The trick to taking down your Christmas tree without leaving a trail of needles down the hallway of your apartment building and thus drawing attention to your Christmas Freak status is to keep it for so long that by March 1, you’ve vacuumed it all up.
I.
Big marshmallows are
so overrated. They are
only good for s’mores.
II.
How many beats does
“s’mores” have? One? But what about
the apostrophe?
III.
Half a bag of small
marshmallows can fit in one
hot chocolate. True!
IV.
Plus they’re best for s’mores;
they melt faster and coat the
graham evenly.
February is the worst. If the month had a soundtrack, it would consist of nothing more than a series of long, slow moans. The only people who enjoy this time of year are those who have February birthdays, which is selfish. Why must you ruin our pity party with cheerful festivities celebrating the great miracle of life while everyone else is trudging through the slush muttering pejoratives at no one in particular because the weather conditions are too extreme to risk raising one’s head and being pummeled by sleet and rain?
In my opinion, the best way to get through this dark time is to embrace your inner Grinch. Ironically, the more I ponder him, the more he cheers me up. He’s so flexible! I love how he looks like a sly old grandma in his santa suit. And his little eggplant top shoulder shrug and peapod shoes! He does what he wants and doesn’t let anyone brighten his day until he’s ready. He knows that sometimes in order to feel better you first have to feel worse. Here are a few of my favorite Grinch-sults to supe up your February arsenal:
Your heart’s a dead tomato squashed with moldy purple spots!
Your heart is full of unwashed socks!
You have termites in your smile!
Your brain is full of spiders, you’ve got garlic in your soul!
You’re as charming as an eel!
You’re a bad banana with a greasy black peel!
Ha! You thought today was just any old day but it’s not. Today is the day you should eat your gingerbread house. Here’s some math: assuming that you built and iced your GBH three to five days before Christmas, then left it uncovered on your dining room table to mature, your GBH has been air-drying in cozy radiator heat for approximately six weeks, which I’ve discovered, after many years of experimentation, is the exact amount of time it takes to render a few stale slabs of cookie into perfectly aged gingerbread biscotti, ready to be broken apart and dunked into an evening coffee. It is a true delicacy. Just make sure you chip off the gum drops first. I’m telling you from experience that those don’t get better with time.
Wait, what’s that? You threw yours out? Amateurs! That’s okay; this can be fixed. All you have to do is go to the grocery store, buy butter, flour, eggs, molasses, sugar, ginger, and cloves, and get to it. If you start tonight, your gingerbread house will reach its peak around mid-March, at which point you will be the envy of all your fellow Christmas Freaks, who will revel in the foresight and patience you had to make not one, but two (!) gingerbread houses, and stagger (!!) them so that you could enjoy the fruits of your labor all winter long.
Christmas Freak 