A Hard Life

As the Christmas season is fast approaching, I'm reminded of a funny Holly thing from a few years ago. At the tender age of 6, Holly and I had been having a discussion about how "hard" I was on her. :-) You know, all that making her pick things up and keeping her room from being declared a disaster area is just beyond what a child of 6 should be expected to do. I, ofcourse, was greatly amused by this since she actually lives quite a cushy life and has no idea what "hard" is. Holly informs me that I just don't understand and that she wished I could live her life for one day so that I could see how hard her life really was. I think she stomped away at that point but it was hard to tell through tears of laughter. This was right before Christmas and on Christmas Eve, Jack and I do the Santa thing and I fill his and the kids' stockings and he fills mine. Well, this year Jack decides to be funny. Holly fully believed in Santa at that point (she still does actually) and knew that you did not want to wake up and see coal in your stocking. At that time, she also thought that Santa filled all our stockings, mine and Jack's included. So Christmas morning we're infront of the tree opening presents and we start to get into the stockings. In the top of mine is this crudely wrapped hunk of something. Jack is about to pee his pants holding in laughter so I know something is up with this "package". All eyes are rivited on me as I unwrap this massive chunk of..... COAL!!! and Holly's eyes go as wide as saucers. She gets this solomn look on her face and says "See mom, I told you that you were being too hard on me". Jack (I still want to kick his behind for that) is just dying with laughter and I'm not about to let Holly continue to think that Santa gave me coal so I tell her that Daddy was just "trying" to be funny and that he put the coal in there. "But I thought that Santa put the things in our stockings" (Oh Jack, you are a dead man) "Yes honey, he does but Daddy snuck in here this morning and put the coal on top. Santa didn't really give Mommy coal" (Stupid Jack) Thankfully she finally believed me, probably helped along by the fact that Jack was still laughing like a hyena. I still need to think of a good way to get back at him.