posted by Brandy on Nov 28
For those of you on a hunt for holiday decorations (namely Christmas, but I did not want to offend anyone….oh, what the hell……) for those of you on a massive hunt for FUCKING CHRISTMAS decorations……DO NOT BUY THEM FROM WALMART!!!
Now, I can visualize all of you anti-Walmart shopping Nazis cheering with glee as you read this but it is not what you think. I do shop at Walmart. In fact, I shop their all the time! But I have recently learned that buying cheap Christmas decorations such as lighted reindeer, a life-sized Frosty the Snowman and box-shaped presents that glow in multi-colored neon and automatically open and shut, open and shut, and open and shut……is NOT a very good idea! Yeah, Dave and I were on the hunt! Purse tucked under arm, two screaming children packed tightly in the basket and wallet snugly packed in back pocket. We were on a mission and we were headed to the “Christmas” section of the store and were not leaving until we had loaded up the cart with decorations that included TWO reindeer, FROSTY and some lighted boxes.
Everything seemed fine, until we arrived at home. Dave piled on the snow gear while I fixed us a cocktail. Yes, it was only 11:00 am on a Saturday morning, but goddammit, we had a yard to decorate. We downed the cocktail (and added one extra shot of Southern Comfort to boot!) and headed out! The two reindeer were first. We set them up, got them positioned in just the right spot, above the waterfall and staked them into the ground. They were draped with white lights and, when activated, one head moved up/down and the other one, with antlers moved side to side. It was nice….. Frosty (the fucker) came next. What we failed to realize is that Frosty is six feet tall and is assembled in four different parts: bottom, middle, head and hat. We threw him together, piece by friggin piece, slapped on the tie fasteners, staggered the lighted boxes on the ground next to him and anxiously waited for night fall. When darkness settled in, the four of us (me, dave, paris and phoenix) ventured outside and activated the lights. At first, we felt like the Griswold’s (the movie Vacation, with Chevy Chase) with Clark (a.k.a. Dave) in all his glory as the lights streamed on. Then, I REALLY felt like Ellen Griswold as I looked, in horror, as half of the Reindeer lights were dead, Frosty’s fucking right arm was twitching as if he had Tourette’s syndrome and one of the boxes had a broken hinge so instead of opening and closing, it jerked and made a horrible humming sound. Dave relentlessly plucked light after light after light out of the reindeer to see which one was dead…..you know, IF ONE GOES OUT, THEY ALL GO OUT!!! AAAARRRRGGGHHHH He then gave up and moved to Frosty where he tried to controlling the obnoxious arm tics with more ties. This, in turn, stopped the twitching arm but resulted in a full body convulsion. The arm was now motionless but the rest of Frosty’s fucking body looked like he was in the midst of performing the ABS OF STEEL exercise routine.
Dave grunted and as he glanced down at the “broken” Christmas box, he looked at me and said, “Fuck it, let’s go have a drink!”