Color Me Crusty

Maybe it has always been this way but am I the only one who sees the world through rose and green colored 3D glasses around the last quarter of the year? The truth is that as of late even orange and black Halloween is also getting flocked and being horned in on by rutting Rudolph and his deer friends. Thank goodness Valentine’s red letter day and the white, red n’ Independence blue have stayed true and somehow have avoided being elf-hijacked too.

Yes, apparently now Christmas is not just one day of the year but in fact extends its over-ripe aroma to all of Fall and hangs around a little too long like that last plate of dark-meat leftovers from Thanksgiving. No just because I set a few mousetraps in the attic around the gold garland and stored ornamental rainbow balls doesn’t mean I’m the pied piper of gripey Grinches at all. But honestly, what other holiday totally consumes white light to make life costlier, less productive and an even deeper black hole than it already is?

I don’t see Chanukah getting in my way too much, but  then again even if I were Jewish the wife would never allow a cold gassy giant like me to bounce around next to a bunch of lit candles in a tattered flannel t-shirt. Ol’ Cinco de Mayo and Groundhog’s day don’t ordinarily tax too much of my tiny brain twists either, though inexplicably now I am hungry for five pork sandwiches. The outlier eggy Easter tries to rudely intrude Spring with its funny bunnies, fuzzy ducks, and PEEPing treats too. But in the end with only a month of brown choco hype n’ hubbub to last, even a Winter wonderland whiner like me can frown, bear it, and stand fast.  

Actually I think most of my crusty Christmas recriminations have more to do with my personal geezer leanings rather than society’s oblivious overreach toward an overbearing holiday marketing niche. After all even this Scrooge still gets sucked up by Santa’s jolly jingle and rebuff of we - the far less jovial. It’s just when your hair and skin begins to turn pasty-white like Frosty’s filling, elderly life turns exceedingly telling. Especially so when you’re constantly reminded for months on end that you now need those colorful candy canes for walking rather than to eat as oh so sweet treats!

Click Clock

Unlike many graying creatures of the night my head must have mixed in 2 parts bat with the fat under my hat because as I get colder and older I seem to be hearing some sounds BETTER! No the television is still a mush of mumbles and breathless whispers but that is likely due more to my Pringle can amplified budget TV and the sorry state of  modern entertainment programming. Surprisingly now, high pitched clicks are becoming louder and yes, I drool even more uncontrollably at the sound of coins clacking together - which makes for some uncomfortable stares in Taco Bell’s all-tile echorest-room.

I’m not sure what’s changed but it seems now that all of the analog clocks in my house are screaming for their civil rights and ‘just want to be heard’.  Is this some kind of plot from the fancy new clock corporations to drive geezers to the brink and switch to their dinky blinky digital displays? If that’s the case, I’m determined to stand firm with my big noisy clocks, one finger in my ear and the other in a crass digital display of its own.

At Halloween I seem to hear perfectly fine, but oddly any other time of the year I have become almost completely deaf when anything else pounds on the drawbridge door asking for handouts. My wife handles my selective hearing by prefacing her requests with time-tested tricks to garner rapid attention. Drawing me in with comforting utterances beginning with ‘Ding Dong’ or ‘Pop Tart’ will get my most positive reaction, but if the wife’s pressed for time and wants me to fold-up and run like wet ink on a newspaper, she just happily snaps a 3-ring binder.

Other than the spouse, the good news is that most external distractions can be simply buried in the yard along with the bones of other telltale hearts and crafts of noisier times gone bye. But sadly when it comes to my OWN creaky joints and snapping flaps, they seem permanently attached to me so what do I do when skulking the stairs on an otherwise silent night. Clearly all I need to do is don’t whine and unwind those clickity clackity clocks and practice STOPPING time!

Holiday Color Combo

Though the weather has been turning cooler, the last time I checked it still said September on most calendars except for apparently the ones in ALL stores that sell the things. Can it be that my beady peeps are deceiving MEeps or is Halloweeny’s orange and black getting devil-horned in on by Christmasy red and green.  Like that weird spiced ice cream with pie chunks at Dairy Queen, this odd combo thing must be a seasonal fad because last year I saw the same color palette except it was all growing on my shriveled, month-old, rotting pumpkin.

Since both of us have never liked crunches or sticky situations, I am not sure how candy canes or I am going to handle the seasonal food and confections situation with all this new age celebratory melding. It takes a big brained elf with waxy lips, and popcorn balls in hand to be able to comprehend and consume ‘toasted pumpkin seeds’ and choco Chanukah gelt all in the same month of the year. I already knew that Frosty was keeping warm by dipping in the cider more often than proper but I never guessed that batty Drac had tuned his toothy straws toward the tannenbaum taste of holiday nog.

I’m all for doubling up colorful calendar red lettered days like Black Friday and White sales, as long as you leave my birthday out of it since I already have all the wrinkles and wisdom I can stand. You can also skip two-timing delivering the letters of any color from the greeting card people since at $5 a pop, they have obviously ALREADY doubled down on their prices, lack of creativity, and hackneyed double entendres. At least glossy cards can do double-duty over email in one sense by doubling my toilet paper stash – though they never seem as soft or absorbent as the bevy of monthly mailed bills do.

Since I typically give out cookies that taste like dog treats anyway, my fireplug and I are actually looking forward to the Wolfman visiting on Halloween dressed as a harried Keebler Elf this year. To get in the combo spirit and if the caribou union will allow it, maybe even ol’ St. Nick himself could slip in a few flying monkeys with the reindeer train this December. Of course only as long as everyone is well mannered, fling-free, and adequately diapered - since due to inflation, Santa’s oversized red bag doesn’t hold as much stuff as it used to. 

Halloweaned

Sadly as I have gotten older and my permanently mounted gray mask has gotten scarier, it seems my interest in Halloween has waned a bit. This is particularly irritating given the fact that the rest of the world seems to be turning toward the orange light and embracing the pseudo holiday with invigorated fervor. Why now is everyone showing up so late to this party since when I was on board, my Mummy used to preach to me about my impaired judgment for handing out candy to kids from the back of my van.

I really did not see the problem since children scare me every other day of the year so what’s the big deal with putting out a little pay-back every 31^st of October? What else am I to do with that big bag of five year old fun-sized bars of chalky chocolate and a dusty dish of ribbon candy from last Christmas? You don’t expect me to feed that stuff to my pet llama do you because I’m almost positive he will spit it out at me.

Who really likes this season of the pumpkin except for the reason it gives to make tasty pie crusts, play with cans of aerosol whipped cream, and lord over locker room sunflowers with the sheer size of their seeds? I don’t need some ghost holiday to tell me that being hopped up on sugar and glowing in the dark is a little more fun than a carefully regulated lifestyle. Hey I already know a little something about being a ‘batty’ pagan, irresponsibly wolfing down a week’s worth of overpriced chocolate in a day, and hanging out on the web so what’s so special about All Hallows Eve?   

You see geezer-creatures like me naturally lose interest in celebrating one dumb day a year of terror, since every day already feels like Halloween as I repulse reflexively at mirrors due to my bloodshot vision and a plethora of personal hygiene nightmares. It’s one thing to appear more and more like those moldy n’ craggy sleepy hollowed out pumpkins heading for a REAL crypt, but it’s quite another to smell like them too. So it’s probably best that I continue to act my age and avoid ‘going over the top’ with my inner-Weener; but believe me it’s difficult since every October a little part of me still dreams of donning a hockey mask, fake machete and a ‘too loose’ pair of PANTS!