ouch. damn it.

"shelly! try this! it's awesome!"
"no that doesn't look like the kind of thing i should do."
"come on! it's fun!"
"it looks fun, but i don't think so."

how this conversation went from reasonable resistence to "i think i broke my clavicle" i will never understand. i started out so responsible and so intelligent. but it DID look like fun. and the other kids were doing it. i know, i know, you are going to say, "but shelly, the other kids are at least 15 years younger than you are!" let's not get too involved with all these details, hmm? it was fun to slide down the hill and it looked like even more fun to move over to the part where there was a little jump at the end. the other (less dramatic) jumps had gone alright, how was i to know that this one had scheduled an ER visit for me?

i have been completely honest with my friends and my readers in the past, and there is no reason that should change. as i have always suggested, i don't always make very good choices and some of my choices hurt. this one hurts the most. as it turns out, those ligaments in the shoulder are extremely important. and useful. this is the first time i have tried to type since "the incident". right now i feel like someone is jabbing a hot knife into my shoulder joint. time to stop for a while. i 'll be back when i can take the hydrocodone again.

here comes santa claus

i explicitly remember the very moment at which i knew beyond reasonable doubt that santa claus was a figment of adults' imaginations. i had been collecting evidence for quite some time and i finally had enough to bring it to the grand jury. i remember standing beside my mother in the hallway of our house as she dug for a cookbook or wrapping paper or any other of the wide variety of household items that made their home in the hall closet. i looked into my bedroom at the barbie mansion (that is what it was called but it looked more like a barbie tenement) which i had received the year before from santa. my mind flooded with all of the evidence i had been storing, waiting for the right moment to inform my parents that the jig is up. "mom, there is no such thing as santa, is there?" having never been a woman to go too far out of her way to cover up the santa scheme, it didn't seem to bother her at all that her younger child was finally on to her. but she did cross examine me (as her only available witness) and make a bit of a conversation out of the situation before just coming clean. "why do you say that?"
i rambled off my major points of undeniable proof.

• first, santa has always had your handwriting.
• second, once i saw some presents hidden downstairs that said they were from santa.
• third, you and dad always got really mad at us if we wouldn't go to bed on christmas eve.
• fourth, i heard you carrying presents in the middle of the night once on christmas eve.

my fifth exhibit was the clincher, and she knew she couldn't lie to this little detective any longer. for anyone who has read the post about my stuffed animals, this won't come as a surprise... one year as we were setting christmas cookies out for santa i said to my parents, "the reindeer have to do a lot of work too, but no one ever feeds them. what do you think they would like?" none of us knew exactly what reindeer generally feast on, so i decided on carrot sticks. that seemed like a reasonable treat for flying mammals. i took out 8 carrot sticks that were exactly the same size then searched for one that was a little bit bigger. "this one is for Rudolph. all of the other reindeer are so mean to him all the time, he deserves a bigger carrot. that'll teach those other reindeer to be nicer to him and maybe they will get better treats too." i even labeled the one that was for Rudolph so there would be no confusion. i woke up the next morning and ran downstairs to see what kind of delightful goodies santa had left for us. no cookies, no carrots, just presents. so far, all was well. then my mom announced that it was time to go upstairs for breakfast. i opened the refrigerator to get the milk or juice or whatever and what to my wondering eyes should appear!?! but 9 tiny carrot sticks back in the crisper, the largest one with a hole in it where the toothpick sign had been. i knew that no santa claus who was worth his weight in hershey's chocolate would have deprived his little drivers of a nutritious snack in the middle of a busy night. there was only one explanation. and when i presented my mother with an opportunity to explain this, she folded. she admitted to a lifetime of lies and misrepresentation. none of it is real. none of it. no santa, no toy shop at the north pole, no flying talking reindeer, no mrs. claus baking cookies and keeping her man fat. all a hoax. and all i could do was wonder, "Why?" why would adults do this? why make up this elaborate story with context and supporting characters and costumes in the mall? why when they have to spend unholy amounts of money to prove to their little darlings that they are loved would they allow some pretend person to take all the credit for that. it just doesn't make sense. it still doesn't make sense to me. i can't think of one thing about the santa myth that makes childhood qualitatively better than a childhood without such a distortion. my pretend kids are never going to hear about santa. i will just tell them that the santas who roam the streets at christmas time are there for kids who are a different religion from us. it's true enough.

not dead

december, as a rule, is a sucky month. it tends to end well, but everything leading up to those fantastic celebrations in the final week totally sucks the life right out of me. particularly the shopping part. if i spend too much time in shopping malls i start to see how sadly i am beginning to blend in to the masses. this is upsetting to me and i don't like to be faced with this reality for very long. i begin to worry that i will look into a mirror one day and see a midwestern woman with a spiral perm, pink lipstick and a festive seasonal sweater accented with a holly-adorned dickie. and brown loafers with thick socks that stretch midway up my calves. i already wear (on occasion) something that my mother would refer to as a "decent winter coat". i think it makes me look as though i have been recently tragically separated from my arctic cat. i am on thin ice and every move could lead to my final fall into all that i have worked so hard to resist. no more trips to the mall for this girl. it's homemade and internet gifts for everyone!
there is something to do nearly every evening in december. fun things, but eventually even those become a bit tiresome. i am ready for a quiet night alone with my lover, my doggies and my tivo. perhaps in january.
i am writing all of this nonsense simply to make an appearance and to say that i am not dead, just busy. i miss my regular visits to the computer and i thought i had best let my 3 readers know that i will be back. i know that my recent absence has not been too terribly alarming, nor has it disrupted the daily lives of anyone besides myself, but since one of my most recent posts had a photo of a woman with a gun to her head and i tend toward irritability and stress, i thought it best to drop by.
now i have to go to work. so i can buy things. so i can become normal. so i can buy things that normal people buy. i better get myself a third job. seasonal sweaters are expensive.