CHRISTMAS

Christmas is almost over by the calendar. But the fun will continue. Today was wonderful. Food was on the table by 10:00 and new items continued until 7:00 tonight. This morning we opened stockings and laughed like idiots. We had nice gifts, silly gifts, candy, and Texas scratch offs. Most of us could not even figure out how to scratch off the cards. Mine is a Bingo card. I read the directions and decided I needed either more caffeine or a drink. Still haven't scratched it off.

Then we opened the presents. Lots and lots of presents. There were gifts for 9 people. Lots of presents. Fun gifts, silly gifts, incredibly lovely gifts. My nephew Lee always gets ceramic chickens, the uglier the better from his sister Lisa's family. Lisa and family laugh and laugh when he opens them. He doesn't know why they give them, nor why they laugh. I do and shared with all the house guests. Lee got lots of chickens this year. And we laughed and laughed. We won't tell him why we laughed.

Today good friends came by and had drinks and snacks with us. More laughter. After they left I put out the supper food for the "family". As we ate we talked about our families. We are one family, but we are partners, close buddies, husband, wife, sister, brothers, nephew, lots of sides to this one family. We told about family history from the 1700's, family members that are not liked very much, family members no longer with us, tales of our childhoods, family heirlooms that went to the wrong person in the family. Not that I am bitter. Then there was the fishing trip, wet pants, and Vaseline for a rash.

Today, Friday, we will go to the Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park and to the Conservatory of Flowers. We will continue the orgy of food and laughter.

May you laugh, may you be happy. Again Merry Christmas.

Family and Airplanes part 2

Erik sent a test message to us last night. They are in Portland for Christmas. I was hoping the flight would be canceled and they would be with us. Now will they be home in time for the family dinner on Saturday?

Nephew Lee is the luckiest man in America. His planes were not late and he made our late crab feed dinner last night. The only planes this week that were on time.

Today we are rethinking our annual Christmas Eve walk in the city. We look at store windows with puppies and kittens , we have lunch, and then to the trains and gingerbread houses. And between looking and eating we stop for Bloody Marys and other Yuletide drinks. As long as you are walking you can hit a lot of bars. Problem today. Major rain and wind today. We will do some of it but it depends on the weather. We will have fun, two cars to the city, and then back home for Christmas Eve dinner.

I wish you a Merry Christmas. Tell someone you love them.

Family and airplanes

WARNING, spellcheck is not working tonight. I am a poor speller so bear with me.

Yesterday we spent the day waiting on planes. Rain and fog here, snow in the rest of the country. Marty's sister's plane was three hours late as was his brother's. Thank goodness for flight trackers on the net. They are here and safe. Today we did nothing but eat, wrap gifts and talk. Family is good. Tomorrow my nephew arrives, hopefully on time. Our son and his wife are to fly to her parents' tomorrow in Portland. For two days there have been not any flights there. Snow big time in Portland. So they may be here spending Christmas with us this year.

Tonight we had a big family dinner, prime rib for the meat eaters and sauteed portabellos for the vegetarians. Homemade cookies and lots of fine wine. We had the family prayer, the toast to family together, and took lots of pictures. For the first time in years our son pinned ornaments on the Advent tree. That almost made me cry. When he was little he picked what to pin on every night for 25 nights. Tonight was a lovely evening we laughed and told tall tales. We trashed people not there and talked of parents long gone.

It is Christmas and the family is together. We are laughing and having fun. It is Christmas. May you be as happy as we are. Merry Christmas.

Did you ever read a Mystery?

I bet everyone has read one mystery. We all read Poe in high school. As children we read Nancy Drew, Trixie Bell, The Hardy Boys, and even the oh so hard to believe Bobbsey (spell check hates this word, so I hope I am close to right) Twins. Mysteries are fun, they make killer movies and TV series, pun intended. Think of Dexter, Monk, The Bond movies, Die Hard, The Usual Suspects, Speed, The Bourne Identity. Most of these came from wonderful books, all fun and exciting. Some the books came later. But mysteries fun, scary, disturbing. Gotta love um.

I have a friend, Janet Rudolph, who makes her living from mysteries. And for fun she moderates our weekly mystery book group. You must read her recent blog and then read the interview she gives a link to. It is the December 20, 2008 posting.

http://mysteryreadersinc.blogspot.com/

Lights and Memories of Lights

Tonight I really got the Christmas feeling. We had gone to dinner with friends in San Leandro, a lovely town 15 minutes from our house. As we were taking them back to their house we saw a house all lit up. The house was on a corner and was outlined in white lights on all four sides. The lights were perfectly placed, windows, gables, doors, every tree and bush with reindeer in the yard. Beautiful. Marty pulled over so we could look and look. And then he started driving up and down the side streets following the lights. Every house was better than the last one. We had a great time just looking. It was such a feel good time.

This experience made me remember my parents driving us around to look at lights. We would go all over the little town we lived in. The town water tower had a huge star that was lit up all of December. It was on the highest hill and could be seen for miles. (During WWII they didn't light it just in case the Axis powers used it as a navigational aid.) Then one night we would drive to the next town, 15 miles away on a two lane mountain road to see the Kern's Bakery nativity scene. It wasn't Christmas until we made that drive. And as a plus you could smell the bread baking.

The lights are usually beautiful and they brighten our lives. They sometimes make us smile and laugh. Some of the houses are so awful white trash looking that we love them. There is a house in Concord, CA that we checked out every year for 15 years. It was so awful and we loved it. There were things on the roof, yard, trees, driveway, eaves, everywhere. They moved, blinked, and there were tracer lights. You had Santa and Baby Jesus next to each other. The colors were bad and the lights were a little sloppy. It was our favorite house.

One Christmas we drove home from Maryland to Kentucky. As we left it began to snow, not a nice drive. But the landscape was great. We would see lights in the distance and then we would see it. A barn trimmed in lights, and the fence, and the huge satellite dish outlined. We laughed all the way home.

I love the lights. They are beautiful and the memories are so good.

At the Marriage Factory

This week I was sort of busy marrying couples. Monday I married 6 couples and Wednesday 5 couples. Steady but not too busy.

Monday the head marriage desk clerk told me an awful story. A woman ( let's call her Sue ) called her from New Mexico to find out if her husband had married someone else. Another woman ( we will call her Betty) had called Sue and said she was married to Sue's husband. She said he had declared Sue missing for X number of years and gotten a divorce 5 years ago in CA. But he is still living with Sue in New Mexico. She checked the names and dates and yes he had married a second wife, Betty, while still married to Sue in New Mexico. Bigamy. Sue thought he traveled for business and that was why he was gone so often. Betty knew about Sue all along, and could no longer put up with the situation. There are children and grandchildren with Sue.

I am thinking this man must make a hell of a lot of money to run two households in this economy.

The marriage desk does not have to report this to the police, which I find strange. It is up to the wives. I am waiting for the nightly news to report an ax murder in New Mexico this weekend when he gets home. This one I would really like to know the ending.

FRIENDSHIP

How much pain and trouble do you allow your friends to give you? How much do you forgive? How much pain and trouble do you give out?

Friendship is so very important. You need friends to make life worth living. It takes both sides for it to work. It is like a marriage, except you don't have those fights at midnight and stay up all night until things are settled. With friendship fights you worry about being as rude as the one who hurt your feelings. So you say little. Friendship errors you forgive, but it is hard to forget. If you love the person, you will work on forgetting.


Friendship is vital to life. You love your friends in spite of what happens. You hope they will love you in spite of what you do. I am so thankful that we have friends who can understand and love us for what we are.

TIS THE SEASON

Christmas, so much to do. So much stress. Not enought sleep, we are tired. So much to do. Decorate the house. Parties and more parties. They conflict, which one to go to? Some we want to go to and some we only go to because we like the host. There are gifts to wrap,( see the blog 12-11-08 on wrapping). Meals to plan, vegetarian, vegan, no beef, only want rare beef, traditional meal or not. Then you have multiple trips to the airports. Yes, airports, the family is coming in on different days and at different airports. And we work Saturdays and Sundays during the four weekends of Open Studios in Berkeley. How will it all get done?

Well, you who read this regularly know about the decorating and gift wrapping. The meals will happen, we will decide sometime before the guests arrive, we always do. And the airport trips? I pulled the Mother card and our son Erik is making one run while we are working Sunday. Bless you Erik. One guest is getting a rental car with GPS and will bring himself. Santa will remember that. And the others will get picked up when we get there.

But what about the fun? What about the family celebrating being together again? What about laughing, telling tall tales, drinking, family traditions of yelling Christmas gift every phone call. How does that happen if all of the above work has to be done? How does it happen?

Well, it happens, always. Some years better than others. Every one jumps in. They cook, help clean, shop, calm me down during my annual meltdown. I want everything perfect, never gonna happen.

Last year one of the most fun family thing we did was grocery shopping. Really. One afternoon we planned our dinner for the next night. It was a long list, and I didn't want to spend an hour or more at the grocery. I made a plan. There were five of us. Every one was given a portion of the list and X number of minutes to shop, and then we were to meet at the checkout stand. We hit the doors on the run, everyone took off with their lists and scattered. We would pass each other in the aisles and yell where is . . . found it . . . and I've still got . . . We were in and out in 10 minutes. And it was a fun family project.

Tis the Season for happiness. Kiss someone and tell them you love them. Merry Christmas.

The Sadistic First Grade Teacher

I help in a first grade class room every Monday morning. I am very fond of the teacher, Ms. H. This woman is a wonderful teacher, very warm, organized and just a little sadistic. I am convinced she and her family spend weekends thinking up craft projects. I do not do craft projects. I have no eye hand coordination, no patience, and no skills. When I do a craft project, it looks like a first grader did it. But she is sure I can do them and can help the children.

Last week I worked with paint, washable paint. ( only from your skin, doesn't really come out of clothing even after bleaching. ) I painted their hands blue and they pressed them down on mittens cut from construction paper. That wasn't too bad, until a little girl grabbed my sleeve/arm, blue on white. Still a little blue on the shirt. But I don't wear good clothes to work with first graders. So a minor deal.

Today the project was to show how uncrafty I am. She is sadistic. Stockings of felt. Two red pieces and two white pieces with holes punched along the side;, a long, long piece of white yarn; glue; and glitter. I saw a nervous breakdown coming on. The three adults started the stocking: made sure the red lined up with red and the white lined up with red and white; we taped the end of the yarn to make it firm, we knotted the yarn into the first hole of white felt, and then we gave them to the children. They were to push through the holes up and down and all the way around the stocking, sewing it shut on the side. Some finished in a flash, others sewed sideways or skipped holes or knotted the yarn. After the sewing we wrote their names on the white with glue and they put glitter on the name. And if they wanted they could draw a picture with glue and glitter that.


We worked with them and some got it. Some we took out the yarn and started them over, and then repeated. The motor skills just aren't there yet for some of the children. Two little girls finished quickly and saw their tables mates in trouble. They jumped right in and started fixing the problems. They were much better at this than I am.

And then there was Becky. I took hers apart 6 times. She would sew about three stitches and them start going sideways instead of straight up and down. She started to cry and I felt awful for her. That was me in first grade. I hated art projects. Coloring OK, anything else pure torture. After so many errors I couldn't let her be that upset and feel a failure. So I pulled up a chair and sat with her and we did every stitch together. We still had to take out a couple of stitches and restart. We got it done though. And Becky finished up happy. Her name and the girl she drew in glue were glittered within an inch of Liberace land. Glitter she can do.

Ms. H now has two weeks of Christmas vacation to think of projects for me to do. She is sadistic.

STARSTRUCK

Saturday night our old neighborhood had their annual Christmas progressive dinner. We are so pleased that they still include us. There were about 30 people this year. The guests list varies each year. The organizers stay the same, but each year there are new neighbors. We are the only ones who live elsewhere.

We start at the appetizer house. We wander around from person to person to talk. There are lots of hugs and laughing. Champagne, wine, and a variety of great foods are brought. The table is full of deviled eggs, crab, cheeses, veggies and dips, nuts, and lots of other stuff I never got to. Our neighborhood does a party well.

The second house was the entrée course. Tables are set up for a sit down dinner. Fine china, linens, crystal, and silver are used. Candles all over provide a festive look to the setting. It is an incredibly beautiful setting. We had ham, turkey loaf, beef tenderloin, salad, mixed veggies, and a mushroom potato dish. And again champagne and wine were poured.

The third house was dessert and wines. Again we wander and eat and talk. We had cakes, pies, cookies, torts. Wonderful sweets were there. People stand around the piano and sing Christmas carols. And as at each house there were the neighbors to visit with.

Some of these old neighbors we see through the year and some this party is the only time we see them. It is so good to be with friends during the holidays. We laughed and gossiped, and talked serious stuff. It was a lovely evening. Except for . . .

One of the neighbors is a very famous actress who sometimes attends neighborhood parties. She and her husband wander in and wander out. You aren’t sure which course they will show up for, if at all. God forbid you should sit where someone has decided she might sit. And they say children are cruel.

We had a wonderful evening. We met new interesting people, renewed old friendships, and laughed and laughed. Merry Christmas.