{"id":23196,"date":"2018-12-15T13:44:20","date_gmt":"2018-12-15T20:44:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=23196"},"modified":"2018-12-17T20:53:42","modified_gmt":"2018-12-18T03:53:42","slug":"its-in-the-bag","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=23196","title":{"rendered":"It’s in the Bag"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"IMG_7467\"<\/a>What’s in the bag? Why, baby Jesus, the reason for the season! Now begone, Ghosts of Fox News Past, Present, and Future, and take your #WarOnChristmas with you!<\/p>\n

Gotta be honest,\u00a0we’re not feeling it this year. Granted, the holiday spirit kicks in later every year, and Christmas is still\u00a0ten days away, but something’s\u00a0off this year and we both sense\u00a0it. By mutual consent, there’s no tree in\u00a0the living room, no lights hanging from the eaves, not even a wreath on the door. Not saying it’s not gonna happen, but so far we’re meh about the whole thing.<\/p>\n

Nor am I\u00a0saying we’re sad or feeling bah-humbugish; we’re our normal reasonably happy selves. We’ve done our seasonal due diligence, sending out letters and cards to family and friends, buying gifts to exchange, planning\u00a0festive Christmas Eve and Christmas Day meals. Maybe it’s just that the last traces of childish anticipation, now we’re both firmly in our 70s, are gone. Maybe it’s our growing\u00a0apprehension over what Nancy Pelosi calls Trump’s “monstrous endgame<\/a>,” and the knowledge that we live among people who\u00a0look and act like us on the surface but who, underneath, would happily watch the less fortunate die rather than see them get\u00a0taxpayer-funded\u00a0medical care, while rounding\u00a0up and deporting anyone who doesn’t look and talk like them.<\/p>\n

Well, before I go off the deep end, let me put in a positive word\u00a0for the cheering effect of pets. Last night, as I prepared the curry and peanut sauce for chicken satay, two brownish\u00a0blurs streaked between my legs and around the corner of the kitchen island before my eyes could register what I saw. I heard\u00a0the doggie door slap twice in less than a second, and a Yip! as a hurtling body collided with its edge.<\/p>\n

“Donna,” I said, “did you ever see Maxie and Mr. B chase each other like that before?” And she said, “That wasn’t Maxie, it was one of Polly’s cats.” I should have known. The rule is the cats aren’t allowed out of Polly’s room, but inevitably they\u00a0encroach and slowly become part of the household (not unlike Polly herself,\u00a0now embarking on her third year in the guest bedroom, a condition best defined as homelessness-but-for-parents-to-live-off-of\u00a0… and now, I think, I may be zeroing in on\u00a0another reason behind our holiday blahs).<\/p>\n

One of the main Christmas gifts I ordered for Donna came in a less-than-plain, clearly-marked envelope, and wouldn’t you know Donna brought in the mail that day. It’s okay, though, because I have a pretty good idea what she ordered for me, and I know we’ll both be pleased. Donna and her friend Mary Anne are taking a three-day road trip between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, and I might hop on the motorcycle and go somewhere myself (destination TBD, but there aren’t that many possibilities this time of year\u00a0that\u00a0won’t involve below-zero temperatures on at least part of the route, so it may have to be\u00a0a couple of out & back day\u00a0rides instead).<\/p>\n

I haven’t blogged about words and language lately, so here’s\u00a0one for my fellow English majors:<\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/a><\/p>\n

Is “have it out for” a regionalism? I grew up with “have it in for,” and I’m from the Midwest, so maybe people say it differently in other parts of the country and this is just the first time I’m seeing it. Any experts out there?<\/p>\n

By the way, Elizabeth Warren and I have something in common.\u00a0We both took DNA tests. I wanted\u00a0to verify what I’d always been told, that I come from an unbroken line of whitey tighties (check). She wanted to\u00a0find out if family stories about a native American ancestor were true (they were). They say\u00a0Warren damaged her chances at a presidential run by taking that test, even though any one of us would have done the same. Maybe we should all agree humans are humans, no matter our genetic makeup. Maybe\u00a0our country will decide\u00a0to take a cruelty break over the holidays, putting the monstrous endgame off a week or so. Maybe pigs will fly, and maybe we’ll put out an inflatable Santa at the last minute.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What’s in the bag? Why, baby Jesus, the reason for the season! Now begone, Ghosts of Fox News Past, Present, and Future, and take your #WarOnChristmas with you!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,15,40,250,10,5,2,21],"tags":[2640,2637,2024,2639,2638],"class_list":["post-23196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-consumerism","category-cooking","category-critters","category-culture-wars","category-current-events","category-motorcycling","category-personal","category-words","tag-christmasspirit","tag-pelosi","tag-trump","tag-waronchristmas","tag-warren"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23196"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23204,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23196\/revisions\/23204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}