Dear Grandmotherly Type in the White Chevy Malibu:

Why, oh why, did you have to do a flagrant u-turn in the school parking lot yesterday so you could cut in front of my car?

Yes, it was raining, but you had an umbrella.

And I did not.

The Bijon Frise sporting a Santa hat riding in the mini van in front of me today totally made up for yesterday, though.

Signed,

Blonde Mom

p.s. I finally mailed our Christmas cards yesterday. And you?

Last night when the hubby got home from work the Christmas tree was illuminating our front window, supper was ready, the girls were peacefully coloring at the kitchen table (although they were teetering precariously at the great yawning edge of the abyss heretofore known as endless whining and bickering), and I was playing an Elvis Christmas CD. I felt like a vertitable modern day June Cleaver I tell you! He will never tell, but for a moment he just might have thought his family had been abducted by aliens.

The holidays can be a stressful time, with parties to attend, presents to wrap throw into last year’s gift bags, and mile-long to do lists to plow through. Here are some of my tips for saving time and stress:

Order your holiday cards this week if you haven’t already done so. I ordered 100 photo cards from Winkflash yesterday for less than $40! They are running a great special and the prices are cheaper than WalMart. (Savvy shopping mamas around the world swoon!)

Buy your holiday stamps online. That’s right. You can go directly to the U.S. Postal Service’s website, order stamps, and have them mailed to you. You might think this is silly, but I can’t tell you how nice it is to avoid one more trip to the post office this month. And it costs a whopping $1 for the convenience.

If you are really into convenience and you aren’t on a tight budget, Hallmark offers a service where they will address and ship your cards for you. I’ve never tried this, but one of my friends has. For a $1.25 per card, Hallmark will even have a staff member handwrite your personal greeting. They also have gorgeous photo card templates to choose from. Of course I think it might be odd to get a card with someone else’s handwriting, but this might be a great option if you have a very large number of cards to send.

I am no longer a mall rat, but if you have a day of power shopping planned at your local mall, take advantage of their gift wrapping service. Just be prepared to stand in line, although some malls will offer a drop-off option. I’m not a big fan of wrapping presents now that I have small children and must lock myself away at midnight in the bathroom in order to get any wrapping done, not to mention the fact that the first word that comes to the mind of Miss A when she sees a beautifully wrapped package is DESTROY!

Recycle your holiday gift bags from year to year. I think this is the third year the Sesame Street bag will appear under the tree. You’ve got to love Grover in a Santa hat.

Learn to say no. You don’t have to attend every event or party you are invited to, now do you Miss Paris Hilton?

Make a shopping list and stick with it. Your wallet will thank you. And honestly sit down and ask yourself if you can remember who gave you what for Christmas last year. Think about it.

Shop online and check out a website such as Current Codes for the latest discount codes for free shipping and other good deals. For out of town gifts, remember that Amazon will gift wrap and ship the item directly to to the recipient. If you’re super lame and forgot someone on your list or are completely out of time and resources, you can e-mail a gift card at literally the last minute.

Purchase a few inexpensive generic gifts, such as holiday candy or a pretty embroidered hand towel, for those impromptu holiday lunches. It’s good to keep a couple of bottles of wine on hand, too. The bonus is you can drink them if you don’t give them away.

Cook suppers with staying power. In the winter I like to make heartier meals that provide at least one night of leftovers. Last night I made this Southern Living skillet taco recipe and it was a big hit. I know my psyche is shoring up for a long winter when KFC commercials start to look appealing. (I am a fan of the original recipe variety as well as the mashed potatoes and gravy. Dang, that is some good sodium-laden shizzle.)

And one last thing, don’t forget that the holiday memories that will have the most impact on your children involve the gift of your time. Take the time to drive around your neighborhood to look at holiday lights (and the cynical among us adults can snicker at the neighbor with the gawdiest amount of inflatable lawn ornaments), put on a Bing Crosby CD and bake a batch of sugar cookies, and sit down to read a holiday book, talk about the true Christmas story, or watch a holiday DVD.

So, what are some of your holiday sanity savers? Add them to the comments!

p.s. Feeling the need to get the heck out of Dodge? One of the ads in rotation on my sidebar is for a five-night Tuscany getaway sponsored by PAM (complete with airfare and cooking lessons for two.) Check it out! 

With apologies to Laura Numeroff, children’s author of “If You Give a Pig a Pancake.”

If you give a man a beer at a football game, he might just want another beer.

He will down the beer rather quickly because it’s so hot out.

Because it is so hot out, he will want another beer.

When he drinks that beer he’ll get the munchies and buy another round of beer for his friends while he’s out.

While he’s out he’ll see the daiquiri stand and buy an overpriced strawberry daquiri.

After he drinks the second beer and the overpriced strawberry daiquiri he’ll start sweating alcohol and talking about armpit sweat runoff.

When you overhear his crazy armpit sweat runoff talk, he’ll give you the “this guy is toast by halftime” vibe.

As halftime approaches his girlfriend will shift from embarrassment to true mortification and start talking on her flip phone.

When she closes her flip phone she’ll give her girlfriend the “let’s get the hell out of here” look.

Her girlfriend’s date will also be drinking at a fairly rapid pace, but he wisely avoids the overpriced daiquiris.

When the girls leave for the restroom the obnoxious drunk boyfriend will flip off the opposing team with both hands and use the F word because apparently the double flip off wasn’t enough. (There is another beer or two consumed at some point, but I started losing track and obviously so did he.)

The F word will make the surrounding parents pivot and glare.

The glaring will make his girlfriend, who is returning from the restroom, wonder what he’s been up to.

The more she wonders what he’s been up to the more she wants to leave.

They’ll leave the game after half time, because by then he can barely talk but he can still walk.

As they are walking out the girlfriend will profusely apologize to you, the parental type sipping on bottled water and indulging in the hedonistic sneaking of clumps of sticky cotton candy from her 5-year-old.

And you will look over at your 5-year-old and your husband and smile because you know you will all be a bit sunburned in the morning but the only hangovers will be from consuming too much cotton candy.

You will also thank the good Lord above that you are married to the kind of man who would never drink a daiquiri at a football game.

Edited to add: The hubby prefers beer.

(I should have added this as the punchline. Wink.)

This true story brought to you by the drunk guy sitting to the left of us at Sunday’s Titans/Falcons football game.

My best friend and I went on a moms’ retreat weekend to Chattanooga.

What? Didn’t you know Chattanooga is the new Vegas?

She and I both turned 38 this summer and I had a wild hair idea to actually go somewhere for the weekend and not just meet for a hurried celebratory lunch which ends way too soon. The best friend and I have known each other since 4th grade, back in 1979 when the Grease soundtrack on vinyl was the High School Musical craze, thus an hour does not do our conversational marathon skills justice.

We decided to cruise to Chattavegas in her minivan as it’s a relatively short drive, and we were able to indulge in a lot of shopping and talking and eating and drinking and then some more shopping of the discount variety. You know, basically the staples of life. The weather was gorgeous and the sales were plentiful. We indulged in beer and pizza before noon on Saturday al fresco and topped that off with some Ben and Jerry’s. It felt decadent to be sipping on a bottled beer next to parents wielding baby bottles. There was no calorie counting allowed. We may venture further next year and who knows what we’ll do for our 40th. There was talk of a spa retreat or a trip to NYC or the Bahamas. Moms gone wild!

Some quotes from the weekend:

I’m just looking forward to not wiping anyone’s butts.
My best friend has three boys (ranging from 3 to 11) and I have two girls. No further ’splainin needed.

It’s OK. We’ve got wine and chocolate!
Upon radioing the hubby’s shop and realizing that there were two wrecks less than three miles apart on I-24 as we headed out of town and traffic came to a complete standstill for at least a half hour. My best friend, being the prepared genius that she is, had packed M&Ms and Halloween Reese’s Pieces and party mix, as well as enough varieties of Coke to keep us awake for 72 solid hours. And then of course, there was the Fat Bastard Shiraz in the back seat, waiting for us when we got to our hotel. If necessary, we would have been prepared to uncork that baby.

It’s buy one get one free martinis!
We had no idea it was happy hour Saturday night when we ordered our martinis and were greeted with four from the bar.

There were no celebrity sightings in Chattavegas, but our server Friday night at PF Changs sounded amazingly like Keanu Reeves. The best friend and I did have a riveting conversation Sunday morning about Kenny Chesney’s sexual preference (she works with someone who knows Kenny fairly well and the verdict is that he is most definitely not gay, just thought you’d want to know.)

Being someone in much need of a technological break and not wanting any temptation to sneak down to the hotel business center to blog or check e-mail like some sort of Internet addicted mommy blogger who checks her Sitemeter stats daily, I left both my laptop and digital camera at home. I know, I know…crazy! We slept in late and didn’t order anything from a kids’ menu all weekend. We browsed in Barnes & Noble Saturday night and sipped on wine and read our new books when we got back to the hotel. Hey, we’re small town girls. It doesn’t take much to thrill us.

Overall it was a fun and much needed mama’s retreat. There was nary a chicken finger or juice box in sight and the only objects subject to swiping were our debit cards, no poopy bottoms allowed. If there was any niggling ounce of doubt that I shouldn’t have taken off for two nights, it was snuffed out the moment the hubby called me Friday night from our neighborhood pizza joint and I could hear the girls in the background, squealing with joy as they played air hockey with my dad.

Today I decided that I deserved a cherry limeade and some tater tots from Le Sonic and made a pit stop before picking up Miss C from school.

I pulled in behind a Lincoln Navigator driven by a mom. Her license plate holder said, “I’m Not Spoiled. My Husband Just Loves Me.”

Translated I believe that means this woman is a, well, you know. I must confess to stereotyping her.

And then I got home and realized the only car adornment on my Nissan Pathfinder is a black and white oval sticker that says WOOF. I’m sure the day I slap a soccer mom sticker on my hatch is not far off, as we are in season three of soccer for Miss C.

But I digress. Back to my beloved WOOF sticker.

Translated I believe that means, “I’m Not Spoiled. But My Dogs Sure As Hell Are.”

Dear Mother Who Signed Her Son Up for Free Swim Lessons, Even Though He Knew How to Swim:

It was clear that you thought it was adorable that your son was swimming like a porpoise on crack, but it was incredibly distracting, not to mention rude, to the instructors and the three kids who really were trying to learn to swim.

Dear Dad in the Family Locker Room Who Was Irate Because I Accidentally Cut Him Off at the Swimsuit Water Extractor Gadget:

Get over it! It was an accident! I apologized and you responded by saying nothing. Hmmmm. Either you did not understand me or you are just plain rude.

Dear Angsty Teenage Boy Wearing Street Clothes on the Elliptical Machine:

Dude, I know your skin has not seen the light of day in three years, but you’ll sweat a lot less if you put on some lightweight workout clothes instead of ankle length denim shorts and an XXXL shirt.

Thanks,

Blonde Mom

You know you live in Nashville when you see wild turkeys at the soccer practice field and see a country music video shoot on the way home from practice. This is where I fantasize about inventing a new career for myself as a video location scout. I grew up in the boonies and could lead them to a real farm, not a park two miles from Starbucks.

Coming down from a pain medication high on Sunday led me to do crazy things. I cleaned my desk and shredded tons of paperwork. I found a photo brag book that I thought I’d lost over a year ago. And here all this time I thought someone was carrying around pictures of my girls and claiming that they were theirs.

Speaking of paperwork, we are only in week four of kindergarten and oh my GOOD LORD the paperwork. I’ve never seen so much homework, take home work, not to mention newsletters, teacher letters, PTO letters, volunteer request forms, calendars, lunch schedules, etc. And now if I can only beat down my inner pack rat who feels guilty about throwing away any of my precious daughter’s schoolwork. Because, you know, she could be president some day and they might need her first phonics worksheets for the archives.

For about 30 seconds I confused my electric knife with my mixer while starting to make Bailey’s birthday cake. I couldn’t quite figure out why the beaters were not going into the base. And then I realized that in ten years of wedded bliss, I have never gotten my Martha Stewart on with the electric knife. Do people actually use electric knives?

I’m researching a Mother’s Day Out program as opposed to full-time daycare for Miss A since I am usually home by 1 Monday through Thursday now. Rumor has it mothers camp out in their minivans at 4 a.m. to get a slot. Things could get ugly. We all know moms can whip out their can of mama whoop ass over anything related to child care. This is a church-based program, though, so no one could get too competitive, could they? I did some name dropping when I e-mailed the director Monday. I have no shame.

Is anyone else tired of reading about how “bad” Britney Spears looked on the VMAs? I didn’t watch the VMAs, but from the photos I’ve seen her post-babies/nasty divorce/Cheetos with a Red Bull chaser physique doesn’t look that bad, does it? So she’s not Posh Spice or Paris Hilton thin, but who is? It took guts to put on her best underwear and fishnet hose to dance and lip sync on live TV, especially with Sarah Silverman in the wings waiting to crack a vagina joke. And, as scary as it is for me to admit, I’m on Kanye West’s side as far as MTV exploiting Britney. MTV has the class of a Jello midget wrestling match at a state fair midway.