Sorry, not rheumatoid arthritis. Just me.

In the spectrum of office holiday spirit, I would guess that my workplace is at the average.  Last year was my first Christmas at this job, and I noticed that tacky sweaters and light-up earrings were fairly prevalent throughout December, someone hung ornaments from the drop ceiling in the hallways, a couple of people passed out baggies of some homemade snack mix, but that’s not surprising, considering that the average age of our predominantly female staff is probably 45. However, whatever my office lacks in spirit it makes up for in obligation.  Since Thanksgiving, I’ve been notified of no less than six upcoming holiday events that will no doubt be a joy for me to attend and causes that I have been dying to support, of course.

First, there was the notice about the annual department Holiday Lunch — oh, wait, I mean, the Holiday Colloquium. I had a horrific time last year, so I considered trying to schedule a midday appointment somewhere to get out of it.  Then I realized that I have to take pictures for the newsletter again, so I signed up to bring soda, which means I don’t have to cook or bake, and I can get rid of four random 2-liters we have sitting around. The jury is still out on whether I’ll actually hang out and eat after I take pictures; if the environment is as junior-high as it was last year, I will be glad to hide out in my office.

Not to be outdone, the annual Associate Luncheon is coming up, when the uppity ups serve us dry chicken and overdone beef as they look ridiculous in hairnets and latex gloves.  I was loath to go last year, but my boss chirped, “But it’s free!”  Yes, that’s true.  We don’t have to pay to stand in a monstrously long line, eat institutional food, and fight for cafeteria seats.  You know what else is free?  Bringing my lunch from home and eating in peace.

Throughout the year, the hospital has been pushing a donation program that goes toward pediatric care like, um, the rest of our work.  Employees can sign up to have a certain amount of their paychecks go to this fund, but I’ve never signed up because I figure that the pay cut I took to come here takes care of it for me, Scrooge that I am.  Anyway, this month, the departments and floors that have 100% participation in this donation program get a prize!  A real, attractive prize in the form of … a pizza party or an ice cream social!  Happy day!

But hey, since I’m not donating to the fund, it opens me up to any other holiday-time donations around here.  For instance, my floor apparently adopts a family from a hospital, as I learned from the flier slid under my door that included the line, “Please let us know what your donation will be.”  Well, then!  I will assume that they mean, “Thanks for considering!” or “Let us know if you’d like to donate,” and not, “We will hunt you down if you don’t donate anything, Selfish.”

The day after I got the adopt-a-family flier, I got an e-mail about how my work group (which I guess is different from my floor) donates money toward buying grocery store gift cards for the social work people to distribute, if needed.  In this case, I appreciate that the message emphasized that the donations were voluntary and anonymous, but the slam-bam timing was less than ideal.

There’s a flier in the hallway about volunteering at the Ronald McDonald House that’s on our campus, and I thought that might be a cool thing to do some evening.  I scanned it to get an idea of what was involved: preparing a meal, serving, cleaning up — it all sounded reasonable.  But wait, they were looking for volunteers for the month of May?

The cherry on the top of this ice cream sundae of guilt came in the form of an e-mail from the management yesterday.  “Happy Holidays!” sang the subject line, and I crossed my fingers in the hopes that they were giving us the afternoon off for Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve.  Yes, that was the case!  I had planned to take those days off, anyway, but this message meant that I could bank an extra vacation day for later.  The only part squelching my gratitude was the smarmy language: “As a reward to share with families and loved ones, we are giving Associates the Gift of Time.  May your hearts be warm and full as you enjoy this joyful season.”  Oh, gag me.  As nice as the gesture is, the Gift of Time does little to help us forget that there is a hiring freeze in effect and that no one is getting a raise this year.

It’s not that I’m against eating together or donating to families in need, but the sheer onslaught of so many items with cheesy, guilt-ridden rhetoric makes my eyes roll back in my head.  I know, I know, I’m a terrible person.  Bah!

On Me
For months, I’ve had a mysterious skin condition on my left pinky that I assumed was eczema, since it runs in the family and I had it as a child.  I wasn’t alarmed until it started bubbling up painfully and acrobatically jumped to the middle finger on my right hand, but I didn’t want to go a dermatologist to get it properly diagnosed because my previous experience was less than positive.*  Instead, I self-medicated with some 1% hydrocortizone cream from the supermarket, which kept the rash manageable, but without improvement.  Last week, randomly noticed that the rash would dissipate when I took an allergy pill for my seasonal symptoms, so what kind of allergy might I have?  I remembered that my face breaks out if fragranced products even go near it, so I swapped out my seemingly-docile cucumber-aloe lotion with a hypoallergenic, non-fragranced variety.  I’ve been using it for less than a week, and my skin has cleared up almost to the point of normalcy.  Woo!  So, apparently, I have sensitive skin?  Does that mean I have to switch out every other product?

On TV
A couple of months ago, I spent two days on the couch, languishing at the hands of an ambush cold, and one of the side effects was that I became completely addicted to Jon and Kate Plus 8.  I had never really experienced the show other than snippets on Best Week Ever and The Soup, but I was utterly taken by those kids.  I loved how, when they met someone new, each child would each hold out a hand to shake and say, “Hi, what’s your name?”  The family doesn’t live too far from us, so every so often, I’d recognize a restaurant or a local attraction.  During the vow renewal special in Hawaii, I could not take my eyes off of the littlest girl learning to swim underwater, popping to the surface and asking, “How long was I under?  How many minutes?”  Oh, sure, Kate is uptight, Jon can be oblivious, and the kids are scream-y, but with such a sudden, large family, what can you do?  I concede that a pack of half-Asian kids has its charms, but don’t get any ideas, people.

Online
I have succumbed to the siren call; I have finally signed up for a username at Etsy.  Between browsing for earrings and stationery for gifts, I could not hold firm any longer.  There wasn’t a real reason behind my reluctance, but I never found things I really liked.  Oh, that has changed.  I still feel like I am bobbing around in an ocean of random things, so any suggestions for sellers or items to check out would be greatly appreciated.  I’ll look at the browsing potential as a reward after I finish a particularly painful project currently at hand.

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* Yeah, the dermatologist looked at me for two seconds, swabbed my scabrous lip, assumed it was impetigo before sending the sample to the lab, and gave me a prescription for an antibiotic that completely screwed up my other medications.  And then it didn’t turn out to be impetigo!  I paid two co-pays, went to early-morning appointments (that were seconds long), and threw off my prescriptions for that.

JG and I struck out to get a Christmas tree on Saturday with the names of two new farms to try.  The tree farm we’d patronized for the past two years charges by the foot, and it was always rather uncomfortable when we got up to the front and the tree was two feet taller and $15 more expensive than we had estimated.  A friend gave us a tip for a new farm to try this year.  “You drive up this old couple’s house,” she said, “and any tree you cut down is $20!”  After spending at least $70 for a tree over the last several years, it sounded too good to be true.  JG found another farm in a local magazine as a back-up plan, and we set off to find a better deal.

We made our way down to Maryland, just past the Pennsylvania border.  Just when I thought we had gone too far or the place was mythical, there was a solid line of cars pulled over on the side of the road.  We slowed down, peeked into the short driveway, and sure enough, there was a very old man, a machine wrapping netting around trees, and people hauling away their evergreens.

“This is the place!” JG said triumphantly.

The house had a modest sign that confirmed our whereabouts, but it wasn’t clear what we were getting into until we walked past the couple’s house and saw the huge expanse of trees.  In a largely residential area, there were rows and rows of trees, and I was amazed. Besides quantity, this farm had a mix of short- and long-needled varieties, which JG told me was very rare.  I gravitated toward a long-needled variety because I liked the skinny profile better; in the past, our chubby trees have created an awkward traffic flow and been ridiculously heavy.  We found several long-needled candidates, and we ended up choosing the one that was JG-plus-extended-arm-plus-bow-saw tall.  After a certain point, all of the trees blend together for me, so I am quick to pull the trigger.  “Let’s go for it,” I said.

I braced myself to hold up the tree while JG sawed at the trunk, but I barely felt it when the cut was complete.  “Is the tree lighter than usual?” I asked.  Usually, we carry the tree back together — JG leads the way with the big end and I struggle in the back with the pointy end because I can’t see my feet — but he grabbed the tree with one hand and picked it up with no problem.  Awesome!  I grabbed the saw and followed him to the couple’s garage. Our total came to a whopping $20.50, which included a sheath of netting around the tree.  I could not believe it.  We are so going back to that place next year.

We set up the tree in the living room when we got home with much less drama than in other years, even though we figured out that JG-plus-extended-arm-plus-bow-saw height equates to about 11 feet, which was, oh, roughly three more feet than I expected.  JG anchored it to the wall to avoid last year’s capsizing, and I unpacked our decorations.  I went through seven strings of lights and all of our ornaments, but at the end of the night, we basked in the glow.  It was lovely in every way.

To sate the cassoulet curiosity out there, the final result was just okay.  It tasted fine, and the broth was thick and tomato-y, but it wasn’t something JG and I were excited to eat.  I served it over rice, but it would have been nice to have bread for sopping up the liquid.  The cassoulet’s most egregious offense was not performing in the leftovers arena.  I didn’t skin the chicken before I froze it (Hello, skin the drumsticks and freeze them independently?  What kind of high-maintenance slow cooker meal is this?!), and I suspect that this higher fat content contributed to the rather slick nature of the next day’s lunch portion.  I e-mailed JG over my lunch hour, “Yeah, I don’t want to continue eating these cassoulet leftovers. This is not going down easily.”  Needless to say, Mom’s cassoulet did not earn its own clear plastic sleeve in the recipe binder.

I’m more annoyed because this recipe is another in a string of mediocre (if not terrible) results.  I’d amost rather have a flaming disaster than a wan lump of blah, especially since we’d have to eat leftover blah.

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JG and I are going to a game night tonight, and we are supposed to bring 5-10 Christmas phrases for the group to act out in a Charades-like game.  Immediately, we schemed to come up with traditional, but not ordinary, phrases.  How many times can you act out “trimming the tree”?  We thought of eight phrases without a lot of struggle (popcorn garland, The Polar Express, yule log, “Jingle Bell Rock,” North Pole, nutcracker, Prince of Peace, and reindeer games), but two songs became a bone of contention.

First, JG suggested “Mele Kalikimaka,” which I immediately vetoed on the grounds of being ridiculously hard to pantomime.  He contended that if all the answers are Christmas-based, only a hula dance was needed, but I said that I had never heard of that song before I met him.  JG accepted the veto.  Then I suggested, “Marshmallow World,” which has to be one of the fluffiest, most inane songs of the holiday season (probably why I had to sing it every year in for chorus class at my public high school), and JG claimed that he had never heard of it!  He put our suggestions to the test with his next class, and I demanded that he write down the titles, not say them.  To my dismay, the kids unanimously recognized “Mele Kalikimaka” but not “Marshmallow World.”  What the heck!  I hope that I’m not the only one cursed with the knowledge of this ridiculous song.

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Apparently, the surge of motivation borne by my master holiday to-do list has worn off, because I am now as peppy as a slug.  That is, I am completely inert.  Nothing holds my interest for longer than a half hour, and I feel so disinterested about everything that I annoy myself.  I want to shake myself and shout, “Pull yourself together, woman!” but you know, I don’t think I have the energy. Or care enough.  Oh, a nap?  That sounds nice…

No more!  I declare this The Weekend of Productivity.  We’re cutting down a Christmas tree to be decorated, and I will sit at the coffee table to write and address cards, fold and put away my laundry (from last weekend — oops), and put away my suitcase (from Thanksgiving — double oops).  If I am really on a roll, I might even wrap some presents.  Then I might earn a nap and temporarily succumbing to inertia.