Up On the Housetop Reindeer Take Five

Ambling aimlessly up and down the aisles of the grocery store, my ears catch the inevitable refrain of pre-Thanksgiving Christmas music:
“There’ll be parties for hosting
Marshmallows for toasting
And caroling out in the snow;
There'll be scary ghost stories
And tales of the glories of
Christmases long, long ago.”

Wait. Back up a second. “Scary ghost stories?” What scary ghost stories? I’m feeling like maybe I’ve missed out on some Great American Christmas Tradition here. It’s Christmas Eve and the family is gathered around toasting marshmallows (it’s not just for campouts anymore) and singing favorite carols. The sweet and tender closing notes of Silent Night are sung, “Sleep in heavenly peace.” Suddenly Mom flicks off the lights; Dad holds a flashlight up under his chin, casting evil and monstrous shadows upon his face, and he begins, “It was a bitter and gloomy night just like tonight, not very long ago, when three children just about the same age as you learned what utter and heart-stopping terror really means....” 

Ain’t no sugar plums gonna be dancing through those little heads. 

And while we’re on the subject of lyrics that make no sense, how about “Up on the housetop, reindeer paws.” [Snort!]  Since when do reindeer have paws? Duh. Somebody must have been nipping at the eggnog when they wrote those lyrics. 

And how about “I Saw Three Ships Come Sailing In”? The entire song makes no Christmas sense. What the heck do ships have to do with Christmas? I have never once seen Christmas Ship wrapping paper, Christmas Ship centerpieces, or even Christmas Ship cookie cutters. Candy canes? Check. Bells? Check. Angels? Check. But ships? Wha--? And how in the world are ships going to sail into landlocked Bethlehem? “O they sailed into Bethlehem on Christmas Day in the morning.” I’ll admit, however, that my curiosity got to me on this one. Although it goes against my nature to look up everything that I don’t understand (because frankly I don’t have that kind of time, besides the fact that ignorance is far more entertaining), I did just that--I looked it up. 

About the lyrics, Wikipedia says, “The reference to three ships is thought to originate in the three ships that bore the purported relics of the Biblical magi to Cologne Cathedral in the 12th century.” Hang on now. “Relics”? As in “a part of a deceased holy person’s body”, or “remains, corpse,  [or] bones”? Jeepers!  Johnny Mathis was right--there are scary ghost stories about Christmas! I guess I won’t be laughing about those lyrics anymore. And by the way, what kind of weirdo would call scaring little kids on Christmas Eve “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year”?  That’s just sick.

On the other hand, now we have a new Christmas tradition to look forward to: Gather round, Kids. We won’t be roasting chestnuts this year, but help yourselves to marshmallows while I go grab my flashlight.

How to Eliminate Unsightly Stains

One of my kids, who shall remain nameless, likes to say, “You wanna know what really bugs me?” When I remember my parental responsibility to try to raise happy,  productive, contributing citizens--and also because I know it really bugs her-- I respond with something along the lines of, “Sure. But you also need to tell me three things that make you really happy.” In light of that sage advice, I will without further ado relate Three Things That Make Me Really Happy About Grocery Shopping:

1. food
2. the really swinging tunes they have playing
3. food

That was actually harder than I thought.

What really gets me about the grocery store is not the conundrum of balancing the disparate requirements of finding nutritious yet inexpensive food items, while catering to the varying taste preferences of each member of the household.  Neither is it the challenge of making sure that we don’t run out of staples such as Strawberry milk powder and croutons, while making sure not to overburden our tiny pantry. It’s not even the fact that grocery stores are designed to trick you into buying certain items--frankly I could always use help making decisions. Nor is it the fact that at least once during every excursion into the grocery store, I have to find someone taller than me (which is almost anyone, including some children) to help me reach something on the top shelf. What really bugs me about grocery shopping is the blatant and ridiculous inefficiency of the process.

Think about it: Food off the shelf and into the cart; food out of the cart and onto the conveyor belt; food off the conveyor belt and into bags and then back into the cart; food back out of the cart --still in bag--and into the car; food back out of the car--still in the bags--and into the house; food (finally) back out of the bags and into the fridge or pantry. Can you imagine anything else being this kind of inefficient? Government for example...oh wait. Never mind. Childbirth for example? People simply would not stand for it. There must be a better way (Although I would kind of miss the swinging tunes.)

However, until someone invents drive-through grocery stores with online ordering, or a system of underground tunnels connected to vending machines in each home, we don’t have many choices. It’s time to get efficient. Yet somehow, when in the name of Efficiency (which my children have slanderously labeled Laziness), I roll out my picnic blanket in the middle of aisle 12 and just start chowing on peanut butter and jam--with a bottle of strawberry milk--right off the shelves, you would not believe the foofaraw (look it up) this causes. It’s not like I don’t have money with me--cash, no less! You’d think the store manager would be more understanding, or at least more supportive of cutting down on the wastage of plastic bags. 

What else can we do? Let’s get creative, Kids. Our precious time is being frittered away with this disorganized and unproductive system. Fix this mess, and there is a whole universe of problems to devote our time and energy to solving: world hunger, melting glaciers, gray axillary stains, toasters that always burn one side of the bread, plastic wrap that sticks to itself, cable news networks, muzak: the list goes on and on.

What Would Sherwin Think?

A friend recently enlightened me on the correct term for the extra skin on the bendy-out-y part of one’s elbow; she said it is called a wenis, alternately spelled weenis or wenus. I suddenly had a vision of middle-aged guys in white lab coats, chilling in a break room, laughing themselves silly as they invented names for obscure parts of the body. Sadly, for the sake of my imagination, it turns out that wenis is simply a slang term; the real name, olecranon skin, does not hold the same ability to make you do a double take.

But the mental picture conjured up by that word triggered other questions about The People Who Name Things: Who names paint colors? And how do they name them? I tried to picture a class of third graders, drawing a picture and writing a paragraph about what they want to be when they grow up. What type of child thinks, “I’d like to invent the names of paint colors”? (As a side note, one of my off-spring, as a third-grader wanted to be a gondolier, so it is possible.) Or a group of high school graduates, sitting in their solemn-looking caps and gowns, dreaming of the future: Which one is thinking, “I am just bursting with color names here! Hurry up with that commencement address before I forget them all!”

Just on the Sherwin-Williams website alone, there are over 1,500 paint colors and somewhere in the neighborhood (meaning a total was not listed, and I am too lazy to look it up) of 100 colors of stains. Now add all the color names of Valspar, Olympic, Behr, Glidden, Martha Stewart Living, etc. Frankly it boggles the mind! Here’s a very small sample of orange color paint names from Sherwin-Williams: Daring, Daredevil (plagiarism runs rampant in the paint industry), Rejuvenate, and Emotional are some of their single word titles; then there are tags such as Energetic Orange, Knockout Orange, Obstinate Orange, and Inventive Orange. So, do they just have a computer program where someone enters a bunch of adjectives and nouns, including common color names, which are then randomly paired (such as Captivating Cream and Connected Gray), and just as randomly assigned to a particular shade--such Innocence or Jovial? I would assume they try to go for more positive sounding names, because it might be more difficult to sell Irritable Orange. Or Wenis. 

Or is the process more organic? Is it like a big Mad Lib party: “Trudy, I need an adjective AND a beverage;”  “Okay, Fred, name a part of the body.” That would be pretty sweet. Especially if you all got to kick off your shoes, sit around on banana chairs, or pillow pals, and munch on inspirational snacks (possibly generating names such as Sparkly Slurpee, Guacamole Green, Mellow Hummus, or Melty Mint Magnum: “Dude, Elbert! You got a triple bonus for that!”)

Either way, I must say I admire their creativity. Maybe I should hold a paint-naming party, too. I’ve always wanted to rest my olecranon skin on a pillow pal, while munching inspiring hummus. (Hummus is quiet? Whatever.) In the mean time, feel free to share any awesomely paint colors you have used, or would like to invent.