Debate

So here I am closing in on the end of January. But before I move forward I do want to show you one look back -- as I face the eternal dilemma. It's important, y'all.

Here is the question that everyone should be lucky enough to face. When contemplating peanut brittle, do you stand up for the pulled brittle (a la Nano) or are you a poured brittle fan (Susan, we revere your name)?

Now, some of you may wonder, because brittle is good. Who cares beyond this? And I am going to say that my own political stance is always toward compromise and peace and ways we all agree. So yes. Plus -- I have never encountered bad peanut brittle.

But I do feel the need to address the eternal debate.

*********

There is a vocal Nano faction that tells me:

1. Nano (some may remember her as Sadie Forsythe, but you can call her Nano.)

2. Sadie's pulled brittle is light and airy, and one doesn't ever have to worry about breaking a tooth.

3. Coleen has mastered her grandmother's top-secret recipe and technique, so that the brittle she produces is Sadie-esque in every good way.

3. The left-over delicious sugary bits are so awesome on ice cream or stirred into coffee, . . .

4. Nano.

*********

But my poured brittle friends are also quite vocal, and they make an excellent point or two.

1. Poured brittle means everyone keeps their fingerprints -- not an insignificant consideration. Have you pulled peanut brittle, people? It will hurt you. Permanently.

2. My girl Susan has mastered the poured brittle that will not break your teeth. I do believe that most of us who think about poured brittle are thinking about a brittle that lacks the airy gorgeousness of Susan's brittle.

3. Susan's brittle = [ angelic choirs? orgasmic sugar rush? you will just have to take my word for it. ]

*********

So for me it comes down to:

SHOCKINGLY DELICIOUS v. TOTALLY DELICIOUS

*********

Not even a vote.

Looking ahead to Christmas: now we can finally celebrate!

So Advent is almost over, but as most of you know the Christmas season really begins on December 25, as we celebrate the Feast of the Nativity. In the pre-commercialized past, traditional celebrations of Christmas really kicked in as everyone celebrated the twelve days of Christmas from Christmas Day to Epiphany on January 6. That's what the song refers to, obviously. That's also what Shakespeare is talking about in his play, Twelfth Night; in his time Twelfth Night, or Epiphany, was a time of revelry, when everything was topsy-turvy -- like the capers and shenanigans of the play.

In my crowd, we try pretty hard to stick to these old ways. The husband and I host a swingin' party on December 26 every year -- traditionally called Boxing Day in England (for reasons that are explained various ways by various sources).  A couple of days later we will all gather at Mr. and Mrs. K.'s home to sing carols and eat fabulous cookies and drink fabulous wine. We will also play The Name Game, which I have also played in its guise as The Colander Game. Either way, I will do well in this game if I am seated next to The Mother. Not that I am competitive, or planning my strategy already . . . .

On New Year's Eve we go to The Mother and her husband (so is he The Father? I don't think so, but I'm not sure why . . . ) for a black tie swanky soiree. Yes -- I said "black tie," and get this: it's so swanky, the invitation says "white tie optional." Boom.

And finally, on January 3, my whole extended clan of beloveds will meet at my sister's house for our family Christmas celebration, along with a rollicking game of "Dirty Santa." The primo gift last year was an ear wax remover, but I've got a few surprises up my sleeve this year; I think I can top that. This will be our last loving look at the Soldier, who will deploy to Korea on January 7. A brand new graduate of West Point and the field artillery school, he will take all, all the prayers with him when he goes -- please add yours to the pile!

+++++++

Again with the looking ahead, the Advent book for today is actually a great story to read on December 26 -- the Feast of Saint Stephen. If you know the carol you know that the good king and his servant boy went out into the cold winter night on the Feast of St. Stephen, "when the snow lay round about, deep and crisp and even." This little book tells the story of the carol. It's a sweet one!

My advent calendar is like my life: always running a little bit behind.

Here's our pretty tree from a couple of years ago -- after the gifts had been opened.

Well, so let me share a list of all the things I have not done yet during this Advent season:

• decorate the Christmas tree with all my lovely ornaments, each of which has special meaning to me, but which I may or may not be able to find currently
• put lights on the Christmas tree
• acquire the Christmas tree
• bake any sort of scrumptious Christmas-y treat
• put twinkly Christmas lights up outside my home to welcome family, friends, and maybe a wassailing stranger or two
• wrap any Christmas gifts for my family and friends
• purchase any Christmas gifts for my family and friends
• hunt down the Christmas stockings and stocking hangers
• write a hilarious, not-too-braggy, chock-full-of-pictures Christmas newsletter to include with my Christmas cards
• mail any Christmas cards
• purchase, craft, or recycle any Christmas cards

My Christmas angst level is high, y'all.

It feels like I say this every year. But -- I am always able to slide into the pew in time to sing carols before Midnight Mass, and somehow the little baby Jesus is always able to celebrate another birthday.

And I have also realized that Santa has my back; it's just that I need to learn how to recognize his elves when they are all around me.  Somehow the treats get made (the sunny girl is my go-to baker); the presents get purchased (come here, Amazon-dot-com, so I can kiss you on the lips) -- and wrapped by Coleen and by the girl in charge (who has a system, of course). The Boy Scouts come through every year, with a tree, and greenery, and luminaria to welcome those wassailers and friends.  My family's Christmas mornings are always wonderful, and our Christmas Day is mellow (we all lazily read our newest books), and we continue our festive season the very next day with a kick-ass Boxing Day party.

So -- get thee behind me, Christmas angst!

+ + + + + + +

And here -- with no angst! -- is a "catch-up" batch of wintery and Christmas-y books for Advent:

DECEMBER 14:

  

Twelve Kinds of Ice, by Ellen Bryan Obed, is a nostalgic and old-fashioned seeming book about the different kinds of ice one family experiences as winter progresses.  From a delicate skim of ice on a pail to true skating ice, the narrator and her sister find a way to find joy and anticipation and fun.  The delicate and precise illustrations by Barbara McClintock match the tone of the writing -- the book evokes all the different feelings of winter.  I'm so glad to have found this book!


DECEMBER 15:

Kevin Crossley-Holland wrote a trilogy of books that re-tell the King Arthur story that the tall boy loved when he was younger, so I was curious to see how he "re-tells" the Nativity story.  His book -- How Many Miles to Bethlehem? -- is wonderful.  The language is sometimes whimsical and sometimes sweeping and majestic, as Crossley-Holland narrates the story through the voices of the various participants and observers.  And the artwork!  Oh my goodness, it's so gorgeous!


DECEMBER 16:

In A Perfect Day, Carin Berger creates a snowy world using collages made of ledger paper brushed with paint; the texture and depth in the illustrations seem to be a way of representing the unique quality of the light on snow.  The story of the children who emerge from their homes to play together is told very simply, but the pictures give the story a richness that will have young readers and pre-readers poring over the book themselves for hours.


DECEMBER 17:


A storybook called The Nativity seems pretty straightforward, and the reader might assume that it will take a reverent tone when it describes this most important of all births.  And the story is absolutely told with a serious voice -- taken from the King James version of the Bible.  But the illustrations by Julie Vivas are just the slightest bit kooky, so that everyone will delight in looking at the pictures.  Mary's belly is really, really big; the angel Gabriel has bright red hair, shimmery wings, and big work boots.  It's hilarious! I just wish, wish, wish I had been able to share this book with the urchins when they were little -- but I am happy that my sister's small boys will get to enjoy it (guess what they're getting for Christmas?!)

Adoption Day!

Well, so last week the small boys had a big, big day!

We celebrated Adoption Day, which was great in every way you can imagine.

  The judge who signed the documents was happy to be part of such a joyous occasion.

We were a big and boisterous group, all gathered to watch this family grow -- it was fabulous!

Afterwards we celebrated!  The small boys were a little confused:  whose birthday was it?  And the question was valid.  There was a cake, decorated with Lightning McQueen and 'Mater -- quite satisfactory, but why no candles?  There were gifts, but they were "family" gifts.  What's up with that?!  Tons of family and friends filled the happy house, and everyone wanted pictures of the small boys.  But where was the singing?  And again -- why no candles??  It was a puzzle.

So -- here they are:  all nine of 'em!  The perfect family!

I'm drowning in twelves -- and I can't stop singing about it!

Well, I mean -- what kind of Advent book selection did you expect on the twelfth day of the twelfth month of the twelfth year?

You all know, of course, that the twelve days of Christmas are actually the days from December 25 to January 6, when the western church celebrates Epiphany or Three Kings Day.

But those freaking twelves have been calling to me all day.  

And just for fun and because I have done nothing to get ready for Christmas, where nothing equals not one damned thing -- and because I am getting just the teensiest little smidge of a bit angsty about it -- here is a festive little Merry Christmas song that the fabulous Woodbridge Singers used to wow 'em with.  This twenty-first century choir does a swell job, too:

Here's what I love:

 

Well, so this past weekend I packed up the sunny girl and the husband, and took them along with me on a little mini-vacation to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, to meet up with some of my besties from college.

People, we had a fabulous time!

My friends and I have seen each other only sporadically over the years.  Partly this is because they settled down over there, and he lives way up there, while I came back to my hometown down here.  It's also true that life and stuff happened (as it does to us all), and there were some lean years when the money for a get-away seemed (at the time) to be better spent on rent or the mortgage, and braces for the kids, and dance lessons, and a new car to replace the POS, and college tuition for the urchins, and a new softball bat, and summer camp and medical bills and . . . . You get the picture.

But this year we all turned fifty, and we (by which I mean Allison) decided that to celebrate, we needed to lay eyes on each other in person, and not just on Facebook.

 So Allison is quite the cruise director as it turns out.  She found us the most fabulous house that is the farthest thing from a shack you can imagine, and waved a magic wand so that both her girl and my girl could take the PSAT at a time that didn't ruin our plans, and nudged Terry and me into confirming those plans and packing our bags and actually getting our asses into gear -- all without raising her voice once.

I just love Allison!

Check out this awesome house!

There were the most comfortable, nap-worthy sofas . . . 

. . . including this one that the two teenagers decided was the "best sofa ever" and plotted to sneak into a duffle bag.  I never said they had good spatial relations.

There was a most excellent porch off of the bedroom assigned to the husband and me . . .

. . . and king-sized beds for both of the loving couples in the group.  Dennis and Allison needed a ladder to get into their bed, and worried about nosebleeds all night long -- but tell me the glamour of this room is not worth a nose bleed??

Terry cooked for us in a beautifully appointed kitchen (words like Viking and Sub-Zero can be bandied about here), and provided -- single-handedly -- a meal that included roasted chicken, mushroom risotto, salad with creamy goat cheese, and white chocolate mousse.  For real, y'all.

It did not suck.

We watched old movies (Oklahoma! and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, because we do love the show tunes), and played cards (and Terry just appears to be sweet, but really is a ruthless, Hearts-dominating bastard, which I say lovingly even though I got my ass kicked), and strolled along Rehoboth Avenue . . .

But mostly, we just loved spending time together. 

These are the people who helped me grow up.  We all met on the very first night of Freshman Orientation, in August of 1980, and have been friends ever since.  They have known me at my worst and my best, my silliest and my most earnest, drunk and sober, happy and sad.  And they have loved me all along.

How lucky am I?

The tall boy is my hero -- and so are you.

OK, so I am sorry to report to you that my tall boy is back in the hospital.  You may remember that he had some pretty significant and scary (not to mention painful) surgery last month.  The universal thinking six weeks ago was that a procedure called a pleurodesis would save the world, cure cancer, re-kill Osama Bin Ladin, ensure that pandas live forever, and send our tall boy out into the world with permanently fixed lungs.

Well.

As it turns out, his continuing pulmonary woes are -- well, they are continuing.

The ways that this sucks are multiple and varied, and I could go on for days about how crappy this is, but frankly, I'm too tired.  But the sunny girl told me that I could blog the lazy way, and show you some screen captures of the texts that I have sent to various people as we have sat with our boy, while he hears super-smart, super-confident, super-experienced cardio-thoracic surgeons and pulmonologists and interventional radiologists (which I didn't even know was a thing, but it is) -- plus Uncle Doctor (who is an OB-GYN) -- say, "damned if we can figure this out."  Tragically, I'm not even paraphrasing.

Then the sunny girl talked me through the whole "screen capture" thing, which I didn't even know was a thing, but it is.  So any successful screen captures are thanks to her.

So -- here's what happened this time:

So -- that's pretty much where we are right now.  The tall boy is in the hospital, tethered to a chest tube and a pleural pump, with no end in sight.  He could be -- justifiably -- so depressed and cranky and mean.  But he is my hero because he has repeatedly said, "It is pointless to get pissy about things I cannot control."  We should all be wearing this on a t-shirt.

SHE (who is turning out to be the world's greatest girlfriend) has been his only bright spot in a really very discouraging turn of events.

Well, HER and his grandpa -- who brought him a fabulous Italian sub and ate lunch with him while talking about the Redskins game and Eisenhower.  Oh -- and his cousin, who is studying to be a nurse and was really nice about not asking to see his chest tube up close and personal, and who brought him a balloon that is basically a dead fish (which cracked him up).  And Lisa and her husband, who have visited every single day.  And Grandma Carol and Aunt Heidi, who brought him a watercolor set (people -- this tall boy is BORED).  And his professors at Catholic University, who, to a person, have been so supportive and gracious and have made sure he concentrates on getting better instead of on papers due and classes missed.  And all the people (Coleen, Sheri, Judy, Susan, Kathy, David, Lissa, Andrew, Carolyn, Mary) who have joshed and joked and jollied with him on Facebook and via text, as he faces a frustrating and frightening turn of events.  Plus the prayer warriors:  Annalisa and Jim, James and Betty, Carol Jean and Jim, Steven and Terry, Holly, Bonnie, Cristie, Bob and Elaine, Katey, Jane, Randy, Meghan, Lourdes, Mark, Lissa, Scott, Rafe, Alan, Jana, Saskia, Wendy, Matt, Rosemary, Joe.  And my dear, dear blog friends around the world: Polly, Heather, Maureen, Diane, Rena, Holly, and others I don't even know about.

He is a lucky, lucky tall boy.

We love you all very much.

Gradu-palooza -- the girl version!

So the girl in charge graduated from high school last weekend.  

 I feel old.  I ask you -- does this look like the face of someone who is ready to step out into the wide world? 

No?  OK -- how about this?

I know, right?

 [ The festive bow was after the fact, and I say -- too bad.  ]

While the mortarboard hat does make a definite statement, I think the bow shows way more fashion flair.  Call me crazy.

We partied it up for our girl, with balloons and party platters, and grandparents and aunts and godparents. 

My friend Saskia made this beautiful cake, which tasted even better than it looked, and strictly followed the girl in charge's instructions:  chocolate, with a side of chocolate, filled with chocolate and frosted with chocolate.  Please.

The bestie was there to make the day perfect.  It wouldn't be a celebration without her and her mom -- they make any party more fun!

So, yeah!  My girl in charge is already making her lists and organizing her minions as she prepares to leave for Emory University in the fall, but we're not going to talk about that because I can only absorb so many of these  moments when my life swings on a hinge and everything changes.  I don't really understand how parents make it through life without sobbing every day.

But we do.

Renovation progress report: the finish line . . .

So we're just about at the end of our renovation project; Juan Pablo will come by tomorrow and  shave the bottom of a closet door -- and then I'm sure he will be so glad to be done with us and move on to his next miracle-making project.  The worrisome part of this of course is that now it's up to us (us!) to do the last few things that will make the basement picture perfect.

Here are a few before and after shots -- so you can really understand how ecstatic the husband and I are about this makeover. Because, really.  Without evidentiary proof, no one would believe what a hellhole of sloth, despair and shoddy construction the place used to be.

What started out looking like this -- and you need to imagine this cabinet vomiting puzzles, games, Legos, broken crayons, Polly Pockets, random batteries and empty soda cans . . .

 

. . . went through an unfortunate phase of looking like this.  This explains the delicate scent of mildew that ever-so-gently used to waft through our basement.  It also may explain the ongoing breathing difficulties of both the tall boy and the sunny girl.

Juan Pablo to the rescue!  He washed the walls, then coated them liberally with a water-resistant sealer/primer.  You will notice that he also framed the walls so that they could be insulated.  Maybe this winter we will not have to resort to cowering under blankets and comforters -- and warming our hands over electric space heaters.

For real, y'all.  We were like some kind of twenty-first century Dickens novel, except what the hell, people?  The husband makes a fine living, and we pay the bills, and it should not be 55 degrees in our basement!

Here's the same corner now. 

You see why I'm giddy, right?

As I think I may have mentioned a time or two, there was no bathroom on this floor of our home, because a rustic, Daniel Boone-esque wet bar is much more practical.  But we really wanted the tall boy (and our guests, while the tall boy is away at school) to have the ability to go about their daily ablutions without having to climb two flights of stairs and climb over all of the accumulated girlie items in our other bathrooms -- by which I obviously mean laundry and blow dryers.

The dilemma here was that the best space to put a full bathroom was where a water supply was not.

But is this the kind of problem that can stop Juan Pablo?!  Pish-posh!  Just give the man a jackhammer and look out!

 Some people call this scary, but I call it progress!

All better now!

You can see here (temporarily covered with gravel) the path that the sewage drain takes from what will be the toilet and shower drain to the main drain on the other side of the house.

And here are the copper pipes for hot and cold water for the sink and shower -- running above what will be the ceiling.

Juan Pablo's tile guy is an artist.

  Here's the finished product.  I just love it, don't you?

 And now Harry Potter the tall boy has been sprung from the cupboard under the stairs, which was actually a junk-filled guest room, furnished with leftover furniture from the grandparents or college or the dump.  This picture shows the former bedroom in a pristine state that was so rare that it's really just a lie.

God, I hated this room.

The closet was a do-it-yourself affair, and some former homeowner felt it was important to have quick access -- through the closet -- from this back bedroom to the storage room.  Maybe it was a speakeasy! As an added bonus, there was one electrical outlet in the entire room.

Now that's a closet!

 
This will do nicely for the tall boy!

So that's our renovation -- and that's why we're so stinkin' happy about it!  We still need to bring back our bookshelves and my mom's old upright piano, and hang a few pretty things on the walls.

But we sure do love it!