THIS DIVA'S 12 GRIPES OF CHRISTMAS

I hope that all of you who celebrate had yourselves a merry little Christmas, and made your Yuletide gay! Well, as gay as you can within the confines of  Leviticus. For the most part, mine was quite jolly. However, I have a few complaints and shall address them here. May I present to you "My 12 Gripes of Christmas?"

TALKIN' TURKEY WITH MARNEY!

It's that time of year again!  The much maligned Thanksiving Letter by Marney is making its festive away around the social networks. No one knows if Marney actually exists or if the letter is a well-constructed  ode to one of the most passive-aggressive fictional hostesses in history. Either way, it's a thing of a beauty because, though the letter is offensive on so many levels, anyone who has ever hosted a large family holiday can find, somewhere in all the obsessive-compulsive demands for NO MORE ALUMINUM FOIL, a glimmer of truth. In case you missed it, read the Marney Letter Right Here! 

THE GALES OF DINOVEMBER CAME EARLY

When I was a little girl, carrots did not come in bags. Instead, you bought them in bunches with the leafy greens still attached. When my mother would come home from the grocery store, she would cut off those greens and present them to me. I then turned those stalks into fancy ladies in beautiful  gowns dancing  at a ball, or long-haired witches casting spells over a boiling pot. Lest you think we were impoverished and this is some sob story about how I had to "make do" with a potato as my only doll and a burlap sack for a dress, I assure you that was not the case. I had real toys. Plastic ones, in fact!  I also had a vivid imagination and, apparently, a thing for vegetation.

LET ME EAT CAKE!

I remember the day it happened as if were yesterday. I call it "The Day of the Great Explosion." I was a few months shy of my 38th birthday and flying to Florida to attend my sister's wedding. I went through my wardrobe to select the perfect dress for the nuptials, hoping to wear the one I had purchased only six months prior. I slipped into the sleeveless sheath and checked my look in the mirror (apologies to Bruce Springsteen.) My first reaction was, "What in the absolute world??" (Actually, I probably said something a bit more profanity-laced, but we'll stick with polite expletives for the purpose of this blog.) My entire body looked as if it had exploded overnight, leaving me with a pooch of a belly, hips straining at the material of the dress, shoulders too tight for comfort. I let out a cry and raced for the bathroom scale. Ten pound weight gain! But, when? How? No time to think about that.  I was going to have to either lose the ten pounds in 24 hours or move up a dress size. With a broken heart and a sense of defeat, I went shopping. I felt depressed, dejected, unattractive, and suddenly very old. The new dress size I was forced to purchase due to the weight explosion? A size 10.

NESTING: NOT JUST FOR PREGNANT LADIES ANYMORE!

When I was 9 1/2 months pregnant with my son, my next door neighbor caught me outside doing the unthinkable. I was standing on a rickety kitchen chair washing the ceiling of my screened-in porch. She rushed over in a panic, shouting, "What do you think you are doing?!" I calmly replied, "Cleaning." Such is the  mentality of a woman in the "nesting" stage of pregnancy. Nesting is the term given to the time in a pregnancy when an expectant mother, be she cat, squirrel, or human, begins to prepare the physical world outside her body for the new baby. In us human mothers, it often involves a ridiculous amount of washing, scouring, folding, sorting, rewashing, and refolding. Sometimes, as in my case, the compulsion to sanitize every inch of living space is so strong that we do something fool-hardy.  After all, what if my baby took a notion to crawl on the porch ceiling, and I hadn't properly sterilized it ahead of time?

WHAT I REALLY NEED IS TO TAKE THE CAR KEYS: SEE YOU LATER, CAN I HAVE THEM PLEASE?

Unlike Rainman, I am not an excellent driver. It took me three times to get my drivers' license, and a long while after that before anyone would go anywhere in the car with me. The day I got my temps, my mother had me hop into the driver's seat, her on the passenger's side, my two sisters in the back. "OK!" she said, "Take it slow and back out of the drive into the road." I took it fast, pealing out backwards and on an angle, right across our back lawn and into the hedges. Dad didn't fare much better, as he kept repeating, "Stay on your side of the road. STAY on your side of the road. For Christ's sake, STAY ON YOUR SIDE OF THE ROAD." Nor did the high school driving instructor who made heavy use of the passenger-side break and who was always suspiciously hung-over on the mornings after he had me as a student. Therefore, it was ironic that, out of all her children, I was the one who had to take Mom's car keys away last year.

TIGERS AND GORILLAS AND LECHERS, OH MY!

It's Pop Goes The Friday, the day reserved for me to talk about my favorite subject - pop culture!

Ever since I was a teenager, I have had a love affair with bubblegum music. Back in high school, when everyone else was discovering Queen, Bowie, and Led Zeppelin, I had my dial set to the local AM station that played sunny beach music and one-hit wonders like The Night Chicago Died - "Nanananananana." I was young for my age, and a bit naive (I thought Happy Days was a documentary) so the songs did not need to be deep. I was also awkward and shy with the opposite sex, so innocent tunes with delicate lyrics about true love were my comfort zone. Though my taste in music has grown, I still have a soft spot for pop and regularly set my radio on the local FM Hot 100 station. Believe it or not, there is some good stuff out there. However, there's a part of me that hears the music through the ears of that 15-year-old girl holed up in her bedroom playing and replaying her Carpenters' albums. For her sake, I have a little something to say to a few of the top artists this week.

I'M BUYING!

A friend of mine was recently asked to participate in the television-audience measurement system, The Nielsen Ratings. Naturally, I'm awash in jealousy because I've only dreamed of having that much power over our national pop culture. Never mind that  I'd probably claim to watch only the loftiest of PBS programming while secretly binge-viewing Real Housewives of Miami and anything on TLC. Anyway, as a new Nielsen Family, my friend began to fill out the requested information. When she reached the box that required her to admit to her actual age, she found she was left with the final option, the dreaded 50+. Not 50-60, mind you. Not even 50-75. No. In the world of  Nielsen, everyone over 50 is tossed into the same bin as people old enough to be their great-grandparents (who are mostly dead, BTW.) In other words, The Nielsen Ratings, which is used to determine the advertising rates for each television program on air, places the same value on a 50-year-old watching Breaking Bad as they do on his/her 95 year old Nana napping through a turtle-mating documentary on Animal Planet. Oh, this got our granny-panties in a wad!

I HATE MY BRA

As someone who was flat-chested until my thirties, my relationship with bras has always been dysfunctional. I wanted one when I didn't need it and needed one when I didn't want it. Now, it is National No Bra Day, and I have finally been given public approval to forego wearing the thing, yet, I find I cannot. It seems I have a severe case of Stockholm Syndrome when it comes to my 18-Hour and can't bear the thought of leaving it on my dresser, torturous clamps and annoying straps dangling in despair. So, I will wear my bra today, even though most days, I'd rather drown it in a pool of Woolite.