Is anyone else having an uh-oh feeling about this time a year?  In the midst of all the cheer and bustling about, I feel about as incongruous as a dog poo on the good living room rug. 

Those who know me casually, my design clients, the Goose’s business associates, store clerks, all assume I’m marching to the same holiday theme as everyone else.   Actually, there is something more akin to a dirge playing through my head.  My deep, dark and unseemly secret?  I despise the whole Christmas hoopla. It puts a damper on my tropical colored mojo. I know, this makes many feel the need to hand me a cocoa, snuggle me or else sequester me away in a research facility so that I might be probed to discover what’s wrong.  I just do not enjoy it.  

The mere thought of shopping makes me insane.  My kids know I have a limited number of minutes that can be spent in a mall during the year and they watch me anxiously when shopping with me lest I fall to the floor in front of Macy’s, scratching and clawing my clothes off and blurting out obscenities.  Nothing says birth of a savior like a middle aged woman naked in a mall. 

It could be true that my heart is two sizes too small at this time of year.  All the stress, though, has most likely caused my liver to grow a size or two. 

I so look forward to the time after Christmas when the entire world goes on a diet and thoughts turn to cleaning up houses and buying new furniture (hopefully, from me). 

I just saw a study where 65% of Americans say they would like to just forget Christmas this year.  I’m with them.  I think if it came around, say, every three years or so, I could get behind it.  

My blogs lately have been whiny and blah.  It’s just the time of year.  I’m one of those people, however, who if I hate something, I want the whole world on board with me.  I love it that the check out girl looked at me today and said “Merry Christmas” and then looked down and whispered “bah humbug”.  I asked her to repeat it and she looked at me, scared and afraid that her true feelings had been exposed. She deadpanned another “bah humbug” and started to apologize but I interrupted with “high five, sista, I hate it too” and we shared a conspiratorial smile.  As I walked away I feel certain that she was wearing a Lilly Pulitzer bikini and hiding a flask of rum under her red sweater too.  There’s nothing wrong with that.  We all do what we have to just to make it through.