My True Love's Gifts

In the first week of Christmas, my true love gave to him(self), a brand new BMW Transmission.

Why did I have to add the car type, you ask? Transmissions are already ridiculously expensive. However, a luxury German made car transmission is the price of a small American made vehicle -- fully loaded -- and I needed you to understand the magnitude of the bill.

In the second week of Christmas, my true love gave to us, a brand new hot water heater... that took two days to fix... leaving us with no hot water. My big burly retired Marine teased me because I was using my electric tea kettle to fill the bathtub. He said, "It's not too cold, You could take a shower. You guys are wimps." Yet when I came home from work on the second day, I caught him with the teapot in the bathroom.

In the third week of Christmas, my true love gave to me, $800 worth of front tires... to replace the bald ones... so I could pass the VA. inspection. Of course with my luck, their one inspector was out that day leaving me having to make sure I squeeze in another visit to a car care center with all that free time I have during the busy holiday season. Of course my deadline was December 31st.

In the fourth week of Christmas my true love and I gave to my son, a great Christmas. (The gods gave us a break.) Yeah! We focused on my son, though. We decided we had given each other enough lavish gifts for the year.

However, in the fifth week of Christmas (December 31st to be exact -- just when I thought we finished the month unscathed) my true love gave to me, a brand new rear passenger side tail light fixture for $400 dollars because I still failed the inspection.

You see, it was broken, and I kind of forgot because the light still worked. It's just that the red plastic covering was a tiny bit cracked,... okay... broken open... leaving a bright white light glaring into the windshield of all that followed me. I didn't think it was that bad; I just considered myself a beacon of light. Besides, it was my true love's fault.  Ever since a heavy wind blew the basketball hoop onto the hood of his Bimmer, he never pulls far enough up the driveway to allow me room to back out of the garage without a fight. And I believe the only reason he refuses to park in the garage is because he hit the side of the door opening as he was turning in one day (though he has never admitted it.) Hence, early one dark morning at 5:30 a.m., I clipped his car trying to back out of the driveway. We were waiting until January to fix it, forgetting that I needed a safety inspection. Ugh!

And now it is the new year, January 1st to be exact. While, I am the first to admit that these stumbling block, Murphy's Law type unexpected bills around the holiday are annoying, I will add that I realized the truth which is that we are blessed to be able to pay them off without issue. The true nightmare would be if we could not.  However, let's hope this year my true and I are done with the lavish gift giving for now.

The View

All of my  blogs used to be funny because I love to laugh at myself and make others laugh in the process. However, tonight I was going to write about the  deplorable treatment of my mom in her nursing home, and I stopped. It is far from funny. It would depress me, and you would not want to read it. Besides, I would not have enough time to write about it anyway.

Then I decided to write about my son, there always used to be some funny scenario to share about growing tweens. However as I wracked my brains, I realized that there is nothing funny because he has reached the start of brooding teenaged funks! He mopes past me and grunts barely audible answers to any question I pose.

Lastly, there’s my husband, I am sure that there is a story there however, I am so busy teaching, taking care of mom, going to class, and grading papers or creating lessons that I scarce see him enough to experience anything funny. (Though I will say that my newly retired husband had the audacity to nudge me in an electronic game of scrabble because I had not made time to make my move.)

Which brings me to my final thought on this situation which is quickly becoming the norm and beginning to overtake my weekly submissions.

Last week, I couldn’t find the time to write at all, and the week before that I wrote a poem about… well, not having anything to write about.  The week before that it was a short paragraph about not having time to write… and the week before that I squeezed in a very short paragraph after school and before the parents arrived on Back to School Night.

And now here I sit basically filling this blank space with more banter on not being able to write due to time constraints as I watch the big hand near the 12 on the clock and my grad professor turning on her presentation.

Sadly, as I perch here straddling this window sill called SOL Tuesdays, looking out at all the other wonderful writers running past my house, I feel like Esperanza’s grandmother in House on Mango Street, who “looked out the window her whole life, the way so many women sit their sadness on an elbow.” Life has a tight grip on my leg pulling me back, so it can board up the opening through which I have been trying my best to escape these past few weeks since finding you

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