Coordinating Christmas

One of the few upsides of my years in retail management is the toolbox of useful skills it has left me with, skills that are particularly useful here at the holidays.  I multi-task like a champ, can giftwrap with my eyes clothed, decorate with a shoestring budget, and scheduling for three houses is nothing after you've scheduled holiday shifts for twenty employees.  I'm awesome with my time management, which is why I've had all my Christmas presents (stocking stuffers included) wrapped and stashed in the attic for weeks.  As much as anyone can be, I am organized at Christmas.

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Holiday Witness

I love the holidays.  Thanksgiving is only three days away, and I am already counting down to Christmas.  I have an attic full of already-wrapped Christmas presents, and the only reason my house isn't yet fully decorated is because my husband flatly refuses for us to have lights or a tree up before Thanksgiving.  (Or, as he put it, "Show Turkey Day some proper respect!")

However, there was a time in my life when I wasn't so enthusiastic about the month of December.  This was during those bleak years of my life that I worked in retail.

Now that I've returned from the front lines of store management, I have some hard news for my fellow Christians:  A lot of you are really terrible customers, and you're not bearing good witness.

As a service to those still trapped in the service industry, I'm going to explain some common problems and how you can avoid them so that you aren't damaging your faith.  (If you can't follow these basic rules, then I recommend taking the cross of your neck or the fish off your car before you go out for Black Friday.)

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Natural Pageant vs. "Natural" Pageant

<---What "natural" means, apparently.

This past Saturday was my son's second ever toddler pageant.  Having done one, I thought I was better prepared for what to expect.  I'm an idiot.

My son's first pageant was a low-key affair; some kids and their parents in a hotel conference room, one outfit, one time onstage, and about 25% of the contestants were boys.  My amazing little boy won (yay!), we got a plastic crown, a sash, and a couple of trophies, and were home in time for lunch.  It was also a natural pageant, and I made a vow to only put him in natural pageants, as I feel that the glitz pageants aren't appropriate for children.

This past weekend's pageant was also billed as a natural pageant, though it did have an outfit-of-choice category, meaning that a clothing change would be required.  The OOC was supposed to be Christmaswear, so I chose a pair of green corduroys, a red shirt with a few rhinestones (very macho, and I got it at Kid2Kid for $5), and an adorable black top hat that my husband sewed a snowflake onto.  The hat made the outfit, and it was incredibly adorable.  For the "beauty" portion, we just decided he would wear his suit, like last time.

The pageant was located in a town over 2 hours away, and registration opened at 10:00, so I was up before 6:00, double-checking that we had everything and packing extra toys, snacks, etc.  My dad and mom came this time to provide a cheering section, so we all drove up together.  In true toddler fashion, my son stayed awake most of the drive, and then fell asleep for the last 20 minutes.  We had to wake him up to get him out of his carseat, and I was worried about how cranky he might be.

When we got to registration, it became obvious that we, the adults with him, were going to be the cranky ones.  We were surrounded by toddler girls with their hair in curlers and moms carrying garment bags.  When we got to the dressing room, it was a fog of hairspray and, "natural" pageant though it was supposed to be, there was plenty of make-up being applied, and even hairpieces being pinned in.  I saw the surreal image of a little girl, not even school age, carrying a plastic box with her curly fake hair in it.  Plenty of the little girls were crying, and I bristled when I heard one mom say, "Beauty is pain."

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All My Children

My son's youngest cousin, my soon to be one-year-old nephew, appears to be allergic to dogs.  The dogs at my parents' house come around him and his eyes immediately start to turn red, and water.

All while my son runs tearing by, holding out a squeaky toy so the dogs will chase and jump on him.  It makes me really bummed for my nephew.

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Kissing the stress (and the dream) goodbye

So, about 6 weeks ago, I started my first cycle on Clomid.

In case you're unaware, Clomid is a medication that induces ovulation in women who do not ovulate consistently on their own (like me).  It does this by (literally) screwing with your brain chemistry and tricking your body into pumping your hormone production into overdrive.  So...yeah.  It takes a women already struggling with the emotional turmoil of infertility, and ramps up her hormone levels.  Hijinks ensue.

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Today's Post Delayed

Had a big fun post on practical evangelism planned, but just couldn't hack it out this morning.  In a lot of pain, and worrying the Clomid may be causing OHSS (ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome).  It's supposed to be pretty common, but, not to be a whiney-pants, this is really, really painful.  Going to try to work on the post later, when I feel like sitting up and thinking for that long.