Last Year's Christmas Letter (that was never mailed)

I'm a terrible procrastinator. Really. I don't hink I've ever mailed out a Christmas letter on time. And last year, I had it all typed up, envelopes addressed, copies made - and never went to the post office. So to all my friends and family who received neither present nor letter, this post is for you!!

And she writes....

Well, here I am again, writing a Christmas letter that may or may not get mailed by Halloween of next year (it didn't - obviously). If by some miraculous circumstance this letter arrives sometime during the holidays, we will all know that some sort of divine intervention took place!!! So, belated or not, here’s the Farthing Family Holiday Update.

If you have received this letter and have absolutely no idea who it may be from, don’t be surprised. If you’re a friend of mine, I may not have told you that I got married. So, if you remember Karen Reinhard – that’s me. If you still don’t know who this is from, you must be associated with my husband and he is notorious for not introducing me. So, HI!!!! I’m Karen, this is the annual letter (which you may or may not get during the Holidays since I normally send it late), and I hope you call Chuck to let him know that you got the Christmas letter from his really strange wife (ha!).

Anyway…..We all know what a procrastinator I am, and this year is no exception. It’s the third week of December, and I have yet to buy a single gift. I have several projects that have been left unfinished, and my house looks like it normally does (somewhere between “disaster area” and “nuclear holocaust”). Hey – if you want to visit me, come over anytime. If you want to visit the house, I’ll need for you to make an appointment. Currently, the schedule for the house is pretty full, but I could probably pencil you in, say, April Fool’s Day of 2012.

Anyway, projects. I have one unfinished project that irks me on a daily basis, but I just can’t seem to find the motivation to finish it. I will, someday. Hopefully someday soon. I’m wishing myself good luck with it, but so far my wishes have not come true.

So, I have these stairs. These particular stairs used to be covered in carpet. This summer, I decided that I hated the carpet on the stairs and ripped it up (not something my husband was happy with, by the way). And guess what? I have beautiful hardwood stairs. Well, they would be beautiful if I were to refinish them. Having neither the time nor the money to do it right, I decided to paint them. I decided to paint the walls in the foyer and up the stairs, as well. Again, this is not something that Chuck is happy about.

Three days before Thanksgiving, I started taping and painting walls and stairs. The walls look great (except for that one spot near the ceiling that I couldn’t reach, but you can’t really see it. Unless you look right at it, but who looks at the ceiling anyway?). But the stairs, well…. Okay, so I didn’t like one of the colors I chose for the stairs. Of course, I didn’t realize this until the paint was already on the stairs. So, I bought some new paint and started again. Needless to say, I ran out of time and didn’t get the job done. Now I have stairs with three different colors on them, tape still attached (in a different color, of course), one of the handrails has not been reattached to the wall – you get the picture. My foyer looks like something out of “Bear in the Big Blue House”. The kids like it, but, again, this is not something that my husband is happy about. It’s a good thing he works nights and I work days, or I think I’d hear just a little bit more about it (ha ha!). I really will get this project finished someday.

It just seems like there isn’t enough time for anything!!! As I write this letter, I am surrounded by laundry (both clean and dirty), my dishes have been done but are not yet put away, and house cleaning around here seems to consist of hiding stuff in closets. Do not open a closet in my house unless you are truly brave and fully insured. You know, Santa has all those elves to help him out. I wonder if he’d loan me some laundry elves? Maybe he could use his connections and have the Guild of Magical Creatures send over some cleaning fairies, too. Now that would be a Christmas present!!

Let’s see…what’s next? The kids are doing great. Everyone is getting taller, smarter, and more “smart-alecky” every day. Even the baby!! Daniel is the King of the Comeback and the Ultimate Repeater. For a three-year-old, he has a remarkable grasp of sarcasm (learned from his brothers and sisters, no doubt). His “4-letter word” vocabulary is astounding (learned from his mother, no doubt) and has caused me considerable embarrassment! So, we’ve recently embarked upon the “Clean-Up Your Mouth” campaign, chaired by Chuck and enforced by the kids. Needless to say, my “Quit Smoking” campaign has been derailed. I’m also starting to wish that the “Anti-depressants Are Not the Answer” campaign and the “You Can’t Really Drink Yourself Sane” campaign had not been the resounding successes that they were. C’est la vie.

Jessica has decided that she wants to take Jujitsu next year. Not Karate, not Tae-Kwon-Do, but Jujitsu. She was very concerned that I understood the difference. According to Jess, she doesn’t care to learn how to kick and hit people - she wants to learn how to throw them. Don’t ask me how a twelve year old knows the difference, but she is accurate in her assessment of the various forms of martial arts. Sounds like a father-daughter activity to me. At least I don’t have to worry about any boys getting out of hand with her in a few years. As a practitioner of Jujitsu, I doubt she’ll have very many dates!!!

James is, well, he’s James. I truly love my son, but he’s kind of like his Mom in that he definitely meanders to the beat of a different drummer. Notice I said meanders not marches. He wants to go his own way and in his own time, and he doesn’t notice that anyone else is on the path with him (if he’s even on a path). He has this fixation on penguins these days, and I think we’re going to have to check him into some sort of penguin dependency program. He has several penguin stuffed animals and associated penguin knick-knacks, he owns The March of the Penguins and Happy Feet on DVD. He knows all the different types of penguins, where they live, what they eat, what eats them, how they mate and reproduce (yes, yes he does), and all sorts of other penguin-type trivia. If I were a really sick and twisted mother, I’d disguise a Christmas goose as a penguin and serve it up for supper, but I think the boy would probably be scarred for life. Guess I’ll have to wait until he moves on to something else to exact my revenge….

Kristen started wearing glasses this year. I haven’t seen them yet, but I’m sure she looks very sophisticated. Chuck tried to talk her Mom (Lisa) into buying her some RPGs (for those not familiar with the term, RPG is an acronym for “Rape Prevention Glasses”, aptly naming those oh so fashionable black-framed, military-issue glasses we all received back in “the day”), but I’m pretty sure she wound up with something more attractive. That’s really too bad, though. As pretty as she is, she needs something to keep the boys away. I’m already plotting how to steal Chuck’s Taser so that I can follow (at a discreet distance, of course) and be able to send any misbehaving juvenile on a lightning ride with 50,000 volts!

Joey has decided that he wants to grow his hair out – long. His Mom said he could, but that poor boy doesn’t stand a chance!!! Every time it gets too shaggy, one of us manages to get him into the straight-jacket, tie him into the chair, and attack him with the clippers. We just can’t seem to help ourselves. He just has so much hair! And, invariably, he winds up with the “haircut gone bad” syndrome and gets scalped. And just so everyone knows, it doesn’t happen just at my house. It happens at Lisa’s house, too. Poor kid. He’ll eventually overcome the trauma of his childhood, though, and be a really strong person. With long hair, I’m sure.

Chuck’s still working for the Mayfield Police Department. I’m sure I could have everyone ROTFLOL with tales of “life on the mean streets”, but I’d hurt someone’s feelings or something. However, Chuck is out there harassing the citizens of Mayfield just like always. I found him the perfect t-shirt for Christmas. It says, “If you run, you’re just going to jail tired!” Now, my man may not be able to beat very many people in an endurance race. However, if he has to give chase and catches up within the first 200 yards, the resulting hit is going to hurt. I’ve seen it. He looks like a freight train hitting a go-cart. It’s truly a thing of beauty.

I started a new job and I love it. Don’t you wish you knew what I was doing - ha!!! Call me sometime and I’ll tell you about it, because I have to end this letter. A three-page Christmas letter is long enough.

So, with all of our love and our wishes that everyone has a great holiday season, I’ll close. Take care of yourselves, remember to have fun at least once a day, and let the people you love know how you feel (with exuberance and frequency).

And now, for the cheesy ending quote (but one of my favorites) by Maya Angelou: “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Make sure that everyone remembers what a great person you are (including yourself), because if you got a letter from me (the worst correspondent in the world), it’s because someone in this house believes that you are truly exceptional. Happy Holidays and God Bless!!


Love,


Karen, Chuck, Kristen, Jessica, Joey, James, Daniel, and Ebony (woof!)