"You're Prettier When You Smile" and Other Christmas Nonsense

One Christmas a couple of years ago, Chris and I decided that we wanted to get away from just spending a lot of money and find what it was that made the holiday special for our family. No offense to you Christians out there, but we are not members of your faith, and please don’t fill my message board or inbox with “Jesus is the reason for season” arguments. I’ve heard them all. Tried them all. I am not interested. Quit reading if you are offended. For the almost 30% of Americans who are either not Christians or are religious “nones” (of which there are currently 22.8 percent of Americans who self-identify as “nones”), why do we celebrate Christmas?
In an effort to answer this question, we decided that for one year, we would physically make (like craft with our hands from scratch) each and every gift we gave. While the finished products were nothing short of a Pinterester’s wet dream, the process was extremely expensive (about 20 percent costlier than the year before), and I am not sure that we really captured the elusive Christmas spirit.
It was nice to spend time thinking about each other and then turning those thoughts into something each of us could hold and touch in our hands, but we were all badly burned from the glue gun and had safety pin holes in our thighs, not to mention we were dog tired. I think Chris sliced open his hand 10 times attempting to whittle his gift for Ben. The dog later ate that gift washed in Chris' blood. I failed to finish about a dozen projects and gave an uncompleted blanket to Lily and told her to finish it herself (I said it nicely). We did make good memories that Christmas, and we will always be able to compare our battle scars, but I was disappointed in my inability to really get into the holiday spirit, not to mention all of those wonderful gifts I did not manage to finish for which I had bought more than enough supplies still haunt me like the Spirit of Failed Christmas Past. I didn't find the meaning of Christmas that year, not really. Again, no Jesus remarks. All kinds of folks get into Christmas without believing in virgin births.
While talking with a friend today, she said that the hardest part about parenthood is managing her expectations of what she would like to get done with what is possible for a human to accomplish. That made me think about all the times when I was the most overwhelmed, including now. When family and friends felt we should find a church, we tried every flavor of Jesus out there. It just created confusion and sparked arguments. When Chris and I were going through a separation, we both listened to what friends and family told us and it was terrible guidance. When Lily threw monstrous fits as a child and family thought we should spank her more, I caved to public opinion and hit her. It NEVER made it better. When Thomas wouldn’t talk, I listened to everyone else’s “advice” on how to fix him. Turns out, he was never broken. He talks just fine, thank you. Joe needs so much attention and redirection at almost every moment of his waking day. Luckily, I now know he doesn’t need a beating (I’m sorry we had to learn that by messing it up with the first two children), he just needs time to mature (I didn't mention Ben because has been a really easy kid. He doesn’t stress us out). That does not mean that it is easy or that I always handle it beautifully. It means that I now know when to tell other people to shove it, and it gets easier every day. My marriage survived because both Chris and I shut everyone else out of the conversation and we saved our marriage on our own.
Why should I treat Christmas any differently? Everyone keeps telling me how I should love this time of year, like that annoying habit people have of telling you to smile when you are clearly not smiling for a damn good reason and are entitled to make your face match the disgust, irritation or sadness you actually feel. I think my dislike for Christmas bothers others because it makes them feel uncomfortable seeing it. Shoving gingerbread and tinsel down my throat in an attempt to get my feelings in line with what is socially acceptable to feel about Christmas is their way of saying, “You sure are prettier when you smile.” So, my response is, “Fuck off.” I can Bah Humbug all I want.
The idea of having Christmas joy is so intricately entangled in our Western culture that we run up thousands of dollars in debt and trip over ourselves pretending to be charitable to appear to have it. People literally hang themselves in droves this time of year because they can't seem find it. I'm afraid that even my declaration of “fuck off” won’t be strong enough to stop the onslaught of elves and angels that attack us all this time of the year.
And if one more person suggests that visiting the Christmas markets in Germany will magically cheer us up, even as we approach our third month in the hotel and are struggling to emotionally survive here, I may lose my Glühwein all over them. All six of the markets we visited in an attempt to drum up jolly were nice, if you enjoy walking miles in the freezing rain from the train station through ankle-deep mud and hoards of people competing for space under the one awning available in dilapidated castles. Maybe next year it won't rain constantly and we will be able to appreciate them more. Maybe next year we will finally locate that Holiday cheer. Don't hold your breath for either.
Our society needs to find their inner Scrooge, not the miser, employee-abusing asshole Scrooge, but the guy who just doesn’t care for all of that false merry making. Let’s face it though, at the end of that book the Spirit of Christmas Future threatened Scrooge with a lonely death for not liking the holiday. We Grinches may never win this battle.
You see, I don’t like Christmas (if you did not already pick up on that subtlety). I never have. As a kid, I picked up on how stressed out all of the adults were during the holidays (they were Christians, by the way. That fact did not make their Christmas any more merry or bright), and I was always relieved when it was over because life could get back to normal. No more exhausting trips up and down the attic stairs with boxes of decorations. No more dancing the divorced-parents’ shuffle between families and houses. No more lukewarm finger foods or wearing pinching, patent-leather Mary Jane’s. No more reciting of The Night Before Christmas. No more lectures about manners and the fancy hand towels. No more watching my Nana and Aunt Karen struggle to pay the mortgage while also trying to buy us kids each something special. No more guilt trips about Jesus’ sacrifice for my pitiful soul.
Christmas is hard. It is impossible to manage our expectations during this time, and we never feel adequate to meet the expectations of others. Our "failings" are never more apparent than at Christmas. Everything is expensive, and difficult, and on display at, like, a million different parties and gatherings we feel obligated to attend, dragging our tired, overwhelmed children and cranky spouses behind us.
So, like with other uninvited instructions, I need to recognize that other people’s ideas of how I should embrace the Christmas spirit are just as useless as their parenting and marriage advice.
FYI-if you have been married less time than I have (almost 20 years) or have kids younger than mine (18), I will cut you if you offer unsolicited advice on either topic.

Merry Christmas, folks.

Loose Women, Laundry Mats and Mammary Glands

While waiting for a home, if you’re an Army family, you will spend countless hours doing your best to ignore the unenlightened ramblings of strangers in laundromats. The only difference between this situation and the experiences of the millions of other Americans who are forced to wash their underwear in public, is that on an Army post, there is always one woman (it isn’t always a woman, but it usually is. Like, if I had to bet on it, it would be a woman) who believes in fate, and that because the she is in the laundromat with me at the same time, on an Army post, we must share some commonalities and that it is her duty to make me her Tide sister or something.

            Today, I was minding my own business, as introverts so routinely do, reading a book (Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood. It is so good. Which is why I was reading it all by myself in silence) while standing in front of my washing machine. There are only 10 machines in the facility and there are currently 40 homeless Army families in the area. You do the math. It was very busy. I was standing in front of my machine with my book propped open on a towel in order to take up the least space. You know, I was practicing the art of actively attempting to avoid being a nuisance. It was going pretty well. I was enjoying my quiet time with my book, cleaning lint out of dryers, and periodically pairing socks when this itty bitty, skinny woman in huge sunglasses (think Iris Apfel huge), a fluffy, white down coat, and 4-inch heels slams into the folding table with five shopping bags brimming with dirty clothes.

To really paint the picture, imagine Sarah Jessica Parker in that scene from Pretty Woman when Julia Roberts is waltzing down the street like, “Bitches, look at me now on Rodeo Drive with all my bags!” Except that this woman was hauling soiled blue jeans into a grimy laundromat in 20-degree weather in rural Bavaria. You see where I am going?

Anyway, I noticed her. She did lurch the folding table several inches in my direction as she dramatically fell into it. Maybe I am just a real bitch, but she chose to wear that ridiculous ensemble to wash her laundry. To even get into the laundry mat, you have to hike a block down a steep hill on a broken sidewalk with your hands full of baskets and bottles. She asked for it. I did not feel sorry for her. The rest of us laundresses, and one Serbian Soldier, wore boots and carried our laundry in sturdy burlap bags and bins like normal people.

But playing the damsel in distress is a way of life for some women, and it usually works, except in a room full of middle-aged women wearing North Face snow boots and heavy, winter parkas. I kept reading. The lady to my right never looked up. The Serbian Soldier, who had the hood of his Gortex cinched tightly around his face, snorted a little but went back to folding his t-shirts. We all just went about our business.

I’m not sure what it is about humans that makes us want to talk to people directly after embarrassing ourselves in front of them, as if our charming personalities will make the super-horrific thing we just did disappear, but this was her next tactic. I was standing closest to her.

“Ha. Ha. Gosh I really just made a mess of my jacket,” she said to me as she touched my arm and pointed to a smudge on her otherwise snow-white coat.

This touching my arm tactic she employed required I acknowledge her, very manipulative of her.

“Yeah,” Is what I said.

I didn’t really mean it as an insult, but there I was just trying to read my book when this Brittany-Spears-sized mess of a woman wearing stilettos came crashing into my world. What are you supposed to say when asked a question like that? My Nana would have told me to say something like, “Bless your heart. You have just had a day, haven’t you?” But if you are from the South, you know that really just means “Yeah.”

The next thing I know I am hearing all about her move to Germany. Listen, I am the world’s worst over-sharer. I have a nasty habit of talking too much when I am super-nervous, super-tired, or super-drunk, not while washing clothes with strangers in public, at noon and sober.

“We are staying at a hotel in Parsberg and it is really nice and there is a pool and we love it but I forgot that tops are optional in Europe and I think that these 'European women' have loose morals and are trying to seduce my teenage sons.”

Yep. It went just like that, folks. Needless to say, I was no longer attempting to read my book or ignore her. For better or worse, she now had my full attention.

Against my better judgment, I asked, “Who is trying to seduce your teenage sons?” I was honestly confused.

“Well, we go down to the pool — and see, we have vacationed in France before and some of the beaches were topless beaches, so this isn’t a new thing for us — we go down to the pool and the ladies were not wearing tops. I was like — to my husband — I was like, ‘Honey, these ladies are naked.’ He said that they were not ‘naked’ (she did the air quotes thing reenacting how her husband had spoken to her. She used a lot of air quotes for all sorts of things, not just quotes) and not make a 'scene,' but my boys were just standing there staring at the 'topless ladies.' I didn’t know what to do.”

“Why didn’t you just go back to your room?” I asked. Again, I couldn’t stop myself from engaging with this lunatic.

“Why should we? We have every right to be there, too. They should cover up.” Was her response.

“Why should 'they' cover up?” I asked using her affinity for incorrect use of air quotes hoping that she'd see I was making fun of her. She did not.

“Well, because it isn’t decent to show your breasts to teenage boys.” She seemed upset with my inability to grasp this simple concept.

“It’s OK to show your breasts to teenage girls or other adults though?” I asked. “What if they were strippers? How about nursing moms? Is there a time when boys can see mammary glands?”

“Well, I don’t … I … It isn’t right. I didn’t need to see that this morning.” She decided right then and there that I was not her Tide sister and turned towards another woman in the room and began telling the story from where I so rudely began asking logical questions.

Turns out these two women were genuine Tide sisters and they spent the next 45 minutes complaining about how "European women" are all succubae (is that the plural for succubus?) waiting to pounce on our innocent-minded boys.

I don’t understand this obsession with making the female form something shameful or wicked. I can't comprehend how a woman’s nipples are seductive while a man’s are allowed to wink at us from behind their hairy curtains from the sides of roads, construction sites, and in every back yard barbecue in America on July 4th. If anything, it is the male nipple that should be illegal and illusive. They are utterly (pun intended) useless and therefore should carry the allure. A woman’s nipple is a means by which babies eat. They are useful, sturdy, and stretchy. There is nothing stimulating about dripping, sore, female nipples. They are tools.

When I retold this story later to Chris and our boys, they all asked if we could find a room in that hotel. They insist that they only want to stay in the hotel for the pool, not the loose "European women" who hunt pool side with their mammary glands exposed. Truthfully, I wouldn’t care either way. I can’t imagine that looking at middle-aged women’s unclad bosoms would be incredibly interesting for very long. Especially, if I decide to unstrap my top and join them. See, Lady Godiva back at the laundromat was going about this all the wrong way. The best way to make sure that my boys aren’t being corrupted by topless women, is to join the pack of cougars splashing in the water, my breasts swinging free in the rays of sunlight streaming through the windows overhead.

I’d be willing to bet they’d never go near the water again.

Don't Talk to Strangers

How should an officer’s wife answer the door to her husband’s new commander and his perfectly-poised wife? How about with a gruff, “What do you want?”
Let me back this up. Day 12 in Germany began like every other so far, like a scene out of an even more dystopian-like Ground Hog’s Day. We woke up at precisely 6 a.m. and reported downstairs to our firm, but equally cold, German, hotel overseers. We ate our daily serving of meat mosaic in the form of slimy cold cuts with a side of stinky cheese and got the children onto their school bus.
Seriously, we eat bologna and head cheese for breakfast here. Like, it’s a real thing.
Yesterday, I decided that my sour attitude about this Army PCS needed to change for the better, so I loaded up my swim bag and headed on post to … did you think I was going to say SWIM? Nope. This post is so small that there is no pool. Nope. I loaded up my swim bag to try my hand, or more accurately my ass, at a spin class.
Now, those of you who know me also know that I have a slipped disk in my lower back and suffer from decreased lung capacity and the asthmatic symptoms caused by such a lung injury. Now you are going to ask yourselves, “Why would Kim do such a crazy thing?”
That is a great question, friends! I did it because there is literally nothing else to do around here. There are no jobs to apply for. The forecast told me that air conditions were bad for people with asthma; No walks through the black forest today. I have no car. I can’t read German well enough to navigate the local, and I do mean very local, bus schedules just yet.
Anyway, I went to spin class. Aside from having to get off my bike after 30 minutes and use an inhaler, terrifying the entire class and prompting a registered nurse to come out and check on me, I thought I did really well. Of course, the bike seat rode up my enormous ass the entire time and I’m pretty sure I bruised my colon, but I called it a win.
Chris dropped me off at 8:45 a.m. and I had agreed to shower at the gym and then walk to the library where I would be able to read until he finished a finance briefing around noon and could pick me up.
As I stood completely naked and attempted to apply lotion to my skin while balancing my towel over my delicates, my phone rang. Of course, it did. How could I have done something as stupid as attempt to go to the gym and shower without interruption?
It was Thomas. He was about to cry and begging me to check him out of school. He swore he was going to puke himself to death if I didn’t extract him promptly.
There I was, dripping water, leftover sweat ( … because let’s be honest here. Who actually gets completely clean in a locker room shower?) and diluted lotion all over the floor in front of the spin class members who had just attempted CPR on me, while telling my son that he had better be seriously ill to ask to leave school.
Once I decided that his illness was, indeed, ferocious enough to warrant missing class, I dressed as quickly as I could and raced out of the gym into the brisk, German air to discover that I did not have a car.
Well, what was I going to do? How would I get my vomitus son from school without a car?
I began walking across post to find Chris. And while this installation is pretty small comparatively, it was still a good hike. I had to ask about a hundred people where the incoming Soldier’s finance briefing was being held, but I found him and interrupted the briefing to get Chris’ attention. I should remind you that my hair was still dripping water when I left the gym, so I had a towel on my head. Beautiful. I was simply radiant.
We got to Thomas just in time. He did not die. He did puke 4 or 18 more times into the Ziploc bag that contained my workout clothes, but he did not die.
Second win of the day.
Chris had then missed the finance briefing where we learn how to get paid for the roughly $4,500 that this move has cost us out of pocket to date, but Thomas was safely delivered to his bed and toilet. It's worth it, right?
After soothing Thomas, I sat down to read the book I had planned to read in the library after the bike-defilement class, when my newly acquired Handy (that means cell phone in German) informed me that my pin was invalid, and my phone had been locked, but no worries, I wouldn’t need it for anything in the hotel. What could possibly go wrong?
Little did we know that in our haste to get the kids out the door for school and then get on post for that amazing spin class and the finance briefing I banged into Wedding-Crashers style, we let the cat, who has been holed up for a couple of weeks now in a carrier or in one of the two rooms in our minuscule hotel-home, sneak across the hotel hallway into our second room. He peed all over Joseph’s bed.
Of course, I didn’t notice right away. I thought, with the naivety of a newcomer to a distant land who has no reason to believe that this new world means her harm, “Hey, it started out rocky, but I’ll be able to salvage this day.”
The other boys returned from school, had a snack, spilled the milk all over the hotel carpet, did some homework, fought for 45 solid minutes, Joseph told me he lost his newly-bought coat that took me a month to find, and I remained, uncharacteristically, calm.
“No worries, Joe. It’s just a coat.” I said. “We will find another one.”
An hour passed. Two hours passed. And then I hear Ben telling Joseph that he “smells like cat’s butt.”
Of all the insults these boys fling at one another, this one was unique and required additional investigation.
This is the point in this story where I find out that the cat urinated all over Joseph’s cubbyhole he now calls his room. I swore dirty words many times. I stripped the bed. I attempted to call Chris so that he could hurry home (?) and get the comforter and linens to a washing machine as quickly as possible, and you are never going to believe this part, he was already doing our laundry at a laundromat on post when I attempted to phone him, but, alas, my phone was locked.
In my frustration, I lashed out at Ben who, in my defense, has been a real curmudgeon all day and I guilted him into taking Mapledog out for a long walk while I dealt with the cat-piss situation.
Usually, a story of non-fiction couldn’t possibly get any worse at this point, but that is not how life for the Greens plays out.
I mentioned earlier that I dressed quickly and hurried out of the gym in order to find my sick child and get him home (?). Well, I don’t know if you have curly hair or if you have ever loved someone with curly hair, but there are certain ointments and salves that must be applied in order to prevent those curls from becoming an Afro once dry, and while the natural look is incredible on my black compatriots, it leaves me looking like the Pacific Northwest’s infamous Rachel Dolezal.
I had just sat down defeated and angry, lectured Joseph on why ripping open the hotel's ball-point pen was a terrible idea at the moment, and was desperately trying to keep my head from imploding, when I heard a faint knock at my hotel door.
“What?” I shouted.
I was sure it was Ben coming back with the dog prematurely, armed with some stupid excuse as to why she didn’t poop.
Another knock.
“What do you want? That dog had better have popped. I mean it,” I yelled.
Another knock.
This time, I flew as fast a witch on a full moon the entire two-foot (I mean, one third of a meter. I’m in Germany now. Meters it is.) distance to the door, swung it open ready to pounce on my teenager …
OK. So, earlier this week Chris got our P.O. Box set up, and while in line, he made a new friend. This event is, in and of itself, a rare miracle, as he never speaks to anyone. Who did he meet? I’m so glad you asked. It was none other than his new commander’s wife, Christine or Christy or Crystal, who knows? I wasn’t paying attention when he retold the story because I didn’t care what her name was. Why should I care what her name was? I have enough going on in my 200-square-foot homestead (I’m sorry, that’s 60.96000m in Germany) to worry about officer wife clubs and tea parties. I think they still call them tea parties. They might as well call them tea parties. I’m never going to another one, and they are just as make believe as the ones held around plastic tables in princess dresses.
Anyway, Chrysanthemum asked if we (the family) were doing OK, to which he responded that we were not, in fact, “doing OK.” And that this entire moved had sucked from beginning to, well, we are still at the beginning and it has continued to suck. And that we were going to be in this shitty hotel room for months and we didn’t have a kitchen or a place for the boys to do their homework. She comforted him (I guess, I wasn’t really listening when he told me this story, as I mentioned earlier) They parted ways.
OK. Back to the third knock.
This time, I flew as fast a witch on a full moon the entire two-foot (I mean, one third of a meter. I’m in Germany now. Meters it is.) distance to the door, swung it open ready to pounce on my teenager … and I shout, “What do you want?” into the faces of two perfectly-poised people dressed to the nines.
To be honest, the first thought that flooded into my head was, “Shit! The Mormons found us again.” They always find us. You’d think being genuine apostates, they’d leave us alone. While contemplating what I was going to do with the Mormons at my bedroom door, Chrissy said, “Hi! I met your husband earlier this week.”
It suddenly dawned on me who she and the man behind her were, Chris' new post office buddies. This was not going to turn out well. I could smell the downturn coming, but I knew I was powerless to stop it.
I grunted, “He’s not here. He’s doing laundry.”
She sputtered a bit then said, “Well, he told me that you were staying at the Schöll and I thought I’d stop by.”
To which I replied without giving it one moment to marinate in my head as to whether it was the right thing to say, “Now, why would you think that was a good idea?”
Shocked, she just stood there a very long minute before adding, “I want to invite you to a ladies' luncheon next week.”
Now, you guys know how much I hate the officer-wife bullshit — the vacuous rituals that turn once perfectly pleasant women into rank-wearing, gossipy, twits, but what I hate even more are unannounced visits … to my hotel-room home … filled with the scent of fresh cat piss ... by a commander's wife ... while I'm wearing a white girl’s Afro.
I glowered at her before responding, “I don’t do ladies' luncheons.”
Keep in mind that I don’t even know this woman’s name. She certainly didn’t think she required an introduction, as her name and rank should have preceded her, obviously (that was snark). I have never seen her before, and she showed up at what is essentially my bedroom door at dinner time, unannounced.
And, as if I had not already told her no, she continued to try and convince me to attend the event at which the ladies will be served the meal of lunch next week.
“No. I don’t do ladies' luncheons,” I repeated.
She stood motionless, caught in a pregnant pause for what felt like an eternity as her husband, my husband’s new commanding officer, cowered behind her.
“Is there anything else I can do for you?” I asked as I shook my lovely locks in her direction and showed off my hole-filled LuLaRoe leggings and over-sized tank top — no bra mind you.
She told me there was not.
I shut the door.
I’d like to take this moment to remind any of you who may not already know how to behave with strangers, do not knock on their hotel doors and expect them to be grateful for your inconvenience. I repeat. Do not knock on strangers’ hotel doors and then act bewildered they aren’t nicer to you than they are. Any response less volatile than a swift kick in the ass, is you getting off easy. I did not kick Christa; therefore, I showed great restraint.
Third win of the day for me.

Harvard Was My Back Up, Bitches

I applied to the Harvard Extension School today for grad school. Sure. That sounds impressive, but really, I barely did the application correctly and there was a glitch with my timed essay submission. So, before I even got accepted into the program, I emailed and called to tell the registrar’s office that I messed something up. Great. I’m sure this is going to be a win for me.

I could blame the shoddy internet service we have out here in the sticks of southeast Germany, but I’d be using that intermittent coverage as a crutch. You see, my first plan was to work, not attend grad school, again. The truth is, today I missed out on what could have been my dream job. I have been looking for a decent job that plays to my experience, education and natural gifts since we found out we were coming to Germany two months ago. That short time frame may not sound like a hardship, but it has felt like a lifetime. Enter stage left: my dream job. The Hohenfels Bowling Center is in dire need of a … what do you call a bowling alley attendant? Anyway, I tried to apply for the job and I was told that I wasn’t qualified. The job was given to a kid who has “more experience.” I’m curious as to what that experience is. What? Can he count to 300? Does he know something about disinfectant spray I didn’t learn in nursing school? Are they afraid I can’t take the stress of the league bowlers? I worked with 7^th and 8^th graders for two years. There is nothing more stressful, except for that massive paper I had to write on Henry James’ unspoken narrative style before I graduated from … COLLEGE.  

So, Harvard was my back up plan if I couldn’t get hired as the bowling alley bitch. I didn’t want that job anyway.

Harvard here I come, maybe. I sure hope they got that essay.