

5 – What was so special about the reindeer named Rudolph?

A few years earlier, Rudolph had been a she, Ruth, but she had undergone a sex change operation because Santa, a misogynist, would not permit a female reindeer to lead his reindeer team.

6 – What were the names of Santa’s reindeer?

Groucho, Zeppo, Chico, Harpo, Curly, Moe, and Larry.

7 – Why do we leave a snack for Santa?

If you don’t leave Santa a snack, the fat bastard won’t leave you a present.

8 – Who or what is Krampus?

Krampus is what women go through each month when they have their menstrual cycle.

9 – How did the tradition of kissing under mistletoe get started?

It was an attempt to take a man’s attention away from the cameltoe of that sexy young girl in the very, very tight jeans and to force him to focus, instead, on kissing his wife on her lips. Her mouth lips, that is.

10 – Why is Christmas celebrated in December?

September has Labor Day, October has Halloween, November has Thanksgiving, January has New Year’s Day, February has Valentine’s Day, March has the Ides of March, April has Easter, May has Mother’s Day, June has Father’s Day, July has Independence Day, and August has International Beer Day (followed by International Hangover Day). December needed a holiday, so it was decided that Christmas would be in December.