Totally on Top of It

This Holiday Season

Welcome to Pocketful of Prose, a community for sharing stories. Thank you for being here. As always, there’s an audio version of this pocket if that works better for your life. Also, links are in bold to make them easier to find. This week, I’m sharing some helpful holiday tips. They probably won’t change your life, but they might make you laugh.

Without further ado, today’s pocket.

Well friends, we have made it to “the most wonderful time of the year.”

And I want you to know, that this year, I’m on it. I am working full time and writing a memoir which is stirring up all sorts of feelings, but I want to assure you that I am totally on top of this holiday season. In fact, I would say I’m crushing it just like Shannon in Kim’s Convenience. If you have never seen Kim’s Convenience, it is beautiful and hilarious, and I encourage you to watch this clip, and then watch the show on Netflix instead of reading the rest of my pocket.

I have put together a little holiday survival list for you, just a few tricks that totally work for me. Below each piece of advice, I share a practical application.

1.     Don’t stress over décor.

I stole this advice from Vicki at HGTV. Thanks Vicki. Vicki suggests keeping it simple and incorporating “readily available natural items such as boughs, holly and cranberries” into your decoration scheme. I am so into this. I love the idea of bringing the outside inside. Vicki’s is right about not stressing over the décor. I’ve decided this season I’m going to be as cool as a cucumber.

However, I am taking a slightly different approach. Forget the debate about decorating after Halloween or Thanksgiving, that’s a stale argument. I’m going avant-garde and opting for a more year-round approach. I want my decorations to shout, “Christmas, come and get me. I am so ready for you. In fact, not only am I ready for you, I’m also ready for Easter, the Fourth of July and anything else that comes my way.” There’s white Christmas, classic Christmas, Elf on the Shelf Christmas. Why not ironic Christmas?

Here’s the look I’m going for.

My mom made this, and I have no intention of taking it down.

Guess what folks, my decorating is done. It is that easy!

Vicki also suggests that you "give the house a good cleaning," before you start decorating. Here, Vicki and I part ways. Everyone knows the decorating covers up the dust.

2.     Keep your gift buying simple. Buy your presents early.

On it.

Not only have I bought several gifts this year before Thanksgiving, but the gifts I bought also support local youth.  I know. I am such a good person. I bought a delicious three-dollar pumpkin bread to support our culinary students. This gift was for my YMCA kickboxing instructor, Janet, who always has gifts for us around the holidays, even Thanksgiving. Seriously, she’s amazing. This year, she gave out bandanas. Mine is hot pink.  Fortunately, I am prepared this year because I have bought a three-dollar pumpkin bread. I will give this to Janet and experience the joy that comes from sweet gift reciprocity. That feeling of knowing you managed to get a gift for someone who always gets a gift for you. Sadly, though, I leave the pumpkin bread on my desk over the long weekend along with my fresh farm share eggs, so I am empty handed when I show up to kickboxing. This works for my uppercut, but Janet deserves better.

I have to push them down a few times, but the eggs survive the egg test, so we still eat them. The pumpkin bread, on the other hand, is still in our fridge. I’m telling myself the crusted edges are crystalized sugar and not the beginning of mold. Hey, it’s the thought that counts, right?

In addition to the three-dollar pumpkin bread, which was a true bargain, if you ignore the fact that no one consumed it, I also bought a very expensive tub of popcorn to support the girls’ basketball team.  I rarely use the adjective very, but I use it here to emphasize just how very expensive this popcorn was. I also don’t actually have a recipient in mind for this gift. But, hey the girls’ basketball team looks sharp in their new uniforms. Maybe I can give it to Janet for Christmas.

Finally, I bought a wreath to support our daughter’s friends’ marimba group. Unlike the popcorn, the wreath was useful. At bare minimum, it met Vicki’s decorating criteria. I couldn’t put the wreath outside because I already had decorating under control thanks to my year-round approach, so I put it on the radiator. For days as I worked on my memoir, I kept wondering what the pleasant smell was. It really put me in the holiday spirit. Everyone kept saying how much the house smelled like Christmas. Turns out the smell was toasted pine, and the radiator is not the most suitable place for a natural Christmas wreath. I feel like Vicki should have mentioned this in her post. However, only some of the needles turned brown, and I didn’t burn down the house, so I have another thing to be grateful for this holiday season.

3.     Keep Your Priorities in Order

I’ve so got this. I spent my five days of Thanksgiving Break spending time with my family, eating, drinking wine and writing. I managed to fit it all in folks. Here’s how. I stopped cleaning my house and doing laundry. You would be amazed at how much you can accomplish if you just take cleaning off the table. It worked great, until the Saturday after Thanksgiving, when I ran out of clean underwear. I wasn’t worried, though. I’m as cool as a cucumber. I simply removed underwear from my priority list. I put on pajama pants, sat down on the couch and wrote for hours. The freedom was exhilarating. Saturday evening, I managed to throw in a load. It took a Herculean effort, but I even got the clothes into the dryer. Then, I assigned Seabass the chore of bringing up my laundry from the basement, where it remained in a laundry basket in our kitchen, which is where I got dressed when I returned to work on Monday. My kitchen may look like my bedroom closet, and I may be a tad wrinkled, but the first draft of my book is almost done.

4.     Make time for yourself.

I decide to treat myself this season and get a good escape read. See my pocket on why escape reads rock. I choose a book my friend Andrea, of Literary Merit, recommended to me. It is a book by Eric Thomas. I read Eric’s last book Here for It and loved it. It was hilarious and had the most fun hot pink cover. In Here for It, Eric tells stories about his identity as a Black, gay American and how the parts of his identity sometimes come into conflict with one another and sometimes create something new. I don’t remember the title of Eric’s latest book, but no big. I don’t sweat the details these days cause I’m as cool as a cucumber. I look up Eric Thomas’ most recent book in the library catalog and reserve it.

I pick up the book from the library on my lunchbreak. I am that eager. The title is You Owe You, Ignite Your Power Your Purpose and Your Why. I think it is ironic, you know, like my holiday decorations. I can’t wait to read it. When I get home, I crawl into bed, which is the only place in my house these days that is warm enough to read because I’m afraid to use the wreath toaster. I start by reading the dedication. The book is dedicated to Eric’s wife Dede. This seems off. I look at the back cover, and I read a few words… fortune 500 companies, CEO’s… This also seems off. It finally dawns on me that this book is not the book I thought it was at all.

The book in my lap is not ironic. It was also not written by the same person who wrote Here for It. Will the real Eric Thomas please stand up?

Turns out, there are actually a lot of Eric Thomas’ out there, and more than one of them has written a book. Here for It was written by R. Eric Thomas. R. Eric Thomas’ book cover looks like this, which makes a lot more sense. R. Eric Thomas’ book includes funny stories about middle age and his marriage to David, a Presbyterian minister, not his marriage to Dede, which also makes a lot more sense. R. Eric Thomas’ book looks so good. In fact, you should probably stop reading this and go read it right now. Maybe your library has a copy.

It’s not that the book in my lap, the one written by the other Eric Thomas, doesn’t look good. It’s just that it is about maximizing your potential, which is such a worthy pursuit but also not the vibe I am seeking right now. An escape read is about hiding, not about drawing yourself out. An escape read lets you forget that you’re making everybody uneasy by digging up the past and writing about it. It lets you forget that it is “the most wonderful time of the year.”

An escape read doesn’t ask anything of you. It just makes you laugh.

I would love to continue this conversation in the comments. What resonates with you? What books and shows make you laugh? How are you handling the holidays? Tell us about a time when you too were totally on top of it. I invite you to stick around and read and respond to the comments of others in our community. Everyone wants to be seen.

Here’s the heart to click if this post brought a little light to your day.