Life is Short, Lick the Spoon and Laugh...a Lot!

Christmas is almost here! I’m so excited! I absolutely love Christmas and everything about it. I do admit it comes with some stress like gift buying, wrapping, cooking, decorating, bills, work, parties...goodness, I stressed myself out just writing all that!

This year I am having a stress-free Christmas. Y’all know I’m on a health and fitness journey and that is stressful enough without adding in the holidays. I have a spoon rest in the kitchen given to me by future daughter in law that says “Life is short, Lick the Spoon.” I’m going to live that this year. I’m not even going to pretend to eat healthy this week. I am going to unashamedly enjoy every single bite of holiday spirit I can shove in my mouth. It’s okay to do that, next week I’ll crawl out of my carb coma and get back to business.

My mom is making my most favorite cake of all time: homemade red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting. I absolute refuse to eat red velvet cake from any shop, store and heaven forbid, a mix! They are awful, dry, no flavor horrid things and not worth the calories. I have never had one as moist and yummy as the one made with my mom’s recipe given to her by her best friend. Growing up, this little fat girl couldn’t wait for holidays to eat that cake. I’m going to relive that excitement this year.

Isn't It Perfect?!

Ok, now that we have established eating won’t cause me stress, we’ll move on to decorating. As much as I want to be a mix between Martha Stewart and Joanna Gaines, it’s never going to happen. Once I realized it is never going to be perfect, it started looking pretty good. I will not say it happens without a few hitches. Y’all know by now that I’m about as accident prone as anyone can be. I have learned to just laugh about that and make it part of the memory.

My "Special Sauce" of Christmas Decorating

This year I discovered that 100 ft outdoor extension cords are impossible to contain. My son makes it look so easy just rolling it up around his arm, making a nice little loop and wrapping the end so pretty and then hanging on the cork board in the garage. My dad can do that too. Somehow that gene skipped a generation. I disliked seeing all that orange cord on the front porch trying to hide behind the chairs but looking like a big snake dressed in Halloween orange. So, I bought a smaller green cord that could be perfectly hidden. I was feeling pretty proud of myself when I started coiling that big orange cord around my elbow. About halfway through it started to get heavy but I’ve been working out so I pushed through. I got to the end and tried to take it off my arm and I couldn’t move. I guess I wound it too tight. I had to wiggle my fingers around and practically break my wrist in a Houdini move to get it free. I bent over, laid it on the porch so I could grab the end and try to figure out how to wrap it up but when I tried to straighten up my hair got pulled so hard. I figured I’d better not stand up or I'd be bald on one side. Turns out I got so carried away with cord winding I didn’t realize my hair was wound up with it. I had to loosen my neat little coil to free myself, they really should try making hair ties out of that orange rubber coating. By the time I was free the cord resembled a ball of yarn a cat had attacked. I gave up and just threw the wadded-up mess on top of a box in the garage. Let the kid with the cord winding gene fix it the next time he uses it....no stress for me.

Nothing to see here...

I also learned that I am pretty good at improvising when decorating. I bought new light up snowmen for the yard. Those were interesting to try to put together. They are made of this mesh like stuff on rings and you pull them apart and they open like a Japanese lantern. Simple right...wrong! It works great in theory, but they were all about ½ inch too short to hook to the frame. It took me and the future daughter in law pulling together to get them attached. We were feeling great about how cute they were and where we placed them until we started putting the stakes in the ground. Of course, we picked the tree with the most dang roots in the yard! I could not find a hammer anywhere and I was getting cold so I grabbed the heaviest thing I could find. I headed toward those snowmen with my 5 lb. kettle bell and I meant business. I’m quite sure the neighbors didn’t know if I was decorating the yard, beating up snowmen or working out but either way those suckers are anchored to the ground and not moving.

A True Win for the Season

Now we will move on to wrapping presents. I positively LOVE to wrap gifts. I love ribbons that cross around the package and make a big bow and if it is a shiny bow that’s even better. My son has learned over the years to come downstairs Christmas morning with a pocket-knife to speed up the unwrapping process. Wrapping is an event for me. I set myself up with all the rolls of paper and mega rolls of ribbon, scissors, tape, labels and pens. I put on a Christmas movie, light the fireplace and get in the wrapping zone. Oh, and boxes, LOTS of boxes. I am one of those people that can’t throw away a “good” box. I just know I’ll need it to wrap a present. I swear it looks like I’m sitting between a Hallmark store and a dumpster. What I really want to know is how in the world I cannot move from that spot and lose 2 pairs of scissors, 5 pens and 10 rolls of tape? What the heck! Do the boxes come alive and eat that stuff? Do the cats run away with them? I know that can’t be the answer because the dang cats are too busy trying to shred tissue paper and sit in all the boxes. I just took lots of deep breaths, moved the cats out of the boxes I needed and plodded along until I was done. Fairly stress free except for losing scissors that I eventually found poking me in the thigh.

The Cats Have More Fun than I do!

The Finished Presents Look Beautiful!! 

Presents wrapped and under the tree looking all festive so now it’s party time. I am socially awkward at parties; I try to hide in the corner and become invisible. Unless it is a family party, those are MY people and they get my quirkiness, so I let it all hang out then, heaven help my family. Y’all pray for them because you know they need it! With COVID still hanging around there aren’t really any parties for me this year, but I do have a couple of pieces of party fashion advice for you that I have, unfortunately, learned from experience.

First, do not try to trim your hair with the fireplace. Two years ago, we moved into this house, and I had my first fireplace. I was so excited to have a real mantle and hearth to decorate and could sit by the fire. My mom was visiting for Christmas, and I decided we needed a fire to complete the Christmas mood. It was the first time I had ever tried to light a gas fireplace. I had NO clue what I was doing but when has that ever stopped me before. I turned on the gas and started trying to light one of those stupid child proof electric match things. I had to get really close and use both hands to get it to ignite. Big mistake since the gas was building up waiting for me to un-child proof the lighter. When it lit there was a fireball! I kid you not, I stepped back and my hair was smoking. My mom was laughing because there was this cloud of smoke all around me. I touched my hair and ashes fell to my clothes. I ran to the bathroom and sure enough about a three-inch section of hair on both sides of my face was hopelessly singed and my eyebrows got a free trim as well. Luckily, I have a lot of hair so it wasn’t hard to hide except fighting all the baby bird hairs growing out. For a year I walked around with a halo of tiny hairs sticking straight out like I’d just touched a light socket. I look back now and laugh because I’ve always wanted a smoking hot body and I had it for about 30 seconds that year!

Basically what I looked like. Maybe a little less fire. 😭😭😭

Second, if you have even the slightest bit of body fat, do NOT attempt to wear a shape ware body suit to flatten out the bumps. When I worked for a hospital a few years ago we always attended the physicians Christmas party which is a beautiful formal party. I loved it but the stress of trying to dress myself into something remotely beautifully formal was never fun. The year I wore a body suit topped them all. Everything was great until I had to pee. When I put the dang thing on it was snapped so all I had to do was tug it on, which was a workout in itself. I got to the bathroom, down went the hose, unsnapped the crotch and felt so relieved to be able to pee and breathe at the same time. I needed all that breath when it came time to try to re-attach those snaps. When I stood up, the ends of that body suit rolled up my body like a roman shade with the tail ends flapping about chest high in the front and the back. I suspect even the thinnest and most limber lady can’t reach between her legs all the way up to her shoulder blades to grab the tail of the bodysuit and pull it down. I am neither of those things. That stall was not big enough for me to attempt the yoga moves necessary to reach around my back with one hand, grab the end and pull it down far enough to catch it with the other hand between my legs. I’d almost have it and it would slip through my fingers and go flapping back up to my shoulders. I managed to grab it and, keep a hold on it with one hand while I tried to pull the other end down from between my chest. After three times of being beat about the face with the snaps I gave up! I got completely undressed, took that silly thing off then got dressed again. At that point I didn’t care much about the lumps and bumps showing. I started to walk out of the stall I’d been occupying for half an hour when I realized I had nowhere to put the body suit. I had a tiny clutch purse that was not holding a size 3X bodysuit. I didn’t want to throw it away because it was so expensive even though I was never putting it on again. I briefly thought about stashing it in one of the many Christmas trees and picking it up later but then I had a brilliant idea! I stuffed it in my bra as even as a I could. I might have had lumps and bumps around my middle and butt but dang I had a nice chest that night!

I have a million other stories I could share about my holiday stresses that I could share but it’s Christmas and y’all have way better things to do than read about my hot mess of a life. I just wanted to take a few minutes of your time to give you a little breather from your own holiday stress. I hope you take a little piece of advice from my kitchen utensils and lick the spoon, maybe twice, and the heck with the calories until next week. Or maybe I gave you a little giggle and some hope that no matter how crazy and stressful your holiday might be there is always a reason to laugh. I hope you have a lovely and laughter filled holiday.

~Angie

Angie Tillman is an atypical accountant from Little Rock, Arkansas.  She shares living space with her son, daughter-in-love, a dog and three cats.  There would be chickens and goats if the HOA would just see it her way! In her free time, she enjoys kayaking in the many beautiful lakes in Arkansas. 

You may connect with Angie on Facebook HERE Or Instagram HERE