Tricks Of The Trade

As Christmas is fast approaching I'm reminded of one of the old ploys I used to use on my son when the excitement of Christmas became overwhelming and he would really get ornery and didn't want to mind the Nurse or me. Now we all know that Santa knows who is naughty or nice and if you were naughty you ran the risk of paying the price on Christmas morning. Well I devised a way to put real teeth into my threat of calling Santa when the kid was acting up. I had arranged with one of my co-workers that if I ever called and asked for Santa that he would play along and talk to my son about being good. Now mind you Santa has to be someone the child doesn't recognize the voice of if this ruse is to be effective. I think I only used this once but it sure worked wonders. The next time the mere suggestion of calling Santa was all it took to get his attention and cooperation. The Nurse thought this was a cruel and unusual method to obtain peace and quiet, but didn't complain to loudly at the time.

We a had a large gathering today for lunch. I think a lot of you guys were just looking for an excuse to get out of the house. Can't say that I blamed anyone since I spent most of the morning wrapping presents. Have to admit I'm not bad at it since I learned the art from my maternal grandfather. Christmas was always the most important time of the year and he went all out, especially with the gift wrap. In fact we still use one of the package decorations to this day. It is a little beat up, but brings back fond memories. The lunch chatter was loud and varied. Poor Tricia had her hands full trying to get all the orders straight. Since she worked hard we gave her the proceeds from SOTD (a large tip that was well deserved).

The crew arrives tomorrow morning with both dogs. Then the rest of my family will be here on Monday. We've a pretty good sized house but I think 16 people with animals will fill it up. And, five of them will be 10 or younger. This could really get interesting after a few hours. My family can get pretty creative about gift giving. The theme of this year's exchange is Truck Stops. The gift can't cost more than $10.00 and has to be bought at a truck stop store (you know, like a Pilot or Petro). Can't wait for the gift exchange. This could top the year my nephew gave us all souvenir hockey pucks from the Columbus Blue Jackets (not kidding). It really helps to have a sense of humor with this group.

Enough for now. I'll let you know how everything turns out.

CC signing off.

PS - Don;t worry. If you call and ask for Santa I know the drill.