It seemed like a good idea to Nattie to keep Dagny's food dish on the headboard of my bed, where only Dagny can reach it, so the other dogs quit eating it, until 2 AM when I awakened from a nightmare about a Tyrannosaurus Rex standing on my face to eat rank dead carrion, only to find Dagny standing on my face eating rank crunchy dog food.
It seemed like a good idea to suggest to the whole family to make care packages to send to each other instead of individual presents, you know, to save money and stress and all of that, until it turned into a potential one-upsman-ship glorified version of The Surprise Game™* that may or may not cause the death of my younger brother.
It seemed like a good idea to make gingerbread houses ONCE AGAIN, this year, with 12 kids and five adults and four dogs, and to let my sister be the one to earn the glorious burn scars from the sugar, until I woke up this morning and realized the Swedish Fish and the Vodka were all gone.
It seemed like a good idea to go on a family cruise to the North Pole to see Santa, until Natalee dropped her iPod in the grass somewhere and made Papa Stecker and Grandma jog across three-quarters of Coeur De Alene and caused Santa's elves to scold us meanly to have "fast feet" all the way to the boat we almost missed. Turns out it was worth it anyway, even though all of the kids except When were on the nice list, and if anyone had a heart attack they wouldn't admit it. And Natalee was mad at the world for trying to steal her iPod.
*The Surprise Game™ was invented by bored young homeschooled siblings in the upstairs of an old farmhouse, where they would take turns trading crappy toy surprises they dug out of the bottom of their toy boxes/junk drawers for hours. Favorites were bouncy balls with puppy tooth gouges, army guys with torn off bazookas, and silly putty 80% encroached with dog hair.
