This morning as we were barreling down the freeway my children began to sing the Twelve Days of Christmas because really, Christmas is a mere four months away!! This delightfully repetitive and obnoxious song that is pretty much the holiday equivalent of 99 bottles of beer on the wall began to evolve after about the third time around, and all of the gifts changed from leaping lords and dancing milkmaids or whatever they are to the following:

12 giant flytraps
11 hobo spiders
10 boxes of lice
9 pterodactyls
8 rising mummies
7 T Rexes
6 hungry zombies
5-headed dragons
4 spraying skunks
3 thorny devils
2 stinging scorpions
1 velociraptor

So that’s festive, right? I particularly like the use of appropriate adjectives like “rising” mummies (for when the regular mummies just won’t do). Now, I realize this looks suspiciously like something that Georgie would come up with alone, but I’m fairly sure that the girls were back there envisioning this monstrosity right along with him. I mean really. Is this what you want for Christmas??

Venus Fly Trap, although I think they may have been envisioning something more like Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors.

Hobo Spider, which is our very large, local, nasty, poisonous one.

Lice, which I’m sure we all know enough about to detest.

Pterodactyl, which I always thought of as rather charming dinosaurs until I saw Jurassic Park III.

Rising Mummy = never good. This is me (or my body double) being threatened by a rising mummy:

Happily, this guy should be coming along any moment to rescue me.

I wonder how good Brendan Fraser does against these:

Zombies ~ ugly yes, but they move soooo slow. Oh no, what could be fast enough to escape them?? Stilts? Pogo sticks? Tricycles??

Five-headed dragon, which will be represented today by a drawing of a Hydra. Georgie will like that.

Skunk buns. Just what I always wanted for Christmas!

Thorny Devil. Call me crazy, but I think these guys are kind of cute. They certainly beat out skunk butt and zombie woman.

Stinging scorpions. Nope, not cute!

Velociraptor: cute until they slice you open with their giant middle claw and eat your guts while you’re still alive. And thank you, Steven Spielberg, for delivering that very important information to little rabid dinosaur-loving boys everywhere.

I better not get any of these things for Christmas. Of course, when I was a teenager my brother gave me a piece of moldy bread he had been growing in a jar in his closet for three months specifically for the occasion (he partitioned the box and put the actual gift in the other side). I don’t know that spraying skunk could smell much worse than that.

Rachel

Written by Rachel Shubin ~ Fiendish friend for effusive fun!

(And why am I reading this instead of cleaning the room the computer is in?) You are a goober. Which is, I’m sure, the reason your children are goobers! I am especially impressed (negatively, I might add) with the skunk butt. Surely I could have gone to my grave without ever seeing such a thing.

~Mom

PS I still love you.