Twas the Night Before Christmas....

And, all through a house in Chicagoland... EVERY, I mean EVERY creature is stirring, including a small three year-old who is running around half-naked, and her underwear is on backwards. We are beginning our final preparations for Christmas Eve and the stockings are hung on our doors with care. We all hope Santa will be here. Based on the fact the three year-old has been in the Christmas tree often over the last month, none of us are quite sure. I guess the little one does not see ornaments as the ornaments they were meant to be. They are hanging action figures! She took a couple that look more human (like Santa) and played with them as if dolls. I can't blame her really. I always felt, as a young child, ornaments should be played with. I had my eye on a French horn. It didn't make a noise when one blew on it, but I loved it. .Was it the red ribbon? Who knows. Needless to say, I played with it. However, I played with only that one (oh, and my father's Christmas Village under the tree. We had a train and a village. The tiny people in the village would get hit by the train daily. Stupid little people. Don't they know that every 90 minutes somebody gets hit by a train? In my village, it occurred every 5 minutes. And, there were these Matchbox cars. I would put those on the tracks, too. Back in the day, Matchbox Cars had a metal underside. Oh, I how I loved to watch the sparks flicker from underneath and then the paint on the cars would smolder before it met its doom - Now that is Christmas! Death and Destruction to the citizens of Christmas Village. I have that village now in storage. One of these days anarchy may reign on these people yet again! MUHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAHAHAHAHAHHAAAAA!). The rest of them I dared not touch out of fear for my life. My parents used the traditional methods of punishment when I did wrong. I can't look at wooden spoons the same. Anyway, the little one has been busy dismantling the tree. Oh, don't worry folks. Santa will be here. In fact, I helped Santa wrap presents until the wee hours of the morn and hid them in a vacant room upstairs. As I said last night, If the kids only knew that Santa's sacks were actually Glad garbage bags, it would really change much of the mystery. Hefty! Hefty! Hefty! I put a blanket over the top of the sacks, as not to look obvious.... heh. We are just trying to trick a three year-old after all, so get off my back! Next year, I plan on being much tricker.

Anyway, we are preparing for our big night of mystery, magic and good old fashioned seafood with white rice. As a family, we follow our Czech traditions for the most part, and that means Christmas Eve is THE night. As part of our tradition, we do not serve red meat. I am not sure how this started or what brilliant Czech decided to deny us the right to eat a nice juicy steak on Christmas Eve, but we don't. Meatless! Being that I am a fan of seafood, I do not mind all that much. I do find, though, that on this night I really would like a nice juicy steak. Maybe that is one of the reasons I get myself a wee-bit toasted. I can drunkly pretend that the shrimp is red meat. Here is what is confusing about it all. On Christmas Day, I don't want meat. I want shrimp. Can you say, "Joe, you are an idiot?" Yeah, that's how my mind works. We all get dressed up. I get out my camera. I annoy people with my flash. We eat. We clean up. We get the little one all excited. We get the teens rather excited. The signal is given. We do a Santa Hunt (We get in cars and drive looking for Santa). One of use doubles back. We put the presents under the tree. I take more pictures before the chaos. The interested parties arrive. Chaos. Then, I bring out the good beer and visit the spirits. Partake in the spirits? Enjoy the spirits? Get spirited? Who cares, actually. To cap off the evening, I watch the yule log burn on WGN TV from 1-5 in the morning! That, my friends, is what Christmas is all about. I guess that pretty much sums up the day. In fact, I have to run to the store and get some vittles for snacking. I better get my ass moving.

That's enough for now... What? You have a question about my last blog? What is the sarcophagus? That's my party cooler. It's a huge ass party cooler that one could use to store a human body if need be. There are plenty of times I wish I could use it for that purpose. When I bought the sarcophagus I did it on a whim as I thought it would be funny. I was in Sam's Club probably looking for pretzels. I don't remember. I do find myself in Sam's Club for the insane purpose of just buying pretzels. I walked down this aisle and there it was... the cooler. There were five of them. I looked at it and thought, "Jesus Christ! That thing is huge? Why would you need such a large cooler? Who in their right mind would buy something like that?" With a smile on my face, I bought it. I love answering my own questions.

Later!