Sort of Back to Normal

We are recovering from our Thanksgiving nicely. I will eat one more turkey sandwich and then I will be done. For the year. With the turkey.

We had some fine weather this weekend and took advantage of it by spending time out in the yard. Although Autumn is subtle and fleeting in South Texas, the leaves do change and then fall off the trees. Lefty raked and The Kid and I helped bag up all the leaves.

I had just settled onto the front steps when Lefty and The Kid invited me on a walk around the block. The great thing about San Antonio is that you can go for a walk in sandals at the end of November. I abandoned my knitting amongst the leftover pumpkins on the steps. (Every year we take great pride in how long our small pumpkins last without starting to rot. Last year we had one last until May!)

The Kid balanced his walking stick on his shoulder.

We walked around the block.

Oh, and there was this.

Sidewalk Ninja from Laura on Vimeo.

Goodbye NaBloPoMo, hello December!

Thanks Given

My favorite part of almost any holiday may be the days following the holiday, when the pressure has lifted and you can stretch and yawn your way back into a normal routine.

Of course, there's little that's normal about the calendar days we are in now. The countdown to Christmas comes with it's own manic highs and desperate lows. I'm hoping to regulate the highs and lows this year with my hands as I make gifts instead of flop sweating my way through shopping we cannot afford. I'm grateful that I have the time to bake something special, or knit, or decorate.

I like the idea of advent, of getting your heart ready for Christmas, whatever the holiday means to you. I'm looking forward to the holiday this year with a lot less dread and a lot more hope.

I am a believer in lighting the darkest part of winter with twinkle lights.

Giving Thanks

We had a lovely holiday with just one cooking catastrophe and very little drama. I only got into that wound up, teeth clenched mode once during a small incidence of possible salmonella contamination but was able to shake it off. Oh, and the gravy was terrible but I've never had much luck with turkey gravy anyway so I wasn't surprised. We threw it out and moved on.

I brined the turkey in a cooler and The Kid enjoyed using it as a chair until it was time to cook.

My morning began with cake baking. Unfortunately, I forgot the recipe I was using called for 9 inch cake pans. I used my 8 inch pans, overfilled them and we had a chocolate-cake-cooking-over-the-edge-of-the-pan disaster in the bottom of the oven at nine o'clock in the morning. It looked like this.My beloved and much appreciated husband helped me remove the disastrous cake blob from the bottom of the oven. He also fine tuned the flush of the toilet, all on the same day.

For the centerpiece, we took some mini pumpkins left over from Halloween and wrote the things we were thankful for on them. The Kid added some legos as the finishing touch because really, what centerpiece is complete without legos?

Our dinner was wonderful, but my turkey sandwich today was magnificent - I think that may be my very favorite part.

That being said, I did feel like I spent most of my day in the kitchen. I hope to scale down and simplify Christmas dinner so I can spend more time playing, less time cooking. Wish me luck.

How was your holiday?

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to you all (Happy Thursday if you're in Canada)!

My epic tale of cooking catastrophe and (hopefully) triumph will have to wait, at least until tomorrow.

Enjoy your feast and count your blessings!

Pie

We're getting ready...

Holidays By Hand Knitting Projects

I'm a relative newcomer to the knitting world. I started knitting a few years ago and I taught myself, by reading a book (gasp). So I'm telling you, if you want to knit something for the holidays, you still have time to LEARN HOW TO KNIT and KNIT SOMETHING!

Go out and buy this book. It includes everything you need to knit six great projects. The book will teach you how to start (cast on) and how to finish (cast off) and every little stitch in between. The directions are illustrated and painstakingly detailed. If you need more visual assistance, the web is full of sites like this to help you through. So remember even if you didn't learn to knit at your grandmother's knee, or your mother's for that matter, you can knit if you want to. It's not brain surgery – it is tying knots with string and sticks and anyone can do it.

One other point, knitters love to talk to other knitters about knitting. Anyone who knits will surely be happy to pass along some of their knitterly wisdom.

Now, here's my favorite scarf pattern. Cast on twenty stitches. Knit every row until the scarf is as long as you'd like. Cast off. Wear hand knit scarf with pride. It's what all the cool Jedi will be wearing this season!

Here's the roundup of holiday knitting projects.

Cheryl at Ink & Paper has knitted some precious wee slippers. (You have to scroll down to find them.) I'm sure she'd fork over the details if you ask nicely.

Melanie of In Search of Wonder has a pattern for a Christmas stocking ornament.

Nicki at Domestic Cents turned a knitting mishap into a beautiful hat for her daughter. Knitting is a forgiving art.

Kelly of how I knit to stay sane has knit a lovely Christmas stocking. What goodies could Santa stash in those beauties?

Katherine of Curiositys has knit a beautiful, flowing lap blanket.

Ann at Vintage Mommy has some clever ways to use up yarn from your stash.

Don't forget next Tuesday, December 2nd when Nicole at Gidget Goes Home will host Holidays By Hand and feature QUILTING projects. Contact Nicole at nicoleviola at gmail.com to participate.

The Kid Makes a Movie

In case your day wouldn't be complete without some cinematic Lego action, my dear child has created a movie.

Go, check it out.

The F Word

A scene from earlier this week:

Kid: Uh oh, I almost said the "F" word.

Me: Hmmmm. What's the "F" word?

Kid: You know, Mom, FART.

Me: Oh yes, fart, the "F" word!

We watched War Games with The Kid yesterday, thinking it would a good fit for our computer obsessed boy who is being bombarded with military lingo on the playground. It was a hit, but I did not expect the number of expletives that peppered the film, despite it's PG rating.

I prepared The Kid for kissing, which is a big drawback in films for him, I remembered a couple of kisses. I remembered Matthew Broderick in all his computer geeky-ness and Ally Sheedy in her dewy youth. I was pleasantly surprised to see a young John Spencer as an army officer who's conscience gets the best of him in the first moments of the film. (Will I ever see him without mentally referencing The West Wing, without shouting "Leo!")

Movies were paced differently in the 80's and The Kid got a little antsy waiting for things to get going. Once the computers entered the story line though, he was hooked. It's rated PG but I was just not prepared for all the sh*t and *sshole references. At the first one, The Kid raised his eyebrows and looked over at me to see how I was going to react. I shrugged. At the next one, he giggled.

We've talked about some of these words and I've told The Kid they're not bad words. They have no special powers. They are words that are impolite, words we don't repeat because they're offensive and unimaginative, not bad. Words that if you say them at school, you'll get in trouble.

This language, and this playground education of tanks and brigades and military strategies, are steps he's taking into the world of being a big kid, of being a BOY with a capital B and the last thing I want to do is get left behind. So we spent our weekend exploring the words I'd rather he not say and drawing sketches of armored tanks.

My tank looked more like an elephant.

Trevor the Turkey

On Friday, The Kid was the star of his reader's theater Thanksgiving piece

and then he ate his very first piece of pumpkin pie.

Turkey Trot 2008

Today The Kid ran the "turkey trot", four laps, half a mile.

Lefty ran the last two laps with him.

The Hot Beverage Episode

1. I cannot make tea in the microwave. My water must be boiled in a kettle on the stove. I will occasionally gently reheat tea in the microwave (15 seconds tops) but I prefer not to.

2. I once lived in a house with a woodstove and I loved setting my coffee cup down on the front of the stove on those cold Maine mornings and letting FIRE keep my coffee warm. (I melted the soles right off my favorite pair of Keds that winter by putting my feet too close.)

3. I have a friend who used to put vanilla ice cream in her coffee.

4. Sometimes Lefty pours a cup of coffee then goes off to work without drinking it or remembering to take it with him. When this happens I usually call him and we have a short conversation about his sad, abandoned cup of coffee.

Self Portrait

I stop by Shutter Sisters almost every day. I don't always run and grab my camera, but sometimes I do. Even when I don't, I look at my world a little differently afterwards.

Here are my two images from today's self portrait challenge. I'm still working on creating a diptych in photoshop. (The book is open on my lap as we speak.)

Holidays By Hand

This week Holidays by Hand is hosted by Kelly at Almost Frugal. She has a roundup of wonderful ideas to take a bit of ribbon (or thread) and create something unforgettable for the holidays. Go, check it out and get inspired!

Next Tuesday, I'm the host and I'll be featuring simple, fun knitting projects. If you have a project, no matter how humble, send me an email and the link and next week, I'll make you a knitting star - at least for a day. Plus I'll tell you the story of how I learned to knit!

Pancakes

We had pancakes!

Hitting the Holiday Wall

I hit the wall this weekend – the holiday wall where my vague ideas and free-rambling gift lists meet doing the math.

Historically, we spend too much at Christmas. January and February are usually unpleasantly lean. I am determined to avoid this in 2008. While I don't expect the beginning of 2009 to be worry free, I'd rather not be sweating bullets at the end of each month.

I always begin with the best of intentions but then time slips away and it's suddenly the last minute. I get caught up in the manic holiday hustle and I overspend.

I'm going in this year with a clear head, and a small, tidy and reasonable gift list. I'm going to be realistic about what we can spend while keeping my eyes open for bargains. (Anyone know where I can get a saxophone for $100??)

I'm going to make some things on my own. I'm going to make some things with The Kid's help. I'm going to mail packages on time so I don't have to express mail things at the very last minute.

I am going to keep my heart and brain connected and shop earlier, with more creativity and fewer dollar signs. I'm going to trust that people know I love them, that I have nothing to prove.

I want this to be the best Christmas yet and I know that has nothing to do with how many gifts are under the tree, or how much we spent.

I'm saying it out loud. This year I'm all about less debt, more love.

Saturday

Today I drank coffee and ran an errand. I thought about Thanksgiving dinner. I did some reading and some knitting and now I'm going to bring my herb pots in from the deck because we have a FREEZE warning for tonight!

It was a good Saturday. How was yours?

The Mall

I started another post about my trip to the mall this morning but it started to sound like an old person's rant and I was afraid I'd have to stop in the middle and shake my walker at those pesky kids and yell at them to "get off my lawn."

Let me begin by saying, we very rarely go to the mall. If we do go, we do a surgical strike. We make a beeline for the one store we need to patronize, find what we need and get the hell out of there. Today was a mission to Williams Sonoma to procure brining spices for my turkey. They put together a nice mix and it saves me the trouble of running around trying to find juniper berries and star anise when I only need them once a year.

I had forgotten how shiny everything is at the mall. I kind of squinted at all the "sparkliness" (if this is not a word – it should be) like perhaps I'd been hiding out in a cave for the last week. And the smells, when did the mall become such an intensely perfumed place? Perimenopause has blessed me with a very strong sense of smell (kind of like when you're pregnant and you can't be in the same room with a open jar of peanut butter) and the smells in the mall nearly did me in.

I was in and out in fourteen minutes flat – and that included a minute or two of fondling fancy cookware.

We make a different kind of trip to the mall near Christmas, sometimes on Christmas Eve (gasp). This is when The Kid picks out his traditional gift for us, pajamas. We do a little more window shopping and let ourselves get caught up in that whole, breath-holding-anticipation feeling of the final day before Christmas. Lefty gets a cup of fancy coffee and The Kid gets a bag of fancy candy and we walk through and soak up that weird consumer holiday vibe for a little while. Then we come home and have a nap.

I want to have a simpler, less stressful Christmas this year but we'll probably keep that last minute mall trip tradition. It's a part of who we are as a family and essential in some strange kind of way to how we see ourselves as a family: the three of us moving through the crowds, holding hand and laughing – looking forward to what comes next.

Arrgh

The Kid yells "arrrrgh" from the back of the house.

I yell back from the studio. "Are you okay? Do you need help?"

He replies, "No. I'm just having some issues."

That's my boy!

This is the second day in a row of NaBloPoMo kicking my ass. It's not that I don't have things to write about here, things I care about and want to say. It's just that I can't seem to string more than two coherent sentences together.

I care about the upcoming holiday and how to make them special for all of us without passing out from money stress. I care about my friends who got married in California and what's going to happen to the legality of their unions now. I care very much about Obama's transition team and how he'll put things together for January and swell with pride at how focused on integrity the transition team seems to be. (Anyone out there going to the inauguration? Can you take me with you?) I care that Lefty and I had an argument about Cream of Wheat this morning (I am totally serious) and I've felt ragged and sad about it all day.

What do you care about today?

Special Guest Post: Math Crisis

Today The Kid is standing in with a special guest post. Because I got nothing, nada, zip. So please enjoy this exciting tale of after school second grade fun.


Today was Math Club. When I was walking towards the dismissal area I remembered it was Math Club. I ran back to the cafeteria where Math Club takes place. Naman said he would meet me there, however, after a few minutes he did not arrive. So, this is what I did.

I told the teacher that I was going to find him. I got back to the second grade hall, then Iasked Mrs. Beach if she had found him. Then I went back to Math Club. I saw a few friends on the way and there I was.

After that, I played a little bit of a game, then Naman eventually arrived.

THE KID

Some Days are Better than Others

Skin cancer screening today and I am awesomely cancer free. Hooray!

There were a couple of pre-cancerous lesions on the backs of my hands. It has never dawned on me to use sunscreen on a daily basis on the backs of my hands but I guess I'll be doing that now. She froze the spots with liquid nitrogen and I'm now sporting some gigantic blisters. They're gross. I'm tempted to take a picture because they're really big and very very gross, but I like you, so I won't.

I had a half hour long less than successful parenting moment with The Kid today and I have a migraine.

Some days are better than others.