Wordless Wednesday: Queen of the Holiday Ball, 1958

Brown Paper Packages Tied Up With Strings

I'm trying to get those gosh darn Christmas calendars done and I wanted to make sure I had enough good pictures to use for the December pages, so yesterday I planned a little "photo shoot" for when I got home from work, complete with a prop -- an office supply box that I fished out of the recycling at work, that I then wrapped for Shae to tear into, so I could capture the "magic moment" on film.

This is the point where I tell her there is nothing in the box. She actually handled it pretty well, though -- I told her that she was allowed to play with the box, the paper, whatever she wanted, as long as she didn't touch the Christmas tree or any ornaments, and as long as she helped us clean up before bathtime. For as clean as she is, she does enjoy making a mess from time to time. As we all do. (And she wore the box on her head for a while, and called it a "robot hat." Love this kid!)

I have been worrying though, lately, that I am turning into (or already am) one of those "paparazzi parents," the ones who go nowhere without their digital camera, ready to document anything and everything that might happen. Just in case, you know? It does concern me that maybe my own kid wouldn't be able to pick me out of a lineup, but she can identify my camera from 100 paces. I mean, for crap's sake: I planned a photo shoot for my own kid, in my own house! And the only thing she wants for Christmas is her own "cramera!"

Like any decent and reasonable person, I want to take whatever means are necessary to keep my kid from turning into one of those awful, awful people on shows like "The Hills" or "Keeping Up With The Kardashians." I mean, I think we're going to be fine, because nobody really cares about our life, since we're so average and ordinary and normal in every way (except for the monkeyshit craziness, of course, but even that is your typical kind of monkeyshit craziness).

Still and all, I wonder if maybe we are teaching her bad habits, because I spend so much time being Madame Director instead of being Mommy. I have spent approximately eleventy bajillion hours working on these calendars, and at least half that trying to direct my kid so that I could get the pictures that I want, so as to convey the image that I want, so I could make the pages turn into what I imagined them to be.

And I don't want to be one of those parents, one of those stage or pageant moms.

I don't want to make her into anything other than what she already is, which is COMPLETELY AWESOMESAUCE. She already makes me so happy.

Little Saint Nick

I swear, I am not stealing post titles from my sister -- it just so happens that our family celebrates St. Nick's Day and there really aren't many other song names that will work here. Plus besides to which and anyway, "Little Saint Nick" is one of my favorite modern Christmas songs, especially when it is performed by The Muppets.

Come on, sing with me in your best Animal impression: "RUN RUN REINDEER!" Gotta love Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, which is seriously one of the best band names EVAR.

(Incidentally, I believe I was 30 years old before I realized that "Little Saint Nick" is a song about a sleigh, and not about Santa himself. That was quite a revelation, let me tell you. Not sure why, exactly, but I remember being shocked and mortified that I was getting it wrong for all that time, like, "How could I be so smart and still be so stupid?" Little did I know at the time what I would be in for once I became a parent. Oy vey.)

Anyway ... you will notice if you look closely that there are actually a pair of Shae's shoes in there. They're kind of hard to see because her feet are still so weensy (and we even set out a pair of shoes that are still a bit too big), even if they're not as small as they once were. Evidently, she was a good girl -- she got quite a lot of swag. Most of it was Hello-Kitty-themed, because of the $1 section at Target. I figure those stickers are just going to end up on the cats anyway, so there is no point in paying a lot of money for them, you know?

We also went to a Christmas party where My Anonymous Mother works -- it was cute, mostly just a chance to get your picture taken with Santa. Of course, Shae wanted none of that mess -- she said in the car, "I don't like Santa and I don't want to sit in his lap." I figured last year that once she worked out that {Santa = presents} she'd be okay, but it looks like I forgot to include the Creep Factor in the equation. I mean, she understands how Santa works, in theory, and she says she wants to ask Santa for a "cramera," but ... I don't know, maybe she just wants to yell her wish list at him from across the room or something?

(I love how in this picture she is all, "Oh, hey there, Mr. Weird Old Dude In A Fake Beard, you have some lint on your jacket, let me get that for you but DON'T LOOK AT ME NOOOOOOOOOOOO!" You can see the general discomfort and vague terror in her face.)

She was very happy with the small gift and the the goody bag she got. She's becoming quite the pro at ripping packages open, too, although, she is very strangely neat about it. Tear off one strip, give it to Mommy to throw in the trash, lather, rinse, repeat.

Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!

We're in the middle of our first snowfall of the year right now.

Despite -- or perhaps because of -- spending four consecutive really bad winters in the coldest and most miserable place on Earth, I have not developed a fondness for the wet white stuff.

A tolerance for it? Sure. A certain jadedness? Definitely. A marked inability to cope with the wackaloons and weirdoes who drive 15 miles under the speed limit for no real reason and who buy grocery stores out of bread and milk and eggs when the words "wintry mix" enter the minds of local weathermen? Abso-friggin-lutely.

I dunno ... maybe I can eventually be convinced.

Christmas Wrapping

Incidentally: I was at Kohl's the other day, shopping for assorted nonsense and also this giant 2-pound bedazzled "S" Christmas ornament, and I heard a REALLY BAD COVER of The Waitresses' classic tune. And I swear to God, I right about had a heart attack in the store, because I could tell from the singing that the "artist" is a kid. I mean, like, an actual kid, not just someone younger than I am (although I am feeling so old these days that I am practically my own grandmother). Can't tell exactly who sang it -- once I realized about 5 bars in that this was not MY version of the song, I sort of stuck my fingers in my ears and starting singing "lalalalalalala" to myself to drown out the racket, and get off my lawn you damn kids! -- but as far as I can tell, it is someone called Miranda Cosgrove, from some Nickelodeon show that I have never heard of called "iCarly," and this person was literally not even born when the original version of the song came out.

Bah humbug, indeed!

Anyway, this is not about this kind of Christmas wrapping:

Although, hooray! I finally got some stuff wrapped! Of course, I have these ghetto-ass dollar-store gift tags? And they're like all waxy or something? So I can't write on them with just regular pen? But instead I need to use a Sharpie? And I can't find one? So nothing has a name tag on it yet? And I hope I don't accidentally give my father any of the gifts that I got for my nephew? Because that would be awkward? But anyway?

This is about this kind of wrapping:

Where your kid takes some reusable Target shopping bags and decides to wrap herself up in them to turn herself into a "wild thing" and why oh why did I spend all that money on presents when it's already evident that she's going to be more interested in the shiny things and wrapping paper? Sigh. She reminds me of someone or something, wish I could remember who ...

Oh yeah. The cats. Boogers.

And seriously: what the hell is an iCarly? Get off my lawn! And stay out!

Pennsylvania and Some Homemade Pizza Pie

Who knew that there are no Christmas songs that mention pizza? What kind of nonsense is that? There are songs about Grandma getting smooshed by livestock and Santa losing his ever-loving mind and Swiss Colony frickin' beef logs, but not Christmas pizza? Seriously, what is wrong with the world? Honestly, you'd think this was a religious holiday or some such balderdash.

Anyway ... we have like 3 pounds of assorted shredded cheeses in the refrigerator, because HEY YOU NEVER KNOW -- don't you judge me! -- and we're running out of room for essentials like hundred-year-old jars of cocktail onions and warehouse-club size vats of dill pickles, so we've decided to start, you know, using some of it. And since we can't really get a decent pizza in our little town, we decided to make our own.

I have a bread machine that I got for my birthday a few years ago, so technically we could have made our own dough, but we went the Boboli bread shell route because we figured (correctly) that it would be quicker and easier. Also, we wanted to give Shae a shot at "cooking," and even for a hyperactive toddler, it's pretty hard to screw up "painting" pizza sauce and sprinkling cheese on top of a ready-made circle of bread.

And it turned out to be a pretty darned good pizza, too. I mean, it's not gourmet wood-burning brick-oven pizza made from imported organic semolina and maiden-made fresh goat's-milk cheese or anything, but it was easily as good as frozen Ellio's, which everyone knows is the food of the gods. And Shae was pleased as punch that she got to "cook dinner," which was the point of the whole exercise, anyway. And then we watched "The Year Without A Santa Claus" and G and I wondered what the hell drugs the Rankin and Bass people were taking back in the '70s.

So, you know, typical day in our house.

Wordless Wednesday: Trim Up The Tree

Merry and Bright, Silver and Gold

Okay ... so maybe I will misappropriate and mash up holiday song lyrics instead of just titles. Perhaps. Anyway. One of my Christmas presents is going to be a tripod for the fancycam, and probably I could have used it in my attempts to take The Picture For The Christmas Cards, but hello have you met me? I'm the bullheaded-est Taurus you're ever going to meet in your life and I can work this shit out without opening my presents early.

First attempt. Shae is sitting too low for the camera, and also I have the shutter set too fast, so not enough light gets in. Also, she won't look at me while I'm trying to photograph her. No serious concerns yet, we just need to try again.

Second attempt. I promised Shae that I wasn't going to take too many pictures, and in fact I only took about 30, which is hardly any compared to the hundreds of shots I normally take. And of the 30 pictures, only about 10 are actually of Shae -- I ended up with quite a few nice pictures of my curtains and the corner of one of my red Ikea chairs. Here, I have the exposure right, but I don't have the camera up high enough (and I bumped the camera while taking the picture).

All of these pictures were taken without the flash, by the way. If I ever bother to read the owner's manual or use one of the online tutorials for my camera, watch out! (Although maybe you should anyway because I'm kind of clumsy and accident-prone.)

Here we have the height correct, but the camera got bumped again, and the focus is also incorrect, plus we're a little overexposed. This is the point at which I suspect I need to start drinking, and where possibly extortion enters the equation. "Santa is WATCHING YOU," I remind her. It's no one wonder little kids are scared of Mall Santas; he's kind of a creepy stalker terrorist, isn't he?

No. Just ... no. Everything is perfect here except Shae wouldn't sit still. We got the timer to work correctly, the focus is right, the exposure is spot on, but Shae ... well, she's two and a half. It was after bedtime. She was tired and cranky, and so was Mommy, to be honest. So I did what any sane and rational parent would do at this point: I bribed her. Oh yes, I went there. I told her that if she'd just sit still and smile and watch the blinkies and we got a nice picture, I'd give her a dollar for her bank.

Best damn dollar I ever spent.

(Full disclosure: this picture has been "processed" -- I straightened and softened it a bit in post-production, but the rest of it was all Shae, plus whatever magical rainbow sparkle unicorn farts are inside the camera. Oh, and if you were wondering what I used for camera stabilization [i.e., my makeshift tripod], click here.)

O Tannenbaum

And now it starts: that part of the year when all my posts get Christmas carol names instead of regular old lame punny song titles. Sorry. (Not really.) Anyway ... one whole day earlier than last year, we have our tree up back at the ol' homestead.

Some of the particulars for this year: instead of a Frasier fir, we got a balsam fir. The reasoning is simple -- cost. Our tree is about 7" tall, and the balsam was almost $10 cheaper for that size. We're still quite happy with it. It has a nice pine-with-some-kind-of-random citrus scent. Oh, and I think I might be allergic to it because I've had a sore, gummy throat since we brought it into the house. Zyrtec, baby.

This year's tree is decorated pretty similarly to last year's. What can I say? When I find a Martha-Stewart-approved design scheme that I like, I tend to stick with it. This year, I did add some white to the mix, so our "official" holiday colors are gold, silver, and white, with accents of "last year's wrapping paper." Lots and lots of sparkles. Fewer lights than last year, and I did NOT buy any more lights this time around.

You can see here the (mostly) completed tree. I think I am going to see if I can pick up some more white ornaments, just singles here and there, but for the most part, we are done with this bad boy. The only decorations that have any "not approved" colorings are the cupcake (about halfway down, on the left hand side, near the giant bedazzled "S") and the little blue sweater (near the bottom, center-right). One thing you might not be able to tell -- no balls. Just bells and pinecones and finials and glittery springs and random sparklies.

We did go shopping for my Christmas presents over the weekend, and one of them is a tripod, so I will try to get some nice pictures of some of the new favorite ornaments soon. In the meantime, if you're really interested, you can see a couple of pictures I took with the iPhone camera here and here and here. (That last one is a joke, but you better believe that I would hang that sucker if I had one, because I find it best to hedge all bets at holiday time, you know?)

Street Survivors

Because "The One Where I Run Around Acting Like I Am Shooting A Lynyrd Skynyrd Album Cover" is too long, and also maybe more than a little bit obvious.

For the past 103 years, my high school has played football on Thaksgiving morning against the high school just across the river, our counterpart in new Jersey.

The night before is The Bonfire, which is at the end of a week of activities which are significantly primarily to seniors: the Sleep-Out, the Pep Rally, the ritual of dressing like lumberjacks and getting splinters from unload pallets off trucks.

We didn't take Shae to the bonfire last year -- I can't remember why, but I'm sure it made sense at the time. She didn't lose a step any way: she handled the stroll perfectly. Like a pageant queen, waving and flouncing and working the crowd. Queen of the Bonfire, already.

She already wants to know when we can go to the next bonfire.