Christmas Insanity

The past couple of weeks have been insanity on crack in this household.
The Things have been high on candy canes for about, oh, a month now.  I'm waiting for the insulin downer.  Should happen any day from December 26.  I'm thinking of enroling them into the local methadone program with all the other three to nine-year-olds.
The Return of the Zombie Housewives has returned to all Kmarts and Big W's near you.  In the toy aisles it's a total moshpit of body-odour, pram riding sugar junkies and the possible homicides (who knows WHAT could happen if you reach for the last Battle Blade or Trash Pack).
This is the time of the year when parents around the western hemisphere share many WTF moments.  For example, what is with Trash Packs?  It's kind of like a smurf renaissance but uglier.  Hideous little plastic monsters in their own lime green bin. That's it.  But the kids LOVE them and if you have any chance of being "with it" you've got to "have it". If Thing One doesn't get a Trash Pack for Christmas he will advertise for a new family.   Landfill, that's the only word that springs to mind.
Speaking of new families, that is exactly what Thing One suggested we get Thing Two for Christmas.  Nice.
A little spat over who gets the TV remote results in sibling trafficking.
Yes, I've got real charmers in this household.
Watching tele the other night (one of those classy neighbourhood dispute/hidden camera/thank-god-it's-not-me programs) and I said "Hey, is that person in the green top a man or a woman?" 
"Woman," replied Thing One.
"Gahd.  Looks like a man," said I.
"YOU look like a man," Thing One proclaimed.
"WHAaaaa?"
"You do."
Needless to say he is getting a new school uniform for Christmas.
On another occasion I was snuggling up to Thing Two on the couch:
"Are you going to look after Mummy when she gets old and demented?" I asked giving him a smooch.
"No," he replied.
I repeated the question thinking he must have surely misunderstood.
"No Mum," he said again.
"Why not?"
"Because you're not going to get old."
Ah bless.  He is getting six Trash Packs for Christmas.
In other news The Madness is set to continue well into the next year.  Actually, I will probably not see anyone except my Things and Humphrey (sometimes) for the next four years. (Great, does that mean I can grow my whiskers and live on Fruchocs?)
La Charlotta is going to Law School as of February.  Yes, insane, I know.
I'm terrified, excited and feeling utterly ill about it all at the same time.  Excited because I love a mental challenge, terrified because the workload is insane and ill because I'm wondering how I can continue being The Bestest Mother In All Christendom whilst learning about torts and contracts and terrified because, well, I don't like failing.  So, I'm going to give it a crack or "suck it and see" as Humphrey so eloquently put it.
Wish me luck my lovelies.  I'll be in an out and all around over the next couple of months and I want to wish all of you the Very Best Christmas In The History of The World. XXXXXXXXXXXX

When a Red Ribbon is Just a Red Ribbon and Not a Metaphor for Psycho-sexual Mind Games

Hell-oooooooooo! Phew, I'm finally back after being whisked away by George Clooney for three months in Sodom and Gommorah.  (Don't even know if I spelled tha' proper-loike).
Or I could have had my head stuffed so far up a criminalistics textbook that when I emerged I found my children have left home, I've three grandchildren, my husband has run off with a one-legged rastafarian mandolin player and I live within a fortress of newspapers - and ninety seven cats.  Which is most likely? Nevermind.

There is much to be said for hitting a certain age and discovering that your neurons fire about as fast as Telstra's internet dial up network.   I can run faster than the connection at my Mum's place.  Anyway, what I'm trying to say in my typically verbose fashion is .... I've been studying to the exclusion of everything....(except Thing 1 and Thing 2).  The way I hit the books you would think I would've actually sewn up string theory, or at least next year's Nobel Prize. sigh.
Unlike some, I can't learn via osmosis.  As much as I'd love to place my faith-healer hands on a textbook and feel all that knowledge stream into the draughty cavern that is my craniobrainio bit.  My brother-in-law learns like that.  He's a super dooper mergers and acquisitions lawyer who studies for his masters by just THINKING about blowing the cobwebs from his textbook - while he surfs.  My sister is the same....the memory of a steel trap, although admittedly it is generally confined to irrelevancies such as the fact that I borrowed $15 from her in 1982 (she's working out the interest as I write) and my plethora of other crimes and misdemeanours dating back to her birth in 1974.

Dreamt of exams the other day.  Usually it's me walking into a gymnasium looking at the eleventy million desks lined up for an english exam and ...*lightbulb*.... "Oh. I forgot to read the book".  Actually that wasn't a dream, that was true. Almost.  For practically all of my year 12 exams.
Modern European History: Medici's, yeah, weren't they hairdressers from Milan?
Religious Studies: Exodus, I'm sure that's an English boy-band.
Legal Studies: the snail in the bottle....the snail....in. the. bottle.  Yep, that set a precedent that resulted in Schweppes always making  sure there were never. any. more. snails. in. bottles. 
English:  A red ribbon always means a loss of viginity (Tess of the Durbervilles) and seagulls flying into a sunset means new life (Fly Away Peter).  God help me! When can a story just be a damn good yarn and not sneakily woven with symbolic trickery?
I failed. 
The latest exam anxiety dream was loaded with obvious neuroses.....my subconscious knows it needs to s.p.e.l.l things out for me otherwise I will meander in blissful ignorance into the next disastrous quagmire.

Sometimes a red ribbon is just a red ribbon.

(Coming up:  The Kardashians (good grief) and Living the High Life).