Sorrowful J-Dog, Sinking Santa

Perhaps you have been wondering why news of my beloved Jazzercise class has not been forthcoming?

It's because I haven't been going ever since I signed up for the monthly automatic credit card deduction payment option (naturally). The P-dog pointed this out when he saw our last few credit card statements, although I am reminded every morning when I try to zip up my jeans.

(Incidentally, I did not drop the ball on my bill paying duties, it's just that the P-dog gets nervous when he sees unopened billz laying around the house. He feels compelled to pay them, even though they are probably not coming due for a good day or two.)

I also haven't been going because the classes are in the mornings and I've been dreading leaving the J-dog in the in-house child care room. I just KNEW he would flip out. I kept picturing myself happily bustin' my Jazzercize moves, only to have the class interrupted when my hysterical toddler is brought to me by a stern and frazzled babysitter.

But I finally sucked it up and went today. I have to give the little guy credit - he fared pretty well, all things considered, and the nightmare scenario I had envisioned, in which I do side kicks with the J-dog attached to my lower extremities, did not play out.

He was playing quietly with a little Tonka truck when I came to retrieve him after class, although the sitter told me that he had cried on and off the entire time.

When he saw me, the little dude began sniffling/hiccuping again out of the sheer trauma of the memory of being left to fend for himself in a room full of toys and snacks for the last forty-five minutes while I exercised in the next room over.

The sitter gave him a jumbo pretzel stick as a consolation prize and I swear he is already using food as a comfort mechanism because he shoved that pretzel down his little gullet practically whole, all the while staring me down with the most doleful and accusatory look.

You will pay for abandoning me by standing helplessly by while I inhale this choking hazard, Mother.

I can only assume he was using that pretzel stick to fill the mother shaped hole in his little toddler soul.

In other news, my mom called me up this morning to let me know she had somehow misplaced the unopened envelope containing the name of her Secret Santa giftee. She had already called all the other members of the family to see who they got in order to glean the name of her person by process of elimination, and needed to know who the P-Dog and I were buying for.

It turns out the name she had opened on Thanksgiving and wanted to pawn off was actually my grandmother's pick.

It's unclear at this writing whose slip of paper Grandma was passing around the room on Thanksgiving Day, but it will be a miracle if everyone gets an actual gift on Christmas.

The irony is that this whole Secret Santa gift exchange deal was my mom's idea. And of course, the P-dog is disappointed that the fact he picked his own damn self has been blown out of the water.

Finally, I'd like to warn you all to steer clear of Bulgarian honey. I just had some in my nighttime cup of chamomile tea and it tasted like an old tire full of stale rainwater and maybe a used syringe or two.