Random Holiday Realizations

I'm back to work after being off for almost two weeks, and I return with some newfound knowledge cultivated over the holiday season:

1.) Pictures with Santa are expensive.

I can't recall exactly how much they used to cost for those precious mall Santa photos, but I paid almost $20 and only got a 3-by-5 and a couple of teeny keychain-sized pictures. Sadly, neither of my kids were crying or picking their noses, so I didn't even get my favorite kind of Santa shot. Oh well.

2.) Bowling alleys open early.

I don't know where the idea sprouted, but last week we decided to go bowling on a weekday - and a weekday morning at that. I went online to check the hours, and a Beaumont bowling alley got rolling at 8:30 a.m. Who the heck goes bowling that early? We got there around 10:30 and bowled for an hour, with only two other lanes in use. What's great is that even little kids can bowl, with bumpers blocking the gutters and metal ramps for the kids to roll down balls. Thanks to that ramp, my 5-year-old, Curt, whipped my butt, easily beating my 108 with his 136. He managed to get three strikes, too, while I only got a couple of lousy spares.

3.) Pinewood does not like my band.

For the past two years, I've played trumpet in a local rock band called Buffalo Blonde. I had this dream of setting up the band on the half-court basketball court in my Pinewood back yard, with a tall grove of bamboo as a backdrop. On Saturday, my dream was realized. I extended invitations to friends, co-workers and every neighbor within a two-house radius. I hear bands playing out there all the time on weekends, so I figured no one would mind, particularly because we were just playing in the afternoon. We managed to play only about an hour before a Hardin County sheriff's deputy showed up and told us to "Turn that [expletive] off," which we grudgingly did. I guess my invitation radius wasn't large enough. However, that didn't dampen the party, which went on until almost midnight. Side realization: Why didn't the previous owner who built the basketball court instead put the money toward paving the gravel driveway?

4.) Potato salad doesn't keep very long when not refrigerated.

About 4 a.m. the day after the party, my wife was slow dancing with Mr. Porcelain. It obviously was food poisoning, so I went through a mental checklist of what she might have eaten that I didn't and came up with potato salad. The next morning, I went downstairs to find a big bowl coated with potato-salad residue. The wife before retiring had eaten a heaping helping of the stuff, which had been sitting out at room temperature for hours. It'll be a long time before she can look at potato salad again.

5.)Gingerbread house was a disaster.

Just before Christmas, I was in a last-minute shopping frenzy along Dowlen Road, which is like a parking lot around that time of year, with cars barely moving. My wife called me on my cell and asked me to get a gingerbread house kit, which I found for $21 after hitting a half dozen stores. I told the wife that it had better be a GREAT gingerbread house. However, it was a disaster. Fully constructed, it looked like something out of the Ninth Ward of New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. Within days, things started falling off and walls began falling in. What made it worse is that I learned that you can't even eat a gingerbread house. The gingerbread is similar to brick on the hardness scale. Nevertheless, I was determined to get my money's worth, which brings me to my final random holiday realization:

6.) Gingerbread houses burn great.

My first idea was to pack the gingerbread house remains with explosives on New Year's Eve, but I was concerned about harmful shrapnel, so I decided to burn it. During our eye-popping frontyard fireworks display Monday night, I placed the gingerbread house at the end of the driveway, poured lighter fluid on it and set it ablaze. Not only did it burn for a long time, it smelled pretty good.

With the boys getting older, we don't have many Santa photo opportunities left. I can't say we'll go bowling again next holiday season. My band will never play my back yard again, and my kids might be in college before there is potato salad in the house.

But one thing is certain: If I can find a cheaper gingerbread-house kit, I'm going to make it an annual tradition to end the holiday season in a spectacular blaze of gumdrop-dripping glory.