The Cupcakes I Made For My Office Holiday Party Fell Down An Elevator Shaft; And Other Holiday Pleasantries

I am really, really trying hard not to show my bah- humbug face but it seems like the Grinch has cast a dark cloud over me and even the magic of Christmas cannot make it go away.  I have been waiting for Tiny Tim to pop out and make everything all shiny and magical but there has been no such Christmas spirit in sight. It has been a difficult holiday season to say the least. I thought I had gone through a few early holiday snafus and I was headed back on track when I got a call from daycare, while I was offsite at one of my two office holiday parties. Emma has a fever. Those four words sent me spiraling back down my happy Christmas chimney so fast and I felt a lump of coal rise up in my throat.  After being sick a week earlier and missing two days of work, Emma was even more sick than before!  To top it off, right before the holiday party I decided to get my flu shot. Yes, great idea! An event that requires you to be lively and social when normally you sit in a cube and stare at a spongy cloth wall, I decide to inject myself with this “harmless” helper that ended up rendering me helpless to any sick childcare much less any holiday party socialization.

Of course I panicked that she had a fever but my previous experience with panicking and running her straight to the ER when she had a fever proved detrimental so my husband offered to get her and take her to the pediatrician. After the coast was clear and I didn’t have to panic (just a bad virus again), I settled into being sick at home with a sick baby. My husband was a great help and we made it through all of the middle of the night coughing fits and snot sucking screams fairly well. In the process however, we missed several more specially planned holiday events. If you recall, we missed out on going to the tree farm and now we missed out on our ugly Christmas sweater party (I had even found a ugly baby sweater  for Emma at the thrift store).

All the merriment I had left in my Christmas plans was going to my other office Christmas Party (the one I planned specifically for my smaller team). I needed it to go well. My husband was good enough to get a half day off on Tuesday, the day of the party, to be with Emma which gave me a few hours out of the house to set up and attend the beginning of the party. Needless to say everything that could go wrong did. The caterers were a half hour late preparing the food (that I called to check on the day before), the room we had reserved in the building had “otherwise been occupied” by another group whose holiday cheer did not include sharing, or even giving a damn that someone else already had the nice party room reserved, so after all of this chaos I could only manage to do what was within my power and grab the decorations and cupcakes I had so loving baked and frosted the night before. Of course being all sweaty and discombobulated from the previously stated atrocities (including having little sleep from being up with a sick baby), I was out of it and shoved everything onto an unstable push cart and raced toward the new party destination (the not so private, overly crowded cafeteria). As I ran to catch the elevator, the wheels on the cart got stuck in the slat at the bottom where the elevator connects with the floor and well ... the cupcakes did not make it. They flew through the air and landed all over the floor coming to a rest in the elevator shaft. So, I ended up literally scrapping the office Christmas party cheer off the floor of an elevator.  At this point I broke down and cried. I ended up not even returning to the party. I left humiliated and upset.

I guess my mommy strength is really being tested because I have yet to have one great holiday experience (excluding craft club quilting). I am trying desperately to have one happy experience for Emma on her first Christmas. In looking back, maybe spending all that time with her while she was sick was all she really wanted for Christmas. It was simple and uninterrupted time that was not a stressful event with massive potential for something to go wrong. There was no pressure to just sit on the floor and play with her. So maybe we both got what we really wanted for Christmas.