The Magazine Myth: Holiday Edition

I have a love hate relationship with magazines, blogs, basically anything where people have a platform to espouse annoying ideas with basically no recourse (oh wait…). Well, I do love pretty pictures and FOOD IDEAS but I really hate when magazines act like "normal and everyday people" live life like they are rich and have tons of free time and really fancy jobs and all that jazz.

Here are my top 5 holiday magazine myths:

1. Everyone must attend or host half a dozen fancy holiday parties that involve wearing pearls and time traveling back to the 1950's.
Home cooked food and china must be involved as well as wordy toasts that you tear up for and think back on all your amazing accomplishments for the year. I don't think I have ever been or been invited to a fancy holiday party. I'm talking cocktail dresses and pearls and everyone is smoking somehow even though no one actually smokes. A jazz band is playing perpetually and people are calling each other "dahling" and saying dashing things. This hasn't happened to me except when I watch Mad Men. To me, work or church holiday parties always involve lots of appetizers made with cream cheese, weird games,  and a white elephant gift exchange fraught with indignation, competitiveness, and regret. (No lie, one time we left a white elephant party with a CHILDS TOILET. We didn't find it amusing like everyone else did. I mean seriously…we wanted the video iPod! office reference). People are checking their watch, needing to get home, secretly wanting to  fall asleep watching Elf in stretch pants. This is how normal people celebrate!!! Then you take home whatever food you brought and are both offended and glad there is a lot leftover. I guess it didn't have enough cream cheese.

2. You must  buy everyone a present you have ever met and also those peoples relatives and their dogs .
According to magazines only the filthy rich can celebrate Christmas without offending anyone. Fancy gloves for your mail man! Fancy stationery for your bosses daughter! An initialed scarf for your pharmacist! No thank you. Family and close friends only depending on what the agreement is that year. Also I think your mailman would be like "I would rather your dog not try to eat me every day than have these gloves that are clearly marked down by 80% thanks".

3. You have to send out a Christmas card with an adorable picture to everyone you ever met and if you don't send it out the day after Halloween you should feel guilt ridden. 
While I love receiving Christmas cards and sending them, I don't think this is a must. It's nice, but not a must. Also quit wrapping your babies up in lights that are turned on. I don't think that's safe? I also don't have a huge list of people who will want a picture of two adults and two cats wearing santa hats so there's also that. I email you those anyways.

4. Gift Cards are an offensive gift so get them stationery instead.
NO, magazines this is not a thing. I know you are printed on paper so you really have a log in the fire to push paper but NO. Your tweener niece will not want stationery over a Target gift card. End of story. Janna can buy me stationery because she GETS ME stationery-wise. But no, as a teen, stationery was not really a fun gift. Except then you can just write fancy notes to your friends after Christmas Break.

5. Magazines always make every woman sound like narcissistic perfectionist martyrs who have zero interests outside being perfect at everything.
"MAKE TIME to enjoy yourself this holiday! Don't let the holiday bustle get you down, take five minutes for yourself then get back out there being perfect! You don't have to be perfect, just really close to it! Go! Do! From scratch! The most thoughtful gift! Also the house must always smell like cookies!" Yeesh. I love to dabble in cooking, decorating, entertaining, crafting, organizing, ect. But dang, magazines there is MORE to us than organizing and cooking! Sometimes magazines act like what they say is actually rocket science. "Holiday stress getting you down? Don't forget to take time for you! Here's a list of really good ideas NO ONE has ever thought of before! Get a massage! Get your hair done! Get a manicure! Sit down with some cocoa and watch a Christmas movie!" Thanks, didn't think to SIT DOWN and watch tv. I couldn't have made it through this holiday without SITTING DOWN that one time!!!!

Oi. I know. It's a rant. But I have been having lots building up over the last few months. I gotta get it out or I won't sleep well. And magazines truly annoy me. I guess I'm not reading the right ones. But the pictures are always so pretty I have hope for the content. Like you hope that hot actor is actually an interesting person or something. I guess I should just pretend there are no words in them unless its a coupon. There. I'll just do that.

Thanks for listening,
CJ

Allons-y !

Hello everyone! So I'm back with a slightly different blog. I decided I needed a little more privacy. A little bit of growing up made me realize I didn't want my private thoughts so readily available. Not that I'm so interesting or anything but as you age (and oh boy get ready to hear me whine about aging again) you realize not everyone is nice or discreet or judicious with information. So there you have it. I kept waiting until I made this whole blog "pretty" but I think starting to write again is much more important than having my ducks in a row.

So here we are, a quick slice of life.

 Last Saturday I turned 30 and it was really hard. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. I was like Joey Tribianni…"Why God, why?!? We had a deal!!!" Some of you might not understand, but it was a real existential crisis. You know, unrealized potential, unmet life goals, mortality, ect ect. I'm glad it's over and we're back to our regularly scheduled programming of not questioning everything and being able to sleep at night.

I currently am a teacher and my feelings change on this every passing hour.

I want to be a writer when I grow up.

I love cats and have two.

I love stories and write them in my head everyday but have a hard time transferring them down for fear of it being terrible.

I have been married for 6 years. Our dynamic is I give him a hard time always and he acts like he hates but he loves it. I think.

The only thing I have mastered is the art of dabbling in a lot of things.

I like adventure and travel but am also a house cat. (Auto correct tried to change that into house coat but for once I won the battle against auto correct. It doesn't know me at all! I want to break up with it or make it learn me. It refuses to do either).



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I will probably repost a few things from the old blog just for posterity's sake. Here we go again!

Allons-y!

-CJ