Well, today’s entry for Monday is going to be boring as shit because:

(a) I was not been feeling well this morning, to put it politely. Not a hangover (I swear, no headache), just kinda sick to my stomach for no good reason. This is something that happens to me fairly frequently when I have to wake up early, but for once I didn’t have to go to work feeling like that. Huzzah there. It usually wears off sometime in the afternoon, but today it took longer than usual.

(b) I was supposed to go get the oil changed with Mom’s favorite mechanic, but nobody answered the phone today so she guessed they were closed. Ah well, I wasn’t exactly in the mood to move today anyway.

(c) Mom got talked into helping somebody move today, which is about as thrilling as you’d expect, but at least I didn’t have to go do it.

(d) The TV here has decided to break. As far as I can tell it may be something with the lamp (google “Panasonic TV blinking red light” gets a lot of results), but beyond that I have no idea. Mom didn’t believe me when I told her on the phone, so she’ll have fun when she sees for herself. (She did. Didn’t believe me, tried all the same things I did, called Panasonic and got automated recordings, and finally caved in to ask Pat via text at 10-something at night.)

(e) I left my car at Mom’s house because the last two times I have been over there it’s been at like 8 p.m. and the car is frozen over and I have not been in the mood to deal with that. So no going to the movies today or well, anywhere once the quease wore off.

So sadly, no new Hallmark movies for me today. Darn it. I have written a few reviews to post if I have another dull day of stuff I saw on Christmas or earlier, though. I tried to write some things ahead of time since I found out the owners of the house return on the 31st and thus I won’t have Internet at the end of Holidailies and will have to post ahead of time.

Okay, I need to give you something more to read about, so let’s talk more Hallmark. I’m going to mention this link as worth reading. It mentions “Christmas Under Wraps,” the Christmas cookie movie, selling nostalgia, losing all those small town jobs, and of course, Trump.

And also, after watching “My Christmas Love” (something a lot of us did, I found out Christmas Day), if you were wondering how much all of that shit cost to rent... I wanted to know that woman afforded all of that, even if she didn’t buy new birds and whatnot daily.

Okay, just for fun once my brain kicked in around late afternoon and after having a nap, I decided to do the math on how much THIS mom spent, using the PNC Christmas Price Index when relevant and looking up costs myself when not. Note that the index says this is the current cost for one set of each of the gifts given in the song and I abide by the index where the movie stuck to actually buying those items (they did cheat a few).

1: PNC costs $209.99 for a partridge in a pear tree.
2. PNC costs $375 for two turtle doves.
3. PNC costs $181.50 for three French hens.
(No indication on how much cages and birdseed cost.)
4. On the show they used these birds as far as I can tell, so buying four of those came to $47.80. Shipping would be involved, but I’m going to skip shipping costs since hell if I know how much it costs to ship to an imaginary town in Canada.
5: PNC costs $750 for 5 gold rings.
6: On the show they bought three large pillows with geese on them. I did not find the exact pillows on the show, but these from Zazzle with two geese on them apiece came to $94.05 for three pillows.
7. On the show they bought a bottle of swan-labeled wine. I found 7 Swans-A-Swimming beer, which they no longer sell, darn it. On the show they seemed to have ONE bottle of wine with a swan mentioned on it. The best I could do looking online was this, which cost $10.99 if you can find it. So, let’s go with $10.99 for the time being.

After this, we’re just renting humans as chattel. Note that the humans had TWO days of rentals (because they all showed up again at the finale) rather than renting maids for five days, pipers for two, etc. so I’ll change the math for those.

8. 8 milkmaids cost $58. But since they were booked on the finale as well, that’s $116.
9. 9 dancing ladies costs $7,552.84 on this index (yikes! that doesn’t sound right), so doubled that’s...$15,105.68. Even worse.
10. 10 lords-a-leaping, HOWEVER YOU FIND THE PRICE OF THESE, costs $5,508.70 on the index, so doubled that’s $11,057.40. Note that in the movie the girl blows off watching the lords, who are left alone in the driveway to leap alone on the day 10. What a waste of money!
11. 11 pipers costs $2,708.40, doubled that’s $5,416.80.
12. 12 drummers, only rented for the last day, costs $2,934.10.

So my math FOR THE GIFTS ALONE, not counting the van rental, random singers that I don’t know how to price, and whatever other service costs that organization charged the dying woman...it comes to $36,299.31 in American money--hell if I know what she paid in Canadian since they seem to be living in Canada.

Moral of the story: KIDS, THIS IS WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR ENTIRE INHERITANCE. YOUR MOM SPENT HERSELF BROKE SENDING RANDOM DANCERS AND BIRDS TO YOUR DAD. (This is assuming she even had any money left after chemo and medical treatment....well, maybe in Canada she wasn’t destitute.) Most of which I don’t think he was even in the house to see because your daughter thought they were all for her.

The More You Know!

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