I can’t mess with tradition, can I?
God, these kids just keep getting bigger, and older, and what the hell it’s freaking me out.
Archive for Holidays
For the first time in my 34 years, I did not spend Christmas with my parents in Chicago.
While we are trying to raise a Jewish family, we still kept up the Christmas visit with my parents for the last number of years. It’s an awfully secular celebration in my family, anyways, so it didn’t feel like much of a conflict of interests. Or, at least, I really didn’t want it to feel like one.
Last year, though, it felt like it was. Mixed messages, fuzzy details with the kids. Everyone celebrates holidays and defines their identities in their own way, but all of a sudden, this really wasn’t working for us. Maybe it was the age, maybe it was not communicating effectively with my family. But regardless, it wasn’t working. And between the weird conflict over Santa Claus, and the complete chaos and messy family dynamics of large, divorced families at the holidays, I was sobbing last Christmas Eve with the realization that we needed to take a break.
I knew that it was the right decision to take a year off, but it still took me nine months to tell my parents we weren’t coming. What can I say? It’s complicated, and I was chicken-shit. Thankfully, everyone handled it well, and it did not seem to create the additional drama I had feared.
Still, it was bittersweet and a little melancholy to be in our quiet house, with no sign of Christmas or any of my dozens of relatives. It was the right decision, but that doesn’t mean it was without a touch of sadness. (That said, I did very much enjoy my first Christmas Day movie.)
Without the travel, we’ve also spent a little too much unstructured free time together at this point. Today was an extremely welcome change of scenery, with a day trip to Maine to play with our beloved Maria and family. Take bunch of friendly, outgoing kids and a couple of laid-back moms, add about eight inches of snow and a few pans of fresh cinnamon rolls, and you have an almost-redeemed winter vacation.
I am not going to win any awards for “making the most of our time together” this vacation. Not much to write home about, as they say. Personally, I’m glad to have my first non-Christmas quietly behind me. It was one of those shifts in the family dynamic that needed to happen, and I think we’ve all survived. It’s hardly a life-long boycott – we’ll probably go back again next year. But I’m glad we took the break.
M cooked the turkey.
Delicious. And, I’m glad they
didn’t start a fire.
I am embarrassingly lucky. Family, friends, home, support, comfort. There are days when things are hard. But man, big picture? Lucky, lucky, lucky. I can barely even put it into words.
Hoping everyone had a great day out there. Or, if a great day wasn’t meant to be, I hope the hard parts were manageable and brief. Hey, I get it. With family involved, sometimes life is just messy. If that’s more like the kind of day you had, hang in there, friend. I hope tomorrow brings calm.
Comments (2)
Categories : Holidays
Tags : haiku, Thanksgiving
Stink in the stairway.
I feared it was a dead mouse.
Nope. Burst sewer pipe.
Yeah, that’s exactly what you want to discover less than 48 hours before Thanksgiving. A cap popped off of the drain pipe in our basement. With the bathtub draining and dishwasher running, there was water (and, you know, stuff) gushing into the space under the stairs. So, so nasty.
Thankfully (?), it was in an area of our basement with a dirt floor, so the water drained out and there was no flooding. Even more thankfully, the plumbers came over first thing in the morning and had it fixed within an hour, while the kids and I grabbed breakfast at Starbucks.
Even MORE thankfully, the cleaning professionals we called came over and shoveled out the nastiness, sprayed it down with disinfectant, and said that it was so minor they didn’t even want to charge us. They left before M could chase them down with a big tip.
Happy Thanksgiving. I hope something really good comes to those guys.
Started cooking at noon.
Will finish Thursday evening.
So many dishes.
In the last decade, M and I have traveled once for Thanksgiving. It was before we even had kids, but it was enough to swear us off for a good long time. Flights are obscenely expensive, airports are mobbed, and all so we can spend about 48 hours before turning around? No thanks. I’d just as soon host the masses at my own house for the rest of my days.
And while cooking a huge meal for more than a dozen people is tiring and comes with its own stress, the truth is that I’m both a food snob and a control freak. So I think it’s better for all of us if I just do most of the cooking, OK?
If you’re wondering what I’m making:
- Fried turkey, Alton Brown
- Make-ahead turkey breast and gravy, The Bitten Word/Cook’s Country
- Best American Dinner Rolls, Cook’s Illustrated*
- Green Bean Casserole, Cook’s Illustrated* (my favorite dish of the entire night)
- Smashed Potatoes, Cook’s Illustrated*
- Cranberry Sauce, Cooking Light
Coming from other people:
- Apple-cranberry pie
- Salad
- Pumpkin cheesecake
- Stuffing
- Smoked turkey
Yeah. I’d say we’ll have plenty of food.
- – -
* I know, the Cook’s Illustrated website requires a subscription to see the full recipe, which is a pain in the butt. But I canceled my magazine subscription and got the website subscription instead, and I use it ALL the time.
The catalog came,
I didn’t throw it away.
Becca is smitten.
I know it’s a crazy empire of merchandising, but I decided not to fight it. I had my first American Girl doll when I was about nine years old, when it was just a mail-order catalog and not an insane phenomenon. I had the original Molly and Samantha, way back when. Good lord, I even had one of the fancy Samantha dresses for myself, which I wore in a family portrait with my brother and my dad. It is all big poofy sleeves and pink stripes and nine-year-old awkwardness, wrapped in a late-eighties bundle. I am just so grateful that I don’t have the photo in my possession right now.
Regardless, the holidays are coming and I know the grandparents are chomping at the bit for gift ideas. I think I know a certain grandfather who would be positively tickled to get this one for Rebecca. Hey, there are worse things. I’d take this over those awful Bratz dolls any day of the week.
Comments (3)
Categories : Holidays, Stuff, stuff, and more stuff
I do not envy
the kindergarten teachers
on November first.
Halloween was a hit. Daniel loved his handmade Jedi Luke Skywalker costume, Rebecca loved her Tiana dress, and Ellie could have cared less about the elephant costume I borrowed from a friend, and MOST DEFINITELY was not going to put the hat/hood part on, thankyouverymuch.
And here it is, November. Already! Ack!
It’s NaBloPoMo, and I think I’m going to try something a little silly. Instead of the pressure to do a Real Blog Post every single day, I’m going to make it a goal to post a haiku. Yes. A haiku. Because they crack me up. Maybe it’s all the Kit Kats talking, but there you have it. Sometimes the haiku will be accompanied by an actual post, sometimes some pictures. But I make no promises other than 17 syllables.
Please, feel free to comment in the poetic style of your choice.
I’m probably going to regret this when I come down from my sugar high, huh?
There are big stretches of time, it seems, when I have no idea what day it is, whether I’m coming or going, or practically where I am.
M was off work from the 4th of July until today. As lovely as it is to have him home, have extra hands and eyes, and everything else – it means we’ve been in a perpetual state of “what day is it” since then.
Ellie has been sick for most of that time. Not sure what – a nasty cold with a touch of ear or sinus infection? Regardless, she’s been a snotty, coughing, cranky mess for almost a week.
The big kids have been varying degrees of delightful and obnoxious, which is just how it goes.
I would have been totally ready for today to be Monday, to get back to our normal “routine” (whatever that means, right now). Except that, tomorrow morning, the kids and I are getting on a plane and heading to Chicago for a week. Which means that I’m running around like a crazy person doing last-minute errands, loads of laundry, and generally trying not to freak out.
It’s not that oh-woe-is-me my life is so bad right now. It’s not. It’s just tiring and chaotic and feeling a little directionless. Just chugging along with the necessities and the errands, and trying to remember to do something fun every now and then.
Sometimes I beat myself up about not doing enough “special” things. I get stuff done, sure. But I feel like I don’t do a good enough job making special memories and marking occasions. Case in point, the 4th of July. We really didn’t end up doing anything, except letting the big kids stay up late to watch the Boston Pops on TV.
I felt terrible about it, wished we had done something fun. But then again, we had gone to a carnival several days earlier, so I get points for that, right? On the 4th, it was hot as balls outside, and threatening thunderstorms. Ellie was sick and cranky and does not tolerate crowds and noise and late bedtimes well. As much as I wanted to do something special, I hadn’t planned anything ahead of time, and we still aren’t involved in our community well enough to have any idea what might be going on.
Alas. Maybe next year?
Comments (7)
No, really. I totally remembered to take the fifth consecutive year of DAD photos for Father’s Day. (See years 1, 2, 3, and 4)
Just because I did it THE MORNING OF and still haven’t picked up the prints to put in a frame for M… OK, look, I’m really not as on top of things as I used to be. Can I blame the fact that I have three kids? Sure. Why not. Frankly, I consider it a minor miracle that I got a shot of Ellie smiling with the “A” visible and facing the right way. She only kept it there for about two seconds at a time, mostly it was tossed behind her by the time I got back to the other side of the quilt with my camera. In the meantime, please ignore the bruise on Rebecca’s cheek and the scrape on Daniel’s nose. It’s been a rough-and-tumble phase in this house, what can I say. I’m calling it “documentary realism.” I could also call it “my amateur Photoshop skills would probably only make it look worse, so I should just leave it.”
At any rate, a late-night Happy Father’s Day to all of the literal and honorary dads out there. Most especially the very real one who lives in this house. We love him to pieces, we are grateful for everything he does, and we’re glad he enjoyed his banana bread and apple juice in bed this morning, even though we know he would have rather just stayed asleep for the entire day.
Comments (0)
Tags : father's day
It’s not that I really wanted to set my alarm for 5:45am on Mother’s Day. Hell, I don’t want to set it for that hour on any day, much less the day I am supposedly allowed to stay in bed and be lavished with attention (which has yet to happen in my 5 Mother’s Days to date).
But hey, if it means seeing my sister-in-law get married, I’ll do it.
Alright, so the hour was a little ridiculous – I had never before heard of a wedding at 8:00 on a Sunday morning. But the weather was lovely, the location was beautiful, and the event could not be beat.
In part to give them something to do during the ceremony (it’s not like we even had chairs to sit in – there were very literally 10 guests, three of whom were my children), the big kids had jobs to do. Rebecca held onto the bride’s bouquet, a practice run for her job as a “helping girl” (flower girl) at my stepsister’s wedding this summer.
And I was so sad when someone corrected Daniel’s pronunciation – I loved that he called himself the “ring barrier” (burier?) instead of ring bearer. I had visions of him running off and hiding the rings behind some kind of obstacle course. But indeed, both kids completed their jobs honorably.
Me? I was the unofficial wedding photographer. I think I did an acceptable job.
It may have been early, but it was a lovely way to spend a morning. And no matter what, I got to hang out with these knuckleheads. Thanks, my goofy ones, for making me your mom.
Got to pay the bills!
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NaBloPoMo – November 2011
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