The holidays and the winter weather are coming way too fast. That's the problem. Not much we can do about the cold and the light skiff of snow the red dog and I found on the grass this morning--not until we can erect one of those nifty weather nets around the planet that the sci-fi authors are always writing about.
But the holidays? I mean, what's up with my neighbors? They already had the Christmas wreaths in their windows by November 6th, for crying out loud. Now Christmas starts the day after Election Day?! And that's about when the local radio station started playing Christmas carols exclusively, and I do mean exclusively. If I were one of their advertisers, I'd pull my spots. By Thanksgiving, we'll all have heard quite enough and will quit listening to their station.
Okay, the holiday shopping thing is really getting out of control, too. Black Friday starts on Thanksgiving now. It's bad enough that the big box stores employ slavish labor practices that prey on people who so desperately need work, especially around the holidays. But now they want their people to work on Thanksgiving night? They're so greedy they can't suspend their profit gobbling long enough to let their employees digest that other gobbler?
Those dastardly retailers are descending even farther into the spirit of insane competition by trying to see who can open their store the earliest on Thanksgiving night. Target opens at 8:00 p.m., which, they proudly announced, is an hour earlier than last year. Isn't that special?! I hope that Amazon buries them all. (BTW, did you hear that Amazon has contracted with the US Postal Service for Sunday deliveries? Yup, not a joke.)
The young woman who cuts my hair told me she's already spent over a grand on Christmas presents and she's not done yet. Yikes! She makes more than a starving writer, but not much more, I think.
Linus and Charlie Brown were right about Christmas getting too commercial. Ditto for Yule, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, etc. How many ways can they try to get us to spend money? Perhaps they're hoping we won't notice that that little hiccup with the government shutdown and the debt ceiling debacle put the brakes on the economic recovery to the extent that more people had to enroll in unemployment benefits because they suddenly and unexpectedly got laid off.
Yes, they were hoping we'd just whip out our credit cards anyway and swipe, swipe, swipe--talk about a debt ceiling problem! And by the way, we're all no-good-nothings (as they said about three generations ago) if we don't buy our kids the most expensive electronics on the market. Maybe the e-trade commercials where the baby is surfing the net on his smartphone aren't so far-fetched after all.
But nothing substantive has really changed--there's just more bling now. That Christmas-is-getting-too-commercial complaint from the Peanuts gang is a true "Ghost of Christmas Past" because it's been echoing out there in the ether for over fifty years! Digital bling is just the au courant version of holiday commercial. "Second coming of the same old cavalry," to use that delightfully mixed metaphor from the movie Thunderheart.
But even with all his bah-humbugging, my Dad used to put on this really ugly holly-with-berries bow tie and mix up a few Christmas toddies for the family and friends who showed up on Christmas night.
He took us to the tree farm to pick out and tag a real Christmas tree right after Halloween, and he and my Mom saw to it that my sisters and I always had way too many of those commercial presents with lots of old-school bling.
So I'll try to keep things in perspective and do something to get into the spirit even as my Dad did. I'm afraid a bow tie isn't really appropriate, but I have these ugly Christmasy socks and I bought my dog a pretty teal fleece coat which I'm calling an early Christmas (Yule, actually) present. Online. With my credit card. But not from Amazon. I'm hoping they'll sell a bunch of my e-books for Christmas. :) So everybody go put down the plastic for the new Kindle Fire HDX--it has lots of bling!--and buy my e-book! (You know I'm kidding, right? Well, sort of. There is that starving writer thing . . ..)
Here's a Jude Hayes excerpt for today. This one's from the new book, They Pull Me Back In:
I opened the door to a smiling Jonathon in his immaculate chauffeur’s uniform. “Good Evening, Jude.” Erstwhile co-workers, we’d been on a first-name basis since my last case. He always seemed sincerely happy, a man who obviously enjoyed his work. I reflected upon the fact that I really enjoyed my own work—and the fear that it could all change if I agreed to become “a chauffeur with wings” again.
“Hi, Jonathon. I’m all ready to go,” I said, grabbing my briefcase and gloves off the kitchen table and closing the door behind me. There was just enough room in the tiny garage to pass between the wall and my little car and covered motorcycle, both resting peacefully.
As we stepped out into the cold night, I pulled a small remote from my jeans pocket. One button locked both the kitchen and outer door and armed my brand new security system, a Christmas gift from A.J. herself. It was probably unnecessary in this area of Grand Junction, a city not known for its high crime rate, but A.J. had insisted. I had the utmost confidence that Rachel and Decker could handle most unauthorized entries, but even they could use protection against some threats. I smiled ruefully—P.I.s are so suspicious.
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