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Christmas Carnage on Burlington Path
Due to popular demand, I am reposting this from last year, so you can laugh at me all over again.
You're welcome!
Kimmy
******************************************
It seems like everybody is really stressing out big-time over the holidays
this year, so I thought it might be a good idea for me to tell you how stupid I
was this morning, so you can have a good laugh to mix things up a bit.
Okay. So. I get this brilliant idea this morning to make luminarias out of
ice to place alongside my sidewalk and driveway, because they look so pretty
glowing in the snow at night. However, every time I try to put out conventional
paper luminarias, they blow over in the wind, and I end up racing down the
street chasing multiple rolling flaming paper bags while my neighbors snicker
and point. Having previously resolved not to make an even bigger fool of
myself than I already am during the Christmas Season of 2007, I decided that I
would be so smart that, this year at least, everyone would be stunned and
amazed by my dazzling smartness rather than my usual idiocy.
Digging through my kitchen to find something cool looking to freeze the
luminarias in, I found an old decorative Bundt pan that had some interesting
designs. I sprayed it lightly with Pam, filled it about half full of water, and
then it hit me... The Best Holiday Idea Ever In The History of Holidays! I
would be so smart that I would make colored luminarias (!), so that they would
glow in the darkness like jewels, and my neighbors would all gasp at the
delicate beauty of my decorations and bring me trays of freshly baked Christmas
cookies in a feeble attempt at thanking me. This would, of course, work out
very well for me, as I am supposed to host my family here on Sunday and we
already ate all of the cookies I made a few weeks ago and do I look like I want
to make more cookies at this late date?
Back to the genius of my Holiday vision. I dragged a chair over and climbed
up on the counter to dig out the red food coloring from the high shelf in
that stupid little cupboard way up above the fridge that nobody can ever reach
without dragging a chair over. I put the chair back and tripped on the dog,
leading to a heart-stopping moment when the food coloring flew out of my hand
and sailed majestically through the air, landing with a very dramatic crash
in the sink. Thankfully, the red stayed in the bottle, and all of that cussing
turned out to not be necessary after all. I carefully dripped some red into
the water, stirred it to mix it well, and shoved it in the deep freeze.
When it was frozen, I took it out of the pan, mixed up another batch and
stuck that in the freezer, and took the first one outside to see how it looked.
Placing it carefully in the snowdrift, I stood back to admire it's ruby
redness and to dream longingly about how staggeringly beautiful the glowing
line of fiery red jewels would be as they curved gently along my sidewalk, down the
driveway, and out to the street. Surely small groups of neighbors would
gather at the end of my driveway to gasp in astonishment and envy at my
triumph, much as they did in the movie 'A Christmas Story' when Darren McGavin won
the Major Award. Lost in my reverie, I barely noticed when my feet turned blue
and an icicle started to form at the end of my nose.
Gazing mistily at my red luminaria, and envisioning the great victory that
would soon be mine in the never-ending neighborhood battle to be The Best Darn
Martha Stewart On The Block, it occurred to me, as if from some far
distance, that, gosh, that luminaria looks sort of like a puddle
of..well...blood.
My gaze sharpened. My senses became razor quick. Alas! I was right. My
formerly treasured ruby red luminaria looks rather disarmingly like a
crystal-faceted, carefully molded frozen puddle of blood. And in a horrible
fleeting moment, an awful vision of what the future would hold appeared in my mind's
eye. I knew it then, knew it in my very soul, that when this little sucker melted
and the food coloring fanned out into the surrounding snow, it was going to
look like I'd been sacrificing billy goats right there in the front yard.
With my eyes following the projected path of Luminaria Lane, I realized that
there were going to be groups at the end of my driveway, all right. But they
wouldn't be groups of neighbors. No, the neighbors would be those people on
the other side of the street, the ones behind the yellow tape that says
'Police Line Do Not Cross.' The folks in the driveway would be wearing badges,
because if I went ahead and jammed all those frozen blood puddles into the
snowdrifts and they melted, it was going to look like I had a spectacularly
gruesome blood trail running right straight from the street to the scene of the
crime aka my front door, and the detectives (who I envisioned as looking like
variations of Detective Lenny Brisco on Law and Order) would all be thinking
that I had finally decided that I have just had it right up to here with my
in-laws and had decided to act in precipitous fashion. The hack from the local
paper would be out there interviewing everybody in sight and making up gory
headlines, dreams of the Pulitzer Prize dancing in his head, and Arlo Guthrie
would probably make up a song about this event, written in the style of
Alice's Restaurant except instead of the illicit garbage dump photos, he would
sing about the 27 8x10 colored glossy photos of the Carnage On Burlington Path
with a paragraph on the back of each one, telling what each one was.
I reeled from the impact of this terrible realization. My sweet dreams of
finally tearing the coveted Neighborhood Martha Stewart crown out of that
skinny little Sarah Preston's perfectly manicured hands fizzled out like a
Fourthof July sparkler when it gets dunked into a half empty bottle of warm
Budweiser. The flame of hope which had only recently sprung to life in my heart
flickered briefly, then went out. And then I quit worrying about making up
poetic crap and quickly went to find the shovel, so I could get the bloody looking
ice off the dang snow before somebody saw it and started making whispered,
frantic phone calls to the cops. Or worse, to the other neighbors.
I have returned to the plan of making plain old regular ice luminarias. The
food coloring got put away, with me risking my neck once again doing a
balancing act on that dumb chair. I will have plain ice, not red, and the cops
can all stay home and enjoy Christmas with their families instead of my family. I
am saddened, but wiser, as I sit here forlornly sipping my Pomegranate
Martini, which I just noticed is mighty red when the light shines though it
just so. I think it's mocking me.
Merry Christmas, everyone. And cheer up! At least you weren't as dumb as me
today!
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5. Shana in AK (29 December 2008 at 10:13 a.m.)
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1. shelly skindelien (11 December 2008 at 11:02 p.m.)