wedding anniversary

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Christmas Spirit and Assorted Updates

I am sitting in my living room with a lovely view of the Christmas tree, lights glowing softly in the morning dim, and I am still feeling distinctly grinchy. What is my DEAL. We could easily blame my lack of spirit on the fact that I have to go to Costco today, the week before Christmas, because I have somehow allowed our toilet paper and paper towel supplies to dwindle to dangerous levels. Or perhaps we could point to the fact that my daughter’s school just informed us that winter vacation will begin a day early, so agitated are they about rising numbers of Covid cases in the system. And, worse, that the kids will be coming home with devices just in case we cannot return in January as planned, and need to remain remote for a while. Cue wailing and rending of garments. Of course of course I am glad that Carla’s school continues to take this pandemic so seriously. Of course I would rather keep her home than expose her unnecessarily. Of course I want to be a good community member. Of course we will be fine if we need to do a few days or weeks of remote learning. But. Anguished scream.  

However, even before this very unwelcome announcement from the school administration, I had been feeling distinctly dispirited.  Christmas music irritates me, unless it is a very specific and somehow highly elusive style of old-fashioned instrumental Christmas carols. I have wrapped maybe a dozen presents and am already SICK OF IT. I tried to read two separate Christmas books, both which came highly recommended by people I trust, and neither of them were a good fit for my reading style/current mood. We have NO SNOW, just wind, wind, and more wind. We finally put up the tree and the Christmas decorations, and somehow even they seem lackluster, even though they are the exact same decorations I put out every year.

I feel a certain level of frustration (with myself) over this lack of holiday spirit. Also, woe. I LOVE Christmastime, and I feel it slipping away from me, and I’m concerned that this is the last Christmas that will be Magical for Carla, which makes me want to swaddle myself in Holiday Joy that is on a high, dark shelf somewhere I cannot reach. Fretting about it does not help, of course; I cannot GUILT-TRIP Christmas spirit upon myself. I thought I could coax it to me with gentleness and patience, like getting a skittish cat to come up from under the couch, but so far that hasn’t worked either.  

The only Coping Thought that is working for me (currently) is that Christmas Spirit isn’t MANDATORY. There’s no law. I have done my best to do the things that will make Christmas happy for my loved ones and I can finish the last tasks I need to do but there is no law that I have to be cheery or feel awed by the season or cherish every moment. It’s disappointing, but trying to FORCE spirit upon myself is not working, so I am trying to let go. Maybe it will find me if I stop looking so hard.

In the meantime, here are a few utterly mundane updates on a variety of things. 

Christmas Tree Skirt: I ordered the Christmas tree skirt I loved from my recent post and it has since arrived. I like it even more in person than online. The fabric is kind of stiff and heavier than I anticipated, which I quite like; I don’t think presents are going to crumple it or displace it. (It did get some stubborn folds in it during shipping, but I think time and gift gravity will smooth those out.) I LOVE the red version, but I kind of wish I had the burlap one, too. Maybe someday I will be the type of person with two trees and I can get the burlap one as well.

Holiday To-Do List: Just two weeks ago, I was in a bit of a panic over all I had yet to complete. Here is a list of what I had yet to do:

I can make a nice tidy list of things we have yet to complete:

Address and mail holiday cards

Finalize purchases for Carla’s “rilly big box full of all craft stuf”

Wrap and mail gifts for sister-in-law and niece

Mail caramels to my brother and sister-in-law whenever they get here

Buy the final gift for my mother

Buy the final gift for my father

Buy all gifts for my mother-in-law

Buy all gifts for my father-in-law (including birthday gifts)

Buy all gifts for my aunt-in-law

And now, I have completed every single item on that list. Plus, I have wraps all the gifts and packed them in boxes and put them in the mail. All that’s left is to wrap gifts for my family (and on behalf of Santa). A good reminder that there is usually plenty of time to do what needs to be done. Also that panicking publicly on one’s blog is quite useful for stimulating action.

Box Office Breakdown: When last I showed you a photo of my office, it was cram-jammed with boxes. I was saving the boxes so that I had The Perfect Size for the gifts I needed to send to relatives. This was kind of ridiculous, considering I only needed four boxes. But they are gone now! Broken down (by my husband!!!) and recycled! 

My office is usable once again. Hooray!

Coffee Experiment: I ended my experimentation with drinking coffee after two days of drinking coffee. Coffee is not for me. Instead, I have been making matcha lattes with occasional forays into Christmas tea, which is a very gentle, fragrant way to enable the Christmas spirit to enter my soul should it choose to. 

I just ordered a box of Stash Christmas in Paris tea to try in addition to the Twinings. “Luxurious chocolatey flavor paired with lavender and mint”? Yes, please!

Anniversary Dinner: My husband and I decided that we just weren’t comfortable eating in a restaurant quite yet, so we got “fancy takeout” (this means I ordered short ribs and my husband ordered chicken Milanese and we also each got an appetizer, instead of getting our usual pizza/Indian food/Thai food takeout) and took it back to our house where we watched football while Carla was at a birthday party. It was a surprisingly fun, lovely way to spend our anniversary. Plus, we got (“got”) to wait in the lobby of the restaurant for a few minutes while the kitchen prepared our order, and observed all the unmasked people coming in to dine there, and listened to how snarky and unpleasant the three (three!) hostesses were, and witnessed a disgruntled diner gripe to one of the hostesses about how he’d been waiting at a table for fifteen minutes and no one had come to serve him yet, even though someone had waited on a table that was just seated. It gave me just enough taste of Being In A Restaurant to realize that I have no desire to be in a restaurant perhaps ever again. 

Also, I got flowers!!! (And chocolates. They are both from my mother-in-law, but that doesn’t dampen their beauty.)

Dog Gifting: Carla would like to make special holiday treats for all her neighborhood dog friends. I have googled “homemade dog treats” several times, which turns up lots of recipes, many of which include peanut butter. But then some websites say that dogs can be allergic to peanut butter. Or gluten. I feel like we would KNOW if any of the dogs on our gift list had special needs. That seems like the kind of information that comes up, when you are a dog person. Right? But maybe not? I don’t know. My best guess is that we should just pick a recipe, make it, distribute the dog treats, and then the owners will decide if they want to feed it to their dogs or throw them away. It definitely seems like the perfect “It’s the thought that counts” kind of situation. But I don’t know! I’m not a dog owner!

If you are a dog owner/expert, would you allow your dog to eat a treat containing peanut butter? Perhaps I should stick to a different “flavoring.” But the other flavors include things like banana and sweet potato. Do dogs like bananas and sweet potatoes? Am I overthinking this? I am overthinking this. 

Awkwardness: Thank you for your support and kindness in response to my post about being the most awkward human on the planet. I am mostly over it. I have since spoken to several of the moms involved in my big foot-in-mouth incident the other day, and they seemed friendly and normal and the subject never even came up. 

What are you up to, this last weekend before Christmas? If you also have to brave Costco, you have my solidarity and sympathy.

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Giveth/Taketh; VAXXED!; Dinners This Week

Apparently there is a chicken tender shortage????? 

Okay, maybe there is, maybe there isn’t; I asked All Knowing Google and got three headlines of varying levels of certainty:

Article 1: Is a chicken tender shortage underway?

Article 2: US could experience a chicken tender shortage

Article 3: The US is now facing a chicken tender shortage

Time will tell.

Carla, in typical Carla fashion, won’t eat chicken tenders, instead preferring her chicken in nugget form or shaped into dinosaur-adjacent shapelets. But how can the chicken tender shortage not have a domino effect? Well, perhaps this is the ideal time to wean her off of chicken nuggets for good!

And things are looking up, in other parts of the freezer section. I got my hands on some frozen pancakes this week: some of the mini pancakes at Target and some regular Eggo buttermilk pancakes at my normal grocery store. 

I guess sometimes the good lord taketh away and sometimes the good lord giveth.

Carla is now FULLY VACCINATED against Covid 19! And the flu, but that’s less exciting. No less important, though. 

She had a low fever the day after her vaccine, and complained of arm pain and a headache for most of the day. She also seemed a little more subdued than usual. But the next day, she was back to normal, aside from some lingering arm pain. 

I AM SO RELIEVED OMG. 

It’s not like we’re all going to go out and stick our faces into the mouths of strangers or anything (I am picturing those old-timey lion tamers who stick their heads into the jaws of the beast). But I do feel like maybe we can RELAX a little. I mean, we will continue to wear masks, we will continue to social distance. And I can’t imagine that we’ll be attending packed-house concerts or sporting events. I do think I will unclench a little bit? That sounds nice. And maybe we will explore some of the avenues that we’ve considered mostly-closed for the past eighteen months – travel, restaurants, birthday parties, indoor playdates/dinner parties? I suspect we will move very slowly. 

Although…

My husband and I are – possibly – going to eat dinner in An Actual Restaurant for our anniversary this week. We have childcare (Carla will be at a birthday party, full of masked, mostly-vaccinated children she already sees every day at school). We have a reservation. We are both tentatively committed, which is an oxymoron. Tentatively committed to keeping the reservation, not to one another. I mean, one hopes. But despite all these baby steps, we are both VERY NERVOUS at the idea of eating inside a restaurant. Even my husband’s enduring desire for a real steak (as in a steak that I haven’t prepared at home) hasn’t pushed him over the fulcrum of the Should We Eat in a Restaurant teeter totter. 

We have eaten AT restaurants since March 2020. Three, to be exact. Each time, we ate outside. Each time, we were the only people eating outside. Each time, somehow, it rained. Each time, the wait staff seemed totally unperturbed; each time, I assume, the wait staff talked about “the whack jobs at table four” when they were safe and warm and dry inside.

Anyway, we may decide at the last minute to get takeout instead. We shall see. I, for one, am not opposed to eating steak from the cozy if cramped safety of my car, although perhaps we will need to import our own steak knives for the experience. My husband is less enthused at the prospect. But I don’t think anything says “thirteen years of marriage” like scarfing down fancy steakhouse food between the gear shift and the automatic window buttons while your kid is attending a birthday party. 

Let’s come up with some food to eat on the other, less fraught days, shall we?

Dinners for the Week of December 6-December 13

  • Mediterranean Sheet Pan Cod with Zucchini: This calls for cherry tomatoes, which I may add if I’m feeling generous. It also calls for kalamata olives, which I may subtract because my husband hates them. We shall see.
  • Chicken Tikka Masala: I can’t remember if I’ve tried this recipe before, but it sounds yummy. I will add some sliced bell peppers.
  • Thai Chicken Quinoa Bowls: TSomething about this just sounds good right now – the ingredients make it almost summery, maybe? A good change from the fall/winter fare.
  • Ginger Salmon Salad: We have had this once before and I remember it was refreshingly different. I also think it was one of the rare salmon recipes that my husband liked. 
  • Slow Cooker Short Ribs with Mascarpone Polenta: You guys. I am so embarrassed that I STILL haven’t made the short ribs that are hanging out in my freezer. WHAT is wrong with me?!?! (I know exactly what is wrong, and it is that I don’t want to sear the short ribs before putting them in the slow cooker.)
  • Maybe a Restaurant?
  • Takeout or DIY: My family prefer to call “fend for yourselves” nights “scrounging.” But that sounds a little scrappier than what actually goes on. 

What are you looking forward to this week, food-wise or otherwise?

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Ten

I can hardly believe it’s been a whole decade since that magical day when I married my best friend. Here’s what I remember from that day: A whole host of things going wrong, running late, not going to plan, my nervous pulse hammering past disappointment and frustration to panic. The pure calm that settled over me in the empty chapel once I finally saw my husband to be. My father walking me down the aisle, the encouraging push he gave me at the end. Gentle laughter when the pastor read a bit of text too long for me to repeat in one go. The warmth of good friends crowded into a limousine. A tiny cup of velvet butternut squash soup and a buttery square of a brie grilled cheese sandwich that tasted like heaven. Poems on every table that tried but didn’t quite express the love that had subsumed me. Being carried on a tide of joy and love and laughter and, okay, too much tequila, the waves of happiness cresting and cresting and never breaking. Good music – are the stars out tonight? I don’t know if it’s cloudy or bright – and loud singing. Looking out the window to see snowflakes as delicate as butterflies form a kaleidoscope of white and the mountains, resplendent in their shimmering robes, presiding in the background. Magic.

But the wedding day was just a day. Just a party. A wonderful day I will never forget. But in the intervening years, there’s been a marriage. If we’re lucky, just the beginning.

We’ve been so very fortunate, these ten years. (And the seven years leading up to our marriage!) Our ups have been high, our downs have been pretty high as well. I have no doubt that we have sorrow in our future; that’s just the way life goes. But for now, I am so grateful for these wonderful, busy, happy ten years.

I tend to get gooey and overly sentimental about our anniversary (okay, about all things). My husband – logical, practical, scientific – is my counterweight. So in his honor, I am going to try to rein in the goo and aim for goofy instead.

Top Ten Great Things About My Husband

(Well, maybe not the top ten)

Okay, so he’s kind, thoughtful, brilliant, hard-working, funny, great father, supportive of my hopes and dreams, blah blah blah… But ALSO:

  1. Maybe he’s not a big fan of washing dishes, but he is almost always willing to do the laundry and he is SO GOOD AT FOLDING.
  2. He is a master at the art of choosing the perfect ridiculous gif to text me and make me laugh in the middle of the day.
  3. He and I may sometimes disagree – and disagree strongly – but he is always willing to listen to logical arguments, and often comes around to my side.
  4. He says, “Thank you for making dinner” every single night, even if what I’ve made is barely edible.
  5. He can hear an interesting snippet of music underneath the din of a thousand Target shoppers on a Saturday and know exactly how to find out which song it is and then play it in the car until it is our new favorite family song. He did that with Guster’s “Satellite” – which he identified in a noisy restaurant in Ithaca, and which has become one of my favorite songs. Bonus: I think of him and that trip together every time I hear it.
  6. He is super warm and snuggly which is very useful when I have just climbed into a freezing cold bed. But his feet are always icy, which comes in handy when I’ve gotten overheated by being pressed up against him, and he’s always willing to clamp his frosty toes against my calves.
  7. He may not be a flowers-and-jewelry-and-love-notes romantic, but he listens, and sometimes I will find myself marveling, “He is doing this solely because it is important to me.” Like addressing and stamping all of our holiday cards, when he thinks they are a waste of time and money. If that’s not romance, I don’t know what is.
  8. Speaking of romance, he loves to choose my next book for me to read. Almost always, it’s something I end up LOVING.
  9. He is happy to plan all of our travel together – airline, hotel, restaurant, museum, everything – which is great because just doing a single search on Kayak makes me break out in hives.
  10. He keeps getting hotter. I am serious. The older he gets, the more handsome he is.

Of course there are a billion other reasons why I love him, from the frivolous to the serious, the silly to the sentimental. You pile up quite a lot of love in a decade.  But above all, I am still so very glad we chose each other.