The Stand In.....

Crisis averted......she totally fell for it.....or at least she pretended to.

This is how it all went down.....

I stopped at TJ Maxx on the way home and grabbed this way cute little elf. There's a whole lotta cuteness to match it that I wanted to buy too, but this is one broke bitch, and the elf was a necessity.

I got home and said to the girl, "I got the weirdest voicemail today at work. It said.....Collect call from the North Pole, press 1 to accept". Keep in mind that I am the WORLD'S WORST liar. This was no small feat for me. The girl was all, "MOM!!! That coulda been Little Jimmy callin' to explain why he ain't here on time, and YOU missed the call!"......

"Ain't no way it can be this easy" I thought. There is NO way the girl's fallin' for this shit. She calls me out on EVERYTHING and she don't do it subtly. She all bob's her head and holds up that one finger sayin' she ain't no dummy.....she's always on to me. It was really strange how she was just fallin' for it all.....

So, once I was certain she was fast asleep, I pulled out stand-in elf (which I named Pistu (peestoo) after a boy's imaginary friend in a book I recently read), got a piece of paper and started to think of what to write for an explanation as to why this freakish lookin' elf is here in place of Little Jimmy.

I feel that any time you can teach a kid a lesson, you should., so I could come up with somethin' that could learn the kid somethin'. You know, somethin' that the girl would think "wow, if it can happen to one of Santa's elves, it can happen to ANYONE!"

Hmmm.....

Little Jimmy had one too many at the good ol' North Pole bar and was in a drunk drivin' accident that luckily he survived, but just barely so he's in the hospital until he heals and once he does he's goin' to jail......

Little Jimmy fell prey to an online stalker that had finally convinced him to meet him in person.......

Little Jimmy took some drugs an elf friend gave him and has been hallucinating and pickin' at his face for the past 3 weeks and lost his job because of it.......

Ok, so maybe usin' a Christmas Elf to teach some sorta lesson ain't the best idea I've ever had. Obviously, the girl wants to believe in this whole elf that reports to Santa nightly thing so much that she's goin' along with all my lies. There ain't NO WAY in hell she doesn't know what's really up. No way! So if the kid wants to believe in magic and fantasy who the hell am I to ruin it for her with stories of drunk drivin', internet pervs or drugs? She can just go right on believin' because I ain't gonna be the one to fuck it all up for her......well, at least not until she gets into middle school anyhow.

So the story goes.....Little Jimmy's ol' lady Aimee had their first baby so Lil' Jim couldn't make it. He's sorry and hopes the kids won't be too disappointed. Yeah. So goes the story.

Now, I'm totally not a mornin' person. I just wanna do what I gotta do and not be looked at or talked to. I knew this mornin' though that the girl was gonna have some talkin' to do havin' seen this new stand-in. I had to gear myself up for it.

I walk into the kitchen and the second the girl hears me she yells, "MOM! I know what that call you got at work yesterday was about!" I say "call? what call?". She says, "you know the one that was from the North Pole! Come see! He looks weird! It's a different elf! Come see! There's even a note!" I ask what the note says.....she says "I dunno, I can't read cursive yet!". I grumble and stomp....just a little.....and head towards the livin' room tyrin' to pretend I'm as shocked and as excited as she is. Did I mention that I'm totally not a morning person?

Crisis averted.