Santa

So Erik and I finalized our discussion on Santa or no. I listed my cons (materialism, pulling away from the together aspect, not wanting an imaginary guy to get credit for what we scraped together, how difficult I must have been when I told my mom "Well, I'll ask Santa!", not wanting my kid to sit on some grown man's lap at Christmas, etc.) and then he listed his pros. He expressed how he wanted her to have that magic like he did. He said his mom would help out and "be" Santa on some of the gifts, so not all the pressure would be put on us. I remembered a printable on Pinterest I'd found once for a Christmas list to Santa to help keep kids from getting too greedy. I pulled it up.

The link went to a blog called Home by Heidi, but it took a lot of digging to find the right entry. It turns out she, too, found it on Pinterest, and it is an idea I've seen in various printable forms since. Erik loved it. He said his mom would be excited to buy her a book, and his Aunt Julie would be all over the clothes part. And his mom fills a stocking from Santa every year. So we wouldn't have the entire burden, and she also wouldn't get greedy. So you could say I caved, but I really think it was just a good compromise. Santa is on!

Nightmares

I've been gone a while. I've tried to write a post several times since, but every time I started, I couldn't get the wording right. I got busy for a while, too busy to blog, when I started a new job at St. Jude. Finally! I was out of retail! But it was a temp job and it fell through after two months, through no fault of my own. I was sworn he'd call us back as soon as possible. Hopefully, in a week! That was eight weeks and one day ago. I looked it up for ya'll. You're welcome.

So after about three weeks, my friend Katie (who I honestly don't know if I've talked about on here before) told me to apply at her JCPenney. So I did, and I got a phone call almost exactly ten minutes after I submitted my application online, before she could even tell her bosses, "Hey, I found your next star!" like she had promised. So I got hired and it's another temporary (seasonal) job, but I think this one actually will pan out. I've even almost gotten over how butthurt I felt when my supervisor at St. Jude consistently refused to call me back (he had told me to call after a certain day). I still have my locker key and he has my expensive tennis shoes locked up in there, but without my expired name badge, I can't even get onto the campus, and it's not worth the possible humiliation of someone there seeing me and recognizing me. I really miss some of the friendships that had been developing, though.

Anyway, now I'm dwelling again. I think I could really enjoy my time at JCP. We find out soon who stays and who goes, and I'm hoping to stay and move off the floor to the support team. If I go, we're fucked. We got our own place a few days before I lost the job at St. Jude, but went through with the move anyway. Luckily, we had a little bit of savings. When that ran out, we took out the ~three grand in Erik's old retirement fund from FedEx. That'll tide us over until he gets an extra couple grand from his student loan some time next month. Between those, we'll make it until he's done with school and can get a better job, hopefully as a decently-paid personal trainer, or maybe at a local high school. He'll be doing his internship this last semester there coaching the basketball team and there's a small-but-not-insignificant chance that it could turn into a job. I'm secretly rooting for personal trainer because I think it would pay better. However, coaching at a high school would be closer to his dream job (strength and conditioning coach for an NFL team), so I'd most rather he'd be happy.

So why did I title this post Nightmare? Because I woke up from one and retreated to my computer. Everyone has that one dream subject that really fucks with their mind. It makes you wake up and wish you didn't ever have to sleep again. Mine is zombies. It sounds laughable, but when you really think about what they are, and the terror that is suddenly being overrun by them and not having enough ammo or something, it's perfectly logical that a zombie dream would make you wake up, heart racing, all sweaty and terrified, and paranoid, and accidentally thinking the way that pile of laundry is sitting on the chair in your living room looks like a corpse sitting at rest waiting to wake at the sound of you. Oh, and also to make you terrified of your large glass patio doors, because that would be a very easy entry point. Point being, I am now sitting up at my computer because I will not go back to sleep. I have woken up a number of times and keep returning to the dream and I do not like it. I think I need to turn on something nice and sweet on Netflix, but that doesn't always work... I find myself really wishing I had my dog to snuggle...

Oh, that. We had to surrender Tucker to the animal shelter on Thursday. He has behavioral problems that came to a head. We could no longer ignore them or try to fix him. We were the wrong kind of family for him. For the sake of our daughter and our sanity, we had to give him up. Good news is, with the holidays upon us, the man at the shelter was very nice and optimistic about his chances of being adopted soon. He'd be perfectly for a family with a stay-at-home mom or something, especially with kids and maybe other dogs. He did better living with my parents, which made it so easy to ignore his problems. He had four dogs to follow and my mom was usually home. He responded to a shock collar and his only aggression was the occasional scuffle over food with the other big dog or if you spanked him he'd growl and if you got nasty, he might snap at you. A bad thing, I know. Not good around Everleigh, no matter how unbelievable he was with her. But something the right environment can work on.

Anyway, I don't want to talk about it. I didn't even plan on bringing it up. This post was originally going to be a quick sum up and then talking about the dilemma I have as a former Christian, especially around the holidays (religious songs that I still love, other ones that are more modern that I don't like that JCP plays and I accept in this public forum only because Jesus technically is the reason for the season, people tell me to have a "blessed day" and me awkwardly having to nod...). Really, I'm just always looking for quotes on Pinterest and there's plenty of good ones, but then they have "Psalms such and such" or something across it. And that's totally cool, but it's not like quoting other old texts. It has a current meaning and there are current followers. People will make assumptions about you, like if you post a lot of quotes from someone with a liberal stance. And while "Christian" is not the worst assumption for people to make (and the older black ladies I work(ed) with here or at St. Jude tend(ed) to assume so anyway), it's not me. Especially since it was me, I feel this urge to differentiate myself. Even when the quote is beautiful...

I'm not sure how to do Christmas without it. It's easy enough when you're just two of you, going between the homes of the extended family. But now I have Everleigh. Without the Christ of it, how do you make this something more than a holiday to celebrate materialism? Christmas means so much to me. It's a time for family and to express your love with gift giving and receiving. It's a time to make a mess with cookie baking and sharing and eating. It's not just consumerism to me. I actually feel the notion of "Santa" (be good only so you can receive more presents?) makes that harder to teach. I don't want to do Santa with her. My mom is all OMG YOU HAVE TO! and I think Erik wants to, too, so I'll probably cave...

Oh Lord, it's after two. I initially went to bed quite early because Evers went down too early. Then when I woke up, I wasn't even that sleepy anymore. Now is about when I'd go to sleep when I stay up late. Hell, my alarm still goes off exactly eight hours from now. But I'm going to sleep. In between taking too long to type this, I put on some beautiful Youtube covers and caught up with my oldest friend. It's been a good way to take my mind off... the thing I don't want to think about in case I have more dreams...

It's good to write again. I'll try to do it more often. I have some wonderful pictures from the town square with my daughter, my best friend, and her daughter. It's all lit up now. So beautiful. I also made sock snowmen that I found on Pinterest as a gift for my MIL. I'll share all these pictures soon. Night, guys.