It’s day two of Blogmas 2022 and, for me, things are off to a great start. I am really enjoying this holiday season and can’t wait for Christmas! Even though things are going well, life isn’t always perfect. Because of this, I wanted to talk about five things I’m not excited about this holiday season.

Earlier this year, I realized a lot of things have changed since last year. I realized favorite seasonal foods I loved to eat are not made with the same recipe they used to be. The food now includes ingredients I’m allergic to. In addition to this, there are some changes in my life that has made it difficult to enjoy this season the way I hoped I could after the pandemic. Even though I have a lot of frustrations and irritations this holiday season, and I’m talking about five of them in this post, I’m focusing on the happy parts of the holiday season and enjoy them more than complain about the not so happy parts.

And now, here are five things I’m not excited about this holiday season.

Store Bought Chocolates

To make a long story short, back during the recession of the 2000’s, I began to suffer from many problems with food allergies. This was odd because I never had problems with the foods before. After a lot of confusion, I discovered that, in order to cut costs, the food makers began to include ingredients that I am allergic to. These ingredients are cheeper than the old ingredients, but since there was no announcement about the recipe change, I ate the food without knowing the food contained ingredients I was allergic to.

The pandemic caused a recession, which made ingredients more expensive. This has ultimately caused yet another recipe change and the inclusion of more ingredients I’m allergic to. This year, I am officially on a no store-bought chocolate diet due to the allergies I have to the new ingredients. I’m not happy about this at all. I love eating chocolate truffles, and this is the only time of the year when I eat them. Now, I cannot eat them. No store bought peppermint bark. No hot coco powder. And those are the things I am certain I am allergic to. I’m sure there’s more, but I don’t know about them right now. This has also made gift giving hard for anyone who knows me and about my allergy.

 

How Far Away My Friends Live from Me

Speaking of people I know, all my friends have been moving. There are many reasons why this is happening, but I won’t go into that. (I don’t want to talk about their lives on a blog I run without their permission!) I’m happy they are moving (I didn’t like the area where the lived) but I’m not happy about how far away they are from me. Even though they are within driving distance of me, I have had vehicle problems since March. These problems have made me limit the amount of travel I did and still makes me wary of traveling far. I will do my best to see them, but between my vehicle problems and everyone’s busy lives, I won’t be surprised if the best we can do is meet at a shopping mall or other place to spend time with them.

 

Traffic

I live in Arizona. I like it, but there are many things I don’t like here. Even though you can’t have a perfect life, there are certain things that cause people to take a step back and say “Wow. That’s new… and I don’t like it!” One of these things is the huge amount of traffic. With so many people that moved into Arizona, traffic has been terrible. Even though I hated driving during the summertime, I always hate the winter, when winter visitors return to Arizona to live in an area with mild temperatures. Add to it the amount of new people in Arizona and you now know why I know I will hate the traffic in Arizona this holiday season!

 

No Room for A Christmas Tree in My House

I’m writing this post well before the day it is posted, but right now I have no room for a Christmas tree in my house. This is because I’ve been doing a huge (And I mean HUGE) declutter in my house. This declutter is too many years overdo, but I never got around to doing a major deep clean/declutter because my health problems prevented me from moving. In order to help my over all health, and get rid of things, I began decluttering my house months ago.

Right now, the living room is a mess. I like to use it as my base of decluttering operations, so there are more things piled up than there should be. Thanks to the mess I created, I don’t have the room for my big Christmas tree. I’m not sure when I will get around to completely finishing my decluttering, so I am planning on buying a small tree that can sit on a table. Even though the mess I made is temporary, I still wanted to get a small tabletop sized tree to add to my decorations. I will just be using it sooner and for a bigger reason than I originally intended it to be!

 

No Outdoor Christmas Decorations at My House

I won’t go into details about why this is so, but I will not be able to put up decorations outside my house. And I’m upset about it.

 

Well, that’s all for now! Thank you for reading

The featured image used in this post is one I took myself of Christmas decorations at a shopping mall. The photograph was taken in 2019.