Christmas without Tantrums: A Tale of Technological Woe

What's this? Emily is posting before the sun goes down? You must be dreaming. My advice: find the nearest cliff and hurl yourself off the edge. If the sheer intensity of the fall doesn't wake you, maybe you should be a lot more concerned about that water being so cold. It hits you like a thousand knives stabbing you all over your body. (To be fair, I didn't watch all of Titanic last night--just the first hour and half or so.)

But the real reason for this post coming to you at a normal person time is that I did not wake up at noon today as I have for every non-school day in the past week. The things my body does when I release all control to it astounds me. For instance, midnight seems like a reasonable time to go to sleep if you want to wake up at 8 or so. I still get to watch my bloated Thursday night TV schedule (30 Rock, Parks and Rec, Up All Night, The Office, The Big Bang Theory, Glee, and Project Runway) and get in bed without having to haul my half-asleep ass upstairs at 3 in the morning. BUT NO. I go to bed at midnight and wake up at 11 freaking 30. BODY WHY U SO SLEEPY?

But, Emily, why don't you just set your alarm clock to wake you up earlier?
Because, intangible italic voice that I'm beginning to harbor aggressive feelings for, one cannot always trust technology. 11 P.M. Sunday night, I decide that I'm too tired to study and just want to wake up early tomorrow and get it done then. So I set my alarm for 6 (Mind you, my school doesn't begin until 10) and face plant onto my mattress. Only Monday morning, I don't wake up at 6, or 7 or 8... I wake up at nine in the morning. Because my freaking alarm sucks at the ONE THING it was put on this earth to do: wake me up. While I am sympathetic for it's literal failure at life, me and my alarm clock's relationship has been tense since the incident. So I've taken to my mother barging into my room an hour before we have to leave anywhere. It's not a bad system, per say. But I would like more time in the morning to check twitter get myself ready for the day.

I see this post, much like my patience for grammatical mistakes, is rather short. But in light of the events of last night's post, I prepared a second topic! Ma would be so proud.

In my house, to count down the days til Christmas, we have a little sleigh, and each day you're supposed to change the blocks. (Picture of horribly described device here.)

[I'm writing this little bit that has nothing to do with what I was talking about because I just returned from an hour long trip to the doctor where I received not one, not two, not three, but four--count em--four shots. And I thought it was worth noting that now my arms are sore and for some unexplainable reason, everything tastes sweet. We now return to your regularly scheduled programming.]

We've had this sleigh since before I can remember. And every day during December since before I can remember, me and my siblings have had an all-out screaming war over who gets to change the day. I'm talking hair-pulling, pillow-throwing, no-you're-the-stupid-face screaming wars. But one year, my oldest brother decided to step out of the fight and leave it to the younger children. The next year, my oldest sister did the same. Then my other brother. I didn't even notice the loss of this tradition until this year when I, the youngest of my five siblings at the age of 16, passed by the sleigh and noticed it was still set to 24. No one was changing it. As we all grew, we realized we had better things to be doing, and that changing the day on our Christmas countdown didn't mean anything--it didn't give us a special power of authority or a rush of energy anymore. And fighting over it was, frankly, stupid.

I'm not going to spend the rest of my time here pining for the lost days of innocence and naivety where one could be satisfied by the oh-so modest simplicity of a tinker toy. It's not a bad thing to grow up. But I'm not going to sit here and pretend like there's not this small twinge in my chest--a part of me that wishes my siblings and I would return to our giant pig pile, despite some of us being married, or in college, or even a father. When old traditions pass away, then it's time for new ones. This year is going to be my nephew's first Christmas, and he'll have recurring holiday memories of his own one day. But until that happens, it's my job not to forget the countdown each day.

See you guys tomorrow!

Tonight's ABC Family 25 Day's of Christmas Feature: The Santa Clause
Christ-tastic Thing of the Day: Elvish dentistry.