holiday spirit

by

Holiday Check In + Phoning It In for Dinners This Week

We had a very productive weekend, in terms of holiday prep. It makes me feel like my to-do list is complete… but… I am sure there are still items yet to do. Let’s do a little check in:

Complete:

  • I have a beautiful wreath on my front door, courtesy of my mother. It smells so Christmassy and festive. 
  • My holiday cards are in the mail, except for three that require address updates. 
  • I have still only received six cards, so I haven’t yet begun taping them to the wall as is my typical manner of displaying them. 
  • Nearly all the presents are done – including all of Carla’s beautiful drinkware – and I have boxes for my parents, my brother and sister-in-law, and my aunt-in-law all packed with wrapped gifts and ready to go to the post office. 
  • As of yesterday, the Christmas tree is UP. It looks so lovely and warm, with all the golden lights. 
  • Carla and I have finished The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, and I think she liked it more this time, and the end – where Imogene cries and cries, so gobsmacked is she by the miracle of Christmas – still makes choke up. We have just started The Naughty List by Michael Fry, which is so far fun to read. 
  • My Winter Break To-Do list is still 75% baking projects. We have added these chai sugar cookies to the list, courtesy of my husband.
  • I attended and survived my husband’s office party. 
  • Carla and I went through all her holiday-themed picture books and made two piles: books to keep for sentimental reasons and books we could give to our next-door neighbor, for her granddaughter. 

Still to do:

  • In terms of presents: I am waiting on a gift for my mother-in-law, one for my niece, and one for my father-in-law. The one for my mother-in-law got stuck at the post office some time last week, and the manufacturer agreed that it is probably lost and has sent us a new one. The gift for my niece arrived in a box that had clearly been opened. After MUCH back-and-forth with the company, we determined that all the parts are in the box and they are sending me a replacement box, which is kind of ridiculous… and they also can’t give me a timeframe to expect the box, so I am vacillating between just sending the broken box to my niece or sending a picture of it in the box of other gifts for her and my sister-in-law or just continuing to vacillate until there is no time to ship anything to her at all. My husband discovered yesterday that a gift we chose for his dad is not appropriate, so we ordered a replacement; I’m pretty sure it arrived already, but the box has my husband’s name on it so I can’t open it.
  • My husband and I are still trying to figure out if Carla needs one more present or not. He thinks the alarm clock I want to get her is “not a present,” but I am all for practicality. The other idea I had was an adjustable bar stool for her craft area. So far we haven’t made ANY decisions, and time is ticking away. 
  • I usually buy pine boughs to put on the mantel. I love the way they look and smell… but maybe I am okay without them this year?

  • Only three of my husband’s gifts are wrapped (and he wrapped one of them; we are giving each other new Apple watches this year, so he wrapped them both at the same time), and I haven’t wrapped any of Carla’s gifts or done any of the Santa wrapping. In part because Santa chooses TERRIBLE wrapping that is very difficult to fit around boxes and which lasts forever because he uses it for only a handful of gifts. So I need to do some more wrapping.
  • I need to figure out what to get for Carla’s activity instructors. Ugh. There are so many of them this year. And what to get for our housekeeper and my husband’s assistant???
  • I need to clean the menorah. Although maybe I cleaned it after Hanukkah last year, and I won’t need to clean it? I can’t remember. It would be so easy to check and yet I continue playing Schrödinger’s menorah instead.
  • I am trying to figure out if I should send a gift to my friend. We don’t normally exchange gifts, but sometimes we send things to one another out of the blue. I saw a T-shirt the other day that reminded me of her but I didn’t buy it. I really want to buy it, and send it to her… but also I don’t want to overstep or seem like I am forcing her to acknowledge me in some way. (She sent me an ornament the other year, and we put it on the tree yesterday and my heart is just so swollen and painful.) Ugh ugh ugh. 
  • I want to listen to more Christmas music. There is so much of the same, when I play it on Alexa or on the TV. Perhaps I need to try making a Spotify list? I don’t really know how to use Spotify? 
  • There is still nothing really fun or special or holiday-specific on our list (aside from cookie making). What else can we do during the long days of Carla’s winter break? 
  • I need to cajole Carla into making the final two mugs for the final two mug-recipients (our across-the-street neighbors, who have been kindly letting her play with their puppy for months).
  • Carla and I need to take presents and books next door to our neighbor.
  • I need to take the packed boxes to the post office and mail them. 

I suppose, since it is Monday, that I should be thinking about dinners. And yet I am not? Even though we all need to eat, daily. We have plenty of leftover soup in the fridge, along with a TON of leftover ragu (it was really good), so that should tide us over for a few days. Plus I never made the slow cooker garlic chicken from a couple of weeks ago, so that’s still an option. Or I could make burritos. I think we’re covered. It’s a call week, so I like to be less structured as it is. 

So far, I can report that I am feeling much more full of the Holiday Spirit than I did last year. It’s a relief, honestly. I like enjoying the holidays. And even though I wish we had snow, I am really pleased to be able to walk around outside. (I really need to find some snow boots that are good for walking.) I feel, overall, happy and on top of things. My only real “problem” (not a problem) is that I keep thinking of little things I want to get my husband and/or Carla, and then thinking, “but I already got them plenty of things…” and then thinking, “or did I???” But that’s not unpleasant, and hasn’t (yet) reached the level of pre-Christmas panic. I think we’re in pretty good shape!

What do you still have yet to do on your holiday list? What am I missing? Surely I’m missing something important.

by

Sunday Randomosity: Mainly About TV But Also a Little Christmassy with a Soupçon of Melancholy Edition

I seem to have a bit of a NaBloPoMo hangover, and I MISS EVERYONE.

It is early and I am awake, so here’s some Randomosity for you this Sunday morning:

  • I have yet to put up a single Christmas decoration.
  • However, Carla and I have begun reading Christmas stories. She rejected the Christmas countdown reading calendar, which makes me sad. Her reasoning was that she doesn’t like being “forced” to read things, which… girl. It’s a paper calendar. We can have the calendar and color it and ignore every single word on it and no one will know or care. But she hasn’t really figured out the line between Follow The Rules and Some Rules Can Be Bent yet, and I suppose for now it’s better that she leans to the left on this one. 
  • I’ve collected a few books from the library but for now I am reading The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson to her. She seems to enjoy it so far – it is quite humorous. I had forgotten that there’s quite a long section about making fun of fat kids, which is so gross. I feigned a coughing attack while I quickly skimmed the text until I got to a less objectionable passage. “Wow, you should win a world record for that,” Carla remarked. I’m not sure she meant I should win a world record for the subterfuge or for the coughing attack, although I hope she meant the latter.
  • It’s not typical that I censor my kid’s books. Sometimes I read her things that were once, unbelievably, acceptable and use them as Instructive Moments. But sometimes I just want to read a book to my kid. 
  • We’ve had a nicely Christmassy weekend so far. Yesterday, we delivered the letter she wrote to Santa; there’s a special mailbox in a nearby town and we go there every year. Sometimes, an elf will send her a letter in return which I think is so magical. Then we bought a gift for a friend and a couple of gifts for her cousin. Afterward, we came home and watched two Christmas movies, back to back. 
Images from amazon.com
  • The first movie was Spirited, starring Octavia Spencer and Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds. I was not looking forward to it, I’ll be honest. First of all, it’s a new take on A Christmas Carol. Secondly, it’s a musical which is not usually my favorite genre. But it was so cute. I ended up loving it. It was a fresher version of the story than I’ve seen before, plus the songs were really cute and catchy. And there was a nice wholesome Christmassy message. Also: Octavia Spencer. She was a secondary character, which is a misuse of her considerable talent, but she kicked butt in the role and is just so adorable. It wasn’t quite appropriate for Carla, but it worked out okay. 
  • After that, Carla watched The Nightmare Before Christmas and I played games on my phone and then made us all cheese and cracker plates for dinner. An ideal Saturday. 
  • Once Carla went to bed, I watched Game Night. I think I read about this on a list of “Best Family Movies to Watch at Thanksgiving,” but then realized quickly that it wasn’t appropriate for a) children or b) watching with one’s parents. (This was an accurate assessment.) But as soon as I read about it, I needed to see it. How did I miss it when it came out in 2018? Jason Bateman! Kyle Chandler! Sharon Horgan! Chelsea Peretti! Jeffrey Wright! Other people! It’s about a game night gone horribly wrong and it was thoroughly entertaining. (My husband had no interest in watching it. His loss.) Kirsten Dunst’s husband (Jesse Plemons) was in it as well, playing a wonderfully creepy neighbor. It was not the best movie I’ve ever watched, but it was amusing and entertaining. There was a very uncomfortable scene with a gun, where the characters thought it was fake but it was real, and there was a scene where people seemed like they might vomit, and since those are things that I would want to know before I watch a movie I am sharing them with you now.
  • Maybe it’s clear that I’ve been trying to distract myself. I think I’m in the middle of losing one of my oldest and dearest friends. I’ve tried to write about it a few times, because it’s been at the forefront of my mind for a couple of months now. But it always comes out so maudlin. Plus, it makes it seem like I don’t realize that a) relationships of all sorts end for a variety of reasons, or b) both parties rarely get a say in the dissolution of a relationship. Plus plus, you only get my side, and of course I think that I should be forgiven, that my friend is misreading the situation or overreacting or not giving me the benefit of the doubt, that my friend is placing too much weight on third party interpretation of the inciting event, that I should be given another chance… which isn’t fair. (And doesn’t everyone feel that way, when they are the cause of a breach?) The thing is, I don’t think I can do anything about it. I’ve done what I can: I apologized, I tried to listen and improve, I’ve tried to show that I still value and want our friendship while trying not to put too much pressure on my friend to forgive and forget. I can’t do anything else. If my friend decides our relationship is unsalvageable, well. I can’t salvage it. I know all this, and yet it’s agonizing and deeply, horribly sad. So. Distraction. 
  • What is everyone watching, TV-wise, these days? My husband and I are between shows. We just finished Dahmer, which was okay – I was appalled to learn how he targeted gay men and men of color, because that was one aspect of the horror he perpetrated that has somehow eluded me. I appreciated that the series tried to devote time to telling the stories of some of the victims, and found their stories very moving. Niecy Nash was amazing in her role. But it also felt like a) there was too much effort to make a serial killer seem sympathetic or blameless for his actions and b) the show was aware how exploitative it was and yet barreled ahead anyway. I am more than ready for something new.
  • We also recently started watching Station Eleven, after I loved the book so much. The first two episodes have me actively disliking the show, though. They are just too different from the book. I should have waited a bit longer before watching the show, I guess – until the plot isn’t quite so fresh in my mind. Right now, I keep getting very huffy and impatient and “that’s not what happened!” I am sure it is a joy to watch it with me. Everything I’ve heard about it is that the show is really good, though, so I want to give it a chance. 
  • My husband sent me an article that made a compelling argument for watching 1899. It’s about a mysterious ship, people. Enough said. At least, that’s enough for me to want to watch it. 
  • To deviate from TV talk, I bought myself a pair of leggings from Loft on Black Friday. They are SO soft and I love them. So much that I wore them two days in a row. But by the end of the second day, the inner thighs were all pilly and gross. So disappointing. I get that my thighs are generous, but a pair of pants should last more than two days, I think.
  • I have to go to a holiday party. It’s for my husband’s work, and I get that it’s important for his staff etcetera, but I don’t wanna. Aside from the fact that I don’t like people, I don’t really know any of his colleagues or staff. Plus, I don’t know what to wear. My husband thinks I can just wear any old thing, although my instinct is, of course, to shop my way out my anxiety. Probably what I will do is wear black dress pants and a black blouse or maybe a burgundy sweater I bought more than a year ago for the only other dressy public event I’ve attended since 2019. 
  • But what I WANT to do, aside from exchanging my body and face for someone else’s, is to buy clothes that will transform me into a stylish woman who is at-ease around other humans. Something sparkly would be nice. 
Image from anntaylor.com
Image from amazon.com
Image from nordstrom.com
  • In other Things I Am Shopping For news, I am on the hunt for a pair of comfortable boots I can wear while walking in the snow. Note that I did not say “snow boots,” although I wouldn’t be opposed to snow boots. But maybe what I am looking for is a pair of hiking boots? I have a pair of snow boots, and they are warm and comfortable enough, but if I walk around in them for any amount of time they chafe at my heels. A friend and I have pledged to walk every Monday, and another friend and I have pledged to walk on a less regular basis but still outside. So I need good, quality footwear that won’t hurt my feet and will keep them warm and dry.
  • This is where I say quietly that my feet have been feeling a teeny bit better. I have been babying them for a long time, and then I went for a walk with Friend 2 from the previous paragraph and we ended up walking for nearly five miles. My feet were in agony when I got home, but I stretched them as I do daily, and the next day they felt better than they have in months. So I have made an effort to go for some long walks this week – once for about an hour outside and another time for 90 minutes on my treadmill. I’m not saying I’m cured or anything, but I am cautiously optimistic. Maybe what my feet have been telling me all along is to get off my rear and WALK already. 
  • The other thing I have been doing is wearing shoes in the house. They are brand new shoes that have never seen the light of day, but it still feels very strange to wear shoes IN the house. My dad (who noted matter-of-factly that the only real solution for plantar fasciitis is time, and that no single solution works for everyone) (I was already gloomily getting that sense from everyone’s comments) recommended that I start wearing them. Also, NGS mentioned that she never goes barefoot. I really LIKE going barefoot, but I also like walking around without pain so…
  • We have been enjoying our Christmas countdown calendars. My husband got the three of us a No Exit calendar, because we like the mystery games. We have to solve little puzzles every day to figure out which door to open up next. Carla got a Jurassic World calendar, and each day she gets a new little figurine. She has two dinosaurs so far and a little person; she isn’t awake yet so I don’t know what she’ll get today. 
  • It’s rare that I’m awake before Carla on a weekend. She can sleep straight through her alarm during the week, but on the weekend when we have nothing to do, she’ll wake up at 6:00 or 7:00 sharp when some internal mechanism reminds her that she can watch TV. But I have been having trouble sleeping lately; I keep waking up too early and not being able to fall back to sleep. Sometimes I just go through phases, but this morning I blame the wind and sadness. 
  • Carla and I are trying to come up with some fun things to do over winter break. So far I have “make zimtsterne and sufganiyot.” I also want to make cranberry crumble bars. Carla and I have tossed around the idea of making chocolates, which was my tradition with my dad when I was a kid and has been something I’ve done inconsistently with Carla. But… there should be other items on the agenda besides baking, probably? What kinds of fun plans do you have for the winter holidays? Are there any traditions you like to do each year? 
These photos are all from prior years, to remind me of how delicious these items are.
  • My mother-in-law arrives this afternoon. The house is clean, but could use a quick tidy. We are going out to dinner tonight, so I don’t have to worry about making anything. But I should probably go give Carla’s bathroom a quick once-over and set out the guest towels so it feels fresh. Then perhaps I will address holiday cards and listen to Christmas music.

Well, that’s all I have for you on this blustery first Sunday in December. How is your weekend going so far?

by

Holiday Books for Late Elementary-Age Kids and Tweens

For the past few years, I’ve been downloading the free reading calendars from Everyday Reading. I follow Janssen’s directions for printing a large “blueprint” size via Staples, and print one out each summer and each December and hang it on my kitchen wall.

At this point, I think I am doing it mainly for me rather than for Carla… but… at least right now that’s okay. 

(All About Me Aside: While I definitely encourage holiday reading each year to increase the magic quotient for Carla, I also do it for me. Last year, for the first time ever, I tried to read some adult Christmas books. I made a list based on recommendations from people I trust and adore… and then my experiment was a huge flop. I am not going to list them here because a) I’m pretty sure I mentioned them before, even though I can’t find it and b) I know all too sharply the feeling of betrayal and failure that accompanies recommending a book and having a friend/family member dislike/dismiss it. In this case, not liking these much-loved books made ME feel like the failure, I can assure you. Anyway. I want to try again this year, but I am recalibrating slightly by trying to find books that Carla and I can enjoy together.) 

Anyway: I am contemplating the December reading calendar and realizing that we may have finally outgrown our holiday book collection.

It’s not like I’m throwing them away or anything. I love our classic selection that includes things like Bear Stays Up for Christmas and Latke the Lucky Dog and beautifully illustrated versions of books like Oskar and the Eight Blessings and The Night Before Christmas. (I try, I really do, to inject some sort of religious element into this season, so we do talk about the story of Jesus’s birth and we discuss the miracle of the oil. We have a few books that lean more toward the religious, like Room for a Little One and Maccabee! The Story of Hanukkah, but most of our books are more secular in nature.)

All images below from amazon except where noted.

(Another Mainly About Me Aside: Hanukkah is not a major Jewish holiday, but since it overlaps with the Christmas season, I like to give it some prominence in our winter celebrations mainly to feel like we aren’t implying that one side of Carla’s heritage is more important than the other. This may matter to no one but me, but I am just making it up as I go along here.)

Onto the Book Search!

A few years ago I ordered one of my favorite Christmas chapter books – The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson – and read it to Carla. I don’t think she really enjoyed it as much as I did (although perhaps it will be more resonant this year). But what I want is more books like that. Good stories that evoke the spirit of the season and warm the heart. I don’t care if they are religious or secular, about Hanukkah or Christmas or any of the winter holidays we don’t personally celebrate but would be interested in exploring. My only stipulation is that I am trying to veer away from picture books this year. We have plenty, and I don’t know if they will appeal to my nine-and-a-half-year-old anymore. (Sob.)

During my search, it seems to me that there is quite a dearth of this very specific kind of books for Carla’s age range. But we shall persevere.

I got, as gifts, two books that might work: A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Writings by Charles Dickens and A Little House Christmas Treasury by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I started reading the latter to Carla last year and I think it might be the right kind of thing. 

image from bookdepository.com

There is a collection by Louisa May Alcott I may need to own: Christmas Stories: 32 Classic Stories & Poems for the Young & Old.

Carla and I are going to see one of her friends in a performance of The Nutcracker. Maybe we should see if our library has a copy of Nutcracked by Susan Adrian to get in the proper frame of mind? (I personally think the entire Nutcrackerstory is… how can I put this tactfully… I can’t think of a way; suffice it to say that it doesn’t resonate with me particularly well but I do enjoy the music.) 

Matt Haig’s A Boy Called Christmas seems to pop up on “best Christmas books for tweens” lists. But I don’t know if it would appeal to Carla. On the other hand, if she does like it, there are two others in the series we could read. I’m adding it to the library holds list.

Carla is LOVING James Patterson’s Katt and Dogg books, so obviously Dog Diaries: Happy Howlidays: A Middle School Story is on the list.

I initially passed over this book because it strikes me as ridiculous, but… it gets good ratings and Carla does really love dinosaurs. So I am putting a hold on The Christmasaurus by Tom Fletcher as well. 

I completely forgot that The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis was a holiday book! I think I may have it knocking around in a dusty bookcase somewhere along with the rest of the series.

The Naughty List by Michael Fry (NOT to be confused with On the Naughty List, which looks like quite the steamy Christmas anthology) looks cute… although I am already growing weary of the “child travels to North Pole to correct a mistake, hijinks ensue” story line.

Reluctantly, I have ordered The Christmas Pig from the library (reluctant because I continue to feel morally uncomfortable about supporting the author). 

Perhaps The Last Holiday Concert would be a good one; I love Andrew Clements. 

How about a nice holiday mystery story? Pinky Bloom and the Case of the Magical Menorah by Judy Press looks very cute.

Oooh! A Nancy Drew Christmas by the pseudonymous Carolyn Keene sounds right up my alley. Not quite sure if Carla would enjoy it – she’s not as obsessed with mysteries as I am. But this story features a ski resort in one of our favorite states, so maybe that would win her over! Putting that one on hold for sure.

Along similar appeals-to-me-but-perhaps-not-to-Carla lines is The Very Merry Murder Club collection of “wintery crime and mystery stories.” Alas, it is not available at my library.

Would The Girl Who Ruined Christmas by Cindy Callaghan be a good option, I wonder? I could see Carla being turned off by the title… or possibly intrigued. And… is it too tween-y?

I like the sound of Father Christmas’s Fake Beard by Terry Pratchett – a collection of humorous stories.

Or maybe one of the Enid Blyton collections? Christmas Tales or Christmas Stories. And don’t they look like they are illustrated by Quentin Blake? (Amazon doesn’t say and I didn’t do any additional digging.)

As long as we are looking at short stories, I am going to add The Power of Light: Eight Stories for Hanukkah by Isaac Bashevis Singer to the list. It’s kind of old (published in 1980, before I was born!), and may be for a slightly more mature audience (amazon confusingly lists it as having a “reading age” of 4 years and up and a “grade level” of 7 through 9), but if I can find it, it could be worth a try. (Alas, our library does not have it. Perhaps I can find a good used copy from amazon or ThriftBooks. I remember with great fondness Singer’s short story collection When Shlemiel Went to Warsawbut that one isn’t available either.

This collection of stories about the winter solstice – Return of the Light: Twelve Tales from Around the World for the Winter Solstice – sounds really interesting. I love learning how people in countries other than mine celebrate winter.

Although it is yet another of the “child travels to the North Pole” genre, North Pole Patrol by J. C. Deelstra sounds like it has potential.

Okay, I know I said no picture books, but this illustrated version of O. Henry’s classic The Gift of the Magi looks stunning… and that’s a story I haven’t shared with Carla yet.

Eve Bunting’s One Candle also looks beautiful and the story sounds heartfelt.

Nostalgia for The Baby-Sitters Club books made me look twice at Ann M. Martin’s On Christmas Eve, but it sounds very heartwarming!

On an entirely different tone, Krampus and the Thief of Christmas by Eldritch Black sounds different and potentially interesting. Although I can’t tell if it is truly scary or not. Carla is not a huge fan of scary.

What am I missing? What are the Christmas/winter/winter holiday books you (and/or your kids) read every year? 

I have requested 8 books for Carla (and, honestly, for me) from the library and I have three books in my amazon cart. I also requested two Agatha Christies for myself: Hercule Poirot’s Christmas and Midwinter Murder: Fireside Tales from the Queen of Mystery, in the hopes that choosing books by an author I know and love will result in a higher Christmas-book enjoyment rate than I had last year. 

It seems as though I am doing NaBloPoMo this month, which is 30 blog posts in 30 days. (Will I make it??? Only time will tell.) Details at San’s blog here.