Baby, It's Cold Outside

Our first Christmas season as a married couple has so far been a little on the anti-climactic side. Not to say it hasn't been nice, because it has. I don't know exactly what I was expecting- picking out a Christmas tree in a romantic montage with a great backing soundtrack, decorating it with the help of birds and our other little forest friends while singing a perfectly executed duet of "Baby, It's Cold Outside," playful snowball fights that induce passersby to throw up in their mouth just a little by our nauseating couple-y cuteness. Well, other than it being the south and not having gotten much colder than 50 degrees outside, I thought they were fairly attainable dreams. Ha.

So far it has been mainly the heartbreaking realization that while the people around me (including Mark) are winding down with finals and looking forward to the prospect of a whole month's break, the real world isn't split into semesters and if I want to have any kind of Christmas vacation I get to take unpaid time off. Woo.

We did have a nice time going to pick out a tree. I am ashamed to say that we did something that I have frowned upon and judged others for doing as far back as I can remember: we got our tree before Thanksgiving. We justified it by saying that since we were going on our trip to see Mark's family the week before Christmas, we wanted to have as much time with it as possible to get maximum bang for the buck. I hardly think I am on the same level as department stores and places like Hobby Lobby, who were fully stocked and pushing Christmas merchandise as I was running around getting last minute wedding things in July. I mean really, that is just blasphemous. But whatever way you look at it, we committed a serious holiday grievance and I can only hope that the Christmas gods will be understanding and one day forgive me.

The only snafu we hit was during the decorating process. We each had a few ornaments from our trees back home, and grabbed some gold ball ornaments from the dollar store (we keeps it real) to fill the rest of the space. We got the tree home and lit while Mark serenaded me, singing "Christmas balls! Christmas balls! I've got great big Christmas balls! Wrap them up like Santa Claus, I've got Christmas balls!"

Lovely.

I took a break and went back to our room to return a call from my granny that I was unable to answer as we were making about the 16th attempt at getting the tree straight in the stand. She and I got talking for a bit, and when I walked back out into the living room I came to a halt as I stood before a fully-balled tree.

"You..." I said breathlessly. "You decorated without me?"

"Just the ball ornaments!" Mark said cheerily before taking in the look on my face. "I got finished with the dishes, so I went ahead and did the boring ornaments too... are you okay?"

"Yeah," I said gruffly. "I'll be right back."

I then went into the bathroom and started bawling. My husband, God bless him, can be completely oblivious sometimes. My family is all about sentiment and tradition, to the point where we are some of the biggest cheeseballs you will ever meet. Mark completely didn't realize how badly he hurt my feelings by decorating our first Christmas tree without me.

Fast forward to a few hours and nasty little fight later during which I fully brought the dramatics, making a case about how this instance was just one in a series of instances that were indicative of a larger problem with the way Mark does things (blame me having a lawyer as a dad- always trying to make my case beyond a reasonable doubt). It was not one of the prouder moments of our fledgling marriage. Finally, exhausted, we chalked it up to having always done the holidays completely differently in each of our families. Neither of them were bad or wrong. They were just different. We each just needed to be more understanding of that and patient with the other one while we adjust.

When all was said and done, the tree is rocking and our apartment is all decked out and fab. Mark even surprised me yesterday by putting up a bunch of blue icicle lights in our room. It is not quite at the point where my family's house in Canton is, which looks like Christmas itself came in and vomited joy and magic all over the place. (Mom is on Christmas crack. No joke. Another rare but addicting drug- decorating your entire house with Santas, snowmen, pictures, lights- anything cheerful you can get your hands on. An intervention has been staged.) But it is hopefully the start of our own little tradition, which is still going to be great.

And we also dressed Grover up like Santa. I sat him on my lap and told him that my one wish was for him to stop waking me up every morning at 7:00 by pawing at my face.

Texting and Blogging with Molly

Well, Mark and I successfully made it through our first big holiday of married life, handling it very diplomatically by spending two nights and each of our parents' houses. And my family actually made (most of) the Thanksgiving meal, which anyone who knows the Johnsons knows that is truly a sight to behold. For some reason, the cooking gene skipped my mom and ever since I can remember, she has simply not been interested in being one of those dash-of-this-dash-of-that, Food Network-watching, new recipe-trying kind of people. We have probably been to every restaurant within a 25-mile radius of our house. Whenever there's a new pizzeria opens, we'll be there. Whenever there's a new Chinese joint, we'll be there. Whenever there's a grand opening of a sandwich cafe- well you get the idea.

So this was a far cry from our normal routine of escaping down to Gulf Shores Beach, Alabama in order to avoid having to cook. Our desperation to dodge home-cooked meal-making transcends state borders. It is truly sad. But really, who can pass up the opportunity to have Mahi Mahi and turkey in the same meal? Nonetheless, it turned out pretty well, and I contributed macaroni and cheese that I made from scratch right down to the cheese sauce. I kicked Kraft's ass and I kicked it hard. I twisted Cheesasaurus' little mascot arm until he cried uncle. It was fantastic.

Another thing I love about being home is getting be around a dog. My cats, though slightly annoying at times as we all know, are my darlings. But my dog growing up was one of my BFFs, and when she died in February it devastated our whole family. Right after our wedding, my parents and Kate got a new dog named Molly. She is a stocky flat-coated retriever mix, which basically means she looks like a Golden Retriever that got dipped into black ink. She is extremely sweet and definitely has her quirks, one of which being the fact that she settles for no less than two walks per day. While our old dog became a nervous wreck at the mere sight of a leash, you mention something about a walk and Molly goes nuts, leaping in the air with such a great vertical that Shaq would even be jealous.

And then there is her other major quirk: she only goes to the bathroom while on her walks. She never wants to be let out to go in the yard, and if you try to go out with her she just sits and stares at you until you give up and take her inside. While out on her walks, she also feels the need to stop and sniff everything, peeing in about a dozen spots along the way. Molly also uses this time to have a little, uh, "extended personal time," if you know what I mean. So Mom and Dad load down with a plastic bag and butt inspection gloves every time they walk her, and often make fun of each other about who had the misfortune of having to take care of Molly's little souvenirs.

The first night I was home for Thanksgiving, Mom came home with Molly from their evening. When Dad asked how things went, she said, "Well, Molly did some texting and some blogging tonight."

Kate and I looked at each other, confused.

"What do you mean she 'texted and blogged'?" I asked.

"Well, we decided that when she pees in all those places during her walk, it is like her equivalent to texting with other dogs," mom said merrily.

"And blogging is just what we say when she poops," Dad said frankly.

"Let me see if I get this straight," I said slowly, completely affronted. "You are using the term blogging to refer to dog feces? Which would therefore mean you are equivocating my blog to poo?"

"Hmm, I didn't think of it that way," Dad replied with a smirk.

"It's not funny!" I retorted, trying to look pains and not crack a smile, because let's face it. It was kind of funny. "What. The. HELL?"

So now I have to come up with a completely new name for this because I inevitably keep thinking about poop every time someone asks me about my blog. I mean, how hard can it be to change the name of a long-standing and well-respected form of internet communication? Oh, who am I kidding? Thank you, Mom and Dad, for your twisted sense of humor. I hope Molly wrote you a nice big blog tonight. ;)