An Honest Holiday Letter
Holiday greetings from our little corner of the desert! It’s been one of the warmest winters on record here, which means the money we invested in winter wardrobes should have been set aside to pay for the cost of running our air conditioner well into Thanksgiving. We’ve had virtually no rain whatsoever this year; all that dry air means Justice’s bloody noses are more frequent than ever, which leads to more laundry and nightly running of the humidifier. Our electricity bill has never drawn so much financial attention. Over six years of desert-dwelling has turned us into total pansies when it comes to cold weather, so whenever the temperature does drop below 70 degrees, we make soup, turn the seat warmers on in the car, and dust the cobwebs off our fireplace. In the spirit of Christmas, we’ve decorated the house, hung garlands outside, and strung lights in every window. It’s simple, understated elegance if you ask me. Our neighbors take their decorating tips straight from Clark Griswold apparently, so by comparison our front yard is still a big black hole of humbug. The HOA rewards the most well-decorated house with $100 cash, and unlike our neighbors, we don’t feel spending 5x that amount on inflatables for the yard is worth the reward. (I don’t even want to know how much the guy on the corner spent for his inflatable outhouse with Santa peeking out from inside. That’s right. An outhouse. Complete with an inflated roll of toilet paper.) The contest, lame as it is, still requires great restraint on my part, as I am single-handedly the most competitive person on the face of the Earth.
Our Elf on the Shelf, Holly, has made her annual debut for the holiday season. She continues to delight and surprise our children each day of December and I, her talent agent, get absolutely zero credit or commission. I’m sure Holly thinks her middle name is a swear word because there isn’t a night I don’t settle on the couch, realize I need to move her, and mutter, “Oh, Holly! #&*%!” My resentment level is growing, but I keep telling myself, “I’m making memories for my children and that’s what’s important.” I still can’t help wondering if I leave Santa a crisp twenty this year, he’ll reassign Holly to another family next December.
Zach has been working from home since March, and while he’s managed to confine his workspace to a small corner of our bedroom, the number of trips he makes downstairs for a snack, a quick hello, or more ice (don’t even get me started on the ice) has become more and more noticeable. It’s really not his fault that I find any venture outside our room an intrusion of my space (“my space” being the entire house beyond the 5-foot radius of his desk). As co-workers go, he’s actually pretty quiet and tidy. But today I popped in to empty the trash cans, and he was snuggled in bed in a fresh set of “work clothes” (also known as daytime pajamas) with his computer on his lap, and it dawned on me that he may never go back to his real office. The upside for me is that I haven’t ironed one of his collared shirts in nearly a year, as his wardrobe now consists almost entirely of loungewear. For a Connections Pastor, he’s become quite the introvert and quite frankly, a bit anti-social. He recently turned 40 and successfully met his goal of running a 10k. (He still threw up doing a BeachBody cardio workout though, so I’m not sure what that means for his overall physical improvement.) I’m proud of him, but I refuse to let his momentum for pursuing better health distract me from my apathy towards goal setting or personal refinement of any kind.
Providence is now 9 years old and in the third grade. She is finally starting to understand sarcasm (my primary love language- it’s how I hug), so I feel there’s hope for our mother-daughter relationship after all. Her moods are a complicated blend of idiotic hyperactivity, no-nonsense literal perspective, and nerdiness at the highest level. Her obsession with animals and history continues to eat away all hope of a normal conversation with her. She is a walking encyclopedia of obscure facts that we have to work hard at feigning interest in. The biggest development for her this year was engaging in the dreaded “birds and the bees” talk with yours truly. Thankfully, she approached the entire conversation very methodically. I managed to hold myself together when she asked things like, “How many times do you and Daddy have sex?” (which was followed up with, “But why do you do it if you don’t want to make a baby?”) and “So, does it fit together like a foot in a sock?” I found myself reaching for a glass of wine that wasn’t there. It was like a phantom limb. Providence seems to be the only one left in her circle of friends that still believes in Santa and all things Christmas magic, which surprises us given how practical she is. We don’t want to be the kind of parents that tell our kids Santa isn’t real, so if she could just figure it out on her own, it would help us out a lot. Once she realizes our Elf on the Shelf doesn’t move with “magic,” I plan on enlisting her to take over the elf duties and keep up the charade for her little brother, so I can finally retire. Lord haste the day.
Justice is 5 (and a half, because that’s important when you’re in Kindergarten). He goes to school with his pants on backward at least three days a week and can’t for the life of him seem to remember to lift the toilet seat when relieving himself. His biggest accomplishment of 2020 is summiting the rock wall on the school playground and “half making” his way across the monkey bars. He continues to be passionate about all things food. When asked to name his top ten favorite foods, he began with, “First of all, FROSTING.” He also believes wearing his donut-patterned pajamas gives him special superpowers in which he can shoot sugar, butter, and frosting from his fingertips. Justice is overly enthusiastic about literally everything. His emotions are BIG. All. The. Time. He has more drama with classmates in one day on the playground than a whole season of Days of Our Lives. I spend most of my waking moments trying to discern if what he’s saying is true, or, as he puts it, “just for expression.” All his energy is channeled into touching things he shouldn’t, dancing, and singing at the top of his lungs in every octave at every hour of the day. What I wouldn’t give for him to apply some of that energy to something practical like tying his shoes or zipping his fly.
I am the glue that holds our whole family circus together. Without me, our home would be nothing but a smoking crater. I stay on top of housework by avoiding it for 7-8 days at a time. I find it more rewarding to wait until every room is downright filthy, then binge clean everything at once. The before and after are far more impactful that way. The Year of Covid has made me significantly lazier. I order one hundred percent of everything we need online and either have it delivered to my door or brought out to my car, curbside. I rarely set foot in a store anymore, but when I do, I find myself easily flustered by the presence of other shoppers or, God forbid, a line at the checkout. I reserve make-up exclusively for church and date nights. I now find jeans too restrictive, and I count down the hours until I can put on pajamas at the end of the day. “Indoorsy,” has gone from being my favorite adjective to a well-cultivated lifestyle.
May we all settle in and resign ourselves to the likelihood that we’re heading into another year of at-home entertainment. Best wishes for a New Year that meets your lowest expectations.
Signed,
The Imboden Family