Giving Christmas the Old Heave-Ho-Ho-Ho

Those of us who celebrate Christmas are coming down to the final turn with just eight days left until the big day. Or the big show. Or the “really big shoe” as Ed Sullivan used to say. More appropos might be “the really big stocking.” At this point, however, many of us are ready to give Christmas “the really big boot.”

Until December 26, a lot of us will be losing it a little, and some of us have been losing it for quite a while already. About a week ago I looked down at my hands and realized that when I removed my nail polish the night before, I had overlooked my right thumb. Its nail coated in chipped “Santa Suit Red,” the thumb gazed balefully at me, pleading, “Don’t leave me this way.”

I wondered: Do other women fail to take the polish off some of their nails? The next morning, a coworker flashed the backs of her hands at me. Seven nails had the polish removed and three did not. Most definitely an observer of Christmas, I thought.

On Christmas Eve, years ago, one of my gal pals was coping with her first Christmas as the single mother of a toddler. Blowing her bangs out of her eyes, nose dusted with flour, she was baking cookies, wrapping gifts, screwing toy ovens together and bathing her child - all simultaneously thanks to the six temporary arms single mothers grow during the holidays. When a friend phoned to invite her to a Christmas Eve church service, my friend exclaimed, “I just don’t have time for Jesus tonight!” If Mary had said that on the first Christmas Eve, Christmas, as we know it, would have even more baked goods in it.

Maybe it’s because my children are older now, but I am much calmer these days at Christmastime. Gone is the pressure from telling a four-year-old that I was sorry, but the present he wanted was too expensive, only to have him say, “Don’t worry, Mama - Santa can get it for me.” Long past is the night I rocked my daughter in my arms, both of us in tears because I failed to understand that she didn't "really want the truth about Santa."

Today, my children are nearly grown, so if they suggest I make cheesecake this year, they won't be too disappointed when I lovingly point them to the kitchen, and if I do happen to be a little frazzled, text them the link to a fudge recipe.  

Penny Smells Like Bacon

For the sake of anonymity, I'll call her Penny.

Multitasking Me by Teece Aronin. Available on products at

Redbubble.com/people/phylliswalter in the Colorful 

Mod collection.

Penny is one of my best gal-pals and yesterday morning, she became a shining example of what can happen when we multitask.

Remember a while back when I was talking about how part of being mindful means less multitasking, and how researchers are saying that multitasking probably makes us less effective?

Enter Penny. 

Penny had received a faulty communication from a creditor which needed to be straightened out before the next billing cycle. It was morning when Penny called them up and proceeded to spend the better part of an otherwise lovely fall morning navigating voice prompts and hanging around on hold.

Efficient and resourceful, Penny decided to make breakfast while she waited, and fished a package of bacon out of the fridge. After she'd peeled the slices apart and laid it in a pan, her dog followed its nose into the kitchen.

Penny, like a lot of us do with our pets, talks to her dog as though it were another human being. And Penny, like a lot of us, gives her pet all the attention she might give a human being when it walks into the room. So Penny, whose attention was first on the phone call and then on the phone call and the bacon, was now focused on the phone call, the bacon, and the conversation she was beginning with her dog.

Telling me about it later, Penny confessed that it wasn't a high, squeaky, puppy-mommy voice she was using as her dog sniffed her fingers, but a deep, rumbly-purry, big-doggie-mama voice. 

That was when Penny was prompted to leave a message, but because she couldn't hold the phone call, the bacon, the dog, and the conversation with the dog all in her head at one time, she didn't notice the phone prompt. 

And in her low, rumbly-purry, big-doggie-mama voice she said to the dog:

"Does mama smell like bacon? Yes, mama smells like BAcon."

Whoever listened to Penny's recorded message probably understood it better than Penny's dog did - the words anyway. But Penny's intent at the time she uttered the words was anybody's guess - anybody who heard about it at the company, which, by the end of the afternoon was probably everybody at the company. And of course there's always caller I.D. to keep the mix-up from remaining anonymous.

From now on, whenever I talk to my dog, especially if I'm saying something along the lines of, "Young lady, you are not leaving this house in that collar," I'll double-check that I'm not also on hold. And frying bacon.  

And that I'm not using my purry, rumbly voice. 

If You Can't Stand the Heat, Get Out of My Kitchen

We haven't had a kitchen fire in my home for almost a week. I know that's not much of an accomplishment for most families, but in my household, kitchen fires are such frequent occurrences that not having one for six days is a reason to celebrate. In fact, kitchen fires happen so often in my home that these days they hardly faze the kids.


The last time we had a kitchen fire was when my sandwich burst into flames. I was pitching it in the sink just as my son strolled by.

"Hey, Mom, what happened?" he asked in the same tone he also says, "Hey, Mom, how are you?"

"My sandwich caught on fire," I explained in the same tone I also say, "Not bad. How are you?"

He looked at the sandwich and said, "Maybe your sandwich took one look at you and you were so hot, it combusted."

When a friend of mine who shall remain nameless heard that, she suggested I get the boy's eyes checked. At first I took that as a crack about my cooking then realized it was a crack about my looks. Not all of us can age as gracefully as you, PATTY!

Another time I was on the phone with someone while attempting the death-defying feat of cooking while talking. A wall of flames shot up off the stove-top, across the microwave and over four of the cabinet fronts. On the other end my friend heard the whoosh of the fire, followed by rapidly repeating clanking noises as I rearranged the pans on the burners and doused the flames with baking soda.

"Holy mother of God!" he yelled. "What happened?"

"Oh, it's fine," I said. "I just had a little fire on the stove. Speaking of mothers, how's yours?"

I recently learned that my own mother had similar challenges. Our circa 1940 "state-of-the-art" stove had a temperamental broiler that set dinner on fire on a regular basis. My father was always at work when this happened and since dousing fires was not my mother's forte, she would scream for our neighbor, Ray who would rush over and knock out the flames.

I'm not sure what it says about my mother that another man had to put her fires out while my father was at work. Come to think of it, I'm not sure what it says about my father. Oh wait - yes I am.

At construction sites they sometimes post a sign heralding their safety record. The signs say things like: 137 days without an accident! I'm going to do something similar in my kitchen. If I posted a sign tonight, it would read: Six days without a fire!

I know what the root cause of my kitchen fires is: multitasking - cooking while breathing, cooking while blinking, and as in my earlier example, cooking while talking. Cooking while not a cook sums them all up, I think.

I should be embarrassed about all this, but instead, I'll stand proudly by my sign: Six days without a fire! 

Actually, it's not going to be a sign exactly; it's going to be a dry erase board I can update every day, and any day now, reset to zero.