Christmas/Birthday Memories Past

I was looking through some old photos this evening and happened upon a pictures of my husband and Monkey Boy back when he was teeny-tiny. Well, teeny-tiny for him (you remember that he was nearly 11 lbs at birth, right?). They were posed in front of a Christmas tree and my husband still wore his wedding ring (that lasted about 6 weeks after we got married...but that's a story for another day!). It got me thinking about what other memories of Christmas past might be lurking in this photo box. Remember, back in the days before digital cameras, when photos were nearly always posed and most often seemed to happen on special occasions? I came upon a few good ones my first time through, most with me and my older sister, my first friend, my lifelong confidant, my battle partner, my fellow witness to both the joys and atrocities of our childhood. We are adults now, both in our 30s, both married, both mothers (though she has 3 children to my 1!) - our friendship is different than it was when we were children, but our love, if anything, has only grown stronger.

She is 26 months older than me and her birthday is right before Christmas. It's today, actually - December 22nd. Since my birthday is on Valentine's Day, I grew up thinking that everyone had their birthday on or just before a holiday. How sad, I thought, not to have what seemed like the whole world celebrate with you. That's me on the left there, above, posing for a picture with our brand-new dolls after my sister's birthday party. I wasn't really into dolls, honestly, babies have always been more her department, but I wanted whatever she had so I could be just like her. Much to her chagrin, of course, especially as we grew older.

These are Christmas-time photos as well, believe it or not. When we first moved to the US, my father had a job in the coastal Oregon town of Lincoln City and our house was right on the beach. Here, my sister and I are taking our bears "sledding" in the "snow" in our backyard - we had just moved from Switzerland, I guess old habits are hard to break?

One of our parents somehow got us to pause long enough to pose for this second photo, although, apparently, my sister was really worried about her panda bear. This is probably about a year before my parents split up, definitely before I knew there was anything wrong. I thought it was normal for parents to yell in the kitchen after you were tucked into bed at night, what seemed like every night. My strongest memories of this age are the living room of this house, legs/knees of adults, shadows on the ceiling in my bedroom, and my parents yelling. I don't think my mom hit us then, I think she was still taking out her anger on our dad. It wasn't until after he left that we became her targets. Well, I say we, but my sister did everything she could to put the blame on herself for anything that went wrong. She did the best she could. She protected me. She kept me safe. She reminded me that we wouldn't be trapped in that house forever. She is my first and oldest friend, she is my only witness, my only battle companion.

I love you, Kadie <3

Christmas, New Years, No Break - Oh My!

2011 has been a year of many changes for me and my family. One especially interesting change for me, personally? This is the first time in my adult life, really since I started preschool a good 26 years ago, that I have not functioned primarily on an academic calendar. Preschool, Kindergarten, grade school, middle school, high school, college, grad school, working for a school district - 26 years of academia included 26 years of winter breaks (well, they were still Christmas breaks when I started!), spring breaks, summer breaks...I didn't know how good I had it, that's for sure.

So now I have a "big girl" job - aka non-academic, management position - and that means no more academic calendar. Very confusing to my brain and body, which are used to pushing themselves hard for a limited amount of time, then having a week or more off to recover before jumping back in again. I'm still trying to figure out how to gauge my use of energy at work when there are no pauses on the horizon. Sigh. Today marks Day 13 of the great viral bronchitis of 2011 (...as it will be known in my biography. You know, the one that will be written after I am famous and dead) so self-care is definitely on my mind. Clearly, I haven't gotten the hang of it with my new job and new living situation yet.

I love the picture above, clipped from some magazine back when i was a teenager. I've always been a bit of a magazine freak, it's true - thank goodness for the advent of the internet and scanners so I can keep all those images without physically keeping little pieces of paper from decades ago! I think it actually depicts a scene from a play, but to me it always looks like a snapshot from someone's fabulous New Year's Eve party. How do you celebrate that particular holiday? Honestly, for the past few years, I've either watched the ball drop on TV with my son or we've gone to bed as usual. My husband generally goes to church for what's known as Watch Night Service. As far as I can tell, it consists of praise/worship to usher in the new year, followed by a big pancake breakfast. I'm not sure I can handle pancakes in the middle of the night but hey, if it works for you, go with it. Personally, I'm getting too old and tired to pull an all nighter, even with the promise of pancakes to get me through it. Oh well, at least I'm becoming a more interesting person as I age, even if I am less flexible in my sleep/wake cycles!

The Germs are Flowing

So I've been sick for a little over a week now. Viral bronchitis. And no, this is not going to be one of those pity party pony rides (as my adorable friend Yoga Girl would say) - just wanted to put it out there that, despite feel pretty yucky physically, I'm working on feeling pretty awesome otherwise. It's sort of a new thing for me. I find it even more personally impressive when considering that it is 4:30 in the morning and I've been up for a couple hours - did I mention that my sweet husband has some kind of nasty stomach flu that has resulted in a solid 24 hours of fever, diarrhea, and vomiting? Poor guy. It was pretty adorable hearing about how Monkey Boy "took care of Daddy" while I was at work yesterday, though. I told him to call me in case of an emergency or if he just needed to talk. He called me twice. Call #1 went something like this:

Me - "Hello?"

Monkey - "Mommy? The cream cheese? Does it need to go back in the fridge when my bagel is cream cheesed?"

Me - "Yup. That would definitely be a good plan."

Definitely a child wise beyond his year. Call #2 almost gave me the hiccups, I was laughing so hard:

Me - "Hello?"

Monkey - "Mommy? If Daddy wakes up? Can I let him out of bed, or do I need to keep him in bed?"

Did I mention that Daddy has about 200 pounds on Monkey? I pictured Daddy, feverish and cranky, covered in blankets, attempting to get out of bed as Monkey flung himself across his arm and attempted to "keep him in bed". Ha. It was definitely an amusing mental image.

So I'm proud of myself for trying to be positive and I'm proud of myself for emailing my boss a little while back and asking her to take the morning off. It's hard for me to take time off and get nothing done at home or work, but I'm going to do it. Let the sleeping and snozzing begin! Well, continue ;-)

Made Up for Monkey

I'm trolling the internet for inspiration on how to make a scarf that looks like the cartoon cheetahs from the Wild Kratts web site for Monkey's Christmas present. While up in Tacoma visiting my boys this weekend, Monkey informed me that I have a scarf, Daddy has a scarf, but he is sadly scarf-less. Hmmm, I said out loud, perhaps I should make you a scarf for Christmas, then? OH, YES!!! was the overwhelming response. So here I am, trying to figure out the details. Luckily, I didn't mention the cheetah idea to Monkey during the aforementioned discussion. If worst comes to worst, I'll go with something a little less complicated.

Part two of my presents to Monkey will be a handmade journal, with all different types of cool paper and even a few writing prompts. He isn't crazy about writing in school, but he is always coming up with great stories and observations about the world around him. Last year I brought home a little ready-made journal left over from an activity I did with one of my students and Monkey claimed it immediately. A few weeks later, I found it on his bookshelf, filled to the brim with tales from school, jokes, things he wanted to do that summer, and plans for his birthday party. Yup, that's my kiddo :-)

As for my husband, everything I've gotten for him so far is not appropriate to be opened in front of family. And that's all *you* are hearing about those gifts, as well! Hmm...something family appropriate for husband...any ideas?

Homeless...Sort Of

I am 30 years old. I have a husband, who I have known for nearly a decade and with whom I will celebrate our 6th wedding anniversary next week. I have a 6-and-a-half (as he reminded me this morning) son, our wee (well, getting not-so-wee these days) Monkey Boy. And we are homeless. Not out on the street, nowhere warm to sleep overnight, homeless. But me staying with my parents in Portland while I work down there, Husband & Monkey living in Tacoma while he works up here, paying rent so we don't feel quite as much like freeloading boomerang generationers, driving up and down I-5 as much as our schedules allow to spend time as a family, both of us with our own rooms, but no actual structure/apartment/studio to call *home*. Yup, it's weird, especially when we've been living parent-free for over a decade. Especially this time of year, when all we really want to do (especially in the yucky, slightly depressing Pacific Northwest winter weather) is hole up at home and spend time as a family playing board games, watching movies, etc. I guess you could say we are Our-Own-Homeless.

I'm not really going anywhere with this...just feeling a little melancholy this afternoon, I suppose. Still, at least I'm not Our-Own-Homeless alone, right?

ps: I tried to post this yesterday from Tacoma, but the internet connection (or maybe the computer?) wasn't cooperating. Oh well. Back in Portland now. No husband/child (boo!) but reliable internet (yay!) here.

On Visualization & Gift Boxes

I just glanced at yesterday's post and realized I forgot to give it a title. Oops! Is it just me, or do you find that the title is often the hardest part of writing blog posts? Or writing in general? I still remember how my teachers used to say, "Start with the title." What?!?! That *completely* goes against who I am and how I do things. How can you give something a title before you know what it consists of? It's absurd to my little brain.

So as you probably remember, this year I am staying with my dad & step-mom, which has been quite the adventure, probably 90% good, if I were to put a fake statistic on the experience. Well, last night my dad got home from work when I was in the communal kitchen, unpacking and rewrapping my husband's Christmas presents from my mother-in-law (she had them delivered to our house so that 1) he wouldn't peek and 2) she wouldn't have to pay sales tax - that was the order of importance!). So first let me say that Amazon is seriously the undisputed king of overpackaging items - holy cow! This would make more sense if I explained the size of the items involved, but of course then this would turn out to the be only post that my husband reads this month (go away, honey! I want you to be surprised!) so you'll just have to trust me when I say that the largest box could fit several small children in it. It was like Babushka dolls, every time I opened and removed a box, there was another box nestled inside it.

See? Now I'm getting off on a bunny trail about packaging when really what I wanted to tell you about was what I did *with* the packaging. I've been considering festive packaging for my own presents for my husband, which are small & multiple. All of that corrugated cardboard made me think, hmmm...perhaps I can fold fun little boxes in usual shapes! I started with a small cube, just to see if I could figure out how to do it, then progressed to a diamond shape. I approached this task the same way I do most problems in life: first I visualized it, then I did it. So there I was, ruler and pen in hand, tracing out the lines for a 3-D diamond box made out of one piece of cardboard, when my dad interrupted himself mid-sentence:

Him: "Hmm....did you take an engineering course in college?"

Me: "Uhhh, no..." (did I mention I was a music major?)

Him: "Oh...maybe a design course?"

Me: "Nope, no design..." (and my masters is in music therapy?)

Him: "So...how do you know how to do that?"

Me: "I don't know....I guess I just thought about it and figured out the lines and angles in my head and now I'm just...doing it?"

And you know what? It worked! Not perfectly, of course - I eyeballed all of the angles, rather than using a protractor (or is it a compass? I could never keep those two pieces of equipment straight in high school!). I think it is a recognizable diamond, anyway. What do you think?

ps: After I made sure the box would come together the way I cut it, I covered it in wrapping paper. Amazon's shipping boxes are not *that* festive, LOL

Apparently Untitled

It's been a while, hasn't it? I really didn't mean to take a couple weeks off blogging, it just sort of happened. In fact, I've started several posts and not finished them for one reason or another. But that's just how life is sometimes, isn't it? It doesn't always feel right, it doesn't always flow, and you can't always get through it without getting distracted or interrupted. So, oh well. I'm glad you're still here.

I'd definitely forgotten how chilly it is here in Oregon this time of year, brrr! Can't say I'm not not missing the warm Texas sun right about now, that's for sure. There's something about winter weather that makes me feel nostalgic, though, and being in my hometown has definitely made those feelings stronger this year. The funny thing is that it's not really directly related to Christmas or New Year's - my mom never made a big deal of those holidays when we were growing up and I can count on one hand the number of "traditions" (and I use that term very loosely) we had. The things that tend to stick with me are generally related to activities I was involved in - singing at the Grotto with my high school choir - dancing at the Santa's Fling competition up in British Columbia (where the awards were Christmas ornaments instead of medals or ribbons - so cute!) - playing my cello at church - the list goes on. Some years we got to go to a Christmas party with my step-mom's family, which was always fun. I think about these things a lot when we plan stuff to do with Monkey Boy now but, still, I don't consider myself someone who really *CELEBRATES* the holidays in a traditionally American sense. There is no rampant shopping, the most holiday parties I've ever gone to in a single year is two, and most of the time I don't even remember to call my parents on the big days. I guess I'm an apathetic holiday kind of gal, huh?

That's all I got for today, folks. Not very exciting, but at least I'm here. Showing up is half the battle, right?