I hope everyone had a lovely holiday. I sure did. And now, I find myself looking at the new year and the end-of year tax stuff I have to do, and thinking, I really don't feel like writing a blog this week.

So I didn't.

Happy New Year!

Many people complain about weight gain over the holiday season. With all the cookies, special dishes, and more cookies, it’s no surprise we tend to pack on the pounds this time of year. But no worries: I’m here to help.
Here are a few tips to help you get through December with minimum impact on your waistline:

• Instead of eating cookies, eat the cookie dough as you’re baking. Lumps of cookie dough, of course, are smaller than whole cookies, and therefore fewer calories. Also, this greatly increases your risk of salmonella poisoning, and there’s nothing quite like vomiting, intestinal distress, and kidney failure to shed pounds quickly.
  
• Stop being so darn efficient when baking. Instead of getting all your ingredients together before baking, pull them out one by one as they come up at each step of the recipe. Making separate trips to the refrigerator to retrieve the butter, then the eggs, then milk, will add at least thirty steps to your daily walking goal. (I hear people set these goals.) Thirty steps=three extra cookies! (Disclaimer: I’ve never claimed to be great at calorie math.)
  
• Get a real tree this Christmas. From the workout you’ll get walking through the lot, hauling the tree onto the top of your car, wrestling it into the house, and getting it into the stand, you’ll quickly drop weight. Digging the boxes of decorations out of the basement is also great exercise. And there’s something to be said for the sweeping and vacuuming you’ll be doing for the next eight months as you continue to find pine needles throughout the house long after the tree is gone.
  
• Make your own holiday decorations. Many find this to be a frustrating, time-consuming activity. They fail to realize that while you’re cutting, gluing, and painting, you’re not eating. It once took me three days to make a new tree topper, and I lost six pounds and invented four new curse words during the process. Imagine my subsequent delight when we decided not to bother with a tree ever again after finding dried-out needles in the refrigerator in August!
  
• Shovel snow. You people with your “white Christmas” garbage. I don’t know any New Englander who is happy to get two feet of snow on Christmas Eve. Someone has to move that crap out of the driveway and off the roads. Traveling isn’t going to be easy. Start shoveling early. You’ll burn a ton of fat, and since it’s unlikely you’ll actually make it to the holiday feast due to the snowfall, you’ll be eating boiled hotdogs and potatoes for dinner—both low in calories, by the way. Hope your pretty white Christmas was worth it.
  
• Get a cat. If you want a serious workout, there’s nothing quite like a cat to keep you moving. From cleaning up their vomit after they chew on the tree, trying to wrestle them off the tree, chasing them when they steal ornaments, and playing with them when they find the balled-up wrapping paper far more entertaining than the deluxe cat playset you spent a lot of money on and even more hours putting together … the “fun” never ends with a kitty on the holidays.
  

I hope you find these tips useful. As for me, I’m really good at giving advice, but honestly, I’ll be doing none of these things this holiday season. Because why put up a tree when you can bring your cats to visit your mother’s tree and eat all her cookies instead?

This week, I wanted to say something nice about the holidays. I'm sure you're all tired of my complaining. And I tried. I really did. 

I failed.

Luckily, my friend, the talented author Ryanne Strong, has enough Christmas spirit for both of us. Please enjoy this surprise visit from my favorite holiday elf!

Why Your Christmas Crankiness is a Load of Crap
by Ryanne Strong

I love Christmas. From the simple wishes of “Happy Holidays” from strangers, to the extravagant decorations plastered across every public space from late November to January, I adore this holiday. I can never understand it when people tell me they don’t like Christmas.
 
They always have a mountain of reasons, but they’re never very good ones:
 
It starts too early. But we’re not allowed to dismiss anything just because of bad timing—bills, deadlines—we just deal with them and move on.
 
It’s a Christian holiday, why do I have to celebrate it? This one is always amusing to me. You have to dig pretty deep to find the religious element in Christmas, but I guess it’s still there somewhere. It’s been years since I’ve personally laid eyes on a nativity scene though. But, while we’re on the topic of religion, how come I’ve never heard this complaint about Easter? On that one, there are crosses everywhere.
 
Everyone is too cheery./It’s fake. I’m can’t be sure what these folks are used to, but I am unfortunately immersed in a world of angry, cranky, bitter people most of the time. I’ll take a fake smile from a fellow shopper over getting cursed out any day of the week.
 
Big family get-togethers are so stressful. Well, yes. Gathering any large group of people together is definitely not going to be relaxing. That’s why, for over a decade, I have been avoiding these big, structured gatherings entirely. For some I visit before the holidays begin, others I come by and help clean up after their festivities have ended. I’ve always valued one-on-one time more than group activities because it allows me to spend quality time with people I care about and often avoid entirely the people that really just add stress to things.
 
I hate/am bad at giving gifts. You can’t be bad at giving gifts. You just have to know a person and get them something that you want them to have. People are usually happy just knowing that you thought of them—if they aren’t, then they don’t deserve to get gifts anyway! Don’t buy them anything. Although there are sometimes occasions when you have to give gifts to people you don’t know that well, or don’t want to. That’s what gift cards are for.
 
The crowds are vicious! Ah, yes, each and every year you hear about some kind of holiday-related misfortune. If you Google “Black Friday Tragedies” you get back a list with hundreds of thousands of entries, although personally I’ve never, nor do I believe I know anyone else who has ever been at one of these supposedly dangerous events. I have to believe that some of the stories are at least a little bit of fiction embellishing the darkest part of our society. If that’s the case, perhaps we should take them for what they are: dark stories.
 
So maybe it isn’t Christmas itself that people don’t like celebrating. Perhaps they just haven’t found a way that really works for them. Like every day, Christmas is what you make of it. And, if you know where to look, you can always find a few of your favorite things. 

Ryanne Strong's short stories have appeared in Tricks and Treats: A Collection of Spooky Stories by Connecticut Authors, and she will soon appear in both the Inkstains Literary Journal and My Peculiar Family 2, both slated for release in 2018.