new frontier

We found ourselves this weekend in a position that I never pictured us in before.  Not once did I think this would ever happen to us, even when we added Gigi into the fold.  I'm still shaking my head, it just seems impossible to believe we'd ever have weekend like this.  Yet it happened and we never saw it coming.

Saturday night I found myself chopping up many heads of broccoli to make a nifty little buffet broccoli salad (without nuts) for a pot luck buffet and this unto itself was not unusual.

Pot lucks were not uncommon before I was made a full fledged head-of-household partner.  I worked for more than one client that insisted all the consultants attend AND contribute to any company potlucks and often found myself on a week night returning home from some post work beers only to turn right around and back to the scary 24 hour grocery store down the back alley, slightly buzzed, to purchase what one hoped was an acceptable, non-offending, and non-poisonous contribution to a client's baby shower for Marcy in the mail room.  This would always be followed by a panicky period where I would be racking my brains trying to remember what I signed up to bring, hoping that I hadn't agreed to bring dessert when I just purchased a really expensive spinach salad in a bread bowl combo.  Take my word, those head of the party planning committee folks can get really miffed when there are too many appetizers and not enough desserts.  There is no faster way to get a poor client appraisal when you show up with cheese when they were expecting chocolate.

Anyhow, those were the good ol' singleton days where I had disposable income out the ying-yang to throw around on prepared foods for forty people.  These days, I stand in my kitchen chopping broccoli for a nifty little buffet broccoli salad (without nuts).

So it wasn't the fact that we were attending a Christmas potluck, a Christmas potluck hosted by my child's school that had me shaking my head in disbelief but the fact of who we were attending as.

That's right.  We agreed to attend as someone else.

You are reading the diary of one Christmas elf who happens to be married to one Mr. Santa Claus.

I would have rolled my eyes and called you insane, if you had told me that one day I would be tramping through minus twenty-one degree weather to be the centrepiece to a a room full of people, all while dressed as an elf and standing next to my husband, who was dressed as Santa and watching him scare child after child because holy crow these three year olds have NO IDEA WHO THIS FREAK IS.  Yet these kids didn't run away because bad Santa was bearing gifts.  But they still had enough fear in them to act like they want to scream "OMG WHO IS THE FREAK IN RED MOMMY - AHHHHHH!" while maintaining some composure.

Seriously, I've never seen so many catatonic scared children.  Only a few cried, but most looked like they were afraid to avert their eyes for fear that would be when HE ATTACKS.

Actually, that part was kind of fun.

But yes, if you had told me that one day I'd be running out the door, with a tub of homemade broccoli buffet salad (without nuts) under one arm, while pulling a child so bundled up that she couldn't move her limbs, all while yelling "we gotta go now because if Santa and his elf are late, there is gonna be hell to pay", well I would have laughed you out of the bar, partner.

Oh yes, in true form: we forgot the camera.  Darn.