SEVEN

Some people call me Dusty.

A few of you that know me VERY well have heard this one, but I find comfort in documenting it anyway – after all, it is funny.

I was away on business with a group of people I often traveled with. We were a fairly close group, having traveled together a bit, meaning not very much embarrassed any of us.

I left my lotion at home, as I tend to do on practically every trip I have ever taken. That along with sweatshirts seem to be a complete mental block when packing. So, I found a bath and body works, bought some lotion, and headed back to the hotel.

I slathered on the lotion, not paying much attention to it, and headed out to meet my colleagues so that we could begin work on a cut-over that evening. About two minutes into our walk over to the office, one of them noticed that I was sparkling. A lot. A bit like, say...oh, A STRIPPER! I had apparently purchased glittery lotion and was COVERED IN IT FROM HEAD TO TOE. I didn’t really understand the whole “stripper dust” thing at this point, but was told in detail exactly what I looked like. This was right before I ended up spending the evening with executives that I am sure wondered what my moonlighting job was.

Because I didn't have time to go shower, change and come back, I had to spend the rest of the night looking like a girl “trying to work her way through law school”

To this day one of the guys still calls me dusty. It suppose is endearing in its own way…

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If you are offended by people who don't believe in God, or who hate the holidays, you should probably stop reading right here.


We don’t have very many holiday traditions. The fact that my faith in God waivers doesn’t help that much either. I am conflicted in the whole Jesus thing, but really have no issues lying to my kids about Santa. Truth be told, I feel there is as much proof out there that Santa is real as there is that Jesus was the son of God/god/whatever. Sure, I think a guy that did some cool stuff that was named Jesus existed...but the son of a holy being? I'm thinking, no. Yes – I know I am going to hell. No, you cannot save me.

So, traditions. The biggest one we have is with the gift tags. Somehow, and we don’t even know why/when it started, we began doing something silly with the gift tags on the Santa gifts. We give each other presents on Christmas Eve from each other, and then on Christmas morning, we open presents from Santa and his friends. I say “friends” because the gifts at our house come from many different people. If you were to review the tags, you would see gifts from The Abominable Snowman, Donner, Prancer, Dusty (The Stripper Reindeer), Achilles’ Heel (he usually gives socks), The Grinch, Max (Grinch’s dog), Santa’s left nut, and the list goes on and on. Again, I don’t know why – but we do it and every year it gets worse and worse…or better and better, depending on how you look at it.

We have tamales on Christmas Eve (a New Mexico tradition carried over from Todd’s mom). We have ham on Christmas day (New Braunfel’s Smokehouse), and lots of popcorn, cookies, and junk food the rest of the week.

We prefer to stay home and hang out with immediate family, doing as little as possible. We try to sneak out to see a movie sometime around Christmas, and we stay away from all stores for as long as possible after the holidays.

We buy everybody a big gift and then around 20 Santa presents. These started out being candy, socks, perfume…and morphed into big gifts too – because I love to spoil my family. I should cut it out though, because with a family of 7 it is getting freaking expensive.

That covers it. I honestly am happy just tucking my head and going full-force into the holidays – hoping to get through them as fast as possible so that we can get back to normal. I am happy when I am done buying and wrapping presents. We don’t go to church. We don’t go caroling. We don’t travel to see family. We don’t watch home movies, or light a fire. We just sort of hang out and do nothing…and well, it is kind of nice.