Home Alone

It has crept its way into the canon. I hold somethings pretty dear to my heart. Christmas specials are a part of those things. They will never really be as they were when I was a kid: When there was only five channels on TV, the networks plus 25, 56, and 27, although 27 didn't really count. (for some reason I only remember things in Spanish and occasionally religious programming being on there.)  Then, magically, one day, a special would be on channel 5, or 7 or 4. We would camp out in the living room and soak up the glory of it all. Now, they come on the 400 or so channels and we tivo them and then watch them at our leisure. Or... we could always just tune in to the 24 hour Christmas special network and watch them all day long... in June. Sometimes too much availability ruins things. Specials were a bit more special then, but we try to recreate them here. Yes, we tivo them. But we don't allow our kids to chain watch them. We pick a night and watch whatever is in the tivo cue.

Tonight was Home Alone. Who ever dreamed up this show was pure genius. It is as backward thinking as it gets if you try to consider the plot to be up for a Christmas Special... but in the end, the bad guys get whats coming to them (something less than the turning heart of the Grinch though, but still ok), the scary guys prove good, the family gets back together and the true meaning of Christmas, balanced against the frivolity of wealth, comes shining through. Plus, we get to see some pretty great Three-Stoogesesque slap stick. When Marv gets that spider on his face and screams like a tormented, B-movie actress, it is nothing but pure joy on this end.

Henry couldn't sit down at all throughout the whole movie... he was up and cringing, laughing...ducking. Home Alone, the first one anyway, really deserves to be there, in the canon of Christmas Specials....... Plus the soundtrack is awesome!

db

from the deep

We were having shrimp and pasta, and I was shopping anyway, so I picked up some freshly cleaned squid. It is always so cheap, but I never quite know how its going to come out. Soetimes it is so tender, and well, not really flavorful, but at least tender. Other times it is like eating a tire. This time it came out somewhere in the middle. Henry, of course loves it. He takes special joy in eating the tentacles. Nora won't even com near the stuff.  It is kind of a mystery to me. Cleaning it is so interesting though. Squid really is as close to sci fi, life out of space, as we get here on earth. Cleaning it is so weird, they have this cartalagonous skeleton that is clear and looks exactly like plastic. Strange stuff. I had the best calamari at a restaurant once. I believe it was breaded and fried and served with cherry peppers? So amazingly good. Anyone know some good recipes for squid?

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3 hr project

It is time to give in. I have been completely broken down and my defenses are at my feet. I have no will left and no way of pushing it off any further. I must give our awful looking stairs a railing.

There are no good reasons to avoid it anyway. Its just that... I hate our stairs. Putting a railing on them is like putting racing stripes on a junker. Still, people we love need to be able to make it up those stairs. But for me to consider what kind of railing is to consider what would look appealing and that is an impossibility. What they really need to have done is for me to tear them down... they look like construction stairs... and for me to rebuild them. But I don't have the skills required. Cement doesn't get along with me that well. So, I have given in and have built the railing. $60.00 worth of wood and three hours of labor.

I am actually kind of proud of them. I know... I know I said I hate them. But I did do alright I think. I tried to match our back porch. I don't have awesome wood working tools like a table saw (which would have come in more than handy). I built the thing with a drill, a circular saw, a hand saw, a square and a socket set. This is why I am proud. I didn't even have to look online! I ripped the four by fours with a circular saw that didn't even reach all the way through. I had to flip the things... and it didn't look like the forts I built when I was a kid.....thank god.

At any rate... not bad for a project concieved, bought for, and completed in a Sunday afternoon. :)

cookies

Christmas cookies

Sweet...salty...buttery. These are things of joy. I have never actually iced them before... at least that I can remember. The icing is incredibly easy. Just a fork, a bowl, a lob of confectioners sugar, a drop vanilla and couple tablespoons of milk. Stir it a few times and it magically comes together. Divide into a few other bowls and put one drop of food coloring in and there you go. Instant goodness. I bought some cookie cutters a while back. I saw some show, or it might have been a magazine article, about how to do designs in royal icing. It is very similar to those cool designs people do in coffee with cream: toothpicks and knowhow. I gave it a shot, and to my surprise, it is pretty easy to make things look pretty good. They also taste really really good. 

I remember when I worked for Barnes and Noble for a while. The sugar cookies were nearly forbidden. The amount of calories in those suckers trumps every other cookie by a huge margin. They are sitting in my kitchen right now... waiting.... waiting. I am only eating one a day. I am letting the kids have way more than that. 

We are planning on making chocolate chip for Santa. mmm Chocolate Chip, Santa likes those too. 

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...in the machine

I was riding in the car today, looking at Christmas lights, and I noticed a factory that I had never seen before. It had green kind of glowingish looking windows in that sterile modern kind of way. It looked kind of ominous, like a Stepford Wives plant, (This is the way my mind works) and it hit me how much trust I had in people. That place could be pumping out evil in all sorts of ways... I don't know... like mustard gas or something. Things that could kill us all, and I pay it no heed because I trust that they wouldn't be. I know we have inspections and law enforcement and all sorts of things in place to protect us, but honestly, it could probably happen anyway. If people in general were devious enough. But people in general aren't. People in general are not trying to kill each other, well, in outward, obvious ways at least.
This hits me while I am driving on the highway sometims. The amount of trust that I have that the person passing me, or coming the other way down the road, won't do something crazy is astonishing. Every one seems to stay in their lane for the most part. Again, I know this isn't because of general good will and is much more about self-protection, but still...it all seems to work. People are generally busying along, trying to do good for the general population. It's like we are a bunch of little ants carrying our little bits of things for the colony, and I am a part of that. I don't see myself as that type of person. I am much to.... thoughtful...selfish...aware... to be a cog in a machine. I am the Neo that takes the red pill. I think! And yet, I am a total cog... educating the masses for their own positions in the machine. How did it come to this? How did I become The Man? Why do I appear to be happy about it? Is this my midlife crisis knocking? Am I going to grow my hair out and buy a motorcycle soon?

Total Cog.

tannenbaum

We went out and got our Christmas tree today. There are parts of this tradition that stand out as incredibly special in this process. We always get a live tree. I know some people don't do this. I know that there is great argument for not getting one. I know that it is a lot of money for a tree that slowly dies (or quickly) in my living room over a month or two. I know it's pine tree genocide... I know... I know... I just can't get a plastic one. It's like drum sets. I just can't go electric. I need the wood. I need the real. This balsam fir sitting beside me smells so good right now. I can't go without it. 

We generally go to the Lion's club trailer that sits behind the bank in the center of town. The whole atmosphere there is something special to me. I love the bare lightbulbs strung up in rectangular patterns above the trees that are leaning against the wooden frames. The trailer, lit from inside. Nelson Calkins used to sit in that trailer. He owned the house that our first apartment was in. He was old then, bent and slow, but incredibly kind. That was years ago...gees... well over ten years now. Every year that we got our tree, he would be there. It was sometimes the only time we would see him during the year. He is truly a sweet old man. He is still kickin. I half expected to see him there tonight, but I know that was a bit wishful in my thinking. He is very very old now. 

We bought our tree today. It's big! It might be the biggest we have ever had. I actually had to go out and buy a new tree stand this morning. I researched it online before I sought it out. This one is a really good one. Last year our tree took a tumble. I can't have that anymore: So I went out and picked up one of the best one's I could find. It's steel... heavy.... it is made for 12 foot tall trees and our tree is probably half that. It was a total dream to use. 

It's early for us to have a tree. We generally wait till the week before, but we are much earlier than that this year. We have a family tree: the kind with ornaments from all of our childhoods. I love this. I have ornaments from my parents, ornaments made by both of my grandmothers. We have ornaments from Jenny's kindergarten classes, from Nora's and Henry's early years. It is a piece of family history displayed in our living room. 

Both kids were excited... overly actually. They ran around the house and looked at the lights. When it came time to hang the ornaments, they stepped right up and took turns. They had a bit of tough time getting to sleep... just like they should on a such a special night. 

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Advent tageous

Dec 1st. Nora went out of her mind yesterday when she remembered about the Advent calendar's return. We bought this awesome advent calendar years ago. It's wood and has great little cubbies for god-know's-what. We fill it with pieces of candy, tiny little toys, and notes about special things that we are going to do that night. (like watching a specific Christmas special, going out in the car to look at the Christmas lights, making Christmas Cookies, etc.)  The kids get to open one every night after supper. For Nora, this is a blessing and a curse. The girl is under incredible temptation... Honestly, she can barely contain herself. She isn't allowed to peek. It is good practice for the bigger deal of hiding presents in the house and having them remain secret.

I always knew where my parents hid the presents... in their closet. Honestly, I never peaked. They made it completely clear that peaking would ruin Christmas morning, and I was all about surprises on Christmas morning. I told Henry and Nora the same. They know where the presents are...most of them anyway. If they want to sneak and peak, they can. They don't though. I know they love the surprises as much as I did, and still do.

This little advent calendar is great practice for both of them. Henry is fine with waiting. Nora.... walks up and strokes the side of the house... opens the door that they already opened tonight...finds the next number ahead of time... wrings her hands and jumps. She went to bed tonight with another warning not to peak. She wailed, "I won't remember! I can't remember anything" Jenny translated for me. "Nora doesn't think she has the willpower to withstand the temptation."

Poor girl :)

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