As of 7:53 am I became an Aunt today!!!

My sister had her baby this morning... yay!

And here is a writing prompt...

My Christmas was in Florida this year. Is it possible to really have Christmas in Florida anyway? That’s like having it in July. There is no way it can be done without snow.

Driving past the cookie cutter… no, cookie cutter was too cute a word, it was more like they all came from the same bag of tortillas. Cookie cutter houses don’t have stucco on them. Regardless, I was driving past an endless sea of them at 5:30 at night. Yup, night, not afternoon as it would’ve been in my home state of Michigan, but night. It was pitch black out here. And what, do you think, besides my headlights and streetlights illuminated my way down the depressingly suburban lane? Decorated palm trees. The most garish things I’d ever seen in my life. Oh some people just put lights in their palm trees, like fairly normal people who are crazy enough to winter down here. No, these people actually bought these trees like this. It was fake plastic and looked even brighter in the daylight if that’s possible. Vegas had more tasteful things. The frickin’ thing was orange for Pete’s sake.

Maybe it was the only color these old biddies could see anymore.

Am I wrong here? Is Christmas down here alright? Maybe I just grew up on too many holiday specials on television. Please note, that every one of them has snow. Santa Claus is from the North Pole. Snow is like… a requirement for Christmas. Been good? Check. Cookies and Milk? Check. A way to break into the house undetected? Check? Snow on the rooftop? Check.

I grew up on How the Grinch Stole Christmas. That movie wouldn’t even be possible here. Lack of snow aside, there isn’t a hill to be found in Florida. It was the long lost Great Plains state. Maybe that was my problem. I’ve always liked Christmas in theory, but in reality? I always sided more with the Grinch. Or maybe Scrooge would be more apt.

Bah-humbug.

Then again, I tended to side with the bad guys a lot in movies. It seems backwards, but maybe it’s the social worker in me. I have to be understanding, and I am, but typically only of bad people. All the “good” people out there just bitch and moan about the stupidest things. If there was a hill high enough in Florida, I’d throw them off of it. I’d watch the broken crown and the tumbling after and let my evil laugh echo off the walls around me. Whoa, getting way too ahead of myself in this fantasy.

Being a social worker, I see the bad things that come from the holiday. Talk about peer pressure. So many people commit crimes in the attempt to provide a good Christmas for somebody, not to mention all the suicides. It was not the most wonderful time of the year. It is a rat race. There are many weak willed people in this world, and this type of consumerism sucks them in like no other.

That’s why I was driving down this orange-lit gateway to a muggy-hell after all. I was doing a personal favor for a friend of mine. I was the caseworker for her grandmother, who just happened to commit identity theft and took over a timeshare that belonged to a laid up old geezer. Slippery one, that Betty was.

I checked the directions and pulled into the right driveway. Shutting off the car, I sat there for a minute. This would be easy as pie. She knows me, the second she sees me she’ll know she’s caught. She should come home just fine. She’s not a runner.

I folded myself out of my compact car, a twenty hour drive will do that to you, and headed up the landscaped walk. Pressing the doorbell, I heard Jingle Bells gonging inside. The door swung open and revealed something I wished never to see again. My friend’s little old biddy grandma was only wearing Reindeer antlers, a red clown nose, and some sort of harness covered in bells.

A low gravelly voice from the back wheezed, “Betty, won’t you guide my sleigh tonight?”

“Nicky, your North Pole has to wait a minute, there’s an elf at our door.” She turned to me. “Do you bring any toys for us elf?”

I pressed my back to the wall of the entry way, eyes wide. She squinted and jingled as she moved around me to find me.

Giving up, she went back inside calling, “Damn it Claus, next time don’t be so rough that my glasses break. Rudolph can’t guide anything if she can’t see.”

I slid my way back to the car, hopped in and sped away. Looking at the orange palm tree with a fondness. Maybe bad eyesight wasn’t such a bad thing. In fact, I wouldn’t have minded some myself this night.