This holiday season we have a special visitor at the Jansma house.  His name is Bo and he may be one of the most annoying creatures on the planet.  Last week we had Shirley’s Christmas party at our house and her Aunt had mentioned that they were going to have to put Bo in a kennel.  They even went so far as to tell us how they had driven by the kennel and it looked like a concentration camp for dogs.   I am pretty sure on their way from Fremont to our house there was a conversation that involved them saying lets pretend like we don’t want them to have Bo stay at their house for TEN days because we need to act like that would be asking too much but knowing them, well Shirley, they will continue to insist and let’s pretend like they wore us down and eventually give in to their demand.  If they didn’t want this scenario to play out they wouldn’t have gone into how they were keeping Bo at doggie Auschwitz.  Do I like dogs?  Of course I do, but dogs are like kids, you only like them if they are yours.  And Bo isn’t mine.  Furthermore, Bo is being raised by two empty nesters and gets way more attention than even a human should receive.  Apparently he is allowed on furniture at his house because he has already made our couch is own day bed.  Furthermore, he was dropped off yesterday at 4 and when I got home he had gotten into a box of instant oatmeal packs and discarded their contents all over our floor.  To even further endear himself to me he took a dump in the kids bedroom.  The dog has struck out more times than I do in a typical week with my wife.  One my think, he just needs to get acclimated to his new environment and everything will be fine, that’s what Shirley thinks, but there is one more troubling thing Bo does that usurps everything I just listed, he wakes up at 6:30, 5:30 this morning and runs around like a raging lunatic until you feed him.   Why do I know he is never going to acclimate appropriately, because Bo still has his testicles, and there is no way he will ever behave when you combine that fact with the non existent discipline that he has faced his entire life.

Everything the dog does is cute, I am sure if Cara’s aunt had been here when he took a dump in the kids room she would have laughed it off and said “that’s just Bo being Bo”.(I know a thing or two about shitty parenting by the way, I have a PHD in it)  I will admit, I had a weak moment when I agreed to this, and her aunt and uncle have done a lot for us, including helping us move while Cara was 10 months pregnant and I was playing basketball instead of getting the moving truck, how was I suppose to know it had to be picked up by noon?   I’d like to think I would never make that mistake again, but I have multiple times just in different shapes and forms.  My response to the request to house Bo should have been “he’s a dog, he will be fine at a kennel”. Unfortunately, I anthropomorphize animals, and thought he actually had feelings not just testicles.  On top of that I didn’t want her aunt and uncle to be troubled by the fact that their fourth child was in a kennel, but who am I kidding? Once they got to Florida and saw their two grandkids they would have completely forgotten about Bo.

Will I survive the ten days with Bo, probably, will our house ever smell the same?  Probably not, it already smells like wet dog.   However, that isn’t the only impediment I have faced to holiday bliss.  This past week was the last week the kids had school and Parker is in two distinct classes so he had Christmas parties on back to back days.  For some reason the school, particularly the teachers, think parents should attend functions during the school day with their kids.  Fortunately, winter is a bit of an off season for me and I don’t have golf and water skiing consuming my time, the only thing I am juggling is work and pick up basketball.  (I have a place to play hoops twice a day every day of the week, sometimes three times, as well as a weekend landing spot each day, I am 43 years old but walk like Yoda, especially traversing stairs). Aiden also had a party this week which I will get into after discussing the back to back parties.  The Monday party was also attended by my father in law, a fact that allowed me to pop in and make an appearance but not have to endure the entire party.  I was there for approximately seven minutes which was about five minutes longer than I had hoped for.  Ultimately, Parker asked me to go to his party the following day, and it was on the way back to my office after my lunch basketball run so I figured why not.  The problematic thing about these parties for me is that once I get there I am continually looking for an excuse to leave.  Both parties involved craft stations where the kids make a Christmas ornament that you would never hang on your tree or some other conglomeration  of paper, glue, and glitter that will ultimately end up in the recycling bin.  I spend plenty of time with my kids on the weekends, ok, spend is probably over stating it, I occupy the same space as my kids a whole lot on the weekends and feel it unnecessary to see them during the school day.

Aiden’s party was on Thursday and he had no one other than me to attend the party on his behalf. Obviously he would have preferred Shirley or anyone else on her side of the family, but I was all he had and he seemed like he genuinely wanted me to attend.  I asked Shirley what time the party was and she said from 1 to 3.  Perfect I can hit it on my way back from hoops around 1:30.  I rolled into the school and everyone was looking at me at bit funny.  Once I got to his class room I realized something was amiss, there were no parents, only kids and a teacher.  Aiden was up in the loft with another kid and his teacher didn’t seem at all surprised to see me even thought the party was at 10am.  Obviously I had missed the party but his teacher told me I could read with Aiden.  Why would I want to do that, I was mentally prepared for a Christmas party, not for reading to my kid.  Besides, the firm Christmas party was at Clique lanes and I was hoping to get a few practice rolls in before we started bowling for real.  I went and talked to Aiden, and some kid with an even bigger head than his was in the loft with him.  I asked Aiden if there were a lot of parents at the party and bigger head said “all of them were here”. I wanted to call him out on it because my buddy has a kid in Aiden’s class and I know he wasn’t there.  However, I just smiled and laughed.  Besides cross examination 101 tells you to never ask a question when you aren’t certain what the answer will be.

No holiday season wold be complete without me upsetting my wife.  Last Friday the kids went for an overnight with the grandparents they like (not my parents) so I was planning on a date night.  However, Shirley and I rarely talk during the week, the less time you spend with a spouse or talking to a spouse the higher likelihood your marriage will survive (I think there is an algorithm that proves this) so I sprung my idea on her at 3pm on Friday.  I actually asked her if she wanted to meet up with couple friends of ours for a drink or two and then go hit dinner.  “hell no!  I’m already at home and I’m wrapping presents all night!”  So, I ended up meeting up with the couple flying solo, which was probably better, when Shirley isn’t around it’s like taking the governor off a go-kart, I can say pretty much whatever I want, making me much more funny as well as offensive.  After a few drinks with the couple friends I called Shirley and we decided I would pick up some take out on the way home.  When I arrived she was hard at work wrapping presents and I headed to our TV room to watch the Pistons.  As she continued to wrap I could hear her shouting instructions at me as to what she wanted me to do with all the boxes filled with wrapped gifts but I didn’t budge and ultimately fell asleep in my recliner.  When I awoke I was planning on going to bed and getting some sexy time but my failure to assist Shirley resulted in the Heisman.  With sex off the table I decided I may as well lay it out on the table.  I went off on how Shirley spent an entire weekend making candy covered oreos for her co-workers, how our kids have way too much shit already, and how ridiculous it is that we have to buy gifts for every single one of her cousins kids even though most of them live thousands of miles away.  All my points were valid by the way, but the proper approach if I had hoped to take full advantage of a kidless night would have been to say “honey, I really appreciate all that you do, Christmas is such a wonderful time of the year.  I can’t wait to face time with your cousins and their kids and watch them open their gifts, face time is great by itself but when you throw unnecessary gifts into the equation that brings it up to an entirely new level.  I love you, oh and I will do all the things you want me to do in the morning because I routinely wake up way too early so no need to be upset about the perceived lack of effort on my part.”  (I did get up early that Saturday and cleaned the kitchen, took care of the gift boxes, and went to Meijer to get everything we needed for HER families Christmas party at our house later that day).   December 26 can’t get here fast enough.