The Most Wonderful Time...
Task 41, November 6 to November 13
“Is there something wrong with wanting to have a Hallmark Christmas?” Anonymous Hallmark Writer
Wednesday wasn’t the best day. In the morning I brought our lab, Truman, to the local free range kennel. I picked him up at 4ish. When I walked in the person behind the counter, a 20-something bespectacled woman with tufts of purple braided hair smile wanly at me (the kind of smile that one might expect from a person who spent the day herding/separating/cleaning up after several dozen frisky dogs) and said, “who you here for?” And I said, “Truman” and her smile turned upside down and she said, “Truman was very ‘mounty’ today…” Which translates, roughly, that Truman spent the day trying to mount the other dogs. And he smelled like urine. Ewwwww…
Also, I read that the government shutdown might affect the Thanksgiving trip that my wife and I had planned months ago. No TSA, no air traffic controllers, no trip. Now, I am not going to try and correlate my disappointment with the suffering of people who’ve lost their SNAP benefits, or the dire straits felt by those who have been laid off from their government jobs, BUT, damn it, we were taking our first trip to Maui.
Later, I ate some bad chicken. That I cooked! And my wife had warned me not to eat! And fifteen minutes after it entered my gullet I was sweating like a marathon runner and green around the gills and crawling to the guest bathroom, because I knew what my wife’s reaction would be if I soiled the en suite bathroom…and I spent three hours expunging the toxins. The good news: I dropped 7 pounds.
CHECK OUT OUR PODCAST, OLD PEOPLE THIS WEEK, ON YOUTUBE, SPOTIFY AND APPLE PODCASTS
And finally, I watched the Golden Bachelor. And that really roiled me. Mel Owens, the bachelor, was shady, evasive, emotionally walled off, and frankly, no fun to watch. It was the fantasy suite episode for Christ’s sake! It was supposed to be an hour of Mel “getting to know” Peg and Cindy in a carnal, knocking boots way, but Mel, who has the moves of a 14 year old Amish boy (or me as a teen), was so non-committal and standoffish that the episode had all the sensuality of 10:30 High Mass at St. Joseph parish in 1965. (I’m not surprised, by the way. Mel is from Michigan, and played football of UM, which means that he was born without a sense of romance and the vivacity of a dead cod fish. Or my bad chicken).
But then, just as I was about to drag myself to bed, I flicked around the channels and came upon the Hallmark Channel! My heart leapt and my spirits soared. It’s Christmas season! 45 days of cornball, poorly acted, cheesily written, predictably predictable dramas in which some twenty something woman/man (an ad executive/single mom/country singer/journalist) is sent to a snowy town (Vermont, Colorado, Maine, Upstate New York) where they meet a (widower/single father/carpenter/veteran/doctor) to work together on a (Christmas pageant/Christmas contest/Christmas fundraiser) and after a phony conflict that forces the woman/man to choose between staying in the small town or going back to the big city/band tour/new position at the company, love prevails.
And what a dandy movie I watched! It was call Merry Christmas, Ted Cooper! The plot: Ted Cooper, a weatherman with a streak of holiday bad luck, returns to his hometown for Christmas. After a series of mishaps, he reconnects with his high school crush, now Dr. Hope Miller, and finds that with support from family and friends, he can still have a merry Christmas.
My heart soared! My eyes filled with tears! The horrible-ness of my day faded away in the pastel lit sets and fake snow of Lakawanna New York and I felt great.
And there’s more to come! “Holiday Touchdown–A Bills Love Story”, “We met in December” and who wouldn’t want to see “Christmas at Catnip Cafe”!
Life is sweet!
Task: Get some hot chocolate, some gingerbread cookies, a Christmas sweater, and cancel all your plans. It’s Holiday Movie Time!