You Know It's Christmas When.......

Here's a little list of things I feel make it very obvious that Christmas is here, seen as we are but two days from the biggie itself:


...Even at night time the houses are lit up like Blackpool


Yes those blinking twinkling lights are everywhere, so much so that with my bedroom, still without curtains and the neighbours across the road leaving on the lights, I have moved into Mini's bedroom. In fact I think my neighbours lights are out doing the High Streets more muted version. You can probably see 'em from space...


...The kids feel Pringles are a great Breakfast option


Now Mini is growing at a rate of nots, height wise, no matter where we put something, she can reach. So when she kept nipping out to the kitchen every 2 minutes, then Littlest started to follow, I knew she was up to something.
She had found the half tube of Pringles, left over from the night before, and had been pinching them. At 10am.


...The TV schedules are filled with even more crap than usual


You'd think that being that its Christmas time, and we've put up with some truly shocking TV already, the Channels could come up with some decent offerings. Except that it appears that Christmas just means time for ever more ageing repeats of programmes first shown when I was but a twinkle in my Mother's Eye. Some I do admit to liking, but others just leave me colder than the weather. I am so bored I am actually wondering why I thought getting all the shopping done in advance, rather than leaving it to the last minute as usual, was a good idea. So bored!!!!


...Everyone thinks that Everything Will Go Wrong.


If you order something online about a week before you want it to turn up the rest of the year, and it gets on a bit in time with no parcel, you blame yourself, right? Not in December. 


Now I've been a Toyologist this year for TRU. They're a great bunch of people, very friendly, always happy to help. I have also been a customer since a child and have never had a big problem.


But I have been really shocked to see the doom laden messages of some of their customers on their Facebook page. Jeez! 


Messages like "I ordered about 200 quid worth of toys for my kids on FRIDAY! Where are they!!!!!!!???? I will NEVER SHOP WITH YOU AGAIN!!! You have RUINED my Christmas, and I'm going to go on DayBreak and tell 'em how my Christmas is wrecked."


 Erm, well, if you decide to leave your shopping until the week before, at which point it snows, do you really think moaning on a Facebook page is the right course of action? If PLANES, BUSES AND TRAINS cant get over the snow, delivery drivers with online booty are not going to make it either. And to be frank, with online shopping I always think its best to do the present shopping this way at least 4 weeks before I want it to arrive, just in case your electronic order goes missing. 


And seriously, there are people moaning they ordered mid November and they still haven't received their stuff. Well, seriously, if that was me, I'd have moaned weeks back, not now, and certainly not on the Facebook page- how about contact the company on their email? 


Some of the rubberneckers (who probably have not ordered anything at all, but are even more bored with the TV than I am), are coming out with some laughable things. Such as "TRU don't care about children, they want to ruin Christmas". Are they mad, really, a company are not going to think that holding onto lots of gifts is funny- if it gets in the press it'll be bad for them financially.  They're not Scrooge. Dear me.


Let's all be calm and ignore the sooth-sayers and the miserable gits, and pay them the same lack of notice as we would January through November. Chill out!


...The kids have gone mental.


My kids, if you read often, are quite a few pegs close to nuts anyway. But mix in the last dregs of flu, not being able to go out since Friday last week, boredom and their Dad's refusal to watch CBeebies or Tiny Pop, and you have a recipe for a nervous breakdown. My nervous breakdown to be exact. They are seriously bored, ill, cabin fevered to the top of their tiny heads. And so its inevitable that everything leads way to fighting. Even the sofa and who sits where is a battle waiting to happen. It doesn't help that Mini is a) now refusing to answer to Mini and prefers her actual Christian name all of a sudden, which Littlest doesn't know her as and thus can't yet pronounce and b) has a voice which sounds like Panzee from ZingZillahs, and its all going crazier than an Eastenders Christmas episode in my house. 


Christmas huh? 


Bah humbug everyone.