It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Grinchmas

Our Christmas tree.

I was sick last week while Mom was back in Newfoundland. I got better but she came home and promptly got sick herself.

"It's your fault," she said, giving me the Evil Eye while swiping at her nose with a kleenex. "You gave me the plague."

"The PLAGUE? Pretty sure I didn't give you "the plague" Mother."

But she's not happy with me today, and she's also not particularly enthralled with the tree topper either.

"It looked harmless enough in the box," I told her, hands on hips as we stood in front of the tree, gazing upwards at it.

In the box it looked like a pretty white crystal snowflake. We hit the demo button and it lit up nice and pretty and white for a millisecond. We got it home, plugged it into the tree, and realized we bought a psycho disco ball snowflake tree topper.

It flashes in brilliant colours at high strobe light intensity. Bro was sitting in the living room watching a Habs game and complained that it was giving him a headache. Apparently the bad TSN feed last night didn't help either. He was texting me game scores and highlights while I was at work.

Pic doesn't even begin to do it justice.

"I can feel an epileptic fit coming on," was one of his favourites. Thankfully the feed cleared after several minutes. "Seizure averted."

Mom and I sat down to watch the PVR'd game after work, and avoided the disco ball strobe light flickering off the TV by throwing back some rum and coke. When she declined a refill due to her cold I called her a pussy, so naturally she decided she wanted one.

"I'm not a pussy! Get me another drink. You can tend on me for a change. I'm sick over here, what with you giving me the plague."

Did I mention she's on facebook now? I suppose I should take it easy on her on these blog posts, but I like to live dangerously.

Speaking of living dangerously, I sent my Dad an email about how I can't sleep anymore because I'm so afraid to fly what with not having any natural feathers growing out of my skin and all, and that I keep envisioning my own death via a fiery plane crash and am convinced I'll never make it back to Canada if I go to visit him in Panama after Christmas.

He wrote me back saying my fears were silly and that it was just my first international flight and to read a book or something during the flight. He really only finds it tough because he's a smoker and when he gets to jonesing for a ciggy he tends to find the flight long.

I wrote back and said how I was too cheap to cancel the whole thing so I'll come regardless and he replies that he's glad I got over all that silly fear.

Uh... that's not what I said. I said I was a cheapskate and I'll suck it up and get on the plane and try not to embarass myself. That's as good as it's likely to get. I'll resign myself to my fate. Que sera sera.

Speaking of fate, it smiled on me last night for a change instead of merely tormenting, and I got the last spot on evening shift at work. This means I don't have to go back to midnights, which tends to unleash Uber-Cranky Roz.

I went over to my supervisor. "I don't see you doing a happy dance since you got news you get to keep me on this shift. Where's the excitement?"

"I did it in private," he said in his snooty British accent, then sent me into coding mail for the third time that night. I swear he hates me, but he told Mom he sends me in there so much because I'm really good at it.

So if I'm good in bed, does this mean I should be a call girl?

We gave our friend, Little Red, her Christmas present. She was delighted by the bottle of Newfoundland wine, but totally tickled by the wee Toronto Maple Leafs gloves designed for hanging off car mirrors. We've had a Habs one for years.

"Don't tell anyone inside I bought Leafs gear," I warned Mom as we headed back into work.

To make myself feel better, I did buy something Habs related to compensate. Last season I gave Geoff Molson close to $1000 of my hard earned money. This year I've spent maybe $30. It's not that I'm making a statement here about his crappy hockey team. It's more like I don't really care.

At work the mail is piled through the roof and I got stuck in mail prep with The Gimp, a co-worker recently returned from knee surgery. He tried to smack talk me and Mom about returning from Newfoundland with our usual feed of moose, and it didn't take long for me to get disgusted with him.

"For God's sake," I told him. "That wasn't even a good attempt. Don't you know how to smack talk properly?"

I turned to Mom. "You'd think he was a Leafs fan or something."

He is a Leafs fan BTW. He also is usually first out of the parking lot at the end of the night, but I was determined to take him. The second we clocked out I got behind Mom and started literally shoving her up the stairs.

"Hurry! We can beat him! He's handicapped!"

The Gimp was ahead of us and trying to pull away, but I was relentless. Being a Habs fan I don't like to lose, particularly to a Leafs fan. Behind us our coworkers started laughing, agog that I was manhandling my mother up the stairs.

I launched her out the front door and The Gimp peeled off to the right to fetch his car from the secure parking lot while I dragged Mom to the guest parking in the front of the building. She jumped behind the wheel and burned rubber out of the lot.

They call us Thelma and Louise now.

"I'm not doing that again," said Mom when we got home. "I'm too sick. You gave me the plague."