Unwrapped

Ho, friggin’ ho.

It’s interesting how the last of the Spirit of Christmas evaporates roughly the same time as the last of the Christmas booze. One might even think they were directly related to each other – at least when it comes to the adults, I hasten to add. The children certainly don’t need stimulants of any kind to get all hyped up for Christmas, although the presence of sugar in almost everything they eat during that jolly time certainly helps. 

Because my Eastern European heritage dictates we do our big meal (and our big drinking) on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day itself ends up being a bit of a wet fart. Except for my kids at least, it’s a wet fart with substantial follow-through: presents. And, let’s face it, for kids it’s All About The Presents. For the adults in my house, it’s a bit about the Presents, but only as something to occupy the children while we recover from the night before. 

I must say I didn’t choose the presents too well this year. That last-minute cheap-as-chips Spiderman convertible car that I bought at the local markets for Tiddles’s stocking is a prime example of why you should always Try Before You Buy. 

When fully armed with batteries, this car drives around and around  in circles, occasionally stopping to open its doors and fold back its roof, all somewhat surprisingly to the strains of the Vengaboys’ song “Kiss (when the sun don’t shine)”.  Except I’m beginning to suspect his latest choice of car and music,  these days Spidey might like to only kiss where the sun don’t shine. It’s just a hunch. 

Anyways, it turns out the thing is Indestructable – as my sister Princess A pointed out, with barely-disguised horror-slash-wonder in her voice, it must be made of the same materials that the Terminators are made of. You cut off a wheel and it keeps going, round and round, up and down, “Kiss kiss kiss when the sun don’t shine woah-oh-oh, woah-oh-oh.” With a bit of luck, the SQMY batteries (the branding of which looks spookily like SONY from a distance) that it came with will run out soon and prove to be irreplaceable. 

And then there was the Pixie’s “Disney Princess Karoaoke Headset”. For one thing: look at the headset.

That spectacularly bejewelled headband is so incredibly inflexible and so damn small that even Tiddles McGee (aged 2) can’t put it without screaming like someone in a Scorceses film with his head in a vice. I’ve noted that there is no actual photograph of a child wearing it on the box because that would probably contravene Geneva Convention guidelines about using torture devices during peace time, especially involving minors. And as for the “18 All-Time Favourite Melodies” that the Princess Karoake Headset boasts? I’m thinking, maybe “Head on the Door” by The Cure or  ”Unfinished Sympathy” by Massive Attack, or even my karaoke speciality “Wind beneath my wings” (I kid you not) – but no. We’re talking tinny Hammond Organ versions of “This Old Man” and “Three Blind Mice” and all played so fast that even rapper emcee Twista, with his 11.2 syllables-per-second delivery, would struggle to fit in the lyrics. All in all, a dud present. 

In despair, I turned to the onerous yet relatively quiet task of constructing the Star Wars Lego V19 Torrent Fighter with Mr Justice. Check out STEP ONE in the accompanying visual instructions:

Huh? Are they trying to warn us off trying to plant the lego in the lawn? Or is that supposed to be a warning not to have shag pile carpet in this current climate of polished floorboards? Yes, okay, okay, I get it. You’re not supposed to put the lego on the floor. But don’t the makers of Lego realise that ALL lego ends up painfully underfoot at some point or another and that some pissy little diagram ain’t gonna adequately cover their fat-cat arses from the Class Action I’m going to file when I finally work out what exactly a Class Action is and what I have to do to file one (it’s on my To Do List, people, along with “Lose that Baby weight”, “Tidy the House” and “Get a Good Night’s Sleep”).  

Anyway, consider this scene: I’m almost having a nervous breakdown trying to work out if the next piece in the instructions is dark grey or black and the Pixie’s sitting at the same table, eating a middle-of-the-day bowl of cereal using the world’s smallest ‘dolly spoon’ and slurping her milk. Now, this would annoy me under normal circumstances, but under “starwars lego circumstances”, it threatens to push me over the edge all together and while I’m trying to get her to use another spoon, Mr Justice manages to tip an entire tub of our carefully pre-sorted lego onto the floor, resulting in me groveling on my hands and knees frantically collecting every last precious tiny piece – because if we lose just one piece the whole Torrent Fighter simply will not hold and of course with The Pixie still slurpin’ away with that spoon of hers all the while. And it’s at that moment that Tiddles McGee appears to lose it before I do and starts running around the house shouting “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” – or at least that’s what I think he’s shouting until, thankfully, he uses the internationally-recognised hand signal for “duck” and I realise that he’s trying to say “Quack”. And phew! Crisis averted: it turns out I’m not such a bad parent after all, if only one who is “hungover like a bastard” and disinclined to find out why her youngest child has suddenly decided to be a duck. 

Anyway, one of my readers – a certain “naptimewriting” – asked for rants to rival those rabid monkey blogs and I hope I’ve delivered – I do so aim to please. Now if you’ll now excuse me, I’m off to try and work out how to improve my Technorati rankings before those rabid monkeys get there first.