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'Twas the Night before the Yankee Swap...
Enjoy this extended excerpt and discover Marie's secret source for the best (?) Yankee Swap gift. Shopping for a Yankee Swap releases tomorrow.
Preorder your copy today ~ this is one gift that does not have a "Do Not Open Until Christmas" label ;) .
Shannon
If there is one thing you need to know about my mother, it's this: She's generous with advice, information, and product recommendations. Especially the advice.
But she's stingy as can be when it comes to her Yankee Swap secrets.
Until my cat and her dog nearly burned the house down on Christmas, the annual Yankee Swap was Mom's time to shine. A weird tradition in its own right, it tends to be the province of weirdos. I mean, who came up with the idea to bring the craziest gift possible, have people pick numbers out of a hat, and then systematically steal the most prized gift from each other?
You have to have a sense of humor and be a bit of a sadist–and a holiday one at that–to enjoy such a ritual.
And “funny eclectic sadist” has my mother written allll over it.
While Declan is up north with Dad, Tyler, Jeffrey, and Andrew, getting wreaths and finding his special tree, I left Ellie with our nanny, Mia, for a day of shopping with Mom. Being married to a billionaire has its financial perks, so you'd think we'd spend the day on Newbury Street, but no.
We're at a recycling center in Framingham, staring at a tangled ball of rescued Christmas lights. It’s so big that it looks like a mutant cat from outer space hacked it up as a giant plastic green hairball.
We're in the back of this huge warehouse, a place open to the public, part of an enormous complex. Junkyard isn't the right term for how Funicularelli's Salvage Yard works. You can dump your junk off here for a fee, or bring working, usable items and drop them off for free. Whatever they can sell, they do, placing it all in a huge showroom floor-like space, where nothing has a price on it.
That's right.
You haggle.
See that gleam in Mom's eye? Her middle name is Haggle.
Marie Haggle Scarlotta Jacoby is in her element.
“Mom?” I call out. Apparently, I've lost her in the lawn chair aisle, where a mountain of cheap plastic chaises have folded themselves into an organized favela, complete with union reps and a water filtration plant. No joke: The pile of chairs is at least two stories high.
“I'm over here!” A hand appears above a rattan curio cabinet that looks like something out of the TV set for Three's Company.
“What're you doing?” She's bent over, on her belly, rolling on what looks like a giant barrel on its side, with plastic spikes poking out of it.
“Remember these? Cellulite Buster!” She sings a jingle no self-respecting advertising person would write, but the kind that haunts their nightmares. Rolling onto her back, she sits up, rocking forward, pushing her ample tushie into the spikes. “Mmmmm,” she moans. “My glutes are killing me after Jason woke me up this morning for some nookie.”
“MOM!”
She scoffs, closing her eyes, rocking to some 1970s disco song she begins to hum. “Oh, please. As if you and Declan didn't get it on. When they have to get up at 4 a.m. for something, the morning wood must be appeased, especially if they're not headed to work with their brains full of job stuff.”
I start to argue but snap my mouth shut.
Because she's not wrong.
And now I feel guilty it didn't happen this morning.
“You are three seconds away from a public indecency charge on that thing, Mom.”
“Give me five and I'll have an experience even better than the one your father gave me this morning.”
I press the ball of my foot against the roller and shove hard enough to make her stand quickly, forced to use her yoga-teacher reflexes. I used to wonder how old Agnes could be so crude. What could make an elderly lady have such a dirty mind?
Now I know.
Dirty old ladies don't become that way. They just are.
“I am not leaving Ellie with a nanny all day just for you to embarrass me nonstop in public.”
Confusion fills her eyes. “Then why did you come shopping with me?”
A bald dude wearing a dirty blue t-shirt with the salvage yard's logo–a dumpster with a heart on it and the words We Rescue the Junk in Your Trunk!–passes us, pushing a huge cart loaded with bags of what appear to be stuffed animals. One wheel on the cart gyrates like a dying fish on the beach.
“Ooo, is there a Mickey Mouse in there?” Mom asks.
“You always told me used stuffed animals are nothing but vectors for lice.”
“That's true for everything but Yankee Swap.”
... Read the rest on my blog and find retailer links.
Shopping for a Yankee Swap coming 12.23.20. Find your retailer and preorder so it's in your account tomorrow. <3
All the best,
Julia
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