This year's different (Essay #7)

                I anxiously wait all year long to enjoy the strings of lights that outline the houses, the big red decorative bows and wreaths on the front doors of others homes as I drive by. Somehow it seems to keep getting closer and closer to Christmas before we can do this, and it saddens me! So this year, I will step forward and say “So what if it’s before Thanksgiving!” and “So what if there’s no snow on the ground!” I am going to deck my house out with Christmas decorations now so that my family can enjoy it even longer!

            First I am going to go down into the basement and locate all of my boxes that are labeled “Christmas” in big permanent marker letters, which add up to be about 4 or 5  medium sized boxes. I bring them all upstairs and open them up just like its Christmas morning with a huge smile on my face. I carefully take them out one by one, each having its own unique memory popping into my head as it lay in my hand. From little ornaments that my children and I crafted up last year to the very first ones from when they were first born and even ones that I invented as a kid. It takes me back to the ever so delightful stroll down memory lane and shortly reminiscing on the good times.

             Then I let the children go to town, only after I do the MOST important thing you have to do before starting or it just isn’t the same! You flip, flip, flip through the overloaded cd case until you say “AHH HA!”, then slip the disc into the cd player and you crank up the Christmas tunes! As the kids are decorating the house with popcorn on a string and perfectly colored Santa’s and Christmas tree’s get tacked and taped up everywhere, I’m out on the front deck unraveling the strings of lights. It doesn’t matter how carefully you wind those lights up the year before they are always tangled and a bugger to untangle. After that’s done I plug them all in and make sure they work. They do! Yay! I peek in the big front windows at the kids dancing away to the music having a good ol’ time, and then I have to join them after seeing their cute little faces. I pick them up and twirl with them in the kitchen for a while then its back to work and onto the next step, putting the lights up outside.

             In my opinion, I find it way easier to put up the lights and things outside without snow everywhere and the kids little fingers don’t get so cold and it’s much more enjoyable. While the kids hold the lights up on the railings in place I come along and staple (by the way, staples are better than nails!). After we finish that I top the house off with icicles all along the roof and the garage. We throw some lights on two little fake trees that sit on each end of the deck. Then we head inside to do the tree. We dance around decorating the tree together but we do not put the tree topper on until daddy gets home so he can have a little involvement of the holiday spirit.

          Last, after all the decorating is done, we bake our traditional Santa and snowmen shaped sugar cookies and colorfully frost and sprinkle them. We patiently wait for the sun to go down and daddy to arrive from work. It’s just like the big blast of that first fire work you see when you turn on all the lights. It’s so exciting! It’s a rush, and so beautiful! Everybody should do it early like us, so we all can enjoy this warm cozy feeling inside even longer!

Essay #6

Essay #6

                There is only one creature on this earth that gives me the heebie geebies. Coincidently it’s the only creature that I happen to come in contact with on a daily basis. You would think that the mice family and I would have developed some sort relationship based on the fact that I can pretty much expect there will be one greeting me at some point in my day. It doesn’t matter how many I kill because it seems like if I kill one, five more are born and programed to make my life a living hell. These are the top 3 reasons as to why I hate them with a passion. They tortured me as a child in my sleep, they are the reason I cringe, close my eyes and slowly reach into tight dark spaces, and those beady eyed, scrap feasting mongrels have the power to make me jump out of my mini-van and scream like a little girl.

                There was this little tiny square door in the ceiling of my old childhood bedroom. The typical reason to be scared of the attic you would think for a kid would be ghosts or monsters, but no, mine was mice. Not only because of the fact that I had little tiny chewed holes in the ceiling and mouse poop in the deep crevices of the rooms corners but the main factor being the sounds. I could hear their little nails tapping across the wood floor above me while I lay in my pitch dark room at night. Their annoying little squeaking sounds they made, as if they were having a mandatory meeting on how they were going to raid the kitchen. It got to the point that when I didn’t hear any sounds it frightened me even more because I didn’t know where they were.

                Bringing up things from the basement is an absolute terror for me because I know that any item, whether a box or a boot could be a potential residence of the mouse family that coincides in my surroundings. Sometimes the kids are my Guiney pigs when opening things, if they find mice then momma doesn’t go anywhere near that box and it’s kicked outside until daddy gets home. We checked all of the boots and were extra sure nothing was living in them, but by the time I had my boots on I’m sure the neighbors down the street heard my horror scream after my toes sunk into one hiding in the toe of my boot. Oh good god that thing made me instantly sick to my stomach and cringe every year I put on my winter boots for the first time.

                Last winter I had problems with the heating system in my mini-van.  After finding out that my mice infected glove box was protecting them from freezing, my collection of napkins were their nesting materials and their source of food was McDonald’s French fries that usually were stuffed into the cracks of the seats. They probably thought they hit the Mack Daddy of all places to stay and had it made.  I was furious that I had to pay for a new heating coil that shit the bed after the mice chewed the wires off of it, but I was completely freaked out at the same time. The thought of one sneaking his way right up one of my pant legs makes me have severe panic attacks. Those darn things were going to be the death of me on I-95 one night on my way home from work I just knew it. But instead it happened at a red light in Orono around 11:30 p.m. on my way home from work. The creepy critter came out of hiding and scared the be-Jesus out of me. Without hesitating I jumped out of the van, screamed and brushed my clothes off frantically. In about 5 seconds I realized that I probably looked like a crazy person and was completely embarrassed.

                Mice gave me goosebumps from my younger years all the way up to this very moment. From haunting me with their scattering squeaking sounds in the attic, hiding in my winter boots, costing me money to making me act like total fool in public. I’m absolutely petrified of them, although they are such small creatures it is my biggest fear among all fears!