Skip to main content

Whole Hog


 I learned early on you don't always get what you want in life. You can circle as many things as you want on a Toys R Us Christmas mailer and get zero of those things. You can wish for a Lite Brite year after year and be 45 years old and still not have one. This is life. Not supposed to be fair. Not supposed to be used to just given things you want. As a result my life was dedicated to what needed to be done and who needed what. Not what I wanted or needed but everyone else. I didn't get the things I wanted so I just thought that's how it was. Everyone else deserved the things. Not me. 

I would need new shoes yet buy shoes for others. New jackets for them, worn out spray paint hoodies for me. Treat others to delicious restaurants, find bollweevils in my box of rice at home. Make big holiday meals for the family when I was tired and not feeling festive... and put on my best Pollyanna positive face to serve it and kinda cry inside that the responsibility was always on me to make all the good things happen all around me. If I wanted a holiday I had to make it happen. 

I got tired this year. 

The little 12" tree could sit where the cats knocked it off the mantle. The lights could stay dead. Gifts? More gifts after I've given all year? Really? 

I am the Grinch apparently. But no Who's down in Whoville are going to surprise me with magic Christmas love and a giant roast beast I didn't have to cook. This was the year the elf got tired. I bought a ham like I always do and the usual "can't make it" " not feeling it" dance started... and I have to agree to both of those things. Patricia can't make it and is not feeling it. Yet Patricia will make it and deliver it because that's what Patricia does. 

Patricia knows what's it's like to miss her Dad at the holidays and how he would want me to be my very best and spend time with the family because life and time are fleeting, liquid things... Going down the drain every minute. Might be my last Christmas here? Might be a loved ones last? 

And in knowing those things the elf doesn't stop. The elf cooks the ham and puts on the smile and delivers them in her shabby shoes and worn out spray paint hoodie with a smile. And she does it whole hog with mince meat pies and everything. 

Maybe the Christmas spirit is about forcing yourself out of a selfish state of tiredness to bring smiles to people who are trying to decline your invitation to Christmas dinner? I'm still pondering this and many other things at the grand age of 45 on the planet. 

Smoke em if you got em, feed em if they're still around.... That's the best I got in the holiday spirit department this year. ❤️ My Lite Brite is dark this year and I'm ok with that. 

With love, 

The Elf 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Words!

  Hello! I haven't blogged since last year. Even writing the word "blog" felt foreign and weird! I have actually been writing stuff on my Patreon account so if you've missed the updates you can sign up for free over there. There is also an option to pay a few dollars a month to help support me as an artist and get "extra" content- in case you are of that mindset and either way- thank you for caring about the art adventures.  I have missed blogging actually. I guess I like to make words, string them together like a pretty necklace and let them live their own expressive life wrapped around me.  Times are different. Times are weird! But I guess you know that. And also times are the same and as old as time. Is it really more terrible than any other time or are we humans just more "connected" to the propaganda and daily bad trip in a way that is insane and unhealthy? Either way I do my best to keep my sanity and I don't believe about 98% of what I s...

Taming the monster

What started as me deciding to spend 30 minutes picking out clothes to donate from my closet .. Turned into about 2 hours of folding t shirts, jeans and deciding winter was far enough away that all sweaters and coats could be packed away. My closet was a walk-in diaster. My cat had lived in it all winter, knocked stuff down, slept on it, fuzzed up clothes and built forts. No lie.  I had been living in the same two pairs of jeans and 5 shirts off my bedroom floor (closet #2 😂). First things first, all the T shirts from OLD JOBS were the first to get put in donation pile. I don't need memories of "that place" and they were all too small, waaay too large or tan/beige/grey ..all the wrong unhappy colors that just say JOB when you look at them. Bye! So that happened yesterday. Major project that still needs work but for now it is peaceful enough to my brain to leave it alone. I have two large loads of laundry to do because my clothes look like...well like a cat has been sleep...

It's the little things...

I will eventually get back to posting about art 😂 but I lost my first pound with just 3 days of dedicating myself to Metabolic Renewal...and this is me playing fast and loose because A. I did not buy their shakes I'm doing my own. So I don't really know their caloric/nutrition value vs mine. B. Getting 10,000 steps a day on my pedometer.... doesn't happen. That's almost two hours of walking a day. I get 8,000 or 9,000 before the Texas heat or work calls it off. C. Haven't followed any of the meal recipes. I've been winging it with good sense. I will get closer to their instructions in time ( like maybe next week) since I paid for it. My body is SORE AF. It's totally getting put through the paces and I'm lucky there are modifications for pudgy newbies like me. But 1st lb down is a good feeling because seeing the scale move down is what I'm after. I'm pretty proud of myself for yesterday in general..did my workout, a walking session THEN WENT ...