HillBILLY 'Grinchmas'

Hey just because I’m always scratching, walking around with spinach in my teeth, and usually hairy doesn’t mean that I am some hillbilly Christmas Grinch. The only issue is that as I get older I would prefer if all the holiday ‘Hul-la-ba-WHO’ would just get over with a tad quicker, that’s all. Far beyond the gallons of Nyquil I brew n’ consume from the still daily; effectively from one second after Halloween through New Years day, life compresses and besieges me as one big, bimonthly burr-blur.

Oh sure it’s easy to act all high & jolly and kiss random elves & animals when mistletoe, rum-laced nog and choco treats race to the brain to free my inner ‘DOPE-amine’. But I really don’t need any more excuses to do LESS work or accost my remaining un-institutionalized friends or their laundry, with good CHEER and random acts of Christmas. Anyway, who wants Santa’s stinking perpetual pine scent all over my trusty rust-bucket and bounty of hoarded stuff for one sixth of my entire life? As long as my wife, a.k.a. ‘Mrs. Claws’, gives me permission to goof off and keep intravenously beefing up my already well powdered and sugar-coated ‘gut-muffin’, every day IS MY holiday Right?!

Yeah I grouse and whine but it’s all in good ‘ol bum-country fun. Actually my inner ‘Grinch’ is rather endearing when I start to pass ou..t - uh sorry?, … the roast beast feast to my cousin, mother, and step-daughter - who all happen to be the SAME person. While city-folk rage over the age-old quandary of ham OR turkey, ‘round here, at our ‘Road-Kill rally’ we can score BOTH, cooked over a roaring Firestone tire fire by the ‘up-chuck wagon’. Usually by Christmas though, not only has my ‘Grinch-initesimal ‘ heart abruptly enlarged, but my beltline and the pan full of cat litter under my Lazy Boy has swelled thrice its size as well.

So you coastal dwellers and holiday snobs can keep all of your fancy long drawn-out traditions, seasonally-lighted houses with the wreath adorned doors, and fake snow on your window panes. In the Midwest we NEVER take down our lights without a court order and we drive around with REAL deer and bloody antlers stuck to our pick-ups. Yes, in the ‘Zarks, we can count on the pleasure of genuine snow and frigidity to brighten our toothless smiles far beyond just the months of November and December. Gee I guess around here every day must be Christmas and I am just an old ‘inbred Grinch’ after all!

Forget gyms just EXERCISE!

Just because I don’t belong to a gym doesn’t mean I’m averse to exercise, it just means that in MY typical mental state I am not allowed to operate HEAVY machinery. No to stay fit, I want to get my ‘juice’ the old fashioned way by skulking back and forth between the refrigerator, recliner, and the litter box near the roach motel. I used to be in a lot better shape when I was young but once they invented zippers, TV remotes and the devil’s utensil – the ‘spork’, I got a little lazy and a tad flabby.

Oh sure since I type a lot and know my way around a can of aerosol cheese, you probably have guessed that I’m a world class athlete from wrists to fingerprints. Sadly it’s just the rest of my flesh that flaps and flags furiously in a stiff wind which makes me pause, not with concern, but to catch my breath. Apparently my wife worries about my cold, stiff, body too, since she routinely tells me where to ‘go’ to warm up, and she wants me to get off my coffin to increase my activity level and exercise routine.

Even during frigid times of the year I try to appease the spouse with a brisk walk together over the dark and cold Midwest tundra to Taco Bell for dinner. I don’t mind following carrots as long as they taste like tacos, and anyway you’ve never lived until you boot your way through recently thawed permafrost into a two inch layer of muddy ‘Mr. Ma-GOO’! Who needs a hot, expensive & sweaty gym when the great outdoors will suck off your shoes and offer-up 10 pound ankle anchors for free? After all bulky Hulks like me need all the help I can get, to lift and separate my Frankenstein gate, and enhance my already cartoon-creature image.

Like satanic thoughts, most of my daily fitness routine is thrust upon me involuntarily anyway, as I try to keep up with the stuff that makes trouble, breaks double, or takes a fall on top of my ‘un-loved’ Amityville shack. Inside this cavern, there is always a cold darkness stalking me, but that might be because I’m just ‘bats’ by pulling the shades and setting the thermostat too low? When it comes to graveYARD work I am taunted by millions of demon leaves and howling, windy, tree-things which need bunching, crunching, and perpetual decomposition. Now you can see I don’t really need to be banished to a gym to get in shape - I just need to be regularly EXORCISED!