“Elf on a Shelf” is the thing to do this holiday season. Often as I put Pringles down for first nap of the day, Billy Bush and his emaciated co-host, whose name won’t stay in my head, are yapping about where the elf is today. I think there’s one on “Today” also, but all that morning programming runs together for me.
As soon as I heard about these charming little elfs who watch for niceness and naughtiness all day, then use “Christmas magic” to fly to Santa at night and report back, I knew that Kelle Hampton had to be all over that shit. I was not wrong. She had a knee-slapping tale about how her mother-in-law had accidentally touched the elf, and her little sprite daughter screamed at the top of her lungs, because according to the badly written and poorly illustrated book, the elf will lose its magic if you touch it.
I cannot believe Kelle Hampton passed up an opportunity to say to her mother-in-law, “OH MY GOD! YOU RUINED CHRISTMAS!” and burst into tears of grief and horror. That’s what I would do. Instead of getting on the phone and pretending to call Santa, only to remedy it all with some song and dance (literally, a song and dance restored her elf’s magic), I would ring up “Santa” and be all “A blood sacrifice is required? Done and done.”
I couldn’t help but purchase an Elf on the Shelf myself.
Mine is brown-haired, brown-skinned and brown-eyed. Viva named him Farkle. We read the book once, and she never asked for it again. She’s much more interested in Huckle, Lowly and Bananas Gorilla right now. So Farkle was mostly forgotten.
I even touched him, which I figured was no big deal. After the dog took him to her bed as a chew toy, I felt it was a kindness to retrieve him. It turns out, however, that the other elves at the North Pole are like children on the playground. They sense when one of their own is different and they shun him. Farkle is a “touched elf,” and everybody knows it. They know it isn’t his fault, but that doesn’t stop them from treating him like a second-class citizen. It’s very sad. The effects on Farkle started showing up as simple rebellion.
He knows that’s Odie’s “Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim” and he isn’t allowed to touch it. I told him in no uncertain terms, “NOT COOL, Farkle.”
Every night, Farkle flies to Santa to report about how good and bad my kids were, and in the morning, we find him in a new spot. I am not always thrilled about where he turns up.
A) we need a new shower head. Secondly, what a perv!
I think Farkle started to feel my disdain. I say this, because he began to act out.
Cleaning up elf barf does not go on my list of “the joys of the season.”
Damn it, Farkle! That was my last refill!
It’s been a rough week, and I’m glad Farkle will be going home on Saturday. I’m hoping the North Pole provides some sort of counseling for Touched Elves. Maybe after a year in a specialized program, he’ll realize it wasn’t his fault and that he isn’t alone. I feel hopeful because he made at least one very influential friend in my home.
Godspeed, Farkle, and so long. We’re probably going to move in September, and if you don’t get a change of address notice… Hey, it isn’t you. It’s me.
Merry Christmas!
The Friendly Pedant by Mrs. Odie 
Giving up what doesn’t work
If you, like so many others, got here by Googling “I ate too many corn dogs. Now what?” Welcome. I think we both learned a lesson we won’t soon forget. Yes, in my case they were vegetarian, but I dipped them in ranch dressing, so my suffering is complete.
I’m still compensating for my seven days on The Seventeen Day Diet. What a God-awful waste of time that was. Because every action has an equal and opposite reaction, I counterbalanced my week of egg whites, spinach and fat-free salad dressing with approximately two months of pint-a-day ice cream binges. I guess that’s not really equal and opposite. It’s actually an egregiously out of proportion and opposite reaction. Dieting does that to me every time. Once, I was vegan for four years, then spent approximately ten years eating cheese three times a day. After nine months of abstinence in OA, I am on year nine of sugar and white flour bingeing.
Most people dread the holidays because of all the holiday eating. My solution to that dread? Eat like it’s Christmas all year long, and then you have zero dieting stress at holiday time. You went to a party and ate a whole pumpkin pie?
I did that twice last week.The only thing a holiday party adds to the experience is that mistletoe virtually guarantees my fat face gets a kiss.
Four more months of this and I’ll be carrying the baby weight as long as I carried the baby. I’ve spent nearly 30 years giving myself weight loss deadlines: my birthday, Christmas, a special school dance, a family occasion, a court date. Literally. I wanted to be skinny for jury duty. For thirty years I’ve failed to meet every one of them. I’m nothing if not persistent when it comes to failure.
The truth is, women who are thin for their whole lives are that way for one of two reasons: either they were born that way and will be thin no matter what they eat, drink or how much they exercise OR they work really hard to be thin. They exercise daily, avoid yummy foods, and eschew alcohol.
Clearly I am not the former, and I show no symptoms of being the latter.
And I said thin for their whole lives because anybody can look great for a few months or years on a raw almond and cocaine diet.
What do I do? Surrender to being a fat ass for the rest of my life? Not appealing.
From ages 9 to approximately 18, I believed I was fat and needed to lose weight, but I was wrong. From age 18 to approximately 20, I was quite heavy. The culprit? Corn dogs! I love it when these posts come full circle. I worked in the mall after high school, right across from the food court and Hot Dog on a Stick. My cholesterol was higher than my SAT Verbal score.
Even at my fattest in the 90s, I was nowhere near what I thought I was. I had a terrible habit of befriending anorexics, and that threw all sense of perspective out the window. I usually exercised and so I stopped being fat and went back to being average and normal for about ten more years. After college, I gained quite a bit of weight (cheese three times a day). That was temporary, though. In fact, while I’ve always thought of myself as an overweight person, the truth is I really only had two periods of being fat: after high school, then after college. Hey, kids! Learning keeps you thin! Thinner. I was not born to be “thin.”
Then, being happily married to a “snacker.” I’ve always been a meals only kind of gal. Odie is a grazer. When I lived alone, I had no food in my house. Why keep food in the house? They have it at the store and it never goes bad! I would just walk to the local grocery when I felt like eating. Guinness I always had.
For me, getting married was like pulling the rip-cord on an emergency raft. Twenty-five pounds in about a year. Then I got pregnant. Then I breastfed for twenty months and no matter what those Hollywood bitches say in interviews, IT DOES NOT “MELT OFF”! And I “chase my kids around” all day too, skinny bitches. You lie, and you know you lie.
I’m not giving up. But I am not going to proceed as I have before. I am giving up what has never worked: berating myself, starving myself, punishing myself, stuffing myself.
And corn dogs.
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