Whinypaluza Wednesday: Christmas is over?

Take 2. Happy Whiny Blues a Wednesday! Thank you for watching Whiny Blues a Wednesday! No! Start over!

You have to be in the camera first.

Oh my gosh! Sing the song or go away! Thank you for watching! No! We're starting over! What are you doing?

You gotta say, "Welcome!" No need to whine! No need to whine! You gotta sing the right song!

No need to whine, it's Whiny Blues a Wednesday! Have some wine and join us on Whiny Blues a Wednesday with the Green Family!

Need some real wine.

I have some. Oh, right next to me.

Conditions you work under, Ella. Slave driver over here.

You were not singing the right song.

You're starting over from the beginning, not the end.

Okay, so let me see.

Don't eat the wine yet. There comes Max. Max is going to do it.

Oh my gosh, you should see Ella's face. Okay, Max, Max, please stop. Okay, we are trying this again.

Take 2.

So the first one was on my phone.

Yes.

And it was totally fuzzy, the audio. So now we're on Seth's phone.

Yes.

And we're doing this all over again.

That's right, instant replay. Oh gosh, and the light is right on my glasses, so I'm— I have glowing eyes. You always said my eyes sparkle.

Can you please take the glasses off? That does not work. That does not work.

I have super cool contact lenses, right?

Okay, honey, let's try this again.

Focus.

Let's focus.

Christmas is over?

So I'll try not to laugh during the whole thing. So the title of the blog is Christmas is Over? And Seth added the question mark which was the perfect touch to this blog.

Awesome.

Which we're gonna talk about.

Yes.

So maybe you're happy Christmas is over, maybe you're sad that Christmas is over, maybe you're relieved. Which one are you? Let us know.

Type it in the mess— in the chat.

I am relieved.

Yes.

I'm gonna tell you part of why I'm relieved, and then I'm gonna tell you my coping skill with Christmas. So everywhere I go, people wanna know, for the last month, over a month, it is like Christmas has thrown up all over the place.

That's a wonderful way to put it.

Um, I love Christmas. I am, I'm hoping you all had a wonderful Christmas, but you know as well as I know that everywhere you walk there are Christmas things, and for me I would look for Hanukkah things and I would find a little section of Hanukkah stuff and I would say, it's okay, just be happy that they have some Hanukkah stuff.

A section at all? See, honey, I thought you said size doesn't matter.

So I was like, don't be upset that it's a small section, be happy that there is a section.

There's no Kwanzaa section.

So my coping strategy with Christmas, and Seth pointed out that he thinks that it was harder for me this year because Hanukkah was so much earlier this year. Which—

yeah, so you had all this time by yourself with no holiday for us to feel left out, as opposed to if they intersect, then you're not paying attention to everybody else as much.

Yeah, I like it much better when Hanukkah and Christmas, um, coincide.

Yes.

So my coping strategy— Seth doesn't love my coping strategy.

I disagree.

So I like to join in the fun. If something is fun, then I want to do it. So if you're going to make a gingerbread house, I want to make a gingerbread house. If you're going to wear an ugly sweater, then I want a Hanukkah sweater.

That does not seem like a tradition that would be a good idea to copy. I'm gonna make a beautiful sweater.

If you're gonna put up Christmas lights—

who came up with ugly Christmas?

I want to put up lights. So I want to talk to you about the ugly sweaters. So school had a theme week week, and one of the days was Ugly Sweater Day. Well, I want you to know that we do not get the heads up, and maybe we do and I just didn't know, but I went to many stores looking for Hanukkah sweaters, and guess what?

There's not that many.

There weren't any.

So Hanukkah sweaters for us—

I was even looking for— I was like, maybe there's a blue sweater, maybe there's a Christmas sweater that isn't very Christmassy that I won't get yelled at about. Maybe, maybe there's something that I can buy my children for school, but there was nothing. So for next year, we're going to order in advance to be ready. I'm going to order us all Hanukkah sweaters.

Well, you can order them Hanukkah sweaters.

I want to get us all matching ones.

Oh my God, Beverly Goldberg has possessed my wife! Do not want an ugly Hanukkah sweater.

Okay, well, what if I buy you one anyway? What if our holiday card is Hanukkah sweaters?

We got nice Hanukkah pajamas a couple years ago. We do not need—

so the Hanukkah Pajamas are okay. So no Hanukkah sweater. Oh my gosh. So no Hanukkah tree either.

There's not a— that is not a thing.

Okay, no such thing. So I want you to know that if you go online and type in Hanukkah tree, stuff will come up.

I could go online and type in anything and it would come up. Google doesn't not index something.

I think they're pretty. And my friend's mother, who is very Jewish—

apparently not—

has a Hanukkah tree.

That's not my problem. Just because she has it doesn't mean I gotta get one. And why am I copying their ideas? Why don't I come up with my— I'll get a Maccabee something or other.

Well, we do have pretty menorahs.

Thank you. They don't— they can copy us.

I could collect menorahs instead of ornaments. We do.

Are you gonna put— we have like 3 or 4 menorahs. Where do you think you're putting them?

Okay, anyways, I'm going totally off topic. Okay, so the theme that I heard from mothers is that they weren't getting stuff done and things weren't getting done. And I feel like we put these imaginary bucket lists out to put pressure, and it puts pressure on ourselves. So I used to do a summer bucket list, and I used to feel a lot of pressure to get everything accomplished on the bucket list. Seth would tease me, and he would say, what's left on the bucket list?

Yeah, we gotta cross it off, hurry up, we only got 14 days left, what do we gotta squeeze in?

He would totally come home and be like, what's left on the bucket list?

What do we got to do today to make you feel happy?

And it felt like I was putting this like self-imposed pressure on myself. I got rid of the summer bucket list and my summers have been much better. Have you noticed that?

Yes, you are much more relaxed.

So the Christmas bucket list, I feel like you have these imaginary Christmas bucket lists. Bake do a gingerbread house, bake 50 different kinds of cookies, make a gingerbread house, make homemade gifts, deliver gifts to teachers, deliver gifts to neighbors.

Um, you gotta order everything, you gotta wrap it.

I have to wrap everything perfectly.

You gotta have a celebration.

I have to go see Christmas lights with my family. And you list out all of these things and put this pressure on yourself, and I want to tell you that it doesn't have to get done. It's like, do you want to do it? There are two ways of looking at it at this point. What did we say? It's the 30th.

Today?

December 30th? No, December 29th.

It's the 29th.

It's the 29th. Everybody's off. No, students are off.

Yes.

Teachers are off.

Yes.

If you're working, I'm sorry. Seth is working. Seth is working. But You still have time. You still have time to do whatever you want to do. You still want to bake cookies? Go bake cookies. You still want to make a gingerbread house? There's time. Or the other way of looking at it is it didn't get done, and that's okay. So there's two ways to look at it. Yes, at least, right? And it's good enough, whatever you did. Yes, I promise you. And The teacher is not waiting for the homemade gift. The neighbor isn't waiting for your baked cookies.

No, she came over the other day and knocked on the door and said, "You guys are slacking. Where's my Christmas present? Even though I only see you, talk to you a couple times a year." Oh my gosh. She was waiting. I didn't get any fruitcake. Nobody sent me fruitcake. I'm very disappointed.

I was not expecting gifts from anyone. I was expecting gifts.

You were— you wanted Christmas cookies.

I told him, I told him that nobody brought me Christmas cookies.

You're gonna be okay.

I don't, I don't need Christmas cookies. I really do not need to eat more cookies. Um, my friend did bring me beautiful Hanukkah cupcakes. Those were delicious, which were wonderful. And people did show up with stuff, but I wasn't expecting it. I don't think people are expecting as much as you think. Yes, and the reason why it's Christmas is over with a question mark is that there's still time if you still have things left that you need to do.

There's no Christmas police.

I posted today that I thought that I was finally done. I ordered my last presents. Um, my father's slippers didn't fit, so I got him something else today. I got out my last cards today. I, I did not do a ton of cards at one time.

She didn't binge the cards.

I didn't.

This is a first in the greenhouse.

No, no, no. I think I do this a lot. I definitely think that I sent them out in chunks.

But there was a time when you did like 100 or whatever all at once for hours and hours and did not sleep until they all, they all had to get done.

I didn't do that.

You did not.

I did send out more cards today. Awesome. I did send out thank you cards today. I still have another thank you card, but, um, I did find a gift in the dining room that I didn't give my mother, so I'm not quite done. I thought I was done. I do— I do have one more present that I need to drop off to my mother that I found today. That's an oops. I did buy that for her like over a month ago because it was way before Hanukkah when I found it. Wait, when I ordered it, way before— no, I found it at a store. So it was, it was way before Hanukkah when I found it.

It got lost in the—

and it got— it was in a bag in the dining room.

Oops.

So ask yourself important questions. Ask yourself, do I want to do this? Do I have time to do this? What do I realistically have time for? What do I really want to do? What can I let go of? Ask your family. This is the perfect time to have a family discussion about the holidays. How did it go? What went well? What didn't go well? What do you want to do the same next year? What do you want to do different next year? This is the perfect time to evaluate, and I want to tell you that your kids are not going to remember what you didn't do. They're going to remember that you spent time with them over the holidays. And the time with our family is what really, really matters. And if I ask my kids what, what I bought them last year, they don't know. I bet you they don't remember, but they'll tell me about the family time.

Yes, like the family time we went recently, a couple days ago, to go see Christmas lights. It was very memorable. It is on TikTok. It has like 18,000 views. Go find Miney Palooza Mom on TikTok. It will instant pick me up, instant change your mood, instant bring a smile to your face. Go check it out.

I did drag my family to see Christmas lights. I did not go on Christmas Eve like I had planned because I was exhausted.

Yes.

And Seth said, I thought we were gonna go see Christmas lights, and I said, I'm too tired. And guess what? We don't have to push ourselves. We went a different night.

Yes.

I did drag them. Lily wanted to go. Seth and Ella didn't want to go. Max got off the hook.

He was allowed to say no. If I was allowed to No, you—

so you don't want to go? You don't have to go. Me and Lily can go.

I don't think that's a good idea. There needs to be some balancing energy in that car.

So Lily lost an earring when we went to see Christmas lights, and she was talking about this earring the entire time that we were driving because she watched— and in the video, I literally laughed a little too hard, let's put it that way.

So she watched a video of Kim Kardashian losing an earring and being very upset, so she had to copy her and be very upset over and over and over again, saying the same words that were not relevant to our situation.

So it was amusing.

Go check it out on TikTok.

I do love Christmas lights.

Yes, you do.

And there's still time if you didn't get to go. There's still time. They're still up. So this Friday on my podcast is Dr. Crombie, and she specializes in children and adolescent anxiety. So she is like the perfect person for us to listen to and learn from. She wrote two books, Stop Worrying About Your Anxious Child and Stop Worrying About Your Anxious Teenager, is what I think they are. Yeah, I have them. She sent them to me. I can't wait to read them. So you're going to want to listen to her, and the January challenge is going to start in my Whining Palooza Mom group on Facebook. So come find me. And Seth, created. Seth, tell them your other exciting news. The—

well, it's your exciting news.

It's my exciting news.

The Winey Palooza app is now live in the Apple App Store. So search Winey Palooza in the App Store. It looks like a big pink WP, uh, there's all— it is free. There is all kinds of awesome content in there, including one of your inspiring marriage courses. So please go to the Apple App Store if you have an Apple device. Google is coming. Go get an Apple App Store, go in it, get Winey Palooza, download it. We'd love a 5-star rating and a review would be super helpful.

Are you gonna sing us out, Lil? So Seth spent hours and hours and hours building this app, so thank you, honey, very much.

You are welcome.

Um, you are definitely a magician.

Thank you.

And I appreciate my app, and I appreciate you doing this for the second time.

Yes.

So we are going to go listen to it and see if the audio is better.

Yes, hopefully you all heard us.

Thank you for watching Winey Blues on Wednesday with the Green Family.

Cha-cha chicken!

Thank you everyone, have a wonderful week, have a wonderful New Year's. Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!