One holiday task that I'm just not good at is writing out and mailing cards. I'm usually late with them, and I always forget someone. Also, I never seem to have enough stamps. So this year, I've decided to pare down my list. Want to know how to decide to cut someone from your card-mailing list? These rules might help:

1. If they've died, they're off the list. I've found that sending cards to dead people is often considered cruel and insensitive. Go figure.
2. If you've sent them a card two years in a row and they've never sent one to you, cut them off. Fool me once, shame on you . . . you get the drill.
3. If they send you a picture of their dog in a Santa hat, and you know for a fact that they have human children, no card for them. This type of behavior should never be rewarded.
   
4. If they've moved and left no forwarding address, you're off the hook. This has happened to me, like, six times. Where did you go, Grandma?
5. If they constantly misspell your name, stop sending them a card. Clearly they don't love you. By the way, there's an "e" in Stacey.
6. If they don't know if it's Michael Buble or Harry Connick Jr. singing that particular version of "Santa Claus is Coming to Town," no card for them. Only because I thought Harry Connick Jr. was dreamy in Copycat. Yes, it is perfectly acceptable to use your own shallowness as a reason to withhold holiday cards.
7. If they constantly put a "t" at the end of "across," lose their address. You're judged by the company you keep, and do you really want to be associated with someone like this?
8. If their cards are consistently more expensive and sparkly than yours, forget it. This type of card-shaming is more common than you think. If their goal is to shame you with their spectacular Christmas cards while you're sending out old cards you found in the basement and the glue on the envelopes doesn't even stick any more, don't bother sending one to these people. They'll only make fun of you.
9. If they send you a holiday newsletter talking about how wonderful their year was, drop 'em. How nice for them that Bobby is making the Dean's List at Yale and Billy just won a Nobel Peace Prize. This year, you applied for food stamps and your dog got lupus. These happy newsletters are consistently depressing to anyone who didn't have a good year. And who wants to be depressed around the holidays?
10. If they continue to address the card to you and your first husband, and you've been divorced for longer than you were married to him, cut them off. Thanks so much for the annual reminder of the biggest mistake I ever made in my life. You're dead to me.

See? These simple rules will make your holiday card-mailing so much easier.
On a side note, I've only gotten one Christmas card this year, and that was from my bank. Weird . . .

Here's hoping your turkey day was as steeped in tradition as mine. On Thanksgiving Eve, Jason and I like to watch Thankskilling, a fabulous little film about a killer turkey, to put us in the holiday mood. We prefer to spend our Thanksgiving morning bickering (in my defense, he tried to talk to me before my first cup of coffee, which is never, ever, advisable). Then we head over to my mother's house to share our testy attitudes with family.

We don't have a lot of money this Christmas. By "not a lot of money," I mean I'm actually rinsing out our used paper towels and hanging them over the shower curtain to dry so we can re-use them. This holiday season, I decided I'd be making most of our gifts for friends and family. How hard could it be, right?
I found a book on homemade Christmas gifts, which Better Homes and Gardens put out in 1972, making it officially older than me. I decided to pass on the "groovy headbands" that were sure to please any gal, but looked for other, more helpful tips. 
BH & G mentioned that "baked treats make for a super nifty gift for all ages." My sister-in-law had once mentioned my snickerdoodles. I can't remember quite what she said about them, but I decided it was probably positive as I don't recall her throwing them at me, so I worked on baking her a plate of them for the holidays.
I bake these cookies from scratch, and there's some trial and error involved. I have to taste the dough, add more sugar, taste the dough, add more cinnamon, taste the dough, have a sip of coffee to offset my palate, taste the dough . . . you understand. After baking, I let the snickerdoodles cool and looked for a festive plate. All I had was a paper plate that looked like a football. That would have to do.
Some of the cookies were burned on the bottom, so I ate them. Then I arranged what was left into a pretty holiday cookie display. Won't my sister-in-law be surprised to get this lovely platter of cookie this Christmas?

Next up, my handy BH & G book mentioned sewing. I can sew. I've mended socks and even sewed a button onto a sweater once, officially making me a professional seamstress. I decided that the heart-shaped pillows the book mentioned would be perfect for our friends' two daughters, who are both under the age of 5.
The book had a pattern to follow, but I decided I didn't need it. It's a heart, for goodness sake. How hard could it be to cut out a heart shape?
As it turns out, pretty hard. I'm not sure how Amy and Jim are going to feel when their kids receive pillows which kind of look less like a heart and more like a pool of blood. And, given the number of times I stabbed my fingers while sewing them, that's kind of fitting. It's the thought that counts, right?

My stupid book suggested that potting a houseplant in a creative and groovy new planter would make for a good gift. That sounded perfect for my mother. The only houseplant I've been able to keep alive is an aloe, only because those suckers are hard to kill. Perfect for Mom, from whom I inherited my black thumb. It took me a while to locate the aloe, because I'd apparently stored it in the attic last spring by accident, but I eventually found it and put it in a cool new planter for Mom.
She's my mother. She'll understand.

Finally, BH & G had something to useful to offer: namely, a recipe for baker's clay, which could be used to make your own ornaments. I'd been going nuts trying to figure out what to give my nephews, ages 13 and 10 (almost 11). Salvation! My problems were solved!
I didn't want to get too creative with my first batch, so I just cut out some round ornaments, figuring I could make them into eyeballs or skulls or something else equally as cheery. They came out okay, but I started to feel bad. They weren't really holiday season type ornaments, unless that holiday was Halloween. I made a second batch, taking care to design a festive Santa, with round cheeks and laughing eyes, and I even fashioned a red hat out of bright red yarn.
Won't Nathan and Evan be surprised to see this little number on Christmas Day?

There you have it. The holidays need not break the bank if you just put a little time and care into creating your own homemade gifts. It also helps if you have a really, really understanding extended family.

Easter in the Longo house was always filled with candy, good food, and a little bit of terror. As a kid, I remember Dad telling us the story of Easter. Not that one about Jesus Christ dying and being resurrected; I'm talking about the one where Dad would describe waiting up all night, rabbit snares at every doorway and window, waiting to catch the Easter Bunny. He'd go on and on about the feast we'd have Easter Sunday: rabbit stew, beer-braised rabbit, welsh rarebit with rabbit, rabbit sausage ... a veritable feast! Once we were crying good and hard, Dad would scoot us over to Mom in the kitchen to dye Easter eggs.
Sometimes, we'd dye them in the Greek tradition, which, for you non-Greek heathens, is to dye all of them a deep red. No multiple colors, no festive wax drawings or stickers. Just a dark ... blood red ... Easter egg. To represent the blood of Christ, you see. 
Good times for little kids, I tell ya.
Easter morning, we'd wake up to a magically filled Easter basket, complete with marshmallow eggs, jelly beans, and a giant chocolate bunny. That Easter Bunny, he never held back. Sometimes he even left extra candy for my parents, too. What a rabbit! He never held a grudge against my dad for wanting to trap and skin him.
We'd then go on an Easter egg hunt. Perhaps aware of the trauma blood red eggs cause, the Bunny would leave Cadbury Creme Eggs (R) throughout the house. Oh, what fun we had trying to find them before Dad ate them all! Then we'd sit down and peel off the foil carefully, biting into the sugary goodness. When my sister and I were about four creme eggs in, Mom would remind us that we had a dentist appointment on Wednesday.
All in all, Easter was full of happy memories. (Except for the year that we learned one should never, ever, die right before Easter because it's impossible to book a church for the funeral, but that's a hilarious story for another time.) Truly, the worst thing about growing up is no longer getting a basket full of goodies on Easter Sunday. But I have to tell you, the blood-red Easter eggs have really grown on me.

Χριστός Ανέστη!

We don't have a drop of Irish blood in my family, but that doesn't stop us from celebrating what's really important about St. Patrick's Day: overindulgence.
What we DO have in my family is a St. Patrick's Day birthday, which is my sister Kim's big day. In recognition of this, I like to start my March 17th by calling Mozzicato's Bakery in Hartford and ordering a giant chocolate mousse cake. I have them write "Happy Birthday, Kim" on the top, and I go pick it up right away. Sometimes, I even remember to invite my sister over before I dig in.
I think everyone knows that the best part of St. Patrick's Day is that you get to imbibe as much as you want of your favorite drink, and when you puke on a stranger's shoes, they'll just chalk it up to holiday festivities. This is why I like to fire up not one, but twelve coffee pots early in the day. My college days are long over, my friends, but that doesn't mean I can't drink my favorite quaff - Dunkin' Donuts Morning Blend - to the point where I'm so hyped up, I start pretending I'm a smurf with a brilliant plan to outsmart Gargamel using just our living room furniture and spackle. Our first St. Patrick's Day together, Jason thought I had lost my mind completely, but once he saw my giant spackle fort, complete with a sofa moat, I could tell he thought my idea was smurftastic. Yippeee! More coffee, please!
Of course, the worst part of St. Patrick's Day is the way you feel the next morning. I can't tell you how many times I've woken up with the worst caffeine migraine in the history of headaches. I've found, though, that the best cure is the hair of the dog that bit you. Which is why, on March 18th, you'll find me with my coffee in a giant to-go cup, driving back to Hartford for my second chocolate mousse cake in as many days.
Happy St. Patrick's Day, everyone! And Happy Birthday, Kim!

This time of year, "Baby It's Cold Outside" gets a lot of air time on the radio, which is dumb since it's not even a holiday song. I'm sure the deejays think it's appropriate, since who doesn't like Bing Crosby (besides his son, the actors he beat out to win Best Actor in 1944, Democrats, Grace Kelly, and rabid anti-golf people, I mean?) However, this is not a family friendly song, and should be pulled off the air immediately. Let's take a look:

Baby It's Cold Outside

I really can't stay - Baby it's cold outside
1.  I'm sure she's aware it's chilly out, Bing. If the woman wants to leave, let her leave.

I've got to go away - Baby it's cold outside
2. No means NO, Bing.

This evening has been - Been hoping that you'd drop in
So very nice - I'll hold your hands, they're just like ice
3. That's a little forward, Bing. Back off with the hand-holding!

My mother will start to worry - Beautiful, what's your hurry
My father will be pacing the floor - Listen to the fireplace roar
4. My father would be doing a little more than pacing. He'd be oiling his shotgun while looking up your address on Google Maps.

So really I'd better scurry - Beautiful, please don't hurry
5. Better let her out before Dad shows up, Bing!

Well Maybe just a half a drink more - Put some music on while I pour
6. Sure, liquor her up, you pig.

The neighbors might think - Baby, it's bad out there
Say, what's in this drink - No cabs to be had out there
7. Yes, what is that odd flavor I taste? Roofie?

I wish I knew how - Your eyes are like starlight now
To break this spell - I'll take your hat, your hair looks swell
8. Going to the hospital to have that roofie pumped out of your stomach might break the spell, if Bing would just let you leave already!

I ought to say no, no, no, sir - Mind if I move a little closer
9. NO means NO, Bing!

At least I'm gonna say that I tried - What's the sense in hurting my pride
10. I'm hoping she hurts something else of yours in a minute, Bing. One swift kick should do it.

I really can't stay - Baby don't hold out
11. @!$$!!* BING! SHE SAID NO!!!


Ahh, but it's cold outside
C'mon baby

I simply must go - Baby, it's cold outside
The answer is no - Ooh baby, it's cold outside
12. I'm calling the cops.

This welcome has been - I'm lucky that you dropped in
So nice and warm - Look out the window at that storm
13. That warm feeling is a side effect of the liquor and drugs he slipped you. Don't be fooled!

My sister will be suspicious - Man, your lips look so delicious
14. ...aaand he's a cannibal.

My brother will be there at the door - Waves upon a tropical shore
15. Huh?

My maiden aunt's mind is vicious - Gosh your lips look delicious
Well maybe just a half a drink more - Never such a blizzard before
16. Sounds like he thinks your lips would be perfect with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.

I've got to go home - Oh, baby, you'll freeze out there
Say, lend me your comb - It's up to your knees out there
17. Never mind your hair. Just get out of there. Fast!

You've really been grand - Your eyes are like starlight now
But don't you see - How can you do this thing to me
18. Oops! Didn't get out fast enough!

There's bound to be talk tomorrow - Making my life long sorrow
At least there will be plenty implied - If you caught pneumonia and died
19. She should be so lucky to die of pneumonia instead of being raped, murdered and cooked in a stew.

I really can't stay - Get over that old out
20. Pig.

Ahh, but it's cold outside
Baby it's cold outside
21. What's a little frostbite if your life depends on it?

Jason gets mad at me when I heckle the radio. At least I'm smart enough to get the heck out when there's a cannibalistic rapist in the room, whatever the weather!

Happy Thanksgiving!
I hope everyone's turkey day was better than mine. I've been fighting a cold that my husband gave me, and spent the day in bed napping and watching the first four Puppetmaster movies.
As I lay in bed, rubbing Ben Gay on my chest because I couldn't find the Vapo-Rub, I thought about what my family might be up to at that very moment. Dad, of course, would be eating all of the shrimp cocktail, while Mom ran around trying to get dinner ready for 2 PM. This, of course, would be a ridiculous goal, as she only has two ovens and six burners to get two turkeys and 23 different side dishes prepared and all hot at the same time at 2 PM. My sister would be sipping coffee and consoling my brother-in-law, who would not have seen any deer when hunting at 4 AM with my father. (This is not unusual. Nobody, not even deer, want to be up at 4 AM on Thanksgiving Day, trekking around in the woods in the freezing cold, something the hunters in my family haven't seemed to learn yet.) My Aunt Joanne would be playing with my two nephews until their cousins arrived, allowing her to collapse by the cheese-and-crackers tray and catch her breath until the kids realized they would need an umpire/goalie/floating player for their kickball game. (Why the boys buy my "sorry, I'm just too old" excuse while my aunt trots out there in 40 degree weather, kicking balls and stealing bases, is beyond me.) My sister's in-laws, whom we have all adopted as our extended family and share holidays with, would arrive with corn pudding and two casserole plates full of cheesy potatoes. Will Martha notice that she has more leftovers than usual this year, since I often consume most of one casserole dish of cheesy potatoes all by my self? Will my mother save me some, or is she the other cheesy potato over-indulger in our family? I might have to get out of bed and drag my feverish, coughing body over there right now!
My attempt to crawl out of bed, shower, and head over to my parents' house fails when I cough so hard that one of my lungs actually dislodges from my chest cavity, travels up my throat, and flies across the room, landing with a messy "splat" on Pugsley the cat. Okay, I get it. No cheesy potatoes for me today.
Sadly, my family had a wonderful Thanksgiving without me while I slurped on turkey soup and watched stringless puppets attack and kill bad people. I was hoping for a little wailing and "Why, oh why, can't Stacey be here with us? It's not fair, God!" 
But no. The report from Mom later that night was that everyone had a lovely time. Not one tear shed over my absence. 
The good news is, Mom saved me a plateful of cheesy potatoes. So the holiday wasn't a total bust.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

With Valentine's Day coming up, I thought I'd take a trip down memory lane and revisit some of my past romantic holidays. This could explain a lot about my personality, so bear with me.
In 8th grade, I was going out with a boy, whom we shall call Randy Mitchell of 45 Hopewell Rd, Glastonbury. Going out with Randy mostly meant that we exchanged school pictures and I giggled like a drunken smurf every time we passed in the hallways. This was my first Valentine's Day with a boyfriend; I bought Randy a five pound Hershey's Kiss to celebrate the event. Randy dumped me (via handwritten note that he gave to my friend Amie to give to me, no less) on the morning of February 14th. Amie and I ate that whole giant Kiss during history class, thus kicking off life-long food issues.

In high school, I was friendly with a boy we'll call Lee Gardner of 122 Weir Street. Valentine's Day fell on a Saturday, and I was working at a little grocery store in town. Lee called me and asked shyly if he could take me out on my break for a romantic lunch. Of course I said yes, and lo and behold, the rotten little snotbag stood me up. I consumed an entire pint of Ben & Jerry's Heath Bar Crunch that day, and to this day, toffee makes me gag. Maybe Randy and Lee should get together to compare notes on how to give a teenage girl an eating disorder.

In college, I dated a guy named Tom who was fifty thousand times more in to me than I was in to him. In February, he sent me roses, a diamond pendant, a 1986 vintage Ron Francis Whalers jersey, a new car, and gourmet chocolate drizzle popcorn. In return, I hand-made him a card that said "Roses are red, violets are blue, you skeeve me out, I'm dumping you." Personally, I thought it was clever as heck. From what I understand, Tom wound up in therapy for years. It turned out that inflicting psychological damage on February 14th was a power that could be weilded by either party, and I liked it.

My first husband used to demand breakfast in bed for Valentine's Day. I think this was because he was too lazy to waddle in to the kitchen and cook it himself. I would cheerfully comply, always adding something a little extra, like egg shells. And if the eggs happened to slide off of the frying pan in to the litter box before I served it to him, all the better. I'm sure he thought I was the world's lousiest cook. That's okay; I thought he was the world's lousiest husband.

When I finally shed all of that baggage, I tried to find someone  who was considerate, kind, and not inclined to celebrate Valentine's Day. When I met Jason, I thought I'd lucked out. However, it turned out that Jason had a tendency to promise that we wouldn't do anything for Valentine's Day, then surprise me with the complete works of Augusten Burroughs. And I have to admit...it was kind of nice.

So to all of you, I wish you luck getting through this Valentine's Day. If you're feeling down, ask yourself: what's more important? Having a snugglebunny to share this day with, or being the first in line at CVS when all of the candy is reduced to half price on February 15th? Honestly, you could make a good argument for both. 

Happy Valentine's Day!

Warning: You may want to consider not allowing young children to read this post.  Just sayin'.

I found out this week that my husband’s family never believed in Santa Claus growing up. That Jason and his siblings never experienced the magic of believing in an elderly man who broke in to your home in the middle of the night, ate all your cookies and drank all your milk, then left to case out the neighbors’ houses, saddens me. I have many happy memories of my sister and I being huddled together in the pre-dawn hours, wondering if this was the year Santa was going to slit a few throats during his midnight cookie raid. I can’t believe anyone would deprive their children of that!

We didn’t have a fireplace in our house, so I would often wonder how Santa was going to get in. What we did have was a furnace flue, which, if you followed it from the outside in (logically, the way Santa would be traveling) ended in a rather blistering wood stove. It was a mystery to me how Santa would be able to crawl out of that wood stove fast enough to avoid being roasted alive. Mom said it was magic. Dad would just give a hearty “ho-ho-ho, let’s see the fat boy get out of this mess!” and stoke the fire. These are the types of quality holiday scenes that have been with me my whole life, and Jason didn’t have any of that.  It breaks my heart to think of all he missed out on.

And I would be remiss not to mention Santa's eight reindeer, which in our house, calculated out to about 1200 pounds of meat. In the days leading up to Christmas, Dad would turn in to Bubba Blue from Forrest Gump, listing off all of the fantastic recipes he would prepare if he could just get a clean shot on Christmas Eve. Reindeer gumbo, reindeer marsala, reindeer stroganoff, reindeer stew...Dad was a natural chef. This resulted in years of therapy for my sister and I that Jason never had the joy of experiencing, poor kid.

I was one  of those kids who professed to believe in Santa long after my peers did. Sure, I was beaten up at recess quite a bit, and nobody wanted to sit with me at lunch time in high school. But the prospect of not believing was just too scary. By that point, I'd watched such holiday classics as You’d Better Watch Out (1980) and Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984). Clearly, Santa was not someone to mess with, and if it meant that I was pelted with fruitcakes in the hallways every Christmas just because I refused to admit Santa wasn’t real, well, it was worth it. Fruitcake washes out pretty easily. Blood and entrails, not so much. This kind of peer interaction is exactly the kind of thing Jason and his siblings missed out on by not having a healthy fear of Santa in the first place.

Some parents like to scare their kids straight at the holidays by teaching them about Krampus, a vicious satyr who beats wicked children and eats them for dinner if they’ve been particularly naughty. I say, who needs Krampus when you’ve got Santa, master of breaking and entering, immune to the police, and capable of particularly brutal violence should a child stop believing? Sit the kids down for a screening of Santa’s Slay (2005) and you’ll never have yuletide behavioral problems again. Jason, Joy, and Bret missed out on all of that. I feel sorry for them, really.

Happy Holidays, everyone!

Thanksgiving was relatively calm for our family this year. Nothing caught on fire; nobody stuck the pilgrim candles full of 
sword-style appetizer skewers; nobody stabbed a mouse with a fork (these are all true stories in the annals of our family holiday memories. And no, I didn’t do any of them. But I did find the pilgrim with the plastic swords sticking out of his ears hilarious.) All in all, everything went well, and I gained seventeen pounds in one sitting, which I regret now as my 20th high school reunion is tonight. Thank goodness for Spanx!

The day after Thanksgiving, my mother, sister, and I loaded up in the car to elbow our way through the Black Friday crowds, another family tradition. We were all dressed in appropriate gear—soccer cleats, elbow pads, and giant purses with cross-swinging action—and armed with the sales ads. We were three women on a mission, and we weren't messing around.

We were able to hit the trifecta of doorbuster sales before they ended at 1 PM: Macy’s, Penney’s, and Sears. My sister was able to clear the Isotoner display by swinging her lead-lined purse like Thor’s hammer while Mom snatched up the remaining fleece-lined blue women’s gloves. I was on a fast jog to Penney’s, where Barbies and Fisher Price toys were flying off the shelves. It took some maneuvering—including sending a woman in a wheelchair flying on a fast roll down the escalator—but I was able to grab the last two Fisher Price Doodle Bears, which is really what the spirit of the holiday is all about, right? (Not the spirit of Christmas, you sap—the spirit of Black Friday, the holiest of holiest days for bargain hunters.) I used a billy club that I like to keep tucked in my waistband to take out three elderly ladies who were in line in front of me and were insisting on paying with exact change, which took forever, and voila! I was at the register before the sales ended.

One of the hardest things about Black Friday is keeping well hydrated. You don’t want to drink too much water, because you could lose out on the last iPod due to excessive potty breaks. We like to wait until one of us is ready to pass out, and then pop out a portable IV of Gatorade when one of us is showing signs of dehydration. Mom almost went down when we were in line at the Christmas Tree Shop, but Kim spotted Mom’s eyes rolling up into the back of her head, and popped open a bottle of Riptide Rush with moments to spare. Honestly, it warms my heart to see the three of us working so well together in tandem. Forget that Hoosiers crap—this is the kind of teamwork they should be making a movie about!

At the end of the day, I’d made three babies cry, given 
twelve shoppers black eyes with my elbow pads, and yelled at one woman who I’m hoping was just wearing the scarf on her bald head as a fashion statement. That’s right, I’m probably going to Hell—but at least my friends and family are going to receive fabulous gifts at unbelievable prices before I go!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!