Creative Cogitation

The week before Christ­mas is very hec­tic.  Even though I pre­vi­ously pur­chased the basic ingre­di­ents for Christ­mas din­ner, which are safely ensconced in the deep freeze, I decide to make Christ­mas goodie bags for a few locals.  Don’t ask me why I do this insane thing.  The Christ­mas cards, toons and let­ters barely make it out on time (well my Euro­pean friends and fam­ily will be get­ting their cards some­time after the New Year).  I think I will blame it on my Aunt Ally and my sis­ter Rara.  They both find the time this year to crank out the Xmas good­ies that arrive in my mail box the week before Christ­mas… My Aunt crafts her usual assort­ment of hand­made candy, and my sis­ter bakes rum balls and thumb cookies.

I have an art show to get ready for on Thurs­day, a few last minute things (like salad — you can’t freeze salad — OK you can, but no one will eat it), and of course my usual account­ing clients to fin­ish up.  So on Wednes­day after­noon, Decem­ber 22, I brave the last minute Christ­mas shop­pers’ crowd to pick up the stuff for goodie bags: Bags, candy canes, rib­bon, tis­sue paper, some choco­lates, 6 pounds choco­late chips, coconut, sweet­ened con­densed  milk, rum, 8 pounds of butter, 9 pounds of nuts, 3 dozen eggs, 4 boxes of vanilla wafers, 2 large boxes of Rice Krispies, 6 bags of marsh­mal­lows, but­ter­scotch, chow mien noo­dles, 10 pounds of apples, 10 pounds of tan­ger­ines, tea bags, cider pack­ets, and other assorted bak­ing ingre­di­ents… a bag of salad, a gal­lon of milk and a pre­cooked chicken for dinner. Like I said, insane. 

I didn’t buy enough nuts (I can either make the spiced nuts or the cook­ies, but not both) so I set out in the rain to get another 3-pound bag of pecans.  When I get back home my hus­band observes, “You are wet.”

After I change out of my wet clothes, dis­man­tle the chicken, and pre­pare din­ner I get to work on the goodie bags.  Step one-wash the fruit. Step two-find a place to open up all the goodie bags so they can be filled. Step three-line with choco­lates, candy canes, tea & cider bags, and fruit. Step four-place a gal­lon Ziploc bag in each bag to receive the baked goods as they come out of the oven. Step five-bake. Out comes the mixer, the pans, mea­sur­ing cups & spoon, the cool­ing racks and bowls that have not seen the light of day in at least 2 years.  Er… Step five-clean all the bak­ing uten­sils. Step six-bake.  I am good and do not eat a sin­gle choco­late chip cookie while I am pro­duc­ing them, but after that I sam­ple a lot of my stuff.  Need­less to say, I am maxed out on sugar. 

DH wakes to a house reek­ing of sugar at 4 in the morn­ing. He thought­fully asks, “Are you going to bed?” Wired to the gills on sugar, I quickly reply, “I am in the stretch — I only have to fin­ish up the rum balls, rice crispy treats and but­ter scotch haystacks…”  He wisely goes back to bed.  As for me I stay up until 6:30 AM; with the rum ball mix­tures cool­ing in the frige, and a load of dishes run­ning in the dish­washer I finally grab some Zs.  I wake to my alarm 4 hours later, fin­ish the rum balls, fin­ish clean­ing the kitchen and fin­ish wrap­ping the goodie bags.

The first round of goodie bags gets dropped off on my way to Art­bridge Thurs­days. DH and I deliver the remain­der on Christ­mas Eve.  The last batch finds us spend­ing a nice tra­di­tional Christ­mas evening with a bunch of Jew­ish peo­ple we know.  Go fig. We all sit around munch­ing on cold cuts, chips, dip, fruit, and of course my goodies. We talk amongst our­selves about every lit­tle thing, while 2 young girls go into sugar induced orbit, demand­ing atten­tion. Some alco­hol is involved, but not to excess.  We depart just after mid­night so I wish DH a Merry Christ­mas. We take the long way home view­ing Christ­mas lights.  I love Christ­mas lights.

Dur­ing our time with the Jew­ish friends, DH gets invited to go plink­ing on Christ­mas day.  So he gath­ers a cou­ple of guns and ammo, sets an alarm and the auto­matic drip cof­fee maker. He is gone by the time I arise.  It is lovely, just me, my cup of tea, my cats and the remote con­trol all to myself.  DH returns home and regales me with the tale of his plink­ing trip. 

Around 5 PM I started the Christ­mas ham with all the trim­mings.  My brother-in-law shows up after his 12-hour shift at the hos­pi­tal just as all the food is get­ting done and we all stuff our­selves, while watch­ing a per­fectly awful show on the SyFy channel. 

Do I get any Christ­mas gifts? It depends on how you look at it.  The annual Xmas Car­toon and let­ter goes out to 160 peo­ple; dur­ing the hol­i­days I make the rounds giv­ing the gifts of time and cama­raderie.  A few peo­ple may or may not get goodie bags in any given year.  I cer­tainly receive the joy­ful­ness of my friends as they “open” their Christ­mas gifts from me.  As for DH and me, I think we give our­selves what we need: A lit­tle time off, a lit­tle treat in the form or food or bev­er­age, the delight of watch­ing our crit­ters bound about, the plea­sure of friend­ship.  I enjoy the gift of Christ­mas very much.

Jake

Artist, AKAJake.com Come Expe­ri­ence the Art!

The art work in this blog is fed­er­ally copy­righted. All repro­duc­tion and pub­lish­ing copy­rights are retained by the artist. Images are not to be copied, re-distributed, imi­tated, derived OR oth­er­wise used in any form with­out the explicit writ­ten per­mis­sion of the artist.

Its like a super­nova some­times.  After I wrote my last bitchy blog, I sat down and did what I said what I was going to do.  I cre­ated and cre­ated and cre­ated for 4 solid days, from the moment I woke until exhaus­tion drove me to rest.

It was my annual foray into the silly sea­son, Xmas Demen­tia.  Nor­mally I wait until Turkey Day to do this par­tic­u­lar exer­cise, but given the trip to Flo­rence I need to get things done a lot sooner and so I did.  This sea­son I have done 14 new car­toons.  Its a record for me.  Very sel­dom do so many of my 20 or so ideas make it that far-usually its 1 or 2.  If I were to go back and look at my notes, I might find that sev­eral of these ideas have been “devel­op­ing”; I don’t know for sure as I hardly ever go back and look at things that I “kicked in the corner.”

I will be post­ing the new fun­nies in XmasDementia.com once my Xmas let­ter goes out.   I have enough for an entire gallery page in one shot.  It just feels good.

And now for a lit­tle taste of what is to come…

Santa Jaws — Xmas Demen­tia Car­toon by Jake Beckman

Yours in Art,

-Jake

Artist, AKAJake.com Come Expe­ri­ence the Art!

PS. I am still look­ing for Spon­sors & Con­tribut­ing Patrons to help me pay the esti­mated $8000 it is going to cost me to attend this event.  Every lit­tle bit helps.

The art work in this blog is fed­er­ally copy­righted. All repro­duc­tion and pub­lish­ing copy­rights are retained by the artist. Images are not to be copied, re-distributed, imi­tated, derived OR oth­er­wise used in any form with­out the explicit writ­ten per­mis­sion of the artist.