Earl is of the age where she is on the absolute cusp of disbelief when it comes to Santa. Seven is such a weird age. Half of her friends at school no longer believe and are doing their darndest to ruin it for her, too. Little haters. They suck. The other half are still holding into the Santa thing with both fists, doing their best to plug their fingers in their ears and la-la-la-not-listening their way until Christmas, lest they be caught not believing and somehow be docked on Christmas morning. Those are the little Mulders – the little I Want to Believers.
These days, there’s not just the whole Santa rigamarole for parents to maintain (if they so choose, but we won’t get into the parents that refuse to perpetuate what the rest of us are trying to sell – they only make our jobs harder! (but if you’re reading this, I love you anyway)), there’s the damn Elf on the Shelf phenomenon.
Now, I’m absolutely not saying we need to ditch The Elf. The Elf is sometimes a total behavior savior. I get the best behavior our of Earl this time of year merely by invoking the name of our beloved scout elf, Pink. Hence the reason why, after a long ride home yesterday during which Earl went on and on and on and friggen ON about the elf, TechPapa and I didn’t bat an eye or catch a breath before sending her out with her friends while we dug up the elf in the attic.
At least, that was the plan.
(Yes, we should have dug it out before leaving town. Shut it.)
My friends, I give you the four most dreaded words to the mother of a Child on the Cusp:
“I hid him…somewhere.”
Meanwhile, Earl is running around like a chicken with her head cut off with two very excited friends all looking for her elf. Who we couldn’t find. TechPapa and I were slinging decoration boxes out of the attic left and right, frantically digging while trying to act like this incredible burst of activity after a five hour drive was completely normal and to be expected. What? Us? We’re not doing anything. We just decided to decorate for Christmas before we even unloaded the car. Keep looking. Nothing to see here.
Which was the problem. We could not find the elf!
I finally said to heck with the digging and the slinging and took off in the car to Books-a-Million to procure a NEW Elf on the Shelf. And in a moment of brilliance and simultaneous utter stupidity, I bought a girl elf because Earl had expressed her wishes that Pink (who is was a boy) be a girl. Great! Two birds with one stone! Replacement elf and elf of the preferred gender! Mom for the WIN!
Except, as I realized on the way home, Pink couldn’t just VANISH and be replaced by a new elf! How the heck was I going to explain THAT?
Cue frantic development of harebraned plan and recruitment of friends to help me carry out an insane scheme. I needed someone with neat, legible handwriting and proficient spelling skills to write a note from the Elf Reassignment Department explaining that Pink (who had been in sleep training because he kept oversleeping and forgetting to report to Santa last Christmas – an issue documented in last year’s letter from Santa) has been reassigned to a more suitable daytime position at the Toy Development and Deployment Department. He was very sad to leave his former post as Earl’s elf, but here’s this new girl elf to replace him! Hooray!
I immediately thought of Heather and TPO. Heather must have been unconscious or something because she wasn’t answering her texts, but TPO did, and, after I breathlessly explained the entire conspiracy, carefully detailing what I needed her to do, she did what any really good friend would do: She made me feel like a complete idiot: “I certainly don’t mind doing it, but wouldn’t a typewritten letter be, I don’t know, more official?”
Well, DUH.
So I unboxed our new elf, hid her in the car, consoled a sobbing Earl for an hour and a half over Pink’s forgetting her or not loving her and how now she didn’t have an elf or the Christmas Spirit because Pink always brought her Christmas Spirit, then once she was finally asleep, pulled up Photoshop to design an official looking logo and hatch my evil genius plan.
I am nothing if not an overly dramatic overachiever who specializes in overkill.
But she bought it! And she’s already named the new elf Julia (who, thanks to Pinterest, has some big ol’ plans for this holiday season).
Now we just have to make sure she doesn’t find the wayward Pink in a box of decorations somewhere. I’d hate to have to fake a coroners report stating he went to check on Julia’s progress and got trapped in a box of unfluffed garland and suffocated.
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