Monday, December 1, 2008

Holiday yammerings

As I was falling asleep last night, I realized that tomorrow (today) is Monday. I couldn't believe the long weekend went by so fast. For that matter, it's Monday December 1st and I really can't believe that November went by so fast. I think about Lyle and Wendy's Halloween party that was exactly 30 days ago and it feels like last week. I guess that's what happens during the holidays.

Now that it's December, I can listen to Christmas music, which is exciting for me and nauseating for Will. Growing up, my mom had these old Christmas albums (and I do mean albums as in record albums) that we listened to pretty much 24/7 during the month of December. As I grew older, it got harder and harder to capture the same feeling of being "in the spirit of Christmas"...now I know you can never truly recapture the same feeling from your childhood Christmases, but I feel like maybe....just maybe if I listen to Christmas music often enough I can get close. My problem is that I don't own any decent Christmas albums, so I always just used the Christmas music channel on TV. That offered the advantage of not being able to pick your own music so I got the treat of listening to such unbearable classics as Paul McCartney's A Wonderful Christmastime and the formulaic and vomit-inducing Christmas Shoes by Newsong several times a day. Well, we don't have cable anymore, so now I'm reduced to listening to our local Christmas music station over the internet which features the convenience of not being able to pick your own music and the additional advantage of having to listen to commercials and corny taglines.

But no matter what I'm listening to, I definitely need to start decorating. It's been difficult because we were so busy every day this weekend. Thursday was Thanksgiving of course. Friday we had a family business meeting at the newspaper, and after that we went out with one of Will's friends from childhood who was back in town. Afterward we went to the Weinberg center to watch "Dark Side of Oz", which was The Wizard of Oz played with the soundtrack muted and Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon album replacing it. I'd heard of people doing this but I'd never seen it myself, and I still haven't really seen it because right about the time Dorothy was chatting with the munchkins we got a text that Emily was sick so we went to my mom's house to take care of her. The only problem was I had decided to cut loose and have fun since we had an overnight babysitter, and 2 glasses of wine, a glass of sangria and a peach pomegranate mojito later I was worried I would be in no shape to take care of a sick toddler. But luckily we took Emily home, put her to bed and everything was fine...there are few things more sobering than having to deal with your sick baby!

Saturday was a dark day indeed. I walked into my Salsa Aerobics class, excited to finally get to take it again after a week and learned that Kevan the instructor had quit. It's all very scandalous apparently, possibly related to his recent separation from his wife and his only slightly more recent dating of several girls in the class. Recently I have been branching out a bit and trying out some new cardio classes, but Salsa was still my mainstay so I'm going to have to find something else to take its place although I doubt anything can be as fun :*(

Yesterday and today we've had our friend Eddie over installing cabinets and rewiring light switches. Home Depot wanted an exorbitant amount to install our cabinets (of course) so we're having Eddie do it instead and in exchange we're giving him our old van that he borrows all the time. It's a win-win because now that we've moved and have curbside recycling and don't have to periodically move our inlaws junk out of our house we don't really have any need for a big nasty van anymore. And really it's a win-win-win-win because it also means we won't have to pay insurance on the van and I will be able to park in my driveway and not in the street in front of our house! And if all goes well with our unpacking, I should soon be able to park my car in the garage itself. Incredible.

And as I mentioned earlier, Emily is sick again. Maybe I should just mention when she's NOT sick, because honestly she's had a runny nose since June with just a couple days here and there of wellness. It was funny to me when the pediatrician remarked that Emily must be a very healthy girl because in 15 months we'd only had to make 1 sick visit with her. That is true, but she's been slightly sick for a large percentage of that time so I guess I don't think of her as super-healthy. I probably should, I know how lucky I am that she hasn't had any serious illnesses (hold on a sec while I go knock on every piece of wood I can find) but when she's weepy and clingy and covered in snoot all the time I sometimes forget.

So when she's feeling better, we'll have some fun decorating and doing other holiday-type activities for her first real Christmas. At least the first Christmas that she'll realize is different from any other day of the year.

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