Making Christmas

This year, my goal is to put some effort into Christmas again. Holidays aren't difficult for us anymore, but during the two or three years when they were, I got into the habit of doing the bare minimum, and then inertia took over and I never bothered to ramp back up.

On top of that, for a couple of years now G has been in the Preteen Killjoy phase that most of us went through at the same age, during which you don't want to do anything that might be remotely embarrassing or make you look childish. (She was mortified that her school had "Santa's Village" out in the quad last week, until I said "They don't actually think you believe in Santa, it's for fun. Remember fun? That thing you'll have again once you're old enough not to worry that someone will think you're immature?") This eliminated most of our traditional leading-up-to-Christmas activities, such as visiting Santa, riding the Polar Express train, making snowman crafts out of cotton balls, etc., and made it even harder to get in the Christmas mood--a condition that a friend of mine described last year as "lack of Christmas foreplay."

With these things in mind, this year I'm taking a combined approach of:

1. Not being a lazy slug. I put the tree and lights up in early December and have plugged them in every night; I went out and bought new ornaments to replace the ones we lost, and I'm actually sending a few cards for the first time since 2005. I also bought an additional, tiny, real tree to put on a high shelf in hopes of infusing some pine scent into the house--we can't have a full-size real tree because one of our cats likes to eat greenery--but somehow I managed to choose a totally odorless one. Oh well, it looks nice.

2. Finding acceptable Christmas activities. In G's defense, she's right: a lot of local holiday-themed events are geared to very small children--we had the same problem at Halloween, when she would have loomed like Gulliver among the Lilliputians at the various face-painting, pumpkin-decorating, costume-parading festivals, but was too young for haunted houses aimed at teenagers--and she doesn't have younger siblings to give her a reason to attend anyway. Instead, we've been watching more grown-up Christmas movies, listening to Christmas music together at home, and drinking hot chocolate and apple cider, all of which she's enjoyed. Hopefully we'll get around to baking cookies sometime next week.

This year is also a little different from previous ones in that for once, there's no place we're required to be on either Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. G, whose idea of a perfect day involves pajamas, video games and not much else, is ecstatic, and I'm looking forward to spending the time quietly at home. I may be putting more into "making Christmas" this time around, but I'm still all about doing things my own way.

Things to be thankful for

In honor of tomorrow's holiday, here's a short list of things I'm thankful for - in no particular order, and mixing the momentous with the mundane.

G, with all her many gifts and talents
Our pets (but not their messes)
The 12 1/2 years I got to spend with P
Having a job and a place to live
Health
That my parents brought me up to be independent
That I live in a society where women can be independent
Friends, both online and in person
Literacy
Things that are vanilla or coconut-scented
Chipotle burritos
Hot coffee and tea
My iPod (it's old, but it works) and my MacBook
Rainy days
Central air conditioning
Netflix instant streaming
The smell of coffee brewing
Air travel
Black nail polish
Mountains, oceans, forests and deserts
All the different languages in the world
Green glass bottles
Books, bookstores and libraries
Vaccinations and antibiotics
Indoor plumbing
Digital cameras, especially the one in my phone
The sound of a full orchestra...and a single instrument
Electric lights
The Arnolfini Portrait
Silly cat videos and pictures
Calvin and Hobbes
My new favorite website
The entire Internet
Poetry
Flannel PJs
Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams and Neil Gaiman
Texting and email
Loving v. Virginia
Sparkly white Christmas lights
The increasing availability of vegetarian food
Having lived in so many different places
New office supplies
Tim Burton's movies
Freedom of religion (it may not be as free as I'd like, but at least you're not going to get shot for it)
New York City
Birds in flight
Dark and milk chocolate
The smell of wet pavement
Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab perfume
Museums

Happy Thanksgiving!

A visit to the past

G suggested going to Medieval Times for Mothers' Day this year. As it happened, I'd never been there before, which made it an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone by celebrating the holiday and adding an experience to my list of new things, so off we went.

I was secretly expecting it to be cheesy tourist crap--which is why I'd never gone, despite living in the area for 30 years--but I was wrong. IT WAS SO MUCH FUN. The idea is that you're at this tournament in medieval Spain, and the section you're seated in is represented by a particular knight, and you cheer him on in battle. It's easier to get into than you might think; even G, who is usually too full of almost-teen self-consciousness to participate in that sort of thing, was screaming and clapping and yelling "Boo!" and "Get him!" during the final epic battle between the Yellow Knight and the evil Green Knight. There are displays of dressage and falconry, and tournament games, and jousting, and hand-to-hand combat, and it's really pretty neat. (And it didn't hurt that three of the knights, including ours, were smoking hot. Wow.) Here are a few photos:

The arena before the show started. 

Dressage display.

Our knight was the Black and White Knight.

This is a flower that he kissed and then threw to us in the stands. I've never seen G come so close to swooning before.

Galloping blurrily off to the joust.

Jousting!

They have the obligatory overpriced merchandise to buy, and people wanting to take your photo and sell it to you for $10, but we ignored all that and just enjoyed the pageantry. G is already longing to go back, so I suspect we may be spending her next birthday there. Definitely a good time.

One thing that bothered me a bit about the day--and in fact has been a general annoyance lately--is that almost no one realizes I'm G's mother anymore. She looks older than she is, mostly because she's so tall, and I look younger than I am, and so strangers assume that I'm her friend or elder sister, or sometimes her aunt. When we arrived at the castle, the person checking reservations at the gate wished the women ahead of and behind me a happy Mothers' Day, but not me. Inside, they were handing out flowers to the mothers; I wasn't offered one. Obviously with my 40th birthday only a few months away, it's nice not to look old enough to be the mother of an apparent teenager, but I am a mother and proud of it, and I'd like to be recognized as one.

It does sting a little, too, to think that if P were still alive, people would probably have no trouble pegging us as the parents and G as our child; it's G and me being on our own together that throws them off. But there's not much I can do about it, short of investing in some MOTHER and DAUGHTER T-shirts or sticky labels--and embarrassing as G thinks I am at times, I'm not that over the top. Yet.

All right, I won't eat your baby, but your soul is fair game

I had forgotten tomorrow was Valentine's Day until I went to the supermarket this afternoon and saw all the massive displays of merchandise. Good thing I did, because I was able to pick up some cheap packs of Valentine-themed Skittles for G to hand out to her class. Oh, lucky teacher, locked up all day with 35 preteens who not only are under the influence of raging hormones, but also have a metric ton of pure grade-A sugar coursing through their bodies.

In other news, today we made a special trip to my office to collect unsold Girl Scout cookies so we could return them to the "cookie leader." G was extremely annoyed about having to interrupt her Sunday-afternoon schedule of sloth and indolence to go with me (I needed her to help carry boxes out to the car) until I reminded her that they were her cookies for her Girl Scout troop. I don't know if she was any happier about it after that, but at least she kept her displeasure to herself.

I'm feeling a little miffed at Girl Scouts in general after once again being the recipient of judgey looks from Girl Scout mothers when I went to pick G up at yesterday's International Fair event. I was wearing more or less what I usually wear--black velvet jeans, long-sleeved black shirt, black shoes with a skull-and-crossbones design, and black sunglasses--and all the Girl Scout mothers I passed on my way into the building stared at me as if I were going to steal their souls and eat their babies. These are clearly very sheltered women, because while I was the only person there in head-to-toe black, my clothes were still completely mainstream by almost any standards, nor did I have tattoos or piercings or a hair color not found in nature (and if I had, who cares), and yet you would have thought they'd seen Marilyn Manson stomping up the sidewalk toward the high-school gym.

I wonder what it's like to be that uptight. I also wonder what sort of reception is doled out to people who do have tattoos, piercings, etc., and daughters who are Girl Scouts. It can't be very nice.

The circle of life

I think a mouse has died in the wall of the staircase that leads up from our garage into the house. At first it smelled musty and moldy, like wet towels, and now it just smells, well, dead. Everything I've read online indicates that my options are a.) knock holes in the wall in an attempt to find and remove the unfortunate deceased, which may or may not be successful, or b.) wait it out until decomposition does its work and the smell goes away. Since I don't own this house and I have no idea how much it would cost to get a ripped-up wall repaired, I've been forced to go for option b, gross as it is.

The bulk of the smell is located near a large heating vent, so one of my friends has kindly volunteered to come over tomorrow, take the vent cover off and see if he can locate the offender that way. I know how to operate a screwdriver and could technically do that myself, but I'd really rather not (yuck), so just this once I'm going to take him up on the offer, and hope to God it works. The smell is minimal today because I've opened up windows and aired everything out, but when G and I got back from San Diego yesterday, it was a bit thick as we came in from the garage. (Not the sort of welcome-home you want to receive, let me tell you.) At least the top two floors, where we spend most of our time, are mostly stench-free; it's all concentrated in that stairwell, so we only have to smell it when we go in or out.

We had gone to San Diego because last month, as I was thinking about how depressing the last several Mother's Days had been, I decided that this year I was going to take preemptive action and plan something for myself. San Diego is only about a 90-minute drive from here, so I found a cute, reasonably priced hotel near the downtown Gaslamp District, and I made a reservation for Mother's Day weekend. Here are a few photos from the trip.

We stayed at The Bristol Hotel San Diego, and I couldn't believe how nice it was for the price I paid. It wasn't a bad location either, within walking distance of hundreds of shops and restaurants.

At the Ghirardelli Ice Cream and Chocolate Shop. G had the cone, I had the Rocky Road sundae. It was delicious, but I only managed to finish about a third of it. I'm not that much of a pig.

People playing giant chess at Horton Plaza. There were giant checkers too.

Outside the San Diego Museum of Art.  Yes, it was yet another cloudy day for an outing.

 Part of the sculpture garden and courtyard near the art museum. That's the bell tower and carillion on the left.

Museum of Man

Mayan stele inside the Museum of Man.

 Hall of Modern Humans. Each of those circles had a human invention or milestone and the year it happened. My birth year was the computer microchip; G's was the euro.

All in all, it was a pleasant weekend and a huge improvement over the last few years. One of the nasty little surprises of widowhood is that while you can organize all the major holidays on your own, no one is going to pick up the slack on the days that are supposed to be about you. It's taken me a few years to get there, but I'm finally in a place where I can arrange my own special event and not feel bad about doing it myself. I'm already planning a similar approach for my fortieth birthday next year -- not sure where we're going yet, but I'm going to make it as good as I can. Surely I must deserve it by now.

Thanksgiving, slightly modified

As I've said before, Thanksgiving is not a holiday with much appeal for me. I don't eat turkey, I hate football (sorry, P, wherever you are), I don't like driving in heavy traffic, and forced socializing is about as much fun as a long, sharp straight pin through my retina. I'm totally down with the idea of doing something to mark the day and celebrate my many blessings; I just think it should be something that I enjoy. So here's my list of Thanksgiving traditions I would like to see catch on:

Side Dish Dinner
Cranberries, green beans, olives, cheese, crackers, potatoes, stuffing, Parker House rolls, three kinds of pie ... and no dead bird.

Jazz Hands
Instead of watching football after dinner, everyone piles into the car and goes to see a huge, splashy Broadway musical. If this isn't possible, I would consider watching televised football if the players were required to sing about it every time they made a touchdown.

Far Apart, Together
The whole family meets up on Facebook and IMs about what they're cooking and how big the kids are getting. All the interaction without the need to get dressed and drive for miles, plus if someone irritates you, you can just make yourself invisible.

Reading is Fundamental
Everyone brings the book of his or her choice to Thanksgiving dinner and reads it at the table while eating. Bonus points if you read something with a Puritan flair, like The Crucible or The Scarlet Letter.

The Witching Hour
Thanksgiving merges with my favorite holiday, Halloween. Dinner is served at midnight on a black-draped table lined with candelabras while live ravens watch from cobweb-hung perches on the walls. When it's your turn to say what you're thankful for, you have to hold a flashlight under your chin and speak in a sepulchral Vincent Price voice.

Sadly, I doubt we'll see any of these refreshing changes anytime soon. People are so set in their ways. But if I take over the world ... look out!