I know that my days of regular blogging are long past, but I still want to blog.  Even if no one reads it.  I think I was less angry when I was blogging regularly.  Or perhaps I was just less angry when I was younger.

I always struggle this time of year.  I don't think i struggled with the holidays in my younger, Jewier years, when the Christmas/Hanukkah season meant new socks and a $10 watch, followed by dinner in a Chinese restaurant and a movie on Christmas Day.  There weren't any expectations because, well, there weren't any expectations.

But now, having been part of a multi-religious family for some time, I feel the stress of the holidays.  The stress isn't self-imposed so mush as external.  The mad rush of people knocking over my kid when I'm trying to buy a box of band-aids at Target, the people piling goods into their arms when I'm trying to smell lotions with my kids at Bath & Body Works -- these all create huge amounts of stress.  I've tried to brush it off by doing all of my shopping online, but I'm still surrounded by it everywhere I go.  Adding to that is the stress of my increasing conservatism.  When I read interviews of people who say how they're struggling this year and don't know if their houses will be foreclosed, so they've cut their Christmas spending down from $1000 a person to $600 a person, the aneurysm that I'm sure is lodged in my left temple throbs.  I am lucky to have a good job and no current financial woes.  I get that, and I do not take that for granted for even a minute.  But we had our period when I had $100,000 in student loans and we were making $17,000 a year, and you know what?  Our Christmas was limited to $20 each and we ate a lot of BOGO spaghetti.  So while I'm not one of those liberals who grow up, make money, and think that paying taxes is anti-American, I also think people need to help themselves first.  This is the same way I think that companies who made their money selling gas guzzling cars that are sub-par to every Honda I've ever owned should have to pay for their executive decisions and not demand that I bail them out.  I pay ridiculous sums of money to the federal government every year, and I want that money to go to something or someone that matters, and not to fund the next Escalade. 

Rant out.