Happier Holidays!!

I remember a few years ago when I was talking to a Crossfitter from another State.  Being friends on Facebook but not really knowing her, I told her how I admired her strength, her seemingly effortless balancing of home, CrossFitting, nutrition and parenting.  I admired her updates about her perfect family, body, meals and the Christmas pictures.  The fucking Christmas pictures.  The perfect tree, the spotless kitchen while she is making cookies with her toddler-I mean really.  How the fuck do you do that?  The perfect shots of licking the spoon and sharing one cookie.  One.  Again, how the fuck?  Perfect hair, clothes, home blah blah blah.  I could go on, but we all know these people.  I'm sure you get a Christmas letter from someone like this.  The kind of letter that makes you feel fat, unorganized and functionally illiterate.   I told her this in February.  And she told me "Isn't that what CrossFit is all about?  Learning to balance everything and be better at life?"  I literally felt myself getting weaker and uglier as she said this.  I took a big drink from my sugary Starbucks drink and said "Yeah!  Pr in life, sure..."  Then, I probably tied my sweatshirt around my waist so my ass would look smaller as I walked away.   A week later, she let it slip that she hadn't taken down her "beautiful live Christmas tree" she purchased so she could replant it with her child and make us all feel like earth rapers.  She also never watered it and it was dead.  Needles were everywhere and the City wouldn't pick it up.  Tree still up?  In February?  Like a crackhead.

 If we are friends on Facebook and you are trying to figure out if this is you, first of all, screw you for being the kind of woman we all want to roundhouse kick in the forehead and second, she de-friended me and moved to Twitter forever ago.  Sorry. 

There is something to be said for perfection and the social media.  We are as perfect or imperfect as we present ourselves to others.  As far as you know, I wake up in my bacon house, put on my Lulu and drive my bacon car to the Box, crush my deadlift and rowing WOD, drink a Progenex, have more bacon, teach a few classes, go through all the witty shit that people email and message me and re-post the funnier stuff, make a gourmet Zone meal for my family and get 8 hours of sleep.  If you are not on the Daily Nicole Wagon, this is all you know. 

I'm regarded in my family as organized.  This is not true.  I just appear to have my shit together.  I do have the best of intentions.

With my Holiday baking...

My intentions.

My results.

With Holiday lighting...

My plan.

My Christmas lights.

This is really my garage floor.  It is also an actual picture of my clusterfuck of Christmas lights.

I will end up cramming it all back in the Rubbermaid container so it can give me the finger again next year.

I forget to move the Elf on the Shelf.  Then lie about it to my child.  "You must be sleepy!  He was over there yesterday."

I buy gift cards because there is part of me that believes that money really can buy some degree of happiness.

I wrap up pictures of gifts I purchase last minute because they will never arrive in time.  Who doesn't love an envelope on Christmas morning?

Santa doesn't wrap gifts at my house and never has wrapped gifts.  Why?  Because on the normal morning, I wake up 30 minutes before everyone else so I can rid the world of the horrid bitch that crawls out from beneath the covers.  I don't have that luxury at the crack of Christmas dawn.  So, instead of helping unwrap toys, I can sit on the couch and let the caffeine do its magic while saying such phrases as "Wow!"  and "You must have been very good this year." By the time I feel awake and normal, we can start unwrapping gifts as a family.

This is what MY kitchen looks like when I cook:

And, I sure don't look this happy:

"OMG, cooking is SOOOOO fun!"

I waste time searching for pictures like this instead of wrapping presents.

or this one:

Hey, it's a Light Bright!

Yet, it all seems to work out every year.  My daughter and husband feel loved and happy.  It's not about the gifts, the food or the Elf.  We look forward to our traditions and decorations,  It's all good.  Every year.

Merry Christmas, my sweet readers.  Post some of your Christmas fails for me to see.  It helps us all feel human. 

Oh, I didn't get a chance to do Christmas cards this year.  I hope one of these will fill the void where mine should have gone.  Happy Holidays!!!