Monday Miscellany: When Will The Holidays End Edition

I'm spent. Exhausted. Completely drained of anything bearing even the slightest resemblance to energy. The holidays, they can kill you if you aren't careful.

It was a few days of highs (the girl doing her Christmas Evening Music Show clad only in a bumblebee hat and bandit-style eye mask, clutching a ride-along stick-pony and singing Jingle Bells at the top of her lungs) and lows (my mother calling Christmas Eve to discuss with me how very few Christmases my nephew has left and isn't it heartbreaking that we can't spend these remaining holidays together?) and very little sleep. So all that I am able to muster today - by way of a feeble, oh hai, am still here, somewhere, hello! - is this random list of observations and proclamations:

1) In the frenzy of Christmas Eve and Christmas morning, when the world is filled with brightly wrapped packages filled with gifts, be careful where you leave your Tampax box. Because when a small child discovers, in a washroom adjacent to that environment - a pretty, brightly-colored cardboard box filled with what look to be individually-wrapped treasures that may or may not be candy, she's going to be curious, and you're going to have some questions to answer.

2) Best to answer, in those circumstances, that it's a gift for Mommy. Santa moves in mysterious ways.

3) Depressing phone conversations with your mother on Christmas Eve can cause drinking.

4) When drinking, it's best to remember that rum is still rum even when it's drowned in a quarter-litre of eggnog, and it can, accordingly, still cause a hangover.

5) Hangovers are infinitely worse when you spend the previous night awake with a newly-betoothed baby hanging off your boob.

6) Teeth and nipples don't mix.

7) Teeth and nipples and too much rum and lack of sleep don't mix, but naked three-year old bumblebees in flight and bright yellow Tampax packages tied up with string under the Christmas tree are kind of cheery, so maybe it all balances out.

Because the New Year is pending, and I need all the good karma that I can get, I'm giving away more donations to charity - this time through CanadaHelps.org, which will provide $25 charity donation gift cards to two readers (they provide the gift card, and you can make the donation to any Canadian charity) (you don't have to be Canadian, it just needs to be a Canadian charity - so if you support breast cancer research, for example, just donate the funds to a Canadian research organization) - leave a comment with the cause - specific organization, generic cause, 'save the world', whatever - you'd like to support, and I'll randomly draw names and post winners on New Year's Eve.

(CanadaHelps is a charity that helps charities. Their website promotes giving by making it easy for donors to find Canadian charities and make a donation online to one of the 83,000 listed - and searchable - Canadian charities. Canadians - make your donations before Dec 31st to get a tax receipt for the 2008 tax year.)

Oh, and just because - there's also a $25 iTunes card for the first name drawn. (You might also consider picking up your own iTunes card and passing it along to someone who could use a little happy music, or perhaps a little Dr. Horrible. If you're in Canada, you can get them at any Sobeys, Mac's or A&P (Toronto) and Safeway, Save-on Foods and Coop (Vancouver) and, obviously, at the iTunes store online. Remember: KARMA.)

WINNERS - Christina and Stacie; Christina's was first name drawn so she gets the iTunes card as well!