Too Much Christmas: A Guide

Help! My multiple chins are suffocating me!  I don't think I've consumed anything that isn't made up entirely of fat or sugar since the festive period began.  I feel as though am turning into a wobbly me-monster.  Gutzilla, if you will.  Doesn't help that I've proper fudged my wonky foot up and I'm on a temporary, osteopath ordered ban from both Crossfit and running while it heals and all. Little to no exercise + ALL OF THE CALORIES is making me feel ever so slightly sluggish.  Not even sluggish and in slow - more like, I feel like a formless lump without vertebrae. Hrrmph.  At least I've been able to focus all my energy on growing this bad ass moustache.  Cool, no?

Andy "sideburns and lipstick" Price looking rather dashing too.

Been a weird month, hasn't it?  Soaring highs of snuggly (translate:drunken) Christmas family time and all of the obligatory "do"s leading up to the Big Day... Crashing lows of the inevitable hang overs accompanied by the depressing flurry of massive icons and influencers passing away.  Just learned of Carrie Fisher's passing, which felt like a kick in my cheese filled guts.  Such a funny, outspoken, admirable lady as well as a great voice for mental health.  Just.  Ugh.  Don't know what I can say that hasn't already been said better. I'm sure if she had anything to say about it, it would be in the form of a cryptic tweet, made up entirely of emojis. 

Instead of dwelling on feeling a bit morbid and watching the clock for when I have to go to sleep in preparation for work tomorrow (which I was doing for a little while there), I thought I'd hop on here and write something silly and try to raise a smile instead.  On December 27th, we're officially in that void between Christmas and New Years where nothing makes sense,  and the after effects of Christmas are fully upon us.  Here, my friends, is my handy guide to recognizing when you've had a bit too much Christmas:

Too Much Christmas:  The Symptoms

1.  Lack of hunger, surge in appetite.
The patient may claim to have "forgotten what hunger feels like."  At any other time during year, this will generally coincide with a loss of appetite, and the sufferer will have an aversion to food as a result.  In the case of and overindulgence of "Christmassing", the physical feeling of hunger will be missing, but the desire to eat food intensifies, particularly if said food is presented on a cheese board or in a Quality Street tin.  Unless that food is salad.  Because it is Christmas, and who eats salad at Christmas? Monsters and rodents, that's who.

God, I miss nutrients.

2.  Emotional Instability
After imbibing Christmas, you may not feel the correct emotions in any given situation.  This may have something to do with the fact that you've been piss-arseholed for a month solid and you are living in a constant merry go round of sugar and alcohol highs and lows.  Do not be alarmed if you find yourself laughing at "harrowing" TV dramas and crying when you see a video of a child getting a puppy for Christmas.  And then watching said video over and over again even though you are watching them through a misty veil of salty, salty tears and can't tell which moving blob is the little girl and which is the puppy any more.  

Mmm.  Salt.  Someone, pass the peanuts.  I've not eaten for thirty seconds.

3. "Where am I?  What year is this?"
 There is a high probability that at any point between December 24th and January 1st, you will have no idea what decade it is, what the time of the day is and who these people  in paper hats are around you.  Don't freak out.  Just do as the vaguely familiar people who all look a bit like you (relatives, perhaps?) are doing.  Keep your pyjamas on, watch only films that you've seen a hundred times before to avoid further confusion and just keep shoveling crackers (the edible kind, not the ones that go bang) into your face hole until it passes.  Hopefully, when you come around, you'll be in the right century.  Don't worry - I've also heard the ice age sucked, but the fact that you have a onesie on and access to the internet should be indicative that that's not where you are right now.

4.  Food Group Confusion
One of the more obvious signs that you've recently been off your tits on Christmas is that you may no longer be able to distinguish the difference between beer/wine and water.   This is temporary.  Eventually, you will remember that trusty, non-hangover giving H20 doesn't have bubbles in it and doesn't make you fall over or want to show your nan that "look, Nana, I can twerk!!"  

Similar confusion can also occur between food and oxygen.  

5.  Smelling/Being Flammable
A sudden increase in gifted bath and body care items often leads to an over use of scented products.  This symptom is innocuous enough and is usually the least damaging to the patient's health.  As long as they don't stand too close to naked flames for a little while.  Best save the Yankees for January.

Additional handy hint for men:  No, those ladies aren't fainting because of the "enticing" fug of Lynx that shrouds you.  They are passing out from the fumes.  Please alert the emergency services.

Happy holidays all, and I wish you a speedy recovery from all the festivities!

😘

Holidays Are Coming, Holidays Are Coming!

Only a few sleeps til the fat man in red creeps into our homes while we're unconscious (no wonder my sister was scared of Santa as a kid.  Seems only logical if you think about it)! I'm just crawling out of the coughy, sneezy tar pit that was my annual winter cold/flu thing.  All limbs intact, but seem to have gained a cold sore the size of France.  I'm no festive fitty, but at least I got my manflu out of the way before Christmas, as opposed to smack bang in the middle of the holiday like last year.  Silver linings and all that.

Coming down with an almighty case of the "eew, get away from me!!"s is all par for the course during the countdown to Crimbo, among multiple other things that it just wouldn't be Christmas time without.  Some people don't feel like it's Jesus-Is-Here-Oh-Look-Presents time until they've seen that Coca Cola ad with the truck in it.  Others don't feel right until they've erected their tree. 

Heehee.  Erected.

I've taken time out of my super busy schedule of emptying the fridge I just refilled and avoiding football noises from the TV to create my own personal list of stuff that has to happen in the lead-up to Wear-Something-Stretchy-Lest-You-Burst Day for it to officially be Christmas time.  Hope you enjoy!

1.  Compulsory viewing of Nightmare Before Christmas/Muppets Christmas Carol/Elf/Edward Scissorhands.  List gets longer every year.

2.  Abandon all intention of eating like a regular human up until the big day.  Instead opt to "sample" all available snacky items/gifts to ensure they are fit for consumption by the people you will be sharing them with come Christmas.  It's the polite thing to do! No one likes a disappointing snack.  

3.  Buy all of the standup comedy DVDs for self before even considering what to buy for relatives.  So far I've watched Lee Evans (meh. Not as good as his older stuff) and Jon Richardsons' (woo! OCD and neuroses! My kind of comedy) new ones.  Sarah Millican, I'm coming to get you next!

4.  Get even a minor case of the sniffles and hold off any and all forms of exercise for at least a week, telling yourself that it is for your own good.  

5.  Find self at end of said week sadly looking out the window, shoveling Nik Naks into face and wondering how you ever managed to put your trainers and go outside in that before.

6.  Go shopping for presents in real world, because it's much more festive than using the boring old internet.  All the smells and the lights and the trumpetty music and miserable faces, and stranger body parts digging into your body parts (not like that!), and the cold, and, and ... Abandon ship and order everything you need off Amazon from safety of car instead.  It's a bloodbath out there.

7.  Oh my God!  No hang over.  It's a Christmas miracle! This is AMAZING!! I have to get up and dance for jo- Oh, right. Still drunk.  Back to bed to wait for the pain to come.  Sigh.

8.  Convince self that not eating advent calendar chocolate for a few days and then cramming all of said days' worth into gob when feeling a bit munchy down the line is much healthier option.  Am saint.  

9.  Experience full-body rage twitches when the Christmas cards have fallen off the window sill for the billionth time because you dared to walk near them.  How fast do I walk?!


10.  Trawl Youtube for covers of classic Christmas songs =).  Here's my favourite.  Walk Off The Earth (they did that cover of Gotye's Somebody That I Used To Know where they all shared one guitar)'s cover of Fairytale of New York. May it give you the warm tinglies too!

Merry Christmas, you scum bags, you maggots!  Hope you have an amazing few days!

xxx

  

Tis The Season

Ho-ho-hopeless: My current Christmassy window display. Observe sad, limp lights on the right.

It's that month!! The one where you can eat anything you like and not feel bad because some bearded guy in flip flops was born in a shed a long, long time ago!

"Oh, go on then seeing as it's Christmas!"

*eats butter from the tub with a spoon*

I'm pretty fricking excited this year.  I've bought a tiny tree in a pot (see picture above... And try to ignore the Korn doll that appears to be bumming a small replica of Whinnie The Pooh's Tigger) and my fairy lights are loosely secured with what I can only guess was joke sticky tape (because it ain't fuckin' sticky!). 

I'm going for a lonely-drunk-who-dug-their-decs-out-of-a-neighbour's-bin vibe at home this year. Successful, no?

And I've not bought a single gift yet.  But's that's okay because I have a plan up my jumper sleeve:

Enter a state of idiotic, grinning denial until the last minute when I'll have to face the cramped streets of Swansea and probably die, crushed up and suffocating in a fellow shopper's armpit.  

The perils of being both short and disorganised.

Anyhoo, so this is my second Christmas from within this whole cohbitty thing - living in a house with that guy I met when he recognised as the pissed girl he'd seen. The one who'd dropped her bank card down an impossibly narrow crack between cashpoint and pavement and couldn't get it back out.

It's a comfort in knowing that one of longest relationships I've ever been in started with the male party's first impression of me being "pfft...tit!"

I digress. Last year, we went to our respective families' homes - he to England, and I to Carmarthenshire (or as he calls it "the Iron Age"). This year, the probably justifiably terrified sod is joining me and my family for festivities.  But next year, I've no idea what's happening.  And it scares the bejesus out of me!

I'm a quarter if a century old and and I've done the same thing every single year since I was first crawling around on the carpet in a party dress. Not much change on that front, either, I suppose. 

... I dunno.  Sometimes I wear jeans now.

The thought of having to be a grown-up and pretend that I'm cool with eventually having to be anywhere other than in my mum's living room with a stocking I'm much, much too old for but all the more appreciative of, makes me want to hide under a big pile of soft things and sob like a toddler. 

I LOVE my family's annual Christmas/all-day-all-ages-piss-up.  And for all the sleepiness, petty squabbling and unexpected food coma-naps, I never want to change a thing.

So because I'm feeling nostalgic and loath to let go, I'm going to use this post to share with you a couple of my family's Christmas highlights:

The Uno Saga

Most families love a board game.  Especially simple ones like Uno, which are straightforward enough for the young and plastered alike to enjoy with ease.  Unless such games involve my stubborn and often grumpy step-grandad, and my then-teenage and equally mule-like sister.

What started out as a friendly post-dinner game turned into an increasingly aggressive squabble about the rules, culminating an explosive "FUCK OFF!!" from my sister. Neither party spoke for a month.  I don't know why, but confrontation is just that much funnier when everyone's in little paper hats and trying to stifle burps.

Nowadays, we just watch a standup DVD after lunch instead.  Much safer.

"Who am I most like?"

Last year. My grandparents' house. Everyone is settling down around the TV bar from nana, who is upstairs faffing about with something or other.  Conversation turns to who most resembles whom in the family.

Me: I don't think I'm that much like you or dad really, am I mum?

Mum: You're a lot more like your nan than me.

Me: Oh? Why's that?

Mum:  Well, since she's retired, she's been a little more...y'know?

Me: No, what?

Nan descends the stairs, wondering why she's being discussed. Everyone pisses themselves laughing.

The jumper she's gone to put on upstairs is inside out.

..............

Only a couple of specific memories there, but there are regular features to my family Christmas that I couldn't imagine missing out on:

- Being awoken at 6am by mum's super-subtle "coughing" because she's grown accustomed to children trying to wake her up at 4am every December 25th.

- Being told to "piss off out of the kitchen" by my step-grandad while he's cooking.

- Falling out with either sister at least once for a grand total of about 5mins because we're tired and because "just fuck off, okay!"

- Drink being forced in spare hand because hand currently in use only contains a half full beverage.

- Sulking from step-grandad as he believes that we're not drunk enough and are therefore not being festive enough. Suspect he secretly desires Yuletide rave.

- My nan occasionally refilling the quality street tin with toffee pennies because she knows that if she puts them all in at once, I'll weed them all out in one sitting.

...Eee... Christmas!!! Hope you're all looking forward as much as I am.

Now, I need to dig out Elf and A Muppets Christmas Carol soon otherwise Christmas can't officially happen yet.

Preparation Time!

I'm sloshing with coffee, I can't keep still, and my hair smells like something toxic. Must be the run up to a Black Friday night of fun and festivities! Anyone else braving the crowds and the cocktails that suddenly cost fifty billion pounds tonight as well, I salute you!

.... I call this image "Welcome to the laboratory"

I'm Not Drunk, I'm a Social Bloody Butterfly!!

Christmas dinner with work last night. Nothing quite like watching your workmates happily chatter amongst one another over a well cooked....

Bah, fuck the saccharine blog talk!

Last night was my third Christmas meal/do with the company I've been swapping time for money with since the day I ran out into the car park, leaping for joy that I'd got my first proper job... In front of my now-manager, who, unbeknownst to me at the time, was still stood by the door, probably immediately regretting his decision.

This was the only one I've attended sober. It was bizarre. Good, but bizarre. The food was cowing lush, my workmates were making me do little almost-wees of laughter, and the secret Santa gift I got was so thoughtful it made me squeak.

As I said, I've been nothing short of plastered for the past two such events. Most of us end up being in the same state. Tis the season to run around dance floors with no shoes on with your professional superiors...or something.

It just doesn't feel like Christmas has been done justice if the next day, at least half of the office aren't sweating in front of fans, groaning and wearing sun glasses indoors in the dead of winter. And it's never in vain. The nights out we have are silly, memorable, and nearly always end up in a casino at six in the morning.

But last night was weird. I'm socially awkward at the best of times (a socially inept blogger? Holy crackers, Batman!!), but because I wasn't lubricated in the brainular region this time,I just couldn't bring myself to relax. My posture was so rigid, I looked like I had hot GHDs lodged up my anus for the whole thing. I was hypersensitive, and could feel my brain lighting up like multi coloured fairy lights. At least it kept things seasonal.

I was either talking so quickly that I wasn't forming real words- just sort of chirruping at my colleagues, talking too quietly to be heard, or shouting in mad, overly enthusiastic bursts.

I looked. And sounded. Fucking. Mental.

I'm not sure if it's just a British thing, or If there's a sad truth in my saying that, contrary to my prior belief, I've never got over the fear of big groups of people, no matter how well I know the people in it. I've been more or less convinced that I got over all that shit at sixteen, seventeen....coincidentally, somewhere around the time of my first alco pop (gag).

Hmm. Something fun to think about.

Right after my night out with aforementioned work buddies this Black Friday. Christmas spirit first, over indulgent self an analysis after!

Cheers, all!