The Dumpster Chronicles, Episode 1

So you know my husband Jamie drives one of those front-end-loading dumpster-dumping garbage trucks.  You know the kind; they do this:

He's been doing this job for almost a year now.  And over the course of the year, he has had the good fortune to catch glimpses of some extremely hysterical items that people have thrown away, all of which have given us hearty laughs (and some that just leave us scratching our heads).  Just about every day, when he comes home, I ask him "anything funny in the dumpsters today"?, and he almost always has a funny tale, and usually accompanying photographic evidence (thank God for cell phones with cameras)!  :D

Today's Funny Thing In The Trash was this:

I know, right?  OMG!!!  And did you catch that?:

It's literally a "dirty book".  Just look at the mud it was laying in next to the dumpster!

Jamie said he opened it to see how old it was (you know, so he could read the articles, ha ha), but he couldn't find a date in it.  I carefully Googled it, and discovered that it's the October 1977 edition.

How embarrassing.  Gee, I wonder if it was someone's Christmas present; maybe a "gag" gift (no pun intended)!

O__o

OH THE HUMANITY!!!

Well, earlier this evening I made the dire mistake of going to Wal-Mart on Christmas Eve-Eve.  I had fiddled around and neglected to pick up a few important last-minute Christmas items in the past week or two, so today I paid for it (and not just literally).

First of all, there were barely any parking places in the entire parking lot.  I'm a freak, and prefer to park in the same exact row every single time I go to Wal-Mart (or the grocery store, etc).  It's just easier for me so I don't have to try to remember where I parked my car (my memory isn't that great).  So I drove up my favorite row, at the beginning of which a little girl was holding up a cardboard sign that had scribbled on it with magic marker "BABY BUNNIES $5".  A lady was with her, holding and petting one of the $5 baby bunnies.  I imagined someone purchasing one of these bunnies, and putting it in a Christmas stocking, only to awake on Christmas morning to a stocking CHOCK FULL of baby-bunny cocoa-puff poo-pebbles, and one worn out, very hungry little bunny.

So I continued driving up the row, to no avail.  No available parking places.  And since the stupid parking spots are all angled, I couldn't just whip it to the other side; they force you to go around and try all over again.  So I reluctantly went around, and realized that if I went around too far, the baby-bunny people might think I'm back because I'm interested in their bunnies.  So I just parked the stupid car 'face-to-face' with some awful-looking ragged-out monster-truck-wannabe & prayed that whenever they left, they didn't just throw it into Drive instead of Reverse and run over my poor little Honda with their massive Bigfoot/Grave Digger/what-have-you.

So I walk into Wal-Mart and get instantly and completely overwhelmed by the sheer number of people in there.  All of which are acting like they're the only ones in the entire store; taking their dear sweet time, leisurely browsing every item, and staying in everyone else's way.  Thank God for medication, or I'm sure I would've had a panic attack.  So I thought to myself, OK; I know what I'm after.  I just need to go to Aisle X to get Item A, then Aisle Y to get Item B, then proceed quickly through the 10-Items-Or-Less checkout, and leave, to hurriedly retreat to the safety and sanctity of my own home.  Simple.  Just stay focused, and dodge the teeming masses of humanity dawdling in my path; like some crazy, real-life game of dodgeball (except substituting 5,000 dazed, zombie-like Wal-Mart Christmas Shoppers for the ball).

Wal-Mart had (of course) conveniently placed 10,000 bins of Christmas trappings all throughout each and every aisle of the store, making the walkways even more narrow, and it made it physically impossible to pass anyone that happened to be in your way.  Single file only.  Elbows to @$$holes all the way.  Some chick was browsing the bin of cheap, yucky boxed perfumes (you know the kind; with playboy bunny symbols on them, etc.), inadvertently trapping me so that I couldn't get by.  I pretended that I, too, was browsing the fragrances, in a feeble attempt to get her to move, but it was a complete failure.  I didn't have the time or the patience to play the "pretend-I'm-looking-too-in-hopes-that-you'll-go-away" game today.  So 5 seconds later, I discovered a shortcut through the Crock Pots and made my daring escape.  Finally.  Onward to Electronics.

Once I figured out where the section was that I needed to be (luckily it was on an end-cap adjacent to the TVs), and it was just wires and cords and cables and boring stuff like that, so I was able to look for what I needed in peace (gee, I hope I got the right stupid cable...I'm not too good with fancy technological thingies)!

So after obtaining said random electronic cable, I proceeded to slowly make my way over to Aisle Y for Item B.  It was at that point that I began to get overwhelmed; between the huge amount of people, and the vast array of bright, shiny Christmas goodies, my mind just kind of started to melt.  I began to succumb to the thought that my paltry Items A and B weren't enough, and that I needed to purchase MORE THINGS.  I swear they must pump pure oxygen into the air or something in places like that.  Plus, it didn't help that I was in the candy/stocking-stuffer aisle, and all of the chocolate looked so dang yummy (and it would be a shame if we all didn't get some for Christmas)!  So I added a few more goodies to my arms.  But I still felt incomplete.  So I started walking slowly on auto-pilot, and back-tracked toward the craft section.  It always sucks me in for some unknown reason.  I looked aimlessly at all the little craft kits for way too long. Finally I started to snap out of it, and realized that I needed to get my @$$ to the checkout.  On my way to the checkout, I thought of ONE MORE THING, and went back to that particular aisle to get the Thing.  It's like I couldn't leave.  It's like there was some kind of invisible tractor beam, holding me there, and some sort of mind control device, persuading me that I needed to get MORE STUFF!  It's like I was possessed!  I didn't like it, so I decided to get to the checkout pronto, so I could get the hell out of there!

Just when I thought it couldn't possibly get any worse, it got a whole hell of a lot worse in the checkout line.  I lined up in one of those 20-items-or-less lines under the assumption that the line should move quickly (imagine that silly notion, heh heh).  Unfortunately for me, I got behind 2 women that just got off their shift slinging hash at the Waffle House, and they, too, seemed to be purchasing some last-minute Christmas goodies.  One of them mentioned several times about how she realized that she "stunk", but that at least she didn't smell like waffles anymore.  Apparently she had oversprayed herself with a sample of that cheap, yucky boxed perfume they have flowing out of every aisle, because I caught a whiff of it as she flailed her arms about, and it smelled to me like that's exactly what she did.  But what made it so horrible was that the Waffle House ladies were not the LEAST bit in a hurry, and one of them kept asking the poor old man running the register (whose name tag said "LESTER" and the tag also said that he was normally just a "GREETER"), to see what each of the items that she put up there cost.  So he had to scan the item to check the price for her (for example, a box of chocolate-covered cherries), and the lady would say "OK, well, I don't want to get that, then".  WTH!!!  I mean, I could kind of understand doing that with maybe one mildly expensive item.  But several relatively cheap items?  On Christmas Eve-Eve?  With 5,000 other eager-to-get-the-hell-out-of-there shoppers wearily standing there for an eternity, shifting their weight from foot-to-foot, trapped behind them?  GEEZ LOUISE!!!

I think it was when the Waffle House Lady asked Lester for a price check on a basketball that the people standing behind me started to lose it.  I mean, I know those Waffle House ladies work hard, and they probably have to go shopping whenever they get the time (and/or when they finally scrape together enough tip money to go -- they were, after all, pulling their cash from their apron/smock thingies to pay for their purchases).  And they probably have a very real need to make sure they don't pay $1 more for a basketball if they don't have to.  (Wal-Mart oftentimes does have a way of charging you more at the register than what the item was marked when it was on the shelf).  Not to mention that Waffle House isn't even closed on Christmas Day, for crying out loud.  But this was getting ridiculous.  I felt sorry for poor Lester because he barely knew how to run the register; Management obviously threw him to the wolves (as Management does in almost every business, grr), and he had to keep hollering over to the checkout girl in the next lane to help him out.  The Waffle House ladies even had the nerve to try to show and tell Lester how to run the register!  They were pretty nice about everything, telling Lester "Thank You" and "You'll Get Paid Overtime" (no he won't, and he told them so), and "Waffle House Is Open On Christmas Day, So Come By And We'll Give You A Free Cup Of Coffee" (which is a practically nonexistent consolation).

The whole time this is going on, I can see Lester grabbing at his LANE CLOSED sign every few moments, and thinking to myself OH NO YOU DON'T!!!  Poor Lester, caught up in Hurricane Waffle House, hollered back to everyone else standing in his slow line to tell us that we might want to move to a different checkout.  The lady behind me looked around for 2 seconds and loudly said "UHH...I DON'T THINK SO"!  I just stood there looking like a deer in the headlights, continuing to watch this train wreck, whilst Lester kept sporadically clutching and releasing his LANE CLOSED sign.

Finally they got the %#%^ price check on the %#%^ basketball, and thankfully the Waffle House lady accepted it, and it's a good thing, because if she had told poor Lester "never mind" and to "put it back" because she suddenly decided she didn't want it after all, I'm sure she would've walked out of Wal-Mart with that %#%^ basketball anyway; installed as a new and permanent fixture deep inside of her rectum; placed there forcefully by everyone that she held up needlessly for an eternity in that 20 Items Or Less Aisle (with Lester heading up the installation).

At long last, the Waffle Housers exited the store with their purchases in tow.  I could tell that poor Lester was relieved to see them go, and after he began ringing up my few items, he placed his LANE CLOSED sign up with gusto.  The lady and man behind me were not amused (the lady had actually sent the man up to the front to retrieve a buggy for them to put their items in some time before that, since they were getting to heavy to hold in their arms, while we were all held hostage waiting for the Waffle Housers to get the heck out of there).

Moments later, my transaction was complete, and I was finally able to make my way out to the parking lot.  When I got outside, the fresh air hit me, and I must have started to sober up, so-to-speak, because I actually remembered which aisle I parked my car in!  And it was still there, intact!  No impromptu monster-truck demolition derby had taken place in my absence!  I drove my way out of the row, past the $5 baby bunny people (making sure not to make eye contact, so as not to feign interest in the bunnies), promptly ran the HELL over the curb with my right rear tire, and embarrassingly proceeded to drive home as quickly as possible.

JEEZ!!!  NEVER AGAIN!!!

The Worst Christmas Jobs in History

Interesting Stuff About Christmas - Part 3: Traditions

(Info taken from a cool free kindle book i found).

Christmas Trees

The origin of the Christmas tree began in the 8th century in Germany.  A missionary, later known as St. Boniface, ran across a group of pagans near an oak tree who were about to sacrifice a boy to their god, Thor.  St. Boniface chopped down the oak tree immediately.  Then he noticed that a tiny fir tree had miraculously sprung up in its place!  Since then, the image of the fir tree became a symbol of Christianity and everlasting life.

Bringing a tree inside became a tradition in the 16th century.  The earliest documented case of the indoor Christmas tree was around the year 1500.  Martin Luther was walking home one winter evening (it may have been on Christmas Eve), when he came across a patch of evergreen trees covered with fresh snow that seemed to twinkle in the moonlight.  He thought it was so beautiful that he cut down a small fir tree, took it into his home, and decorated it with small, lit candles tied to the branches to recreate what he saw.  It's believed that the candles were to simulate the stars that shone in the night sky, just as they had done during the first Christmas Eve over Bethlehem.

After around the year 1700, placing candles and decorations such as apples and other items made this custom take off.  The original purpose of the tree skirt was to catch the wax that dripped off the candles.

Around 1848, Prince Albert presented his wife, Queen Victoria, with a Christmas tree.  Prince Albert was of German descent, where the custom of having an indoor decorated Christmas tree originated, so it was traditional to him.  When people saw their gorgeously decorated tree, they decided that if it was good enough for the Queen, then it would be good enough for them!

Eventually, the tradition of a Christmas tree came to America.  In 1900, about 1 out of 5 households had a Christmas tree.  It was commonplace by the 1920s.

The first electric lights on a Christmas tree occurred in New York in 1882.  By the early 1900s, electric tree lights for the average home was more available, but they cost $12 for a 20-bulb string, when people only made an average of 22 cents per hour!

From about 1920 until the later 1960s, tinsel was made from lead, but today it is primarily made of plastic.

~~~

Christmas Caroling

Why do Christmas carolers travel in groups going from house to house singing and celebrating today?  Doing so probably developed around the 16th century with poor people "singing for their supper", going from door to door until they received enough food and drink to sustain them for the night.

"It Came Upon a Midnight Clear" is attributed to be the first American carol, written in 1849.

~~~

Gift Giving

The tradition of gift-giving as we know it today didn't really begin until the introduction of "gift books" in 1823.

Initially, wrapping paper was simple white tissue or letter-weight paper.  Then red, green, and holly-sprigged tissue became available.

Wrapping paper as it is today came in 1917 when a Hall Brothers' store (the founders of Hallmark) ran out of tissue during the holiday rush.  As a substitute, they sold sheets of decorated paper meant to be used as envelope lining.  It was a hit!  The next year as they sold both types of paper, but most people preferred the new decorated paper.  It wasn't called gift wrap; it was called gift "dressing".

~~~

Candy Canes

The candy cane was actually invented as a tool to keep children quiet!  Back in the 1670s, a choirmaster in Germany took a "sugar stick" and bent one end to resemble a Shepherd's staff during the long church Christmas ceremonies.

In Ohio, back in 1847, a German immigrant began displaying candy canes on his Christmas tree.  It soon became commonplace to decorate a Christmas tree with the traditional "white" candies.

That's right -- originally, candy canes were just solid white.  Then in the 1920s, a man began hand-making the candy cane as we know it today with the red stripes for his family, neighbors, and friends.  Around 1950, the man's brother-in-law, who was a Catholic priest, invented a machine to automate the process.

~~~

Christmas Cards

An English man in 1843 is credited with starting it all.  He needed a way to send out Christmas cards to his family and friends, to try to get them to help less fortunate people, but writing each one out by hand was tedious and time-consuming.  So he hired an artist to paint an image on a card that depicted the act of celebrating a joyous Christmas with family.  It was captioned "A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year To You".  

The idea didn't inspire the man's family and friends to join in his crusade to help less fortunate people, but it did inspire the idea of sending holiday wishes and greetings via a Christmas card.

For the next 30 years, Americans who wanted to send Christmas cards had to import them directly from England.  In 1875, a German immigrant began creating Christmas cards in the United States.

Hallmark didn't create the first known Christmas cards, but their founders began making them in 1915.

It wasn't until 1962 that the first Christmas postage stamp was created after a lengthy battle of opposition concerning the separation of church and state.

~~~

Poinsettias

This tradition came from Mexico.  A botanist, Joel Roberts Poinsett was appointed the United States Ambassador to Mexico in 1825. On one of his journeys to Mexico, he discovered the vibrantly red plant.  He shipped some of them back to his home in South Carolina, and began cultivating them in his hothouses, sending them to his friends and family as Christmas gifts.

~~~

While not many of the traditions we celebrate as part of our American Christmas began in our country, their foundations were meaningful to the cultures they came from.  Now, they are just as meaningful to us today, even if the meaning is somewhat different.

One thing is clear; Christmas is a joyous occasion that we spend with family and friends to not only celebrate the birth of Jesus, but to enjoy each other's company.

Worst. Supper. EVER!

YUCK.  :P

So my husband Jamie has been asking me to make salmon patties for him for a while now.  Several weeks ago, I ran across a recipe for them, and purchased a can of salmon at the grocery store.  It took me an eternity to even choose a can, because they all seemed disgusting to me.  I'd never even made salmon patties myself before, and I've only eaten them maybe once or twice before in my entire life (back when I was pregnant with Lilly, having strange cravings, and even sketchy food tasting so freakin' delicious).  I don't even eat tuna.  I don't really like much of anything seafood-ish.  Maybe feeding cats canned cat food all these years helped turn me off of it, who knows.

Anyway, earlier this evening when I opened the can of salmon and dumped it into the mixing bowl, I thought I was gonna throw up.  The can-shaped mass of disgusting meat was horrific, and I had no idea that it would have some fish skin included on it too.  It smelled like total cat food.  I wasn't even sure I could manage to attempt to make a halfway edible meal out of such a travesty of meat.  I scraped off what skin I could (it came off so easily; I was shocked) and pitched the skin into the trash can.  I added all the other ingredients, but I couldn't bring myself to mix it all together with my hands, like I do when I make meatloaf.  So I got a fork and mixed it up that way.  I must admit, it didn't look too horrible after I got it all mixed up.

Then I had to make the patties.  I managed to do it with my hands, but it was still a little disgusting.  I cooked 'em up (with some taters and green beans to go along with them on the side).  Finally the patties were done.  They turned out just the way they were supposed to, but I still couldn't bring myself to eat them.  They just kind of turned my stomach, especially after seeing the salmon in its original can-form.  Jamie put a few of the patties on his plate, and I tried a tiny bite of one, but I couldn't get past the cat food aroma/flavor, and instead ate all the rest of the taters and beans.

Needless to say, I told Jamie I'm sorry, but that there's no way in hell that I'm ever gonna cook those things EVER again!  He just laughed and said OK.

SICK!  

WORST.  FOOD.  EVER!  :P  

BLECCH!!!

Changing the subject, Lilly got home from school early today, since school was only open a half-day for the start of Christmas Break.  As soon as Lilly walked in the door, she took her necklace off and promptly put it on our cat, Domino.

As you can see, Domino was totally mellow & diggin' it at first:

But then, moments later, became extremely paranoid:

Ain't that the way it always goes, man?

LOL!

Giant Terd Dream

Hmm.  Lastnight I dreamed that the biggest terd EVER was in a toilet.  I mean, it was literally the size of a log (no pun intended, ha ha).  I was concerned that it wouldn't flush down, but then someone pressed the lever of the toilet to flush it, and I anxiously watched, as it somehow managed to flush right down without a problem.

I have a feeling that it might be symbolic, but I don't really know exactly what it means!  O__o  Oh, well, at least the giant terd went down!  That's gotta be a good thing, right?  LOL!

DANG CHRISTMAS LIGHTS (again)!

Well, this morning Lilly's class had their Christmas Brunch, and parents were invited.  So Lilly had asked me to sign up to bring doughnuts.  (I don't know why 'Deana' always seems to equal 'doughnuts')...*sigh*...I'll never get away from it...  :/

Anyway, the brunch was really good.  The kids got gift bags, and one of the treats inside them were kazoos.  You can imagine how that went...a 23-kid chorus of freakin' kazoos, when they're supposed to be eating breakfast.  I wonder how many kids inadvertently spit bits of their breakfast into their kazoo as they merrily ate and blew into it simultaneously *ecch*!  :P

Eventually it came time for the parents to leave so the kids could continue their day.  I decided to break down and go straight to the dollar store to purchase some new sets of Christmas lights (for both outside on my porch, and our Christmas tree), since they had blown out even worse, and now there were only a handful of bulbs that would actually burn (both on the porch and the Christmas tree).  Our Christmas tree with only 1 partial strand of bulbs that would burn looked pretty sorry.  So sorry in fact, that Lilly turned it completely off the other day, because there wasn't much of a difference in the handful of bulbs being on or off.

Stupid Christmas lights.

So I went to the Dollar General store in town, since it was more or less on my way.  I'm not used to that particular store.  I walked in, and it's laid out completely different (and awful) than the Dollar General store I'm used to, which is located closer to my house.  So I walk all around the Christmas aisles, and looked for some lights.  I found some icicle lights for my porch, and purchased a couple of boxes of them.  However, they didn't have the lights I needed for my Christmas tree.  I was kind of surprised.

So after I left the dollar store, I stopped by Wal-Mart, figuring that surely to goodness they would have a whole load of Christmas tree lights.  They didn't.  At all.  I was shocked and P.O.'ed, since I noticed what few sets of icicle lights that they did have were cheaper than the ones I had just purchased at the dollar store.  UHH!

I left Wal-Mart totally empty handed, which is rare, and always feels weird when it does happen; as if they think I'm shoplifting or something.

Finally I decide to just go to the dollar store near my house, which is where I initially thought about going to in the first place.  I really like the way it's laid out.  I know where everything is, and have no problems finding anything I need.  Lo and behold, their Christmas section was fully-stocked, with tons of the lights that I needed for my Christmas tree. I purchased 3 boxes.

I came home and ripped down the old, burnt-out icicle lights off the porch railing, and installed the new lights.  So far, so good.  Yes, I tested them to be sure that they worked before installing them.  It would be just my luck to end up choosing the only box of lights in the entire store that was defective and not burn at all.  Then I went in the house and proceeded to un-decorate the Christmas tree, rip off the strands of crappy, non-working lights, re-install the new lights, and re-decorate it.  So far, so good with it too.

Now I'm sitting on the couch, worn out, and still miffed about all the Christmas light snafus.

Tomorrow is the last (half-)day of school before Christmas break.  It will be nice for me and Lilly to get to sleep late in the mornings, but I dread trying to keep her entertained until school starts back again on January 3rd.  She gets bored and misbehave-y so fast, she doesn't have much of an attention-span, and we usually end up just making a huge mess and fighting.  And it sucks that we can't really go outside, since it's cold and wet and yucky.  Hopefully it will be a little easier to stay entertained after we get some Christmas presents to play with (but that's days away)...!

Hurry up, Spring and Summer!  I hate Winter!  :{

Interesting Stuff About Christmas - Part 2: Santa Claus

(Info taken from a cool free kindle book i found).

So what does celebrating Jesus' birth have to do with stockings, gifts, reindeer, elves, and all that other stuff?

It all began in the 4th century with a real, compassionate, and very generous man by the name of St. Nicholas.  He was a godly man who had a reputation for giving to people.

Nicholas and his parents were Christians who lived in Patara, Lycia, in Turkey during the 3rd century.  Nicholas' parents had prayed and asked God for a child.  From the time Nicholas was born in about the year 280, they considered him to be a gift from God.  They taught Nicholas to be devoted to God, and to be very generous to the poor.

Nicholas became a priest when he was a young teenager.  His uncle, the bishop who ordained him, prophesied that Nicholas would eventually become a bishop.  It was after a return trip by boat from Jerusalem when this prophecy came to pass.  Halfway into the voyage, a gale wind struck.  For 2 days and nights, the waves crashed over the bows.  At dawn on the 3rd day, they sighted land off Myra, which was about 20 miles east of Nicholas' hometown.  As they made their way into the harbor, Nicholas' first thought was to find a church where he could give thanks to God for their survival.  Unbeknownst to him, the old bishop of Myra had decided to retire, and all of the bishops of Lycia had come together to appoint his successor.  An angel had appeared and told them to gather to wait inside the church, and said "whomsoever shall be the first to enter shall be worthy of the office.  His name is Nicholas".  He was only 19 years old, but was immediately acclaimed the new Bishop of Myra.

One story of St. Nicholas' goodness is the reason many pictures show him with three golden spheres.  

These represent three bags of gold that he gave to a poor man so his three daughters could be married.  The man was so poor that his daughters had no dowries.  He was so desperate that he was planning to sell his oldest daughter into slavery so that one of the other two daughters could have a dowry.  To keep that from happening, Nicholas threw a bag of gold pieces through the man's window in the night so nobody would know who had done it.  Nicholas wanted God to get credit for it.  Not long after that, Nicholas did the same thing for the second daughter, saving her from a similar fate.  When Nicholas did it for the third daughter, the father caught him.  Nicholas made the father swear an oath that he would never reveal who was responsible for these gifts while Nicholas was alive.  This story is thought to be the basis of the tradition of hanging up a stocking (representing the bag) to be miraculously filled with gifts (representing the gold) during the night.

At the time that Nicholas was performing these acts of kindness, he was not a Saint.  Because of his good deeds and charity to the less fortunate, he ascended to the Sainthood title in the Roman Catholic Church.  He died on December 6, 342.  In 1087, his remains were transported from Turkey to Italy, where a Catholic Church was built in his honor.  Soon after, his popularity spread, and December 6 became St. Nicholas Day, along with the custom of gift-giving.

What St. Nicholas actually looked like!

With the Protestant Reformation of the 1500s, the worshiping of saints was denounced, so St. Nicholas Day was no longer observed in England.  When this happened, the role of gift-giver was assigned to a mythical character named Father Christmas.  

The day of gift-giving in England was later changed from December 6 to December 25 to coincide with the date that the Church had chosen to celebrate the birth of Jesus.  In Holland and Belgium, the traditional day of December 6 was still celebrated, but there, Sinter Klaas (a Dutch version, meaning "St. Nicholas") rode through the streets on a white horse rewarding good children with treats and toys, but giving rods or switches to bad children.  

In Germany, the saint was referred to as "Nicholas dressed in fur", and also left sweets for good children, and rods for the bad ones.

All of these traditions blended with the immigration to the New World.  As the English and Dutch came and intermarried, Father Christmas and Sinter Klaas blended into one figure.  Dutch Americans later adopted December 25 as their day of celebration, and by the end of the Civil War, St. Nicholas was generally known in the United States as Santa Claus.

The poem "'Twas the Night Before Christmas", written in 1822, portrayed Santa Claus with words as a round-bellied figure with a huge pack on his back.  Picking up on this image, a cartoonist added the North Pole toy workshop in his cartoons for the 'Harper's Illustrated Weekly' magazine.

In 1931, the Coca-Cola Corporation ran an advertising campaign of Santa Claus further defining him as a large man with a red and white fur suit, black boots, and a long, flowing beard.

So where do the reindeer come in?  From a combination of several different legends.  Some of the earliest depictions come from the Finnish legend of Old Man Winter driving his reindeer down from the mountains while bringing the winter's snow with him.  Similarly, the Russian Father Frost comes around each winter riding a sled pulled by reindeer.  Earlier versions of Santa's sleigh had only one reindeer pulling it.  However, by 1823 with the introduction of the Christmas poem "A Visit From St. Nicholas", Santa's team changed to eight reindeer from then on.

The 9th reindeer, Rudolph, came along in 1939 when Robert L. May was commissioned by the retail store Montgomery Ward & Co. to write a children's Christmas story that could be handed out during promotions at their stores.  

About 10 years later, the song "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" was sung by Gene Autry and became very popular.  In 1964, the stop-motion animated TV special aired on NBC.

What about Santa's helpers, the elves?  They are a contribution from the Dutch.  The story goes that St. Nicholas freed a little slave boy from a marketplace where he was supposed to serve for the rest of his life.  Because of this, the boy decided to devote his life to St. Nicholas, and help him out with his work.  Later on, the one "helper" became many.

The true story of St. Nicholas is a picture of the "giving" that Christmas is about.  Santa Claus represents the giving heart of God, who gives good gifts to us all.

Lilly Logic / I See, Said The Blind Man (or Smell, rather)?

Earlier this evening, we took Lilly to the Girl Scout Christmas Ornament Swap.  They had asked everyone to bring a bag of individually wrapped candy so they could be combined together and provided to Meals On Wheels for the elderly.  I had gone out to the store yesterday while Lilly was in school and purchased a bag of candy for us to contribute.  When Lilly got home from school (hungry, as usual), and saw the bag of delicious chocolatey candy sitting on the table, she naturally begged to open it and have some.  I explained to her that NO, the candy was not for us, and that we would be taking it to the Ornament Swap party so they could give it to Meals On Wheels for "old folks" to eat.  Then Lilly said "but all this candy will make the old people get all hyper, and they'll eat too much of it, and then they'll get sick and feel bad"!  So she graciously offered to eat it, to save the "old people" from such a fate.  I looked at her like

and said "but what do you think eating all that candy would do to YOU"?  Silly kid.  She's such a shyster.

Speaking of Lilly, another evening earlier this week, completely out of the blue, she asked me if Santa was real.  Alarmed, caught off guard, and not knowing what to say right off the bat, I paused and asked "...Whyyyyy..."?  Then she proceeded to explain that the toys that come from Santa have bar codes on them like they came from a store, and she was wondering that if Santa and his elves make all the toys, why would they need to have bar codes on them?  I was flabbergasted.  Then she continued to say that some kids at school had also wondered what if it's the parents who actually buy the presents and put them under the tree?  Still in shock, and arms akimbo, I gave a typical parent response of "WHO SAID THAT" to buy me a few more moments to think.  Lilly didn't know for sure, and didn't say, and all I could think to say next was "well, you can't believe everything that you hear".  And then I ran away.

But back to the Ornament Swap.  As we were leaving, Lilly of course asked to use the bathroom, which is her hobby no matter where we are, regardless of whether she really needs to go or not.  More times than not, whatever restroom facility that Lilly begs to use (even though she only has 2 drops of pee in her bladder, and could wait to go for 4 more hours) ends up being thousands of times more lethally toxic with filth and disease than a septic tank exploding with the diarrhea of a million dysentery patients, along with about 10 rotting lepers' corpses.

Luckily (for once, thank God --and it probably helped that we were in a church, after all), their restroom facility was in fact very nice and completely sanitary.  Lilly chose the large handicapped-accessible stall in the back, and being the needy, clingy, only-child that she is, insisted that I join her in the stall while she peed.  At least the stall was big.  She always forces me to join her in the stall, no matter how small of a stall it is.  I will pause for a moment here and state that a couple of days ago, Lilly was being particularly aggravating (which is more the norm than the exception), and I turned to her and frustratedly yelled "WHEN YOU GROW UP I HOPE YOU HAVE 10 KIDS JUST LIKE YOU"!

*ahem*...back to the stall.  As I was waiting the 5 seconds for Lilly to finish performing her 2 drops of pee, I was casually looking around the stall and noticed that it had one of those wall-mounted, flip-down, baby-diaper-changing stations in it:

No big deal, right?  WRONG.  Why, you ask?  Because of what is imprinted near the bottom, right-hand corner on it.  THIS:

FREAKING INSTRUCTIONS OF HOW TO USE A BABY-DIAPER-CHANGING STATION IN BRAILLE.

BRAILLE!!!

Highly alarmed, my imagination went wild, picturing in my mind a blind person changing a baby's diaper, after it had one of those horrid, newborn, up-the-back-all-the-way-to-the-neck, watery/scrambled-eggy, neon yellow, napalm-odored, gallon's worth of crap-splatter explosions!!!

So I came home and promptly made this comic about it for posterity.  Enjoy!

LOL!

O__o