Season's Clock is Ticking Away

Here is another installment of Random Tuesday Thoughts hosted by the lovely Keely.

Christmas Tree - Grown Up Christmas – just not the same.  We didn’t get a tree last year.  The thought of stomping around in the cold to cut down our annual tree didn’t seem worth it, plus we just couldn’t find the time.  I’ve lost the Christmas spirit.  My house is a the size of a shoe box, removal of furniture is required, the hauling of boxes and boxes of ornaments, lights, wreaths, and garlands just seemed like too much work, for what, three weeks of watching needles fall.

The thrill is gone.  See already it’s happening again.  It’s a mere two and a half weeks out, and I can’t see when we will have the time to put up a tree.  What happened to the festive home I used to know?  Gone since my kid left?  I spend Christmas Eve at my in-laws. I spend Christmas Day at the sister’s.  So why do we need a tree anyways?

I need to find a tree soon otherwise it won’t happen.  I mean seriously, Queen Maker and I were together for seven years before we even had Beloved.  So why am I so down on working this hard for Christmas. I think I'm using Beloved's absence as an excuse. I need an intervention.  But please don’t send three ghosts to do it.

I am not being a good Christmas Role-Model.

Baking – Now here is another story.  I’m always up for baking. Because economic times have been hard, I’ve baked a lot of gifts last year.  Cinnamon Rolls that were to die for, Spinach Pie triangles, cookies upon cookies, to give to friends and clients.  

But unfortunately I sample each and every one.  Sprite’s Keeper reminded me about the battle of restraint that I am going to embark on soon.

Baking – Fun.  Baking – Creative.  Baking – Keeps house warm.

Baking – Good.  Sampling everything – BAD.

I am not being a good Health and Nutrition Role Model.

Shopping – nearly done.  The thought of going out in the next two weeks makes me cringe.  I need to get it done soon because I need to do a lot of baking and decorating.  I need to have time to enjoy these things, not feel like I’m adding to the burden pile. I scour the store circulars and comparison shop like no other.  I am a champion of finding a great gift at a ridiculously low price.  I buy quality at bargain basement prices.

I am not a good Stimulate Our Economy Role-Model.

Sewing – Make a steam punk vest for Beloved for Christmas.  Need to start that project, soooon.  Also bought brocade material in an Asian motif to make a jacket for Queen Maker. Like that’s ever going to happen before Christmas. If I ever get them done, I will post pictures.

Wrapping Gifts – Thank God for gift bags.

Christmas Projects with my niece, Amber, 11 years old, and my friend, Hailey, 5 years old. Hailey, this Friday.  Amber, next week.  I’m looking forward to creating and crafting with the girls. It can be so relaxing and it’s a great way to keep the bonds of friendship strong.

Christmas Get-Togethers – How many invitations will we turn down this year?  It means I need to bring something, preferable food. My hair will never, ever cooperate and will never look fabulous no matter how much time I spend on it. I hate the whole dressing up thing and that is bad.  It means that looking sweet in a new dress and heels doesn’t get seen often. What, Queen Maker? I’m sorry, the sweatshirts and ponytail not getting it for you anymore?  Call What Not to Wear!  Use it or lose it.  And I’ve lost it. 

I am not a Good Friend or a Social Role Model.

I feel time ticking away.  The flight or fight mechanism is kicking in people.  I chose to run away from Christmas last year, but I’m planning to stick it out and stay and fight. Wish me luck.

First Step:

Put some Bailey’s in my coffee and play “A Charlie Brown Christmas” by Vince Guaraldi over and over.  If that doesn’t put me in the mood, I don’t know what will.

Beautiful Goodfellows Firemen

Being one of the poorest families in our neighborhood, a fact totally lost on us because we didn't know any better, several boxes were dropped off at our home during the Christmas season with some great stuff in it. I assume a teacher or the school had given our name to the local chapter of the Goodfellows.

I was six years old. The door bell rang and Three. Tall. Muscular. Beautiful. Blond. Men walked into our home carrying several boxes.  They were all over six feet tall and they were wearing their firemen gear.

One of them made a big impression on me.  Maybe it was the uniform or how high I had to look up to see his face, or how blond he was or that deep voice when he offered the boxes to my Mom, but I was instantly smitten.  Up to that point, all the men I knew were friends of my parents.  They were short, flabby, and all brunettes.  This was a new revelation of manhood never before experienced! It was as though Superman had walked in the door.

To have strangers in our home was exhilarating for the five of us. My Mom was incredulous.  all this for us! In the boxes were foodstuffs, white t-shirts, toys for my brother, and dolls.  We were touched.  My mother cried when they left.  The Goodfellows came several years after that always wearing their uniforms.  They were sometimes police officers or firemen and it was thrill to have them in our home.

My family think of the Goodfellows with great affection.  I saw them today selling their newspapers and it always transports me to that day when I discovered tall gorgeous blond men that others actually cared about our family. They made sure we had a good Christmas and we will always be grateful.

Acting Squirrely

Squirrel.  Big fat brown squirrel chewing on my back porch.  Begone you stupid squirrel!

Holes, someone is digging holes into my newly seeded lawn area out front.  Everyday find a new spot. They're more like shallow cups not exactly holes.  Wonder what's doing that and why?

Oh, squirrel.  Big fat brown squirrel is messing with me.  He's eating my back porch and digging up my lawn.  Where's the pellet gun?  Lucky squirrel.  I don't have a pellet gun.

Gigantic seed pods.  How did these seed pods get here half eaten and strewn across all four steps? Who leaves gigantic seed pods as a booby trap to kill innocent women carrying their groceries in the house?   I know it's on purpose because who ever it was spread them across the full length of the steps so I had to step on them. Is that you squirrel?

Urban tumble weeds.  They blow between the houses, swirl a bit, then down the street.  Why can't my neighbors put lids on their trash cans?  Hey! don't you know you can recycle those bags?

Door window.  Big brown squirrel looking through my door window.  WTH?  What's up squirrel?

Getting creepy.  Squirrel antics making me  uncomfortable.  Going on for weeks. Is this really an ordinary squirrel or a zombie squirrel?

Barking.  A supposedly sane woman barking like a ferocious chihuahua at big bad brown squirrel.

No more squirrel. Yeah!  But I think he still had the last laugh.

Go over to Keely at UnMom.  Check out how random folks can be. 

The Daughter I Used to Be

I don't like to be touched.  My personal space is hallow ground. Step too close and I might bark or give you a swift kick to the knee.

My mom's a hugger and a kisser - to EVERYONE.  Be careful because you might meet my mom on the street one day.  And if you look down or disheartened, don't be surprised if a four foot nine, redheaded, 78 year old, looks you empathetically in the eye and with an impish smile, rushes up to give you a big hug and a kiss.  You think I'm kidding?

One thing that annoys my mother is when some of her friends during a conversation keep touching her on the knee or arm every few seconds to get her attention or to emphasize a point.  She tells me this all the while she is touching my arm every few seconds to keep my attention and to emphasize a point.

After about the ninth tip touch, I can't take it anymore, "Mami, stop doing that, okay?"  "What?"

Living with all that love, empathy, and need for human connection, finally got to me. I can't help myself. At our martial art school, students are regularly greeted with big hugs and a few kisses.  Children and adults stay with us for five years or more so they become closer to family than clients. My mother taught me that people all need to feel wanted, welcomed, and understood.  Instead of being the growling grouch of my youth,  I have become a loving, hugging fool.

Vodkamom posted some posts about her mother that got me thinking again about my dear Mami.  I realized that as you get older, real intimacy is sometimes lost between a parent and child. There are a lot of grandchildren and my brother and sisters, and there is plenty of love, but intimate moments are few yet cherished by her.  My dad is not a demonstrative man, very closed, never was.  My mom is a complete opposite.  She needs lots of love, but she is not too selfish.  Because what she gives will tenfold exceed what she needs.

So at church today, watching the multitude of children in our congregation, and I mean multitude, I witnessed the little one's need to hold a parents' hand or to be picked up in those loving, safe arms. The complete bond, that oneness between mother and child was something my mom hasn't experienced for a long, long time. So I decided to be her little girl again.

I slipped my hand into hers as a five year old would, and we held hands the whole service, as daughter and mother, reliving the oneness we used to feel.

Potatoes are Free Balling

This week's Spin Cycle is anything goes.  We can choose our own topic.  My Spin is my challenge with language.

I have always had a problem expressing myself verbally.  You will find a rather lengthy post describing my problem.  An example I used in that post was when I wanted Queenmaker to get the milk out of the fridge for me.

"Honey, could you, um, um get, ah, ah grass! COW! um, um, you know, liquid-y WHITE!  Cold! in big box?"

Poor guy, he didn't have a clue. He even looked around the room trying to find what I'm talking about. Bless him.

The other day I said,

"I'm going downstairs to stitch, jeans, um, um, Water! Soap! Switch-y machine! ah, ah Clean. Basket. Stuff."    Translation: I'm going downstairs to start some laundry.

But my latest, Potatoes are Free Balling. Whew. Wow. I don't even know what to say.

QueenMaker and I decided that in the future we would bake potatoes without wrapping them in foil -  Aluminum - Alzheimer connection scare. We now bake potatoes in a casserole dish.  They taste better.  Or maybe I think they taste better than being foiled because its supposedly a healthier way to go, so of course they taste better.

Anyways, I was trying to express to QueenMaker that the potatoes had a drier texture than those wrapped up in foil, which produced more steam.  I said,

"They're drier but still tender.  These potatoes were not harnessed, um, they were free from, um, um, they weren't wrapped up, um, um (hitting my head hoping for clarity). The potatoes are free balling it!"

QueenMaker, "WHAT!"

Go visit Sprite's Keeper for more individual Spins on any and all topics.

Random Germ-y Family Affairs

Yes, we gathered together for yet another family event. This time it was my beloved niece's birthday.  Whenever the clan gathers, and we gather a lot, there is at least 22 or more people in the house ages four months to eighty years old. These events despite their joyful, fun filled, somewhat harmonious family state of affairs have a more ominous side to them.  I'm beginning to dread them just a little.

They have become a germ convention.  All the kissing and hugging, the clasping of hands, the carrying of sick babies and snotty children.  Carriers of disease coming from all quarters, college students whose campuses are under siege, old folks just out of the hospital THAT day, parents who left a child behind at home because "he threw up just before we left," children that stayed home all week because of fever, not to mention the overtaxed bathroom that over twenty people have use. Aaaugh!

Checking vitals everyday now.  Was that a little soreness in my throat just now? Was that a regular sneeze (my, is this place dusty) or was that a sickness sneeze? Are my glands *engorged?

My Beloved is a tea connoisseur, working at the Crazy Wisdom Book Store in Ann Arbor, for the last two years.  He brought home a tea called Beloved's Don't Get Sick Tea, one he blended himself. Sweet kid, always thinking about his mommy.  (Oh yea, and his daddy too.)

What? Fever for the last two days? Aaaugh! He's got the sickness too!

This past Sunday my mother and I got an unexpected treat at church when we found her goddaughter there.  Maria is a nurse.  There is a point in the mass when we offer each other a sign of peace, which means shaking hands with everyone around you.  It's the only time that people will actually look you in the eye and smile, otherwise its stone face. Well as soon as it was over, Maria grabbed her purse in a fury and took out hand sanitizer.  She grabbed her sister's hand and put a dollop, then she grabbed my mother's then mine.  It was so overt that everyone we shook hands with turned to look giving us the ole fish eye. Usually I try to do things like that on the sly.

Well at first I thought she was overreacting until I look to my right and saw a man helping his eldest daughter.  Her head was in her lap and he was stroking her hair. I wondered if she was sick.  No.  He was removing the lice from the back of her head.   Aaaaaaauuuuuugggghhhh!

Now go visit Keely at UnMom for more Random posts.  At least they won't be a sick as mine although I could be wrong about that.
* that's for jim styro
 

No Room to Think

The Spin Cycle this week is parental confessions.  Check out more Spins on Jen's Sprite's Keeper.

Confessions of a mom when her child was three years old.

Aaargh. I'm going mad.  There were times when the only voice I could hear in my head was that of an adorable somewhat high pitched voice belonging to an equally adorable little boy. He learned not only to ask questions and form sentences, he's learned he could ask them non-stop.  Question after question would fly my way, which I dutifully answered as best I could and I have to admit, I was pretty good at it.  

Then he would check my answers by repeating what I had said over and over.  We moved from two word phrases like "Look mommy." or "What's that?" to requests for full explanations about the world around him and then ask why, until each explanation needed another until he was fully satisfied. Then he would take the information and talk and talk about what he had just heard, peppering me with, "Isn't that right mommy?"

After a while I realized that my willingness to answer all his questions was a way for him to keep me near him, which was really sweet of him.  It was a way to get my full attention, every second of the day, the unconsciously sweet little manipulator. If I started to move from the room or look in another direction, he would recognize the body language to flee and ask another question.  He sometimes grabbed my chin to make me look at him.

At one point I told him, that he needed to give mommy a break because the only voice I heard in my head was his, that I couldn't hear my own thinking voice anymore, that my head was full of his questions and that there was hardly any room for my own questions.

After a while, he looked at me with concern and asked, "Is there room up there now mommy?"  Yes baby, there's room.