Yesterday was my last day at the office for the next two weeks. I was feeling slightly fatigued as the cup of coffee I inhaled at 5am was wearing off. I decided to visit the coffee shop downstairs, so I grabbed my wallet and walked to the elevator.

As I waited for the elevator, thoughts swirled inside my head. Random thoughts such as the list of all the things I had to do before Christmas Eve, to why jelly shoes aren’t in style anymore.

I LOVED  jelly shoes.

The doors to the elevator opened and I lifted my head to enter. The shock of the image standing before me scared me in such a way that I yelped and took a step back. Not gracefully, but clumsy… in which I ended up tripping over my own feet.

It was the Mall Santa Claus.

He laughed, not in the HO! HO! HO! way you would have imagined, but a deep hoarse laugh. I walked in, embarrassed, assuring myself that this was not the real Santa Claus. He couldn’t stop laughing, commenting that I was like one of the kids he sees on a daily basis during this time of the year. I asked about his accent as it wasn’t from the North Pole, but it had a southern twang, like Willie Nelson on tinsel heroin.

Santa is from Georgia, ya’ll.

As we walked off the elevator together, Santa still chuckling, he turned back around and said, “You have a Wonderful Christmas, Jaime!”

I walked in the coffee shop, ordered my skinny vanilla latte and as I was waiting for my coffee…the realization hit me like a ton of holly. 

I never told the mall Santa my name.

Tingles shot through me and I told the barista what had happened.

Could it be? Could it be that the man in the elevator who smelled like Old Spice and cigars was THE SANTA CLAUS? How else would he know my name?

The barista watched me as I took money out of my wallet and she snickered. She tapped me on my hand and said, “Um, Jaime,  your wallet has the sticker JAIME on it.”

And just like that… the images of the magic of Christmas deflated and I had proven once again that the world of Jaime is a world of fairies and unicorns who all wear jelly shoes and know each other by their first names.

It is a beautiful world, indeed.

Happy Holidays!

A couple of weeks ago, Eden Marie came home from school excited about Hanukkah. At the kids’ school, they learn and celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa. It was Hanukkah that caught her attention. For the last couple of weeks this is all we have heard about.

The entire episode did not escape my attention, as in the past couple of years I’ve been drawn to certain aspects of Judaism. In my spiritual walk, I was lead to www.larryhuchministries.com and started to read the Bible in a different way. I started to learn more about this Jewish Jesus rather than the Protestant Jesus I was brought up with.

As I do with everything, I started asking questions. Why do we as Christians not celebrate the holidays that Jesus Himself celebrated? Why are we ignoring the blessings that God wants us to take? And why aren’t more churches teaching this?

If you’ve been a reader of my blog since the beginning of my AOL days, you will know I am fighting to not become complacent in my spiritual walk. I want to be open-minded and am always searching to strengthen my relationship with God.

Tonight, we went to a Hanukkah celebration downtown, only to leave because my husband was uncomfortable. I was a little sad about this because it was a nice celebration and Eden Marie was telling us what everything meant. It would have been a great learning experience had we stayed.

We came home and lit the first candle on the menorah we bought for the children. Eden Marie instructed us on what to do. And if you’ve forgotten…she’s five years old and wants to be a Princess Mermaid when she grows up.

My husband decided to go upstairs and not participate. He would later make his little jokes about his wife being fundamental.

And when I say fundamental, I mean not so much fun, a lot of duh, and just mental.

When I told him this, (my little joke about being a fundamental) he laughed and said, “I never said you weren’t any fun.”

Happy Hanukkah, Internet.

Last week, after three years of incessant begging on my part, my husband and I adopted a three and a half month old puppy. His name is Chewbacca, but we call him Chewy.

Chewy is a bubble of precious joy and loves to have his belly rubbed. He is doing pretty good on house training, going to the back door when he needs to go out. I’m not that familiar with puppies, so the first time the puppy got this huge amount of energy and ran from the living room to the dining room barking and howling OVER AND OVER again…I got upset. Did we get a demonic dog? Oh great, we finally get a dog, and I get one that is possessed.

Instead, my husband looks around and says, “Who gave this dog crack?”

And all four kids yelled in unison, “NOT ME!” 

So I’m happy to say our precious puppy is not demonic, but just an avid crackhead.

I love this dog.

Internet: Meet Chewbacca ‘Chewy’ Chase.

Overheard when I was in the food court at the mall. I’m in line for a Bee Buster smoothie with an extra shot of Vitamin C when I overhear two guys in front of me talking about myths and legends. The conversation went from Unicorns and Dragons to Santa Claus…as conversations tend to do. 

“And this guy that we tell our kids to believe in? Well, where I come from if a big fat guy breaks into my house with a bag of toys, we don’t call him Santa Claus. We call him a pervert and then we beat the heck out of him…and keep the toys.”

“Is it possible to have four kids and feel like your biological clock is ticking?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Sometimes I wake up in the middle night and feel like my biological clock is ticking.”

“Jaime. That’s your bladder.”