A Merry Christmas After All

How did I get this old without ever seeing any of these?

Last night, momentarily insane, I agreed to travel during the Christmas holidays. My lapse in judgement may have stemmed from a "Cool Whip shot" I ingested at a Christmas party two nights ago.  I'm not sure what was in it; one person said rum and another said Kahlua. Anyway, hoping to shed my "Bah, humbug!" reputation and get in the spirit of things, I went for it. This was right after a fellow reveler had approached me with a plastic bag full of individual cups of jello, holding it out for me to take one. I asked what it was and she found my query so hysterical she had to tell several  people standing nearby about it. Anyway, turns out they were "Jello shots," which was news to me. Despite my past consumption of pot, LSD, mescaline, cocaine, magic mushrooms, hashish and a wide variety of frozen alcoholic beverages with little umbrellas sticking out of them, I had never come across one of those. (Live and learn.)

As for the insanity mentioned earlier, my husband and I will fly almost all the way across the country to be with friends in Phoenix on Christmas Day. Naturally my mixed emotions are being whipped into a lather by the TV meteorologists who aim to make every weather event The Storm of the Century. This morning, during a local report on the friendly snowfall we are experiencing as I write this, one of them said, "I promise this holiday weekend, travel will be a mess!" (Really? You promise?)

Normally, being Jewish we usually do nothing besides watch a movie and order Chinese take-out, like we learned in Hebrew school. There's no frantic last-minute shopping or late night gift-wrapping sessions, and Christmas is just a regular day, only without mail and the newspaper. But this year we will celebrate the birth of the baby Jesus with dear old friends who are Italian Catholics, complete with a tree, holiday lights, presents and a lasagna dinner attended by 14 people. I better start shopping.