Another tech week approaches – the last one for 2024! I feel like I just went through tech week, and here we are again. I’m actually pretty excited for this one because the 12 year old is in the show that I’m working on. The logistics of the rehearsal carpool have been complex. We are carpooling with two other families, and it’s taken six adults and a spreadsheet to get these kids to rehearsals and performances.
Things I’ve done these past few days to prep for tech week: – pick out my outfits for the week – make a big batch of something to eat all week (the red lentil soup that J blogged about). Hopefully there will be enough for the 12 year old to eat too. Which reminds me I’ll have to pack snacks for her as well. She gets to the theatre at 4:30p and rehearses until 9:30p – I’m not sure when theatre kids eat dinner. -paid bills. Inevitably during tech week, I forget to pay a bill or two, so I made a point to find the utility bills and pay them. – made a batch of hard boiled eggs in the InstantPot for breakfast. -bought the big container of yogurt. Actually I had my friend who was going to Costco pick it up for me. During tech week, yogurt is a complete meal. -Take a shower. I feel silly putting this on the list, but sometimes I forget.
I still need to stock up on fruits and veggies and healthy snacks.
Tech week reminders for me:
Eat well
Sleep. No revenge bedtime procrastinating
Limit the scroll cycle.
Don’t drop the ball on life admin things. Find time for them.
Hug the family whenever I can.
Find time to go outside every day.
On not Christmas-ing. I haven’t been feeling the Holiday Spirit this December. It’s barely registering for me that Christmas is in two and a half weeks. Some of it is because the weather has been really warm lately. Some of it is because I’ve been really busy at work. And also because we’ll be travelling, we haven’t decorated or gotten a tree or put up Christmas lights. We’re taking a “The trip is the present” approach and not really doing Christmas presents. The little kids have been writing sad Santa letters: “Dear Santa, Don’t come to our house because we won’t be here.” Literally.
I think more than in past years, I’m realizing that Christmas is what we make it to be. If we don’t buy the presents, there will be no presents. If we don’t set up the mantel, the mantel will stay bare. It’s kind of interesting to opt out of all the Christmas things to see what we really hold meaningful, and what is just stress-ladened expectations.
What we have done, though: -Tuba Christmas! Luckily this year Tuba Christmas coincided with the free day, so I was able to go with the whole family. As a lovely bonus, my cousin and my friend K came along too. My cousin was in town for work, and I didn’t think I would get to see her, but she came in a day early to spend Tuba Christmas with us. Afterwards we went for dumplings.
-Listened to Christmas music. The Husband has one play list that is 12 different versions of “We Need a Little Christmas.” That always makes me laugh. I’ve also been listening to choral Christmas music when I need something quiet and calming.
-Watched A Charlie Brown Christmas and Spirited. Spirited is becoming one of our “must watch” Christmas movies every year.
-Went to Longwood Gardens to see the Christmas displays. We didn’t stay long enough to see the lights, but we see trees and the trains. We also saw the new conservatory, which was beautifully bright.
What I’ve been missing: -Going to church. I’m not the Catholic one in the family, but I do still like going to church with the family. Lately I’ve had to work on Saturdays (the Husband likes to go to Saturday evening mass), so I haven’t been to Mass with them. I’m missing the carols and the Gospel reading and the time to sit and think about what Christmas means.
-Hallmark movie binges. I’ve watched maybe two Hallmark Holiday movies this year, which if you remember my posts from last year, is pitiful. I did re-watch Biltmore Christmas, which might be my most favorite Hallmark holiday movie ever. SOOOOOO good and sweet and romantic and just the right tone of angst and longing.
-The house smelling like Christmas greenery. I don’t know if I miss having to get the tree and get out all the ornaments and decorate it, but I do miss walking into the house and being greeted by the smell of fresh pine.
-Advent candles. When we do find time to do advent candles, we aren’t super consistent with them, but I do like the ritual.
-Christmas picture books. I used to borrow 24 Christmas books from the library and we would read one each night in lieu of having an advent calendar. The Husband did borrow a stack of books and there are a few we can pull out from our own collection to read, but it hasn’t been the book flood it has been in the past.
-Planning a big Christmas meal. Though I did just do Thanksgiving…
What I haven’t been missing: -The anxiety of Christmas shopping. I actually like thinking about and buying gifts for people, but it takes a lot of mental and financial resources to do it. I do feel a little bit guilty that I’m not making an effort to buy gifts, but I don’t have the bandwidth right now. Maybe after my show closes, I might run out and get a few things, or do some baking, but I’ve passed the window for ordering things online, and I think it actually makes gift giving simpler when there isn’t the infinite world of the internet available. We have talked about maybe having a few surprise gifts waiting at the house for when the kids get back, but it’s nothing like the four or five + stocking stuffers we usually do.
– Drive through Christmas light displays. We always tried to go to these on a weeknight and it always seemed like a bit of a mad rush. I do like Christmas lights; the other day I drove the long way home through a neighborhood with lots of lights, and that was nice.
-Trying to Christmas plan while in tech.
-Secret Santa or White Elephant gift exchanges.
I’m sure there are more things I’m forgetting happened during this season, but I clearly don’t remember them enough to miss them…
Some Bummer news– I don’t think I’ll be working this summer. I have a trip planned with the 12 year old that is in the middle of the opera season with the company I work for during the summer, and the one show that I was available to work has already been staffed. The lack of contract has hit me harder than I want to. It always is a little sad when I don’t get contracts, and it fills me with self-doubt (Did they not like me enough? Will I ever work with them again? Is there someone younger and cooler and better than me who got the contract?) Also often one gets work by returning to a place season after season, and if you miss a season, there’s not guarantee that there will be a slot for you the following season. (I had a really horrible experience with this at one company where I decided to take a summer off after I had my second child and they never asked me back again – the person who hired me literally told me that it wouldn’t be fair to my replacement if they couldn’t come back the following seasons.) I know I make the choice to be a freelancer but it makes me realize how little job stability there is with this job that I love. Because I can’t take PTO or leave to do things that I want, there are long term repercussions to not being available for work. Oh well, I’m reminding myself that my job is not more important than my family, and that this trip with my 12 year old is cooler than any job. I guess I’m just petulant that I can’t have it all.
Grateful for: -My friend/college roommate K who I haven’t seen at all this fall, despite the fact that she lives in this area. But I texted her and asked if she wanted to come see the final rehearsal room run through of our show and she said “Yes!” I knew the 12 year old really wanted someone she knew to be there, and the Husband couldn’t make it since it was the same time as the 7 year old’s piano recital. K has a very full life – in addition to her full time job, she plays in a string quartet – but I’m grateful that she makes the effort to show up when she can.
-Not having to deal with car seats anymore. I’ve been having to drive carpool to rehearsals, which means putting four pre-teens in my car – three in back and one in front. The two little kids are still in booster seats, so I have to pull out the boosters every time I’m driving opera carpool. I’m very grateful that I’m just pulling out booster seats (which don’t have to be latched in), and not pulling out full on car seats which are kind of like wrestling damp ten ton octopuses. Also grateful that I can put one kid up front so that I don’t have to drive the van since my parking lot at work is the size of a postage stamp.
-Kind words and ketchup chips. One of the directors of our show is from Canada. She actually directed the first show I did the fall too. And before she left after the first show she asked if she could bring me anything when she came back for the second show. “Ketchup chips!” I said half jokingly. Well, she showed up for the second show with a bag of ketchup chips for me. How awesome was that? But also, this past week, both the directors of the show have each pulled me aside at one point to tell me how good the 12 year old is onstage. One of them even said, “I’m not saying this because you’re a staff member. She’s really very smart onstage.” I feel like one of those super critical stage moms because sometimes when I watch the 12 year old in rehearsal (and I try not to watch her too much) all I can see is when she’s not paying attention or goofing off or not coming in on the right beat of music. I’ve always struggled a little because I want the people I love to be perfect because I believe in them, and I tend to be more forgiving of the people whom I’m not as close to. Being told that my kid was doing well, was kind of an eye opening; someone was telling me that my kid was enough and that they saw good work happening- it made me realize that I should also be seeing her strengths this way as well.
Well, that’s the news from here. Hope everyone has a lovely week!
If you celebrate Christmas, how Christmas-y are you feeling right now? Have you ever had to install a car seat? What is your favorite Canadian snack?
I will say, I think they are getting more inventive and less predictable with these movie posters.
A snowy weekend! What better time to recap my 2023 Hallmark Holiday movie binge. As I was out shoveling the front walk yesterday, I thought, “This is one part of winter that never makes it into the Hallmark movies- the backbreaking tedium of shoveling the front walk over and over and over again. Why do I never see anyone shoveling the front walk in a Hallmark movie?” Well probably because the movies are all filmed in July and no one can convincingly shovel snow in July in Vancouver. Also on that note – where are the piles next to door of wet boots and winter coats and hats and mittens?!?!?!
The New York Times had a really fun article (gift link) about Christmas rom coms in which their reporters analyzed 424 Hallmark and Lifetime movies to see how formulaic they really were. No surprises here. We all know the answer is “extremely formulaic.” But really, the article is full of fun tidbits – like did you know that the most popular name for a Hallmark/Lifetime female lead is Emma and male lead is Jack? If you’ve never watched a Hallmark holiday movie, just read this article and you’ll be covered. But then you wouldn’t get to see all the cozy sweaters and fake snow for yourself! Also the comments on this article are GOLD.
Here are two of my favorites: “My wife and I both enjoy these movies, but she has one of the most interesting aspects of it: how many coats can each actress wear given they arrived in their small town with a small carry-on bag. It’s hilarious. Usually 7 to 9 coats. Don’t get us wrong. We love the coats. It’s just hilarious to watch.” I WONDER THIS TOOOO!!!!
“Good research. One datapoint you seemed to have missed is those most popular male lead actors are exclusively Canadian. All of them. Sometimes in an effort to find the most “all American” person you can, you end up with a Canadian.” HAHAHAHAH
Before we get to the Hallmark – our non-Hallmark Holiday viewings this year: -Spirited, which I think has now become a family “must see”. And the kids play the soundtrack on repeat for much of December. -Noelle, our first time watching this Anna Kendrick movie about Santa’s daughter who leaves the North Pole in attempt to right some wrongs. I thought this was fun, girl power version of Elf. -Elf. Classic which we watch every year. Though, to be honest, this was the first time I didn’t fall asleep before the end and whoa… it was so interesting to see the ending with Santa in New York and all that – I’d never seen that bit. -The Man Who Invented Christmas – about Charles Dickens and writing A Christmas Carol. Surprisingly funny. – It’s a Wonderful Life. Another of our must see classics. -Meet Me in St. Louis. Ditto. The family also watched Candy Cane Lane, the new Eddie Murphy movie, but I was at work that night. Apparently it was fine.
On to the Hallmark stuff. As I was drafting this, I realized I saw twenty movies this year, too many this year to go into one post – so this is post #1 of Hallmark movies.
Ice sculpture Christmas (2015): An aspiring chef teams up with a childhood acquaintance to enter an ice sculpture contest. My catnip: This was recommended by Elisabeth and I love movies about super niche things like ice sculpting. My take: This movie had the formula down pat – all the right rom com beats at all the right times. It’s definitely a product of early Hallmark movies in it’s blindingly white casting. The ridiculous: Okay, any time there’s a movie where two people first meet as kids and then recognize each other years later is going to get an eye roll from me. My favorite bits: The lady who plays the head chef, Chef Gloria, was pretty great, I thought.
A Timeless Christmas(2020) – 1903 business man travels forward in time to present day, is confused, causes confusion, and meets a lady who is in charge of the historical preservation of his estate. My catnip: Time travel romance. My take: I thought this one was fine – not the best time travel movie; the period parts looked a little… unconvincing. The ridiculous: Well, time travel… My favorite bit: This is a bit of a spoiler, but there’s actually a poignant part when the business man is angry at his 1903 fiancée for eventually marrying someone else, and then realizes that she found a man to love an have a family with after all and that he couldn’t begrudge her that. It was super sweet.
Mistletoe and Menorahs (2019) – Recommended to my by a Jewish friend as a pretty good Hannukah-ish movie. Christmas celebrating girl (is she Christian? Unclear…) needs to learn about Hannukah to impress her boss and get a big raise. Jewish boy needs to learn about Christmas to impress his girlfriend’s father. My catnip: anything that expands the diversity of the Hallmark/Lifetime Holiday movie scope. My take: This was cute. The leads were engaging – I especially liked the male lead because he wasn’t as slick and perfect as a typical Hallmark romantic lead. The ridiculous: I don’t know, but letting the non-Jewish girl light the menorah at a company holiday party seems… well let’s just say I don’t imagine that’s really something I see happening. I could be wrong, though. Favorite part: making latkes. It definitely made me want to try to make latkes.
Laughing All the Way (2023) – Comedy club faces closure if they can’t raise money so they decide to put on a variety show/gala. One of their employees, an aspiring comedian, gets a now-famous comedian who got his start at the club to headline. My catnip: Let’s put on a show! My take: Okay, this might be horrible of me because I did genuinely think this was a cute charming movie, but… the lead was played by the same actor who played the Jewish guy in Mistletoe and Menorahs, which I had just watched the day before. And I just kept thinking, “He doesn’t celebrate Christmas!!!” I feel like that was kind of an unreasonable reaction, but there you go… The ridiculous: The big show is going to be presented on Christmas eve. Who goes to shows on Christmas eve? Also – it’s a comedy club, but the jokes aren’t funny. My favorite bit: The chemistry between the two leads was adorable.
A Paris Christmas Waltz (2023): Lady quits her job to become an amateur ballroom dancer and goes to Paris with her Pro-dancer partner. Romance ensues. My catnip: Ballroom dancing, stars of the musical theatre stage (Matthew Morrison of Glee, but also of The Light in the Piazza which I listened to constantly this summer on my commute), European locale My take: This one was pretty bad, to be honest – the pacing and plotting was clunky, and the acting was pretty wooden – like you know how some actors just seem like they know they’re in a cliched cheesy rom-com? This was one of those movies. There was one moment when Matthew Morrison started singing and dancing with so much charm and heart, and I thought things would get better, but then they didn’t. The ridiculous: I don’t know a lot about ballroom dancing, but some of her rehearsal outfits didn’t look practical. My favorite bit: the aforementioned singing and dancing by Matthew Morrison.
A Biltmore Christmas (2023) – aspiring screenwriter is tasked with re-writing a classic 1950s holiday movie. While doing research she is transported back in time to the filming of the original film and encounters one of the film’s stars. My catnip: time travel, period piece, Star Trek alumni (Jonathan Frakes from The Next Generation!!!!) My take: I LOOOOVED this movie. I think this is right up there with last year’s Ghost of Christmas Always as my favorite Hallmark movie. Okay, where to begin – time travel movies always have that nice note of impossible yearning, which I love, the settings and costume were beautiful, the leads had so much chemistry, and the plotting and pacing were so well done. And I so very much want to see the real version of “His Merry Wife”, the film that is getting remade. The ridiculous: Well, again, it’s a time travel movie, so there’s that. Also – I always think with these movies when a person from the past ends up in present day – “How is he going to get a social security number?” My favorite bit: The opening, which is played as a trailer for His Merry wife. And of course the end. I might have gone a little misty-eyed at the end.
Christmas in Notting Hill (2023) – American woman goes to England to visit her sister and meets soccer super star who is in the midst of a career crisis. Well, the American is also in the midst of a career crisis too. My cat nip: foreign local, men with accents, stars of 1990s television (Sarah Ramos from Parenthood – does anyone remember what a lovely show that was?) My take: This was fine, but there was no real conflict in the relationship. The American and the English soccer star liked each other from the beginning and there was nothing really standing in the way of them, so there was a real lack of tension in this movie. On the other hand, if you’re looking for all the standard cozy Hallmark Christmas tropes, this movie has them in spades. I would say this is a great movie for having on in the background to infuse the air with Christmas spirit. The ridiculous: Soccer star’s mom makes a living selling swag with her son’s face on it. Seems a little unethical? My favorite bits: okay, to be honest, I watched this really late at night and might have fallen asleep through parts of it. The two leads are charming, though.
Holiday Hotline (2023) – After a career crisis, British chef goes to Chicago for a break and ends up working at a holiday turkey hotline. She fields a call from a single dad trying to recreate his late wife’s Christmas turkey for his daughter. Simultaneously, she keeps running into a friend of her neighbor and sparks fly. Guess what? It’s not really a spoiler to say that the single dad and the neighbor’s friend are the same guy! My cat nip: Single fathers, cute British accents, pseudo- Shop Around the Corner vibes, niche activity (Holiday cooking hotlines!) My take: I thought this one was really cute, maybe my second favorite holiday movie this past year. I’ve always loved listening to the radio program Turkey Confidential and it makes a great premise for a meet cute rom com. I liked the way the story unfolded, predictably, but also with some nuance. The ridiculous: Okay, some of the questions that callers called in with about their turkeys were hilarious and I hope no one ever asked in real life. My favorite bits: The way that the movie handled the “hotline” scenes were, I thought, really well done. It wasn’t just a split screen effect – it was something cozier and quite skillful.
Christmas Island (2023) -Career driven private pilot is forced to land her clients – Los Angeles based toy manufacturers and their kids – at small Nova Scotia Island when she hits severe weather. She verbally spars with the air traffic controller, but then gets to know him in real life when she and her clients are stranded for several days. My Catnip: A Hallmark movie set in Canada! Also Andrew Walker is one of my favorite Hallmark actors – I’ll watch any holiday movie he’s in. Also Rachel Skarsten, who plays the pilot was in The Royal Nanny last year, and I liked her too. My take: The Nova Scotia location was kind of refreshing in a Hallmark movie, and I liked the storylines of how the various members of the family find their way to something fulfilling. The ridiculous: No one seemed terribly Canadian in this movie. I can’t quite put my finger on what made me say this, since I’m sure there were a lot of Canadians in the movie. (Both the leads are Canadian.) But there was nary a ketchup chip in sight! My favorite bit: The part with the Christmas Eve tribute to loved ones that had been lost, featuring a Christmas tree made from lobster traps. I might have shed a tear.
Mystic Christmas (2023) – Globe-trotting animal behavioral specialist goes to work for her best friend at her marine animal rehab center in Mystic, CT. She reunites with a one night stand/best friend’s brother, a homebody if there ever was one. My catnip: Stars of musical theatre (Patti Murin, who plays the best friend, starred in Frozen the Musical.) My take: This movie was pretty enjoyable, though low on external conflict, having, instead a lot of existential soul searching while enjoying Christmas settings. I liked that there were several different minor plotlines, to help keep things moving along. And the seals were pretty cute. The ridiculous: What is it in the world of Hallmark that people have big exciting job offers that always start the day after Christmas? I get that not everyone runs on the same calendar as I do, but… it seems a little unbelievably inconvenient. My favorite bit: There is one scene in which Patti Murin wears the most amazingly snuggly sweater. I loved that sweater. Also there is a book flood in the movie. Seems very hip and trendy, but it was fun to see a series of scenes where they go to the book store, buy books and then sit around and read. I don’t know what it was about the sound design, but the sound of those pages turning was just so perfectly cozy. Weird thing to love?
Well, that’s half the Hallmark/Lifetime movies I watched during 2023 holiday season! I’ll be back with a recap of the rest of them next week!
I know we’re over halfway though January, but did you enjoy any Hallmark rom coms this year?
Here we are in a brand new year. I wrote a check for the kids’ piano lessons this morning, and wrote 2024 for the first time. It always seems special writing that first check of the year, and remembering to write in the right year.
Everyone is back in school and back at work (except me – I go back to work at the end of the week), and I feel like I finally have time and room and capacity to think and be and not just do. The Husband had a therapist once who always reminded him that we are human beings not human doings. There has been a lot of doing these past few weeks. Five people at home on vacation makes for a lot of meals and dishes and laundry and picking up, I’m finding. And the pockets of time I did find, I just felt so scattered – I couldn’t sustain concentrate on things like writing here or reading books for more than a page at a time. So there was some aimless drifting and puttering and a lot of Hallmark movies. And baking and cooking – making food always seems like a nice activity to pull me out of being idle, yet not being too mentally taxing. And scrolling. And random internet surfing. It seems like whenever I sat down to write, I’d get distracted by some internet errand – holiday gifts still to research and procure, plans to make, other people’s news… All in all I’ve been feeling a kind of mental malaise and not quite sure how to kick it. So I’m just going to start with the run down of how the rest of December and our holiday went.
Fun and Festive Things, Pre-Christmas: Our first Snow delay! This was mid December – There was a smattering of snow on the ground and we woke up to a two hour delay at school. The 4 year old and the 6 year old wanted to play in the scant snow, so I bundled them up and sent them in the backyard where they played for about an hour or so. Of course the snow was gone by the afternoon – it seemed hardly worth a two hour delay, but it was nice to have a change up to the routine.
Tuba Christmas! I feel like we didn’t do our usual full slate of holiday activities this year, but even so Tuba Christmas is a must for us. We go every year. It is pretty much the same concert every year – hundreds of tuba (and euphoniums and baritones), playing Christmas carols, audience sing a long, “Santa Wants a Tuba for Christmas”, the kids going up onstage to sing “Jingle Bells”. Even the patter between songs is always the same. This year, hilariously, the MC gave the wrong introduction to one carol. Which made us laugh and laugh because it’s been the same MC for as long as I can remember. It was an excellent lesson in making a mistake in front of a thousand people and being able to laugh at oneself.
Celebrating our anniversary. The Husband and I celebrated our anniversary by taking the train into DC to have dinner at the restaurant where we had our wedding dinner. On the way down, we stopped by Union Station where our friend’s string quartet was playing holiday music. It was a fun mix of seasonal tunes and pop hits. She later told me that at one point they noticed that no one was stopping to listen, so she suggested they start playing Beetles and Taylor Swift. And the crowds started gathering. I guess there is something about playing Christmas songs in December that people take for granted, but a string quartet playing Love Story – well that’s special. After listening to our friend play, we walked to the restaurant and enjoyed much to much indulgent food. And… when the waiter found out that it was our anniversary and that we had had our wedding dinner at that restaurant, he comped up our dessert. What a nice surprise! We finished up the evening by walking through the holiday market – enjoying the cold and the holiday crafts and lights before we got on the train and went home.
We made and decorated cookies. I wasn’t really feeling this, but I rallied and decided to just make two kinds of cookies – sugar cookies for decorating and molasses cookies because those are my favorite. The kids really wanted to decorate cookies and were asking, so I’m glad I managed to do this. I used the leftover royal icing mix from the 4 year old’s birthday which helps simplify the process a lot. I tried a new sugar cookie recipe and it wasn’t great – the cookies ended up spreading too much when they baked and were rather shapeless. I’ll have to research a try a different recipe next year.
Not seeing Christmas Lights. We did not go to any of the many option for seeing Christmas lights, but we did take a a walk after dinner one night and looked at the lights in our neighborhood. There is one house that goes all out for Christmas that is always fun to see.
Work Things – I’m off work until January 4th. Since closing my last show, I worked two vocal recitals (one as stage manager, one doing the super titles). After a fall of opera, a voice recital is a nice balm on my work soul. No chorus of thousands to wrangle, no sets, no costumes, no props. Just a singer, a pianist, and some really great music.
Not so Festive Things: -Life. Life. Life. Between two kids, I spent six hours at the dentist in the past two weeks. They now have enough crowns between the two of them for a small monarchy. Sigh. At least I got some reading done and they got to watch TV. The dentist has tvs on the ceiling. The four year old watched two straight hours of Bluey while the dentist worked on her teeth. -General holiday shopping fatigue. I feel this every year. I need to find a less stressful/tiring method of Christmas shopping.
Christmas Day: We had a quiet Christmas at home. I think that is how everyone prefers it, especially the 11 year old. Whenever we float the idea of travelling for Christmas, she is always vehemently opposed. And I get it – there is something nice about waking up in one’s own bed, with the Christmas tree.
Christmas even my mother arrived. We went for a walk at the Botantical Gardens becuase they have a train display, but whe we got there, we found that it was closed because – either because it was Chrstmas Eve or because it was Sunday, not sure which. We spent an hour wandering around anyway, just enjoying the bare beauty of the garden in winter. Then we went home, and got ready for Church. Our Church was having a living Nativity for the first time, so we went a little early to see that. There were donkeys and oxen and a little tiny baby, all bundled up in the manger. Our church has a children’s procession on Christmas Eve, where all the children lead the opening procession, and it was really sweet to see the four year old walking with her hands in prayer position, more docile than I’ve ever seen her. After church, we came home and had chicken curry for dinner then watched the Guardians of the Galaxy Christmas Special before sending the kids to bed. After that, I was up late on cooking (as I usually am) – I made meatballs, rainbow jello, and prepped the cinnamon buns.
Christmas Day we slept in a little bit, waking up around 8:00am. I had to proof the cinnamon buns in the oven. I had hoped that they could do a slow cool rise in the sun room, but that proved to be too cool and they didn’t rise much, so I had to put them in the oven to proof for another hour before I baked them. The kids did stockings first thing, then we talked to the Husband’s sister and family who were in the Netherlands. Then we had cinnamon buns. Then, finally, we did presents around 10pm. I’m surprised the kids were patient to wait that long.
After presents things took a leisurely pace. I picked up wrapping paper, read some, watched the kids play with their presents. At some point, I thought it might be nice to start dinner, so I did that and that took the rest of the day.
The Christmas Day Menu: -Seafood Paella as the main dish. Ever since a family brought a paella to the 6 year old’s class for their Thanksgiving celebration, I’ve wanted to try to make one. So I decided that it would be Christmas dinner. There are about a gazillion paella recipes online and I couldn’t choose. On Christmas Day, I was texting with my friend in Jordan – her husband was in the foreign service and they had been in Barcelona for a stint – I was lamenting that I didn’t know where to start for my paella recipe and she texted me a recipe from a paella cookbook. The recipe was simple and my friend’s husband said it was pretty flexible and I could use all the seafood that I had bought – calamari, shrimp, scallops and cod. Yay. It turns out paella is simpler to make than I had thought – and it is kind of festive and feeds a lot of people. This won’t be my last time making it! -Meatballs from a Tapas cookbook we had. I wanted something meaty to complement the paella. Everything I googled said paella is supposed to be it’s own meal, but I don’t know – there is something incimplete about just having a rice dish for dinner, so I made meatballs to go with. -Rainbow Jello. As always. Though I made it this time since none of the kids were up for making it. -Orange salad. Something bright and slightly acidic to balance the paella. Most Orange salads call for fennel, but I’m the only one in the family that likes fennel, so I just made this dressing and tossed it over sliced oranges with kalamata olives on the side. -Green Beans. The Husband steamed and then sauteed some green beans for something a little green. -Tomato Garlic bread, also from the Tapas Cookbook. Basically toasted bread with garlic olive oil and rub tomato on it.
After dinner, we watched It’s a Wonderful Life and then went to bed. All in all, a nice day.
The week after Christmas had lots of adventures – here’s the highlight reel:
–Taking the two girls and a friend to ClimbZone and then out for Korean food afterwards. I even got to climb too! It is very exhausting. One of my goals for family fun this year is to book a session at the climbing gym for the whole family. After ClimbZone, we went to this Korean place that makes their own noodles and it was fascinating to watch the whole process of pulling and stretching the dough into long strings. I was unfamiliar with a lot of the food and ended up mixing the noodles with the sauce for the shrimp. oops.
–An overnight trip to Lancaster, PA where we visited the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania:
And we went on a quest for licorice. I had gotten a few bags of Klepper and Klepper salty licorice when we were in Amsterdam, and, as the package says, it is the best licorice ever.
I was very sad when I finished the licorice that I brought home, so I lookonline and the closest place to us to find it is at a candy store in Lancaster, PA called Sweetish, which specializes in candy from Sweden. So when the Husband suggested a trip to the Railroad museum near Lancaster, I immediately suggested we stop by Sweetish as well. The store was amazing. Bins and bins of salty licorice, in addition to Klepper and Klepper. And all sorts of other candy as well. We walked away with a small fortune in candy – In addition to salt licorice of many varieties I also got a smoked licorice. (Of course the two kids who had crowns were not allowed any gummy candy, so they had lots of lollipops. Funny enough, the dentist told them that they could have as much ice cream as they wanted. They just had to remember to brush.).
We stayed in a hotel that night and had some pool time and the next morning we went to Longwood Gardens. The Christmas displays were still up, and even though we didn’t stay to see everything lit up after sundown, we still got a good dose of the holiday display. It was a drizzly, misty day, which has a beauty of its own, I think. A totally precious moment was when the 4 year old started getting tired, so we all took turns carrying her, even the 11 year old. What a good big sister she is!
–Theatre trips. I took my mother to see Fiddler on the Roof as a Christmas present. It was a beautiful production, really well done. The director had framed the show as a story told by a group of immigrants in an Ellis Island-type waiting room. So the different people arriving to America took on the roles of the various characters in Anatevka. I love seeing diversity onstage and I thought this was a reall thoughtful way to have coour conscious, but not colour blind casting. This framework, I thought, also really brought the idea of leaving home front and center in a way that I didn’t usually think of. I mean I knew that Tevye and his family leave Anatevka at the end of the musical, but so much of the beginning of the musical is about the homes and traditions they have established that to think about the beginning of the show through the lens of the end was certainly sobering. Also sobering was the presence of security guards and bag checks throughout the theatre. I feel a little abashed that I go to see a show about a Jewish village and take safety for granted, but there are many people who don’t. Of course going to a show is a bit of escapism, but there was also something very timely about this particular show at this particular time.
The next day, the whole family went to see A Year with Frog and Toad, which was a delightful. I laughed so hard throughout the show. The six year old, who looooves Frog and Toad, kept telling me when things were different from the book. At the end the show, he said, “In the book, they don’t explain how the clock gets broken. And now I know!” Because the breaking of the clock is a major plot point in the musical. Highly recommend this show! We’ve been listening and singing along to the soundtrack ever since. It’s ostensibly a kids’ show, but there were certainly many moments that I identified with. I will admit, Frog and Toad aren’t my favorite books, but there is something incredibly astute about them.
Bike ride – A friend passed along bike that his kids had outgrown and one of them was just right for the 4 year old, so we took them out for a bike ride one day. During the pandemic, they closed off one of the major parkways during the weekends and it continues to be closed to cars on weekends and holidays, making for a perfect place to practice riding bikes. We met up wit some friends and biked down to a playground. The Husband has always been anti-training wheels, but I feel like at this point, the 4 year old just wants to keep up with her siblings so giving her training wheels is the best tactic. I’m sure she will outgrow them soon – goals for 2024?
Hallmark Movie Marathon – we did not have an all day movie marathon, but we did do an entire afternoon where we watched two Hallmark movies back to back. I paired this with a decluttering activity and went through all the 11 year olds’ clothes and got rid of the stuff that didn’t fit and made of list of things that she needed. Apparently she has a gazillion t-shirts and only four pairs of pants. (Also – this was my dilemma at one point – is what does a pre-teen wear for a “nice” outfit??? She has fancy recital dresses and t-shirts and hoodies, but nothing in between that she could wear to the theatre or to a nice dinner. We need to figure this one out…) I’ve watched many many Hallmark movies this year… recap coming!
Trip Downtown to visit the U.S. Botanic Gardens and Trains: Every year the trains have a different theme and this year the theme was pollinators – they had all these models of pollinators, constructed from plant and vegetations. Also – we found a great new restaurant. Food now on the National Mall is always hit or miss, so I’m always on the look out for good food options and we found this place called Rice Bar that has customizable noodle and rice bowls. It was really tasty and had lots of vegetables, which is rare for food places down on the Mall. I was really excited to find this place.
New Years: The 11 year old likes to stay up to watch the ball drop, so we did, though the Husband was in bed by 11:30pm and the two little kids were asleep on the couch before midnight as well. Earlier in the day, the Husband made an apple crisp in a cast iron skillet – a super simple recipe, which we proceeded to eat out of the skillet – 5 forks and dig in! On New Years Day, we did some more cleaning and then went for a hike at Great Falls. It was a little rainy and a little chilly, but once we got going, everyone had a great time. The kids invented this game where they were each rulers of rock kingdoms and would gather for summits to discuss world issues. Seeing all three kids play together always feels so special since they are all at such different ages.
Sibling summit.
So that’s the rundown of the last bit of December into the New Year. I’m sure there are lots of moments I didn’t remember. I had sort of also fallen off the journaling wagon in all the holiday happenings. Something that I want to make sure to made time for again.
Grateful For: – My mother being here. The kids enjoy having so much grandma time.
-Zoom – so we can talk to family far and wide. We don’t live near any family and we are very bad at keeping in touch. Zoom allows us to be a little less bad at it.
-All the good and love and peace of the holiday season. Health and family and friends.
-The Husband scraping the frost off my car in the morning.
Looking Forward To: – Filling my planner and new pens. I have several blank planners for 2024 that I’m looking forward to filling. I use the Hobonichi Weeks Mega as my every day planner. Last year I used the Hobonichi Techo Cousin as a journal/habit tracker. I ordered both another Cousin but also the Jibun Techo Lite for journal/tracking this year. Not sure which I’ll use. I like having the pages for each day that the Cousin has, but truthfully, I don’t use every day, so it kind of seems like a waste of a planner. I also ordered a fountain pen sampler from Jetpens. I love the scratchy resistance of the Preppy Fountain Pen that came in my pen sampler last year, so I thought I’d try more fountain pens. Jet Pens only has a black ink fountain pen sampler, and I prefer blue ink, but even still, I’m excited to try them out.
-The 11 year old’s basketball season is starting, so I’m looking forward to cheering her on.
-A few light months of work. I’m taking advantage of not having to be at rehearsal or at the theatre in the evenings to take on some life fun things – for everyone in the family. I’ve encouraged the Husband to sign up for some volunteer work, I’m adding some activities for the kids, and I’m looking into a class for myself too. I feel like while I’m able to be home to drive carpool or watch the kids while the Husband does something for himself, we should take advantage of the time. My job puts such limits on what we can do as a family sometimes that I feel bad, so I’m eager to lean into life things rather than work things for a few months.
-and of course, all the things that 2024 might bring and that I might plan for the year.
What We Ate: Well, again, since I did really poorly at tracking and journalling this month, I don’t really remember what we ate, but here’s a few memorable dishes:
-Tourtiere for New Year’s Eve Dinner. I’ve made this Canadian meat pie before, and it’s a super cozy meal, which I feel was what the day called for. I used the recipe from the King Arthur’s Baking cook book.
-Egg Curry. One of our new hit recipes from 2023 and a perfect pantry meal. I threw in some kabocha squash as well.
-Congee. I often end up having to throw out leftover rice because I’m never inspired to do anything with it. This time, I decided to make congee with it. I had a loose recipe to start, but then I just started adding whatever I had around – leftover chicken wings from a get together with friends, a bit of that kabocha squash, the last stalks of celery, some jujube berries. It made such a cozy meal. I find kitchen sink meals so satisfying – something about being able to use up the last bit of something in the fridge just makes food taste better to me.
Taiwanese comfort food.
-Chicken Curry in the Instant Pot from Melissa Clark’s Dinner in and Instant. Perfect make ahead meal for Christmas Eve.
-And there was lots of pizza. I think we had at least two or three pizza and movie nights in the past few weeks.
The kids love any occasion to make a sign. Notice the handprint turkeys!
In a lot of ways, while Hallowe’en feels to me like the start of the end of the year, Thanksgiving kicks off the the true, inevitable, unstoppable slide. I mean I can’t stop time either way, but Hallowe’en feels full no on of possibilities and plans while Thanksgiving fills me with “Oh shit! I’m not going to be ready!” I’m working full time until mid December, but there are things that can’t be put off until then – Christmas cards, tickets for events we want to attend, Christmas shopping, the tree. I mean I guess we could delay the tree until I’m done my current spate of shows and recitals, but then it would only be up for ten days, and where’s the joy in that? I think the Husband has a plan, though. I came home from work on Sunday night to this:
A couple years ago, I decided that we needed to up our exterior Christmas light game and so we got this from Home Depot. It makes me ridiculously happy, even though it might be though of as just this side of tacky. There are a variety of slides that the projector can display, so after Christmas, we can switch to just snowflakes and enjoy the festive lights into the New Year. (It also comes with a Hallowe’en slide, but I don’t know that we’ve ever used that.)
Thanksgiving itself was quiet and cozy. I was up late the night before baking pies. In the morning, the 11 year old made waffles, and let me sleep until 8:30am before telling me I needed to come down for waffles. We then watched the Macy’s Day Parade while the Husband and kids made sausage balls – this is one of our Thanksgiving traditions. Followed by watching the dog show, also tradition here. I went for a run around noon, then came home and popped the turkey in the oven. One of my friends, in town to work on the show with me, came over for Thanksgiving Dinner. She essentially played with the kids for 5 hours while I got everything ready. What an absolutely wonderful friend she is!
Thanksgiving dinner. Missing is the Rainbow Jello and the rolls. And of course the pies.
For dinner we had: -Turkey – buttermilk brined and spatchcocked. I had spatchcocked a chicken before, never a turkey. The main appeal was that the recipe said a spatchcocked turkey would cook in 80-100 mins. Yes please. I actually took it out at 90 mins and it was a little dry . -Stuffing, made separately. The sausage dressing from A Year of Miracles. I’m not usually a stuffing person, and particularly since I was spatchcocking the turkey, hadn’t originally planned it on the menu. But then I wanted to make something from Ella Risbridger’s cookbook, and there was a recipe for sausage stuffing with apples and chestnuts and I immediately wanted to try it. I’m not sorry at all. -Grilled zucchini with gremolata, also from The Year of Miracles. This was a last minute add as well. I didn’t think there were enough green things on the menu and I had some zucchini in the fridge. -Green beans – the Husband’s specialty. He steams them then sautes them with garlic and soy sauce. So tasty. -cranberry sauce – the cooked kind. Pretty basic recipe with some fresh ginger added. -Rainbow Jello aka Ribbon Salad. The 11 year old made this from a recipe card from my late Mother-in-Law’s recipe box. Also another thing we have every holiday dinner. Also the only thing the two little kids wanted to eat. I used the Rainbow Jello to bribe them to eat the other things.
-gravy made from dippings -German Potato Salad – my friend brought this. When we were at her house this summer, she made this for us and it was so good that I requested it for Thanksgiving dinner -cranberry relish – my friend also brought this. I’d never had cranberry relish before, and I really liked it, especially sprinkled with pecans. -rolls. Last year I didn’t have rolls and we all agreed that was a mistake. This year we had the Pillsbury crescent rolls and Hawaiian rolls. -Apple Pie – when I made it the night before, I couldn’t tell if the bottom cooked through. Last year’s pie had a bit of a soggy bottom, so I was a little paranoid that I’d repeated the mistakes. So the next morning, I covered the pie in foil and popped it back in the oven for 20 minutes. Not sure if that was the reason, but the crust was in much better shape this year. I use the apple recipe from Serious Eats and the crust recipe from King Arthur’s Flour Baking Companion. -Pumpkin pie. I use the recipe from Tartine, with an extra egg yolk added. (I’m glad I noted that in the blog because I always think I’m going to remember and I never do.) Only, I didn’t have pumpkin. I don’t know where I think a pumpkin was going to magically appear from, but I didn’t have pumpkin. But… I did have a plethora of butternut squash from the Hungry Harvest box. So I roasted that up, and in a fit of panic that it wasn’t going to be enough, threw in a sweet potato as well. The verdict from the Husband, “It’s good, but it’s not pumpkin pie.” So for those of you who think that pumpkin has no taste and pumpkin pie is merely a vessel for sugar, cream and pumpkin pie spice … well, I guess you’re wrong. The pumpkin does matter.
It was a lovely day. We watched some dog show, then ate some (lots) of food. Then after dinner, we played Codenames – which was kind of hilarious becasue the 6 year old insists on being the Codemaster and he’s … well, he’s six. There was a minor meltdown when his team (consisting of him, the 4 year old, and the Husband) kept losing to my team (me, my friend, and the 11 year old). “You NEVER give me a chance to win!!!!” he yelled.
“Um…” I said, trying not to laugh, “every time you play is a chance to win, honey.”
That did not go over well. So we declared it was time for pie, and that seemed to mollify him.
After my friend went home, we put on our pjs and watched the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving special, though I don’t guarantee that I stayed awake. We were all full and exhausted and agreed to leave the dishes for the next day.
(Also – update on our broken dishwasher. It does need replacing because it is old and all its parts don’t really talk to each other anymore. But the repair guy said that if we turn the machine off at the breaker and back on again, it will re-set itself and we can run it. So I did not have to handwash Thanksgiving after all. Frugal me thinks, “Great! The dishwasher still is going strong! We’ll get another ten years out of it!” But the Husband thinks that having to turn it on and off at the breaker is not an ideal solution, so we have taken advantage of the Black Friday sales and ordered a new one.)
The day after Thanksgiving, the Husband took the kids away on an overnight. I so wish I could have gone with them – they went to the Please Touch Museum in Philadelphia. We hadn’t been to this museum in several years. We used to go several times a year – combining it with a trip to Longwood Gardens. But the 11 year old sort of aged out of it before the other two kids were really into it and then 2020 happened. Anyhow, the Husband decided that this weekend was a good time to go back with the kids so he took them on an a great little trip: Please Touch, then Hotel (with pool!, which I take it was a key component of any hotel stay) and hotel breakfast bar (also important.) The Please Touch Museum apparently was a great hit, and parts of it had been redone since we last went. We were a little unsure whether the 11 year old would be an active participant in a visit to the children’s museum, but she apparently really had a good time too.
Then the next day, the Husband took the kids to the Brandywine Museum. Back in September, when he went to the Minnesota State Fair, he and his friends had also gone to the Walker Art Museum. Well, it turns out it was cheaper for all of them to go if he bought a membership, so he did. And it turns out the Walker is part of the North American Reciprocal Museums Association so that his Walker membership gets us into many many many other museums too. One of which is the Brandywine Museum. I had suggested that it would be a good museum to take the kids to because they had their Holiday Trains up, but also they had an exhibit of art from children’s books and a dollhouse, which is always a draw for the oldest. I think children’s book illustrations are a hugely underrated slice of the art world and there should be more art exhibits devoted to that. I’m kind of sad I didn’t get to go along because it sounds like it was a really nice exhibit. The Husband did send some pictures, though:
This is a picture from Sophie Blackall’s most recent book Farmhouse. Can’t wait to read it! I wish I could have seen it in real life.
The Husband reported that the kids seemed to enjoy the art and that the museum had a reading nook set up so you could read all the books featured in the exhibit. He also said that he wrote down the names of almost all the books that were showcased – I’m excited to check them out from the library.
I’m determined to make the most of our reciprocal museum membership in the next 10 months. There are so many art and history museums that we could visit. There is a Duck Decoy museum in Havre de Grace, MD, which is probably about 90 minutes from us!
As for me, I had rehearsal from 12:00p-7:00p Friday, Saturday, and Sunday so I wasn’t home to enjoy the quiet house. Friday, I carpooled with my friend to work, and we went to Trader Joe’s after work, so that kind of felt like a fun friend date. There are a lot of things I love getting at Trader Joe’s (Everything Bagel Seasoning! Pound Plus Dark Chocolate! Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups! Nuts! Dried Fruit! Rice cracker snack mx!). I don’t go very often, however, because I can’t do all my shopping there, and it’s a little out of the way. So it always feels like a treat to go.
Saturday I got to bike to work, which is always exhilarating. When I first stepped out of the house in the morning, though, the sun was shining warmly so even though it was 45 degrees out side, I decided I didn’t need my windbreaker or gloves. About a half mile into my ride, I realized that was a mistake. I was very cold. I leaned into the brisk weather and tried to savor the chill and made it to work. I did, however, walk the bike up that last hill – I wasn’t going to make it up that hill.
Fun things this week:
-In the Fall of 2020, deep in the thick of being home with kids all the time, I decided to do something I’d always wanted to do and signed up for an art class the local community college. I’d always wanted to take a class, but it never worked out with my work schedule. Well, during the pandemic, all the classes moved to be online, and I was unemployed, so I figured it would be a good time to take a class. It turns out to be one of the best things I’ve ever done. (You can see posts with pictures of my work here.) Having that weekly drawing assignment gave me something to do that wasn’t changing diapers or feeding the family or supervising online learning and there was a sweet group of people to interact with every week. Anyhow, at the end of the second class I took, the instructor suggested I submit a drawing to be included in the course catalogue. This was two years ago, and I didn’t think anything of it, knowing that they must get many submissions and my picture was no where as polished at the stuff usually featured in the catalogue. Last week, the latest course catalogue came to our door, and to my surprise, I opened it up, and there was my picture!
It’s not quite like being published or anything, but it tickles me to have a picture of my art out there.
-The six year olds’ classroom had a “Classgiving” potluck. The week before sign ups were sent out for each child to contribute a dish if they wished. I asked the six year old what he wanted to bring. “A turkey,” he said.
Whoa what? No. Try again.
“Rainbow Jello!” That sounds more reasonable. Except when I looked at the food sign ups, it was like six or seven different kinds of baked goods. This was supposed to be the kids’ lunch on the last day of school before the break, and I was a little wary of adding yet another sugary dish to the mix. So we thought about it for a few days. This was the dilemma – do I send what the kid wants to send, or do I send something that will balance the rest of what is on the sign up? Given that it was meant to be a lunch potluck, I was leaning towards the latter. “What about your dad’s sausage balls?” I suggested, thinking a protein option might be a good thing to add. He heaved a sigh, “Okay…”
Which was a win for me on two counts: 1) savory protein (albeit wrapped in carbs), and 2) the Husband got to make them. He’s such a trooper.
On the day of the Classgiving party, parents were allowed to join, so I dutifully went to his classroom, even though I find these things terribly awkward as I am not good at small talk with other parents. Participating in classroom activities solidly falls into the “Will make my kid happy” category for me. When I got there the kids were watching Inspector Gadget and the six year old barely registered my presence. Oh well.
Oh the best part, though – after all my over thinking the potluck sign up of carbs and sugar – I didn’t have to worry that lunch would be unbalanced … someone brought in a paella. Like in a pan, beautifully presented with asparagus and peppers and chicken. It was awesome. It’s now one of my goals for 2024 to make a paella. Also, as I was leaving someone brought in this delicious looking meat stew with couscous. Only by that point the kids were so full of baked goods that I’m sure they didn’t give the meat stew a second glance. Sad. Oh well, I’m sure the other parents got to enjoy it.
-Also highly recommend this poem, by Clint Smith, which I heard on an episode of On Being from earlier this month. It’s entitled “Ode to Those First Fifteen Minutes After the Kids Are Finally Asleep.” Here are the first few lines, but you must click the link and read (or listen) to the whole thing:
Praise the couch that welcomes you back into its embrace as it does every night around this time. Praise the loose cereal that crunches beneath your weight, the whole‐grain golden dust that now shimmers on the backside of your pants. Praise the cushion, the one in the middle that sinks like a lifeboat leaking air, and the ottoman covered in crayon stains that you have now accepted as aesthetic.
Clint Smith’s poem “Dance Party” is also pretty great too. Smith perfectly captures the energy sapping joy of caring for other beings.
-One of the nice things about working on Sunday is that there is a Sunday farmer’s market next to work. So I stopped by before rehearsal to pick up some apples and vegetables (arugula, cucumber, onions, and carrots) as well as lunch (a berry smoothie and chicken empanadas). On my way out, I passed a stall that had a sign that said, “Pickled mushrooms! Try one! It will change your life!” Well, who am I to turn that down, so I did. They were pretty tasty, maybe not life-changingly tasty, but very tasty all the same. The pickled mushroom stand was one that specialized in fermented food and before I knew it, I was walking away with their kimchi, pickles, sauerkraut and, yes, a jar of pickled mushrooms. The ironic thing is that morning the Husband and I had just cleared out the fridge, getting rid of all manner of science experiments and eating up other things, including a bucket of pickles. I was a little abashed to fill that pickle vacuum so soon, but I’ve always been a sucker for fermented food…
Oksana’s Produce Farm. Why make space in the fridge if you can’t fill it with more pickles???
Outfit of the week: Last week was also the first day of rehearsal for the holiday show I’m working on. For the past few years, I almost always wear the same thing for the first day of rehearsal. The outfit is a little more polished than what I usually wear because I like to look relatively put together the first time I meet the singers and the conductor and director. Wearing this outfit is a bit like putting a a uniform- it gets me in the right mindset to start rehearsals.
First Day of Rehearsal Outfit.
The grey dress is actually a nursing dress from Latched Mama. If you look closely, there are slits in the side for nursing access. I bought it when the 4 year old was born and it turns out it is such a versatile dress that I wear it all the time even though I’m not nursing anymore. And it has pockets!! The jacket is Eileen Fisher which I picked up at Nordstrom Rack five or six years ago. I like how it looks a little vintage-y and I love the colour. It’s also a jacket that can elevate any outfit. I’ve worn it with sweats and a t-shirt and ended up looking cooler than I have any business looking. The boots need a serious polish, but I also have had them for ages and even had them re-soled a few years ago. They have a wingtip look and feel fancy but are really comfy. The tights are Uniqlo HeatTech because it suddenly got cold last week. And the scarf is super cool – the little circles are actually the digits of pi, written in a spiral. My sister in law got the scarf for me from a company that specializes in STEM based prints. I always get lots of compliments on that scarf. The hat is from my other sister in law (I think it has appeared before in other posts.)
Grateful for: -Thanksgiving and friends and food and family. Not just on this one day, but all the days.
-Finding my gloves! Several years ago, the Husband gave me some lovely red gloves for Christmas. They were warm, leather Isotoners, and they had touch fingertips so I could use my phone while wearing them. But last year I couldn’t find them. I was distraught. They were not inexpensive so I was hesitant to replace them. Well, this week, I lost my raincoat (sad!), so I had to grab a spare coat from our closet one rainy day. It was a windbreaker that had belonged to my late mother-in-law, which we had kept just for this kind of back up need. Well, I put it on and reached into the lump in the pocket and there were my red gloves!! I was even better than that feeling you get when you find a $20 bill in your pocket!
– Leftovers! One of the most wonderful things about Thanksgiving is having leftovers for easy lunches for days afterwards.
Lunch!
Looking forward to: -Errands getting done. because I don’t have to be at work until 11:30 most days, I have booked morning appointments this week for driver’s license renewal (mine), and then on my free day, I’ve booked a passport renewal (the 11 year old), and a pediatric dentist visit (the 4 year old.) Boy will it feel good to get some of the stuff off my plate. (spoiler alert – the 4 year old has a stomach bug so the license renewal has to be rescheduled since I have to stay home with her. Let’s hope the rest of the things will happen, though.)
-The two older kids’ piano recital. It’s the six year old’s first piano recital. He will be playing Jolly Old St. Nicholas. As you do when you’ve only been taking lessons for four months. The 11 year old is playing a more complicated piece called Sleighride. She’s been working really hard. At first her teacher was going to make some cuts to the piece because she hadn’t been really practicing and the whole piece wasn’t going to be ready, but then 11 year old buckled down and learned the whole piece. I’m going to be honest – piano, specifically practicing piano, has been a huge struggle. I vacillate between not caring and caring very (too) much.
– Christmas books! I love reading holiday and winter theme picture books in December. I used to make it an Advent calendar type event and wrap them all individually to read one per night. But that was a lot of work, and one year the Grinch was due back at the library, but it was still wrapped so I didn’t know which book it was and that was annoying. So now I just bring them home in a big reusable shopping bag and leave them out and we just grab what we want.
What We Ate: It feels like we ate out more than usual last week. Partly the lead busyness around Thanksgiving, also partly me working until 8pm most nights and the Husband and I not sitting down to meal plan. I don’t love eating out all the time, but I guess it’s just that season for us right now. Monday: Bahn mi sandwiches (take-out)
Tuesday: Tofu stir fry with noodles (the Husband cooked)
Wednesday: We had tacos out after the six year old and Husband got haircuts. I had shrimp ceviche and a really tasty fish taco from Fish Taco, a local chain.
Thursday: Thanksgiving – see above.
Friday, Saturday, Sunday – leftovers from Thanksgiving. The Husband hot the kids pizza on their road trip. Sunday was dumplings and broccoli.
I don’t really see myself getting back into the dinner cooking groove anytime soon, which makes me a little sad. I miss having that time to putter in the kitchen and then producing something nourishing for everyone to eat. I had thought that I might be able to do more morning meal prep with my later morning starts, but to meal prep, I have to meal plan, and I haven’t had a lot of time for that lately either. I’m instead focusing on having good basics – fruits, veggies, eggs, kimchi, cheese – in the fridge so that even if I’m not cooking, there are options for solid snack meals for me. The Husband actually does really well for getting everyone fed. Honestly, the kids like his cooking more than mine.
Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving! How is the rest of the year looking? Is it frenetic or calm? Or somewhere in between?
Christmas was a month ago, but never too late to finish up the rundown of the Christmas movies I watched in 2022. And there were a lot of them…
Last Christmas – Okay, this sounds like it’s a Hallmark movie, but it isn’t a Hallmark movie. Emilia Clarke plays Kate, a down on her luck aspiring actor who works as an elf in a London Christmas store. She couch surfs, insults her friends, is vile to her mother and family, and basically is kind of an awful person, but awful in an adorable-there-must-be-more-to-the-story kind of way. When life seems like it couldn’t get any worse, Tom (played by the super dreamy Harry Golding) comes into her life and charms her into becoming a better person by showing her how to enjoy life. There is also Emma Thompson who plays Kate’s mother, doing hilarious and touching Emma Thompson things. This movie ripped my heart out. I loved it so much. Big feelings, big reveal (which you could probably figure out by just watching the trailer), and absolutely has its heart on its sleeve. I would watch it every year, but I don’t want to cry so much at Christmas.
Santa Camp – This documentary is about a camp in New Hampshire that trains Santas, and addresses the question of “Who gets to be Santa?” Clearly Santa has historically had some diversity issues, and Santa Camp decides to tackle those head on by admitting a Black Santa, a Santa in a wheelchair, and a transgender Santa. It’s an interesting and moving look into an American subculture but also into why representation is important.
Hip Hop Nutcracker – This was an adaptation of a stage show, filmed for Disney+. It was fun to hear Tchaikovsky’s score being tweeked and re-imagined, and seeing the variety of dance styles, but ultimately, as I usually find with filmed adaptation of stage productions, I just wanted to see it onstage. I felt like all the fancy camera work detracted from the dancing and I couldn’t really get a sense of what the bodies were doing. It was short, at least.
We also watched It’s A Wonderful Life and Meet Me in St. Louis, but those are such classics that I don’t know that I have anything to say about them. Plus, I slept through Meet Me In St. Louis, so I really don’t have much to say about that one.
On to the Hallmark stuff. And again, these aren’t all strictly Hallmark movies.
The First Noelle – Noelle’s ex-boyfriend comes back to town for Christmas, bringing his new girlfriend with him. She also happens to be named Noelle. Plus she’s super nice. My Catnip: BIPOC leads – (this movie was on BET), best friends to lovers (I prefer when the leads don’t spend too much time getting on each other’s nerves) The ridiculous: Like most Hallmark movies, I wonder “Is this really how [insert industry] works?” In this case, it was publishing. My favorite parts: Spoiler Alert – I really liked how Noelle didn’t end up with the guy at the end. There was a hint of a romance to start, but not a big happy ever after ending. Well, not a romance based happy ever after. I know the point of these holiday movies is romance, but I actually thought the personal journey Noelle goes on in this movie made for a really great story arc.
Three Wise Men and a Baby– Three brothers end up having to take care of an abandoned baby just before the holidays. My Catnip: Cute brothers, babies, Cute Men with babies The ridiculous: I know that this is a Hallmark movie, but the attempts at romantic matchmaking for each of the brothers just felt… superfluous. Who needs romance when you have three clueless men trying to put together a baby swing? Also – one of the brothers is a pet psychologist. Is that really a thing? (Well, I did have a cat once that was on Prozac, so maybe?) Also – it’s always really distracting to me when supposedly newborn babies look like they weigh at least fifteen pounds. My favorite part: Watching the brother’s struggle with a baby. That zombie “It won’t stop crying” look on their faces… I’ve been there. This movie was actually a lot of run. Would watch again.
Jingle Bell Bride – A Wedding Planner to the stars flies all the way to Alaska in search of a specific flower for her client, only to get stuck there in the company of the very handsome nephew of the lady who grows the flowers. My Catnip: Interracial relationships. Alaska. Cute kids. Only there wasn’t cute kids – I had read the blurb wrong. The ridiculous: Do people really wander around outside in Alaska in December wearing just a sweater? I swear no one in this movie looked even remotely chilly. My favorite part: This movie was pretty… just okay. It wasn’t terrible, there wasn’t any stand out moments. Kind of the apex of average in the genre. To be honest, I wanted to watch it because there were so few movies that featured a BIPOC male in the lead opposite a white female and this was one of the few movies I found which was the case. It’s always a BIPOC female and a white male, for whatever colonialist casting subtextual reason. (Am I reading too much into that? Maybe? Probably not.)
Something from Tiffany’s – A mix up leads to Rachel’s boyfriend giving her an engagement ring that was actually meant for Ethan’s girlfriend. My Catnip – interracial romances, baking The Ridiculous: The bad boyfriend. Is really bad. Like appallingly, “why are you still with him” bad. My Favorite Part: Rachel is a baker. There is some serious bread porn in this movie. I want all the carbs. Also – I thought it kind of great that the heroine is also Jewish, so it’s a Christmas move, but not really. Also Zoey Deutch who plays Rachel is adorable in this movie. I didn’t realize until afterwards that she is the daughter of Leah Thompson (of Back to the Future). And now that I know that, I can’t unsee it.
The Ghost of ChristmasAlways: The Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future are sent to haunt a grocery chain executive with a heart of gold, a man whom the Ghost of Christmas Present (Katherine) just might have a connection to and with. My catnip: Christmas Carol spin off, period movies, really nice, decent guys. The ridiculous: I guess being visited by the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future is always going to be a little ridiculous. But that was the whole premise of the movie. My favorite part: One of my favorite bits is when Katherine who is from the 1940s is supposed to step into the present and she magically changes from her period looking wool coat and beret into … another wool coat and beret. It was just kind of funny to me how timeless a wool coat and beret is. Her hair did go from period curls to a blunt bob, though, in case we couldn’t figure out that she was supposed to pass for a lady of the 21st century. I liked this movie a whole lot – it’s probably one of my favorites this year. The chemistry between the two leads was great and the movie was so full of whimsy and humor and made me laugh out loud. I thought it a better take on the Christmas Carol trope than Spirited.
Noel Next Door – Single mom and waitress Noel starts exchanging angry notes with her neighbor whom she feels is terrorizing her kid, at the same time, she strikes up a relationship with divorced composer Jeremy, a customer at her diner. Guess what? They’re the same man! My catnip: grumpy men, single moms The ridiculous: People! stop leaving passive aggressive notes for your neighbor and just go meet them! Movie over. My Favorite Part: It’s always fun to see the classical music world portrayed on screen, even if it is wildly different from real life. Also, there was sweet chemistry between Noel and Jeremy.
A Hollywood Christmas. A director who specializes in making Christmas rom coms finds the studio has sent a studio executive to her set to trim the budget. My catnip: behind the scenes of movie making, Asian leads The Ridiculous: The guy who shows up to play Santa says, “I had to park my reindeer.” Also, after having their budget cut and not being able to hire any musicians for the big final scene, a bunch of the crew members happen to play instruments and are roped into playing for the final scene. That would never ever happen, given union rules and what have you. My favorite part: The behind the scenes, ultra-meta effect of watching a Christmas movie being filmed as the back drop for a Christmas movie. Like who knew all those cozy sweaters were just dickies worn underneath winter coats?!?And the bit where the director says, “We don’t need sound for this scene, it’s just for the montage.” And then there follows… a montage of said director pining as she continues filming her movie. This movie was pretty fun, actually.
Santa Bootcamp: Party Planner needing to find the perfect Santa for a high profile gig, goes to Santa Camp to poach the best talent. My catnip: Stars of yesteryear (Rita Moreno) The Ridiculous: Typical Rom Com movie time line where a bunch of people are convinced to put up a huge gala/Christmas party with practically no notice. Also… (spoiler alert) there is a flying car in the last scene. Also there was very little chemistry between the leads here. My Favorite Part: I liked how the lead’s mother was deaf and signing was a pretty casual part of the story. But otherwise, I thought this movie was pretty flat and heavy handed at the same time. To be fair, heavy handed-ness is pretty much par for the course, but this one was moreso than most.
Lights, Camera, Christmas! When a movie shooting in her small town loses it’s costume designer, Kerry a boutique owner with dashed fashion aspirations, is tapped to fill in. My Catnip: movies about movie making, fashion The Ridiculous: Do people just randomly hire a boutique owner to costume a film? With no experience? And was there really no one else available for the gig? One thing about the entertainment industry, I know, is that there is always someone available. You just have to pay them enough. My Favorite Bit: I always like “behind the scenes” type movies. I thought the Movie they were shooting “My Favorite Santa” was just the right blend of ridiculous and plausible. And there were not one, but two budding romances to follow in this movie – I actually liked the secondary “second chance” romance between the producer and the director better than the main one – the main couple had some nice chemistry, but not a lot of emotional investment.
Well, that’s it for the Christmas movie recaps. (Not that I’ve stopped watching them… I sneak a few in throughout the year.)Until next Thanksgiving, then…
Well we are into 2023, so here’s a “coffee date” style recap/info dump of what life post Christmas has been like…
Trains at Longwood Gardens.
The day after Christmas, the Husband bundled us into the car at 6am and we headed on a little overnight getaway. Our first stop was Steamtown, a National Historic Site in Scranton, PA, dedicated to steam locomotives. I had first heard of this place last year when thinking of places where we could use the ten year old’s free National Parks Pass, though it turns out Steamtown is actually free to visit. (The ten year old’s Pass, given to all fourth graders in the country, went sadly underutilized; I have five years to figure out how to make the most of it when the five year old gets his free Parks Pass…). I had thought this historic site might be fun for the train-lovers in the family, but we never made it because Steamtown was in Scranton, PA, four hours away, which made it a little far for a day trip. When we were looking for a quick getaway for after Christmas, though, this seemed like a good option.
Steamtown features a huge collection of steam locomotives. The museum portion of the park, where there were displays on train history and technology, was having some facility issues so it wasn’t open unfortunately, but there was still lots to see. The roundhouse housed many trains and there were park rangers available to answer questions. The ten year old had many many questions for the park rangers. In the outdoor portion of the Roundhouse, there was a locomotive that we could climb into and even ring it’s bell.
Steamtown!
Locomotives in the Roundhouse.
After Steamtown we spent the night in Consohoken, where we visited the Edwards Freeman Nut Company – a shop with aisles and aisles of nuts, dried fruit and all the candy and chocolate one can imagine. There were wine gums (yay!), and four different types of black licorice, and dried peaches, and an impressive assortment of chocolate malt balls – dark, milk, mocha, mint… We came away with a lot of treats and snacks. Each kid was allowed to also pick some candy- the ten year old picked out a giant bag of Double Bubble and some Bazooka flavored soda, this latter which the kids all tasted and decided was not very good. But it’s good to try things. The five year old picked out a pack of Skittles – but it was Smoothie flavore Skittles, so quite a novelty. The three year old picked out a Kinder Joy and some Chocolate Pretzels.
Then we had dinner at a local restaurant – chosen because the website offered, “Burgers! Tacos! Sushi!” Though they didn’t serve sushi on Mondays so we had really tasty burgers and Tacos instead. Then off to the hotel, which is always a high point for the kids. They are always super content just to sprawl in a hotel room and watch TV and go to the pool and eat those waffles from the hotel breakfast bar. The pool, unfortunately was not working, but we were all exhausted so sprawling and watching tv seemed like a pretty good option. Eventually everyone went to bed, except the three year old, who proceeded to try to interact with the sleeping people in the room, so I took her out for a little stroll around the hotel. We rode the elevator, checked out the lobby and walked up and down the hallways. At one point, she started singing, “I’m never going to be sleepy.” Over and over and over.
She did eventually go to sleep and the next day, I got a run in while the Husband took care of getting the kids hotel breakfast. After I got back, we packed up the room and went to Longwood Gardens. The gardens still had their Christmas display up, and I enjoyed seeing all the festive decorations. The conservatory was an explosion of Poinsettias. My favorite thing, was a fascinating picture of a poinsettia in the wild. They are actually trees and grow to be eight feet tall, looking nothing at all like the plants we get at Christmas. Also – I didn’t realize this, but the red/pink/white parts of the poinsettia are actually the leaves. The flowers are the small yellow buds in the middle – which makes sense when I actually looked closely at a flower, but I had never really thought about it that way before. It’s always really fascinating to learn about something that seems so every day and familiar.
This one was for the birds – there are bird seeds in the gourds.
We also took in the train display and wandered all over the grounds. (Okay, side note re: trains – apparently trains are a huge deal in the Fire Departments around Baltimore and almost all of them have train displays. And there is a very nice person/group that collects all the places that have holiday train displays and posts them on a website which I must now bookmark for future use.) There is something beautiful and barren about gardens in the winter. Sure, the conventionally beautiful time of the year to see the garden is in the Spring and Summer, but I love how in winter when things are brown and sparse, I can really see the shape of things – the pointy and specific spikes of grass and tree and branches.
Winter across the meadow.
I know Longwood Gardens has a spectacular light exhibit, but we’ve never stayed late enough to see it. We’re usually on the road at 4pm so that we can be home in time for dinner. Every year, as we are leaving, we tell ourselves that we will make it out to see the lights one year. This year, the lights were starting to come on as we headed for the exit gate, and I dragged our family down one walk so that we could see some of the lights before we left and it was indeed very pretty.
A gorgeous book end to our trip – when we left the house on Monday at 6am, the sky was dark, except for the single strip of sunrise. And on our way home at 5pm, I noticed that the sky again was gorgeous with a neon orange strip of sunset. I love the contrast:
Morning departureEvening Return
The rest of 2022was pretty low key, but surprisingly social. The baby went to daycare, but the two school kids were home, so I planned some playdates for the kids. One night we had the neighbors over for dinner, a pleasant evening which made me vow to invite people over for dinner more. We had chili for dinner – simple to make ahead and easy to customize.
The Husband ended up having half a day off on Friday before New Years, so we went to lunch at our favorite dumpling house, then went to Lake Needwood for a walk and some playground time. The weather was pretty mild, but the lake had frozen earlier in the week and there were still pretty ice patterns to be seen. I had been to this trail before, but didn’t realize there was a playground with one of those zipline type structures on it. The kids had a great time. I even took a turn or two. The five year old, who initially balked at the idea of going to this park said, when it was time to go, “I didn’t have enough outdoor time!” Which is always something that I love to hear from my kids. So we went to the same park again two days later, this time I suggested it as a meet up location for my mom’s group, which had been trying to get together for a while. I had met these kids when the three year old was born and it was fun to see how our little squishy babies have all grown. Of course, with ten kids running around, I didn’t really get to chat at length with too many other parents, but I guess that’s what happy hour is for.
In between, trips to Lake Needwood, was New Years Day. It was pretty quiet. new years eve we went to church then came home, had dinner and watched the ball drop in Times Square. Actually the Husband and the ten year old watched. The five year old, three year old and I fell asleep on the couch.
… 3, 2, 1. Happy New Year!
New Years Day was nice and low key. We went to Taiwanese Breakfast, and had bowls of warm soy milk – savory for the grown ups, sweet for the kids – with fired dough sticks (you tiao), and dumplings and noodles and egg pancakes. Then we went to the park for a few hours, skipping lunch because we were so full from breakfast. After we got home, I decided that I needed to do one house project so cleaned out the fridge. I’m a little embarrassed by some of the things in the back of the fridge – there were three containers of sourdough starter, all sorts of pickles and more “mystery” containers than I care to admit. The trash was very full by the end of all this. I won’t pretend out fridge is absolutely uncluttered now, but I have started to be more mindful about where things are in the fridge. For example, all the pickles and fermentation experiments will go on the top right shelf. Leftovers on the left. So when I’m madly looking for leftovers to take for lunch, I’ll know where to look.
In a fun bit of “use it up”ness, I found some garlic butter from one of the Husband’s pizza nights. There was also a container of butter and Worcestershire sauce mixed together, leftover from a failed Chex mix attempt. I combined the garlic butter and the Chex mix butter and made more Chex mix. It was a very successful batch of Chex Mix, and very satisfying to finish up the various butters and *not* put containers back into the fridge.
We also had a very “use it up”ness dinner, which was so satisfying, and then we played Kings of Tokyo before bedtime. So it wasn’t a New Year’s day with grand plans, but there was a good mix of tasty food, family outdoor time, house project time, and family evening. Which was actually, upon reflection, a very good ordinary day.
Then it was back to life. I have to admit, I was so glad when everyone went back to school on January 3rd. I love my kids, but having them gone also felt amazing. It took me a few days to get back into the swing of life on my own terms. The first day they were back at school, I wanted to go for a run, so I parked at a trail after doing the bus drop off. Then it started to rain. And I was so unused to having my time dictated by only myself, I didn’t know what to do. My brain was stuck in, “This is your time to run.” but it was raining out so I clearly couldn’t. (or I could, but I don’t really have the right rain gear to run in the rain right now.) I ended up sitting in my car for ninety minutes before I decided to go to the library and pick up some holds and wait for the rain to subside. The rain did subside and I left the library with some good books. And I did go for that run after all. But man, that first instance of blank, unscheduled time was… not well spent.
Grateful for: – 2022. Another year in the books. I’m glad I got to see the end of it. -2023. Another year to live. I’m glad I have the chance. – The other mom, L, at the bus stop. I was late for school bus pick up twice this week. Twice. The bus has been arriving about thirty minutes earlier and I just mentally wasn’t prepared for it. You’d think I’d figure it out after the first time I was late, but I was late the next day too. There is nothing that combines mortification and fear for your child like being late for the school bus. L was there and texted to make sure I was on my way and sat with my kids until I arrived. So grateful for her. – Another mom at my bus stop, A. We’ve been chatting at the bus stop for a while now and before the winter break, I said, “One of these days, we should just walk down to the cafe and have coffee rather than just chatting here in the middle of the street.” Well last week, I had a package to return at Whole Foods, and I asked if she wanted to walk down with me, and she said yes, and it was a lovely morning. -YouTube. Yes, I find a lot of YouTube insidious, but last week, I was reading the book “The Oboe Goes Boom Boom Boom” to the kids. It’s a book all about children in a band. At the end of the book, the author’s note revealed that all the kids in the book was based on real musicians, most of which I hadn’t heard of. So I was able to pop on YouTube and pull up videos of these really obscure yet talented musicians, including Jazz trumpeter Valadia Snow, flautist (and Jethro Tull member) Ian Anderson, Oboe player and composer Ruth Widdy Gibbs, and so many more. I love picture books about music, and it’s always so much more tangible when we can hear it too. – The Husband for driving on all our road trips. I don’t like driving. I suspect the Husband doesn’t like me driving either. At the same time, I know that driving can be tedious and tiring, so I’m glad that he takes the wheel when we go places.
Looking forward to: – Going back to work. It’s just a short gig, two weeks. I’m almost done the first week and it’s been nice to be back at work. – The ten year old’s birthday party. “Looking forward to” might be too strong a way to phrase it, but I’m certainly excited for her to have a party. -My father coming to visit. He’s here for the kids’ birthday. – Having time to sit and plan and think about the year. Maybe not this week or next week, but soon…
What We Ate: Monday: Road Trip – we had dinner at Guppy’s Good Time. The tag line is Burgers, Tacos, Sushi. Unfortunately they don’t serve sushi on Mondays, but the tacos were tasty, as were the cauliflower bites.
Tuesday: Indian Take Out, picked up on our way back home.
Wednesday: Breakfast for Dinner. Waffles and Eggs.
Thursday: Vegetarian Chili from The Weekday Vegetarians.
Friday: Pizza take out and Hip Hop Nutcracker and The Bad Bunch.
Saturday: Yaki Udon noodles with tofu. A recipe from Mark Bittman’s Dinner For Everyone. This cookbook is great because it gives you three variations on each recipe – one fast (under 30 mins), one vegan, and one super fancy (aka time consuming.) We did the “fast” version. Also – life lesson: everything looks better sprinkled with sesame seeds and green onions:
The Husband always says when I’m unsure about a meal, I sprinkle it with sesame seeds and green onions. But I actually think this meal is pretty tasty.
Sunday: Fridge leftovers – used up the lamb from Christmas – part of it I made into sandwiches, some of it I chopped up and threw into the leftover Indian food from Monday. It was so satisfying to use up little bits of food that way.
Monday: Dumplings and green beans. Standard “We don’t want to cook” dinner.
Tuesday: Lentil Soup, loosely based on a recipe from The Weekday Vegetarian. I didn’t have chard, but I used some leftover cabbage that I had in the fridge. I also made zatar flatbread to go with it – pizza dough, flattened and sprinkled with olive oil, garlic powder and za’tar and then baked – the taste to effort ratio is really high on that one.
Wednesday: Brussel Sprout Fried Rice – Meera Sodha’s Nasi Goreng. (vegan) This is the dish that makes the family groan when I mention it’s for dinner, but then everyone devours. I also threw in the last bits of the cabbage and it felt really satisfying to use it all up.
Thursday: Corn and Tomato Pasta from The Weekday Vegetarian. The recipe calls for fresh corn and tomatoes, none of which I had on hand, but I thought this was pretty tasty using frozen corn and canned tomatoes. I think the secret is that the recipe starts with caramelizing a whole red onion.
Friday: Baked Teriyaki Tofu with Broccoli Mushroom Stirfry. (vegan)
Happy New Year. And just like that we are in a new year, another revolve around the sun. I feel like I am just now digging my self out of all the mounds of wrapping paper and packing material and dirty dishes and carbs that is the wake of Christmas. All evidence of our good fortune to have gifts to wrap and food to dirty dishes, so I can’t see it all as too much of a burden to reset.
The week that was before Christmas was… very full. Perhaps a little too full in some areas. I was reading my journal entry from the week before Christmas last year, 2021, and this reflection struck me: “I feel like I’m doing that thing where I do a lot of last minute Christmas buying, and it’s a little out of control… There are an infinite number of things that are designed to be minorly useful but majorly appealing in the Christmas rush. I just need to resist. And think what would actually add value if given right now. Too many presents dull the worth of each thing. On paper, two or three toys doesn’t seem like a lot, but on Christmas Day, it is enough.” As I ventured out to stores last week, I kept thinking of those thoughts that 2021 me wrote. It seemed like there was a huge list of stocking stuffers, groceries, and last minute presents to procure. And at one point, I simply told myself, “Okay, I’m done.” The mental and financial wells were just tapped. So on Thursday I decided that I was not going to anymore stores – I don’t know by what industrial complex I was feeling pressured to keep going to stores, but I was ready to stop listening to it. There were still things on my shopping list, but I realized that list was so arbitrary. And the list didn’t make Christmas, or family memories, or times of peace and relaxation. So I migrated some of the things on that list to the birthday list – because they were fun ideas that I thought the kids might still enjoy – or I put them on the “everyday” list – because they were necessary things that I masqueraded as Christmas present, but which I should just buy for the kids anyway because they needed them – and I stayed home and made three batches of cookie dough. And went to the theatre with friends. And went to the movies with the family. And went to church. And savored the biting cold. And was grateful that I wasn’t trying to drive or fly anywhere.
Fun and Festive things from the week: –Celebrating our anniversary. Our sitter had to cancel at the last minute because she wasn’t feeling well, and I was a little bummed. But the ten year old, made us a banner and cut out paper hearts and put them on the couch in front of the TV and told the Husband and I that we could have a movie date at home and she would take care of the two little kids. And she did. I had already made dinner, so she fed the kids and kept them entertained and brought the Husband and I dinner in the basement as well. It was the sweetest thing. The Husband and I watched See How They Run, an Agatha Christie inspired murder mystery set against a production of The Mousetrap. It was highly entertaining and funny and so very meta. Then after the movie, instead of turning on something else on to watch, we decided to turn off the tv and just read books while sitting on the couch together as the ten year old (tried to) put her siblings to bed. It was not the evening that we planned, but it was pretty nice. (And a lot cheaper than what we had planned.)
She even made a banner! And actually it’s our 13th Anniversary.
– Zoolights. We met up with some friends for the Zoo’s holiday light display. This was the first year that the Zoo has held Zoolights since the pandemic, and people had to sign up for tickets in advance, which made it a lot less crowded than it used to be. That certainly made navigating the zoo a lot easier than in the past. The lights were beautiful, and there were some new lantern animals. We were a little disappointed, though, that the animal houses weren’t open; in the past, some of the animal houses were open so we could see animals as well as lights. Oh well. Things change. It was a pretty late night. After we spent a few hours walking through the lights, we went to an Indian restaurant for dinner, and by the time we got done with dinner it was almost 10:00pm and we still had about a 45 minute metro ride home. I will say the kids were all real troopers with all the walking and the late dinner – they were a little restless at dinner, but didn’t complain. They were probably too tired to whine. On the way home, the baby sat on my lap for the train ride home. And fell asleep. Then while sleeping, peed on my lap. It was probably all that water she drank during dinner. Any thought I had that she might be ready to night time toilet train… well that answered that. When we got home around 10:30p, I carried her home – the Husband offered, but I figured only one of us needed to be pee soaked. But even with arriving home pee soaked, it had been a pretty wonderful evening.
Zoolights!
–Making Holiday Cards with the Kids. I wanted the kids to do something hands on for the teacher cards, so I used painter’s tape to create some images on cards and had the kids paint over it. Once the cards were dry, we peeled off the painter’s tape and voila! Some of the cards turned out a little runny because the baby spilled an entire container of water all over the cards, but I think it gave the cards and nice blurred quality. I always like this technique because it’s pretty simple to execute, but I think highly effective visually. The kids even made some of their own designs too.
paint dryingfinished product
– Seeing a musical. I went to see a production of Beauty and The Beast with my friend and her kids. Originally the ten year old was supposed to come, but she wasn’t feeling well, so I took the five year old and the three year old instead. The three year old did pretty well, although she got upset when Belle and her father was separated and spent the rest of the show cuddling on my lap. Afterwards she said, “I like the show, but I don’t want to go back there again.” Not sure how to interpret that. I had a good time, though. I did feel like the show itself is a touch too long – it’s pretty much the Disney movie with four or five additional songs, and it seemed like it took a long time for Belle and the Beast to meet and start their journey. Despite that, the production felt really special because of the casting of the leads; Belle was played by a self described “queer curvy” Black actor, and the Beast was played by an actor who had only one leg. (There’s a story in People Magazine about the production.) And at first, I though they were going to take a “blind” approach to the casting, where we weren’t supposed to notice that one actor had a peg leg or one actor was a different body type than what you would usually see onstage, but then I noticed they changed some of the words (replaced “fair” with “fine”, took out places where the word “fat” was used), and then there was a moment (spoiler here… ) at the end, when Gaston and the Beast are fighting when Gaston grabbed the Beasts artificial leg and it was just stunning. You could see that this production wasn’t pretending that the two people playing the lead were stereotypical fairy tale storybook leads – their idea of “Beauty” was based on more than superficial appearances. It was a really bold statement to make onstage.
–Celebrating Hannukah with friends – The friends we went to the theatre with were Jewish and they invited us back to their house for dinner and to light Hannukah candles after the show. It was a lovely evening with friends, especially since our kids are all of the age where they can just play with each other and the adults can talk and have a beer and not constantly worry about what the kids were doing. And to top it all off, my friends even gave me an early birthday present – a camping chair! They are avid campers and every time I go camping, I have always borrowed a chair from them, and now I have my own. I’m so delighted that my friend and I can now sit in matching camp chairs by the camp fire.
“On this night, let us light…”
–Seeing It’s A Wonderful Life in the movie theatre. There is movie theatre near us that was showing classic Christmas movies and on Christmas Eve, they had a matinee of It’s A Wonderful Life, so we got tickets and went to see it. We always watch It’s a Wonderful Life on Christmas Eve, and I thought this might be an extra special way to watch it. We took the bus to the movie theatre – discovering a new to us bus route that is a block closer to our house than the bus route we would have usually taken to the theatre – that felt pretty awesome, to discover a new bus route. And we got popcorn and soda – though I accidentally dropped my popcorn on the floor as I was leaving the concession stand, and I almost had a meltdown over that tiny thing, but the theatre gave me another bag to make up for it. A nice touch was that the film was introduced by Jeremy Arnold, a film historian, who talked about the history of the movie. He pointed out how there is a film noir tone to the movie and how Frank Capra’s movie encompasses so many film styles, which I had never thought about before, but it did made me appreciate the craft of the film a little more. Also – fun tidbit, the film won a technical Oscar for an innovative way of creating snowfall. There sure is a lot of snowfall in the movie! The kids seemed to have a good time, though the three year old eventually ended up in my lap again. And fell asleep. And then peed in my lap. Perhaps having her split a large soda with me and her brother wasn’t such a great idea. So yes, twice in one week, a sleeping child peed in my lap. It was pretty bitterly cold when we left the movie, and I hadn’t brought a change of clothes for the baby, so I gave her my puffer vest to wear in hopes that she wouldn’t be too cold in her pee soaked pants. We popped into the mall in hopes of buying her some pants, but then the husband saw that the next bus home was arriving in two minutes, so we decided just to get on the bus. At which point I discovered that I had left my phone at the movie theatre. The Husband and kids got on the bus and I went back to try to find my phone, which at first no one had seen and I was starting to panic, but then the lady at the ticked desk asked around and someone did end up having it. All in all, it was a lot of excitement for one afternoon.
–Our Christmas Eve Tradition. The Husband’s family had a tradition of reading The Night Before Christmas on Christmas Eve. (I guess technically it’s A Visit from St. Nicholas, but no one calls it that, do they?) My late mother-in-law had about a dozen copies of the poem in picture book form and when she passed, we brought them all into our home. Our Christmas Eve tradition is after church, we have dinner, then the kids get Christmas pjs, and we read The Night Before Christmas, each person picking out one copy to read from. We go around taking turns reading and we show each other the pictures in our books and compare how each artist interpreted the poem. This year, I bought a new version to add to our collection – I had come across Loren Long’s version while picking up some stocking stuffers at Barnes and Noble and I loved how he rotates the story through several different households. I thought it felt like a really fresh take on the poem.
Not all houses have fireplaces…
And then we were at Christmas, which I’ll save for another post…
Grateful for: – The ten year old’s faith in Santa. I don’t know if she still truly believes in Santa. But she believes in the magic of him – she helps her younger siblings write letters to Santa and tells them about him. She puts out cookies and milk on Christmas Eve, and even writes him a letter, expecting a reply. It’s pretty magical. -The Husband being safe. One day last week, it was raining and the weather was awful, and he got into a car accident. It was pretty ugly, but I’m really glad that he wasn’t hurt. -The local Botanical Gardens. I was feeling really overwhelmed one day, and I decided to go to the Botanical Gardens to sit and it was the pause I needed that day. -Connecting with friends.
One last thing… I was pretty flabbergasted by this display which I saw in the grocery store as I was on the hunt for candy canes. (Which, incidentally, I had a really difficult time finding. I finally found one box of small candy canes tucked way in the back of a shelf at Target.).
I couldn’t find candy canes during the week before Christmas, but I could stock up for Valentine’s Day. Wow.
What We Ate: Saturday: I went out to dinner with my friend – there was a band playing at the local Irish pub, and she knew one of the musicians so we went to listen.
Sunday: Can’t remember…
Monday: Turkey meatballs with pasta and red sauce.
Tuesday: Stir fried vegetables with noodles, and stir fried cabbage from Vegetarian Chinese Soul Food by Hsiao-Ching Chou. I borrowed this cookbook from the library in an attempt to cook more vegetarian food and I love how simple and flavorful the recipes are.
Wednesday: Indian food after Zoo Lights
Thursday: Vegetarian Chili from The Weekday Vegetarian. This chili’s secret ingredient was dark chocolate – which gave it a smoky mole flavor. I would put a little less chocolate in it next time – the chocolate flavor was a little pronounced.
Friday: Peruvian Chicken and Pizza Take Out
Saturday: Frozen tortellini and red sauce.
Sunday: Christmas Dinner – roast lamb leg (used this recipe), butternut squash salad (from America’s Test Kitchen. no one really ate this; it was a little undercooked), Scalloped potatoes, Jello ribbon salad (from my Mother In Law’s recipe), Filipino sweet rolls (this recipe from Saveur), broccoli (simply seared in pan with salt and pepper), and sticky toffee pudding for dessert.
The festive events are starting to really populate our calendar. Last weekend, we took the kids to the Trolley Museum for their holiday display and trolley ride with Santa. This checked a lot of boxes on the Holiday fun list – there was model trains, Santa, and crafts. The two little kids went on the trolley ride twice so got to ask Santa for toys twice. The first time, the baby asked for a rubber crocodile. The second time, both kids asked for a train set. Spoiler alert – they are not getting a rubber crocodile.
Sunday the ten year old and I went Christmas shopping at the mall. I haven’t done that in an age! We also had lunch there, and there was a really tasty Korean noodle place in the food court. I love how food court options have really expanded since I was a kid. The ten year old had Shake Shack. I find malls a little exhausting for all the choice that is there. We were there to get calendars, but also ended up in the candy store. There were wine gums and Dairy Milk, so I guess it was an okay pit stop. The we stopped at Michaels and we indulged in that fad of taking pictures in the floral section:
Monday was Merry TubaChristmas! It’s a concert where tuba players of all ages from across the region get together to play Christmas carols. The Husband and I have been going to TubaChristmas since we were dating; it’s one of our Christmas must dos. I think one year I was working and couldn’t go, but except for that year, and 2020, we’ve gone every December. It’s always fun to go see all the tubas decorated for the holidays and to hear them play Christmas tunes and feel the floor vibrate for the very lowest notes. They always invite the kids up to sing Jingle Bells, and the three year old took to the stage without hesitation, with the ten year old running up behind her to make sure she could get up onstage okay. The five year old didn’t want to go up at first, but when he saw that his sisters were both up there, he went up too.
That’s a lot of brass. And there were even more in the balconies.
The rest of the week was pretty chill. There was a “snow” delay on Wednesday because of an anticipated storm. It ended up just being rainy and cold, but I was still fine with school starting two hours later and having a slower morning.
I went to the library one day and hoped to pick up some holiday/Christmas books, but the pickings were super slim. I guess that is to be expected mid-December. I usually go the week leading into Christmas but since I wasn’t really going to do Advent books this year, I didn’t feel the same sense of urgency. Maybe I should just buy some more Christmas picture books?
The five year old’s class had a gingerbread house decorating event on Friday morning, which I went to. It was actually graham crackers attached to small milk cartons with frosting, but I’m sure it’s all the same as long as there is a surface to attach candy. Lessons learned: – Get the thick popsicle sticks to spread frosting. The tongue depressor size. – do not get the shrink wrapped candy canes. By the time you get the plastic off there are broken pieces and frustrated kids. – the cutting edge on the Saran Wrap is sharp. -kids like decorating with those red and white peppermint candies, but do not like to eat them.
Also … one parent brought Hot Tamales candy. I thought that was a curious choice. Maybe a little unfortunate for those kids who were unfamiliar with them and thought they were Mike and Ikes. But I don’t know… maybe there are kids out there who like Hot Tamales? My did certainly did not.
Thank goodness for the mask, otherwise enforcing the “no licking, no eating” rule would have been hard.
One week til Christmas and hopefully I’m in an okay place. On the to do list still: -grocery shop. I have the menu mostly planned. – Holiday cards for the kids teachers. We’re going to paint some blank cards this weekend. I have to pick up some gift cards to go in them this week. -Put our Christmas cards in the mail. They are all addressed and stamped, I just have to walk them down to the mailbox. This feels pretty late. Every year I say I’ll do it sooner, but it never works out that way. – Order presents for my brother’s family. They don’t celebrate Christmas so I’m not that concerned with making the December 25th deadline for this. -Order present for my parents. I’m gifting them Storyworth this year. It’s a service that sends the recipient weekly questions about their life and the recipient writes and answer, and can upload pictures. At the end of 52 weeks, the company take all the answers and put them together in a book. It’s a virtual gift so I don’t feel panicked about that either, as long as I order it this week sometime. -Pickup one last present for the 10 year old. She wanted some Barbie accessories. This stuff was specifically on her letter to Santa. I’m always surprised that she still plays with Barbies, but I think she just really likes setting up little scenes. I’m going to pick up some plates and tiny food from the craft store. (The stuff says “for decoration only. Not a toy.” so I had a moment of pause. But I figure it’s fine for a ten year old.) The rest of the kids’ presents are mostly done. I think. The Husband is in charge of the toys. I try to stick to some version of “Want, need, read, wear” categories for the kids, plus one Santa gift. I take care of the “need, read, wear” and the Husband does “want” and “Santa”. Clearly he’s the fun parent. -Stocking stuffers – mostly candy and snack food, but other things if the mood strikes. Last year, in a somewhat self-serving mood, I got everyone a small kitchen gadget. This year we’ve got small things from the arts supply store and matchbox cars so far. -Maybe one more present for the Husband if I can make it to the right store. – organize some activities and playdates for the winter break. Also buy tickets to a Christmas movie. -Pre-make cookie dough. We’re having some kids over to decorate cookies during winter break.
So not too much, I hope, to get done in one week if I’m purposeful about it.
Speaking of baking… I’ve been thinking about my Holiday Baking aspirations. Most of my ideas this year comes from the Cooks Illustrated Holiday Baking magazine – some of the recipes are a little fussy, so the holidays are the perfect time, I feel, to put in the effort. This year I would like to bake: -Molasses cookes (chewy and spicy kind) – Sugar cookies and gingerbread cookies for decorating -Sticky Toffee Pudding, our traditional Christmas dessert -Eggnog Bundt cake. Because the Bundt pan I got this year has been woefully underused. -Cinnamom buns for Christmas morning, as is our tradition. This I usually use the recipe from either The Irish Pantry or King Arthur’s Flour. -Chex mix. Have to have something savory. -rolls for Christmas Dinner. -And I’ve already made apple cranberry crisp. It was a recipe from that Cooks Illustrated magazine and it was a great way to use up the leftover bowl of cranberry sauce from Thanksgiving. I’m going to put this crisp into post Thanksgiving rotation because we always have so much leftover cranberry sauce.
My holiday cooking bible.
Grateful for This Week: – The ten year old’s school music program. They had their Holiday Choral Concert this year and it was really cute. At her old school, Choir was an extracurricular so kids had to opt in to do it and got pulled out of class. At her new school, it’s just part of the regular music class. I really like that the school feels like music performance is important enough that all kids should participate. – Finding parking just a half block from the restaurant on Monday night after TubaChristmas. Also grateful for the Restaurant itself, Chinatown Express, where tehy hand make their noodles. We went to this restaurant, partly because the Husband had been there with the kids the day before and had left the 5 year old’s hat there. So aside from this place having really really good food, we had a practical reason for going there. But… it is also smack in the middle of Chinatown, next to the arena and there was a game that night so parking was a challenge. We circled the area for about fifteen minutes and were about to give up when someone pulled out and we snagged their parking spot. And it was just a half block from the restaurant. A true holiday miracle. And the staff at the restaurant are always super nice and they put up with my attempts to speak half in Chinese and they smile when the kids’ say “xie xie.” The biggest surprise was that the baby loves Chinese broccoli! She grabbed the thick stalk in her hand and just chowed down on it and then had two more pieces. She ate a vegetable!!! So exciting! – Libraries and librarians. I had a book that I just can’t find – it’s in the house somewhere, but I don’t know where it ended up. Anyhow because of that book being waaaay overdue, there is a hold on my library card. I was going to just pay for the book, but the librarian gave me that sly look that they do and just clicked a few things and electronically returned the book and re-checked it out to me. “I’m just going to give you nine more weeks to find it,” she said to me. – Not being at my old summer job. I’ve been off Facebook for over a year now, but this week, I popped back on as I was doing Christmas cards and I have a few friends who had gotten married and I had to Facebook stalk them to figure out the correct last names to put on the cards. Anyhow… it was kind of an overwhelming vortex black hole of … noise and news and happenings. Before I could log off, I saw a whole bunch of posts about this one company that I used to work for. I had left under difficult circumstances, and I had been very sad to leave, and I always somewhat regret not being there still. It’s also a part of why I no longer log into Facebook since I found I couldn’t deal with seeing any news about the company or my colleagues and friends working there. Anyhow the company now seem to be embroiled in some union negotiations that are, let’s just say, not going well. The whole thing just seems really sad and toxic. Over the past five years I’ve have bouts of great sadness about not working there anymore and I really miss my colleagues and the work we did, but after reading about the union negotiations that are happening, I am really glad I’m not part of the contentiousness happenings and drama.
Looking forward to: -Anniversary Date Night with Husband. We hired a sitter and everything! -Zoolights with friends. – Going to see a musical with the ten year old and the five year old and our friends! -Ticking everything off my Holiday to do list above. -Christmas dinner and family time.
What We Ate: Saturday: Pizza (Husband made) and Arthur Christmas (see my last post for the run down on that movie).
Sunday: Sheetpan baked gnocchi. This was one of those pantry dinners that never seem like pantry dinners. Toss whatever roastable veggies I have in olive oil, salt and pepper – in this case it was butternut squash, broccoli, mushrooms, onions, turnip, rutabaga – add gnocchi. Pour into sheet pan. Roast for 25-30 mins.
Monday: Dinner out at Chinatown Express – we had duck noodle soup, roast pork stir-fried noodles (both these dishes with fresh noodles), Chinese broccoli with oyster sauce, green sauteed with garlic, soup dumping, pork dumpling and kung pao chicken. So much food! Sooooo good!
Tuesday: Kale Saag Paneer from Meera Sodha’s East. I had a bunch of heavy cream and half and half to use up as well as two bunches of kale, so this seemed like a good recipe to use. The paneer didn’t turn out great – I think using heavy cream instead of all half and half makes for a softer paneer so the texture didn’t quite hold up in the saag.
Wednesday: Farrotto with roasted butternut squash and brussel sprouts from The Weekday Vegetarians. This was billed as risotto but with farro. It never got as creamy as risotto, but it was still pretty tasty.
Thursday: Red lentils from The Weekday Vegetarians. Vegan. Something quick and tasty that we could eat before the 10 year old’s holiday concert.
Friday: Pizza (take out) and Charlie Brown Christmas and The Ted Lasso Holiday Special from last year.
Halfway through the month so I thought I’d run down the Holiday Movies we/I’ve watched so far. Spoilers ahead.
First off, the Non-Hallmark stuff: Spirited – Musical on AppleTV with Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds. The Ghosts of Christmas (a la Christmas Carol) try to redeem one person in our modern world. There are big musical numbers, tuneful yet forgettable songs, lots of funny bits and lots of heartfelt bits. I liked it mostly for a) Octavia Spencer being all sorts of charming and sassy while singing, b) Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynold’s great chemistry, c) the dance numbers, d) the clever wit. I did not like the plot detail of one child cyber-bulling another. I had a good time watching this movie, but I’d be very reluctant to watch it again.
Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special– We picked this because it was short and we could fit it in after the ten year old’s Friday night basketball practice. I thought this had all the good holiday warm fuzzy ingredients: Aliens trying to understand this “Christmas” thing, human re-discovering the spirit of the season, family, a dash of action, a big dash of quirky humor and so many Christmas lights. If you’re looking for a 45 minute holiday pick me up, this would definitely fill that.
Arthur Christmas: Animated film from 2011 about Santa’s sons – one of whom, Steve, has optimized the gift delivery process to such a high tech degree so that everything happens as stealthily and efficiently as possible, and another son, Arthur, who answers the letters and has to save the day when one lone present gets left behind. Even though this movie came out eleven years ago, I’d never heard of it. It was on every single “Family Christmas Movie” list that I googled, so I figured there was something to it. I thought this movie was wonderful – it’s funny and smart but also has some really heartfelt moments. We laughed so so hard. I also loved the “peek behind the scenes of Santa’s workshop” aspect of it. And the cast – James McAvoy, Jim Broadbent, Imelda Staunton, Hugh Laurie, and Bill Nighy as Grandpa Claus and Laura Linney as Santa’s computer-was perfect.
AND… the Christmas Rom Coms…I have to acknowledge that the rest of the family does not want to watch as many Hallmark Holiday movies as I do. Well, maybe the ten year old. But she loves watching anything on tv.
(Note – I say “Hallmark”, but really I use that term, probably incorrectly, as a genre rather than a network specific descriptor. I really mean any of those hundreds of cute, fluffy, predictable romantic movies about the holidays that come out this time of year, be it on the Hallmark Channel, or Lifetime, or Hulu, or HBOMax… whatever channel or platform.)
So while we have watched a couple as a family hunkered on a couch, I have also watched a few on my own as I clean the kitchen at night. It does not (should not) take 90 minutes to clean the kitchen. But sometimes, in December, it does.
Anyhow, here is what I’ve watched so far, and my thoughts and feelings (Definitely more spoilers ahead!):
Inventing the Christmas Prince – Rocket scientist widow convinces her grumpy boss to pretend to be The Christmas Prince for her daughter. My rom com cat nip: Widows, Grumpy uptight men, diverse leads, stars of the 90s (Tamara Mowry-Housley from Sister, Sister) My Take: This movie was cute, though the whole idea of a “Christmas Prince” who grants twenty-four wishes every Christmas season was a little much – I mean if you are going to make up a Christmas legend for your kid, that one seems kind of excessive. Like maybe one or two wishes. But 24 is just setting yourself up for failure. The ridiculous: Do rocket scientists really work in cubicles? Favorite bit: The pocket protectors for the rocket scientists, and cozy sweaters for everyone else. Actually the cozy sweaters are one of my favorite things in these movies. Seriously, right next to Santa’s toy shop is a knitting shop where elves spend all their time knitting the coziest chunky sweaters for the Holiday movie season. I want them all.
A Big Fat Family Christmas– Newspaper photographer Liv is teamed up with new reporter Henry to cover the Chang family’s annual holiday party. Twist is, the Chang family is her family and she is trying to keep it under wraps. My rom com cat nip:Asian leads, stars of the 90s (Tia Carrere of Wayne’s World) My Take: Plot-wise I thought this movie was a little silly. I don’t love screwball “quick hide so people won’t see me” type plots. But the leads were both really cute and charming and I liked how the movie addressed the main character’s feelings about growing up as a minority. Another thing I thought interesting about this movie is that they had all sorts of Asian people in the movie and then felt the need to explain it. Like Tia Carrere is Filipino-American, and her character is married to Yee Jee Tso who is Chinese – and there is a specific line where one character makes reference specifically to the fact that the Tia Carrere character is Filipino. They also go out of their way to explain the background of the main lead, who had a South African accent. So I really appreciate that they didn’t cast a bunch of Asian actors in this movie and pretend they were all Chinese, even if it was a little heavy handed at times. The Ridiculous: I spent a lot of the moving thinking that Yee Jee Tso looked way to young to be playing the father figure, then chalked it up to good skin. But then I googled him and he is only two years older than I am. Favorite bit – the scene where the Chang family sits around an wraps dumplings. This feels so nostalgic to me, even though I’ve only done it maybe once.
The Royal Nanny – MI5 agent Claire goes undercover as a nanny with the royal family, winning over prankster children and Prince with the heart of gold. My rom com catnip: Nannies, Prince, British accents. My Take: The romance component in this one was surprisingly understated to the point of non-existent. The main plot point of this movie revolves around a threat to the king, hence the agent going under cover, and trying to unravel the source of the threats. Also – the main character looks a lot like one of my friends and I spent a lot of the movie just staring at her. I was overall pretty “meh” about this one – there wasn’t a lot of chemistry between the leads and the Royal Family just seemed like any other suburban family with work/life balance problems, only they had body guards and chauffeurs. I wanted something a little more fantasy/magical. The Ridiculous: The prince falling in love with Claire pretty much based on a single game of charades. Like I said, the romance component of this movie wasn’t great. Also Claire taking down the villain with nothing but an umbrella was pretty silly. Favorite bit: Greta Sacchi as the lady who runs a Nanny school and who trains Claire. I thought her bits were all very clever and entertaining.
A Christmas Spark – Widowed grandmother goes to visit her daughter in Vermont and gets roped into directing the small town holiday play starring the town’s handsome bachelor. My rom com catnip: Widows, putting on a show, mature people in love, stars of the 90s, diverse couples My take: I will admit the number one reason I wanted to watch this was because it stars Jane Seymour and Joe Lando. And lest you think the Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman smoldering couple-ness was a fluke, it was/is not. Their chemistry is so off the chart amazing and their banter is adorable. I have to admit I loved this one. I mean how often do people in their 60s/70s get to star in a holiday rom com. Also – Jane Seymour is ageless and Joe Lando wears striped tights. The ridiculous: Having a final dress rehearsal where the final monologue isn’t written and then improvising it on the spot on opening night. Favorite bit: Any scene that involved Jane Seymour and Joe Lando bantering and making eyes at each other.
Steppin’ into the Holidays: Out of work former dance show host Billy returns home for the Holidays and helps dance teacher Rae put on her Holiday Dance show. My rom com cat nip: Stars of the 90s (Mario Lopez of Saved by the Bell), putting on a show, dance numbers, multicultural family My Take: This movie was a little meh, mostly because there wasn’t a whole lot of chemistry between the leads. Regardless, I really liked the other characters – Billy’s family, especially his sister, is a lot of fun. For that matter, so is Rae’s sister. Hmmm … this seems to be a movie where the sisters are more interesting than the leads. The Ridiculous: The duet Billy and Rae dance through the strangely deserted streets of town and the very obvious added stick poking out of the street lamp pole so Billy can grab the stick to swing around the street lamp a la Gene Kelly in Singin’ in the Rain. Gene Kelly did not need a support stick. Favorite bit: The Christmas show montage. The original dance show evolves to a show featuring talents of the residents in their small town, a decision inspired by the singing firefighter who helped to fix up the barn where they have their show. There’s even a ventriloquist. It’s kind of hilarious and silly.
The Holiday Sitter: City workaholic bachelor Sam agrees to help his sister out by watching her two kids in the suburbs when the baby their adopting is born early. Out of his depths, Sam enlists his sister’s neighbor Jason to help him out. They like each other. My rom com cat nip: gay romance, nannies (well, actually a sitter), babies My Take: I thought this movie was really cute and charming. The Chemistry between Sam and Jason was great – I love soulful stares from across the room and there was a good amount of that. Jason was a little too good to be true, but that didn’t bother me because Sam was such a hot mess. I have to say, as I was googling movie reviews to narrow down what to watch, I came across a few sites that refused to review this movie, calling it “not family friendly” and also taking issue with other movies that have gay couples as supporting characters. It’s so disappointing. I want to be fair minded about this all and respect people’s beliefs, but it’s hard. I mean I’m also watching the World cup in Qatar, so maybe I’m not taking a strong enough stance? The Ridiculous: Sam’s sister and her husband drive three hours to get the baby they are adopting, and bring home the newborn the day after it is born. Through a snowstorm in Buffalo. I know everyone wants to be home for Christmas, but oof…. Favorite bit: Jason’s dimples. It’s so shallow, but there you go. Also – Jason, the perfect Uncle, makes some amazing looking pancakes shaped like Christmas trees.
A Jolly Good Christmas – David, an American working in London, hires Anji to help him find a Christmas present for his girlfriend. My rom com cat nip: London, Asian leading lady, interracial romance, British accents My Take: I thought this one was pretty good, though movies where the leads fall in love whole-heartedly over 24 hours always strain credulity for me. I always think, “Wait… maybe you want to go on a second date or something first?” Of course I’ve never been one to kiss someone on the first date, so… I also liked that this movie was as much about David as it was about Anji. Sometimes these rom com movies tend to be about the heroine’s journey and the man (typically it’s a man) is this perfect cloud that she has to learn to be worthy of. The Ridiculous: see above. Whirlwind romances are not my thing. Also – I know costume choices are a great way to show character development, but the guy who appears at work in the first scene in a three piece suit, and then in the last scene in a velvet blazer worn over a black t-shirt. I don’t know that I buy that wardrobe development. Favorite bit: It might be sappy, but Anji’s speech at the climax of the movie where she says, something to the effect of “As a professional shopper I used to think everyone wanted a unique gift, but I’ve learned that everyone wants the same thing… to be loved.” Christmas with a bow right there.
Whew. That’s a lot for half a month. More to come, though, I’m sure.
Last week was a quiet week; between a sick kid and a supertitle gig I spend most of last week at home. Trying to work, getting distracted, cuddling, and reading.
The week started with yet another sick child. The five year old had been running a fever all weekend. He’s a good patient and just lay on the couch all weekend, moving to his bed when he got tired of that. We had had plans to get the Christmas tree, and when he still wasn’t feeling better on Sunday, I sent the Husband and other two kids out to get the tree from our local fire station, where we always get our tree. They came home with a nice tall tree, the bifurcated top led the tree to be dubbed Maleficent by the ten year old.
While they were gone, I strung the outdoor lights. We have a motley assortment of lights and every year I try to remember how I strung them up the year before so that things don’t look too patchwork. We have red and white lights – those go on the front stoop. We have multi coloured lights – those go on the hedge. But those come in two sizes, so I have to be strategic on how those go on. Plus one set actually has a white light setting which we use after Christmas. Then we have one set of white lights that go on the witch hazel tree. Every year it seems like we have too many or not enough but then push, prod, and re-adjust and things work out. I need to just take a picture for posterity.
The lights for the tree were also kind of a saga. The Husband bought a new set of lights for our tree because one of our string of lights had that cliched section that didn’t light up. Unfortunately, the new strand was not the right quality of white light to match our existing strand, even though both were “warm white” light. The nuances of “warm white” baffles me. So I took our old light strand and swapped out light bulbs until I figured out the problem and managed to move the non-light up section to the end of the strand. Fine, we wadded up the non-light up section and pushed it into the middle of the tree. Lights went up on the tree. Not an hour after we put all the lights on the tree, the middle section of one strand went out. Argh!!!! By this point we were kind of over it and decided to leave everything. There is a swath of unlit tree in the middle of our tree, but we have decided just to live with it. I’m putting a reminder in my phone to buy new lights for next year.
Ignore that black hole in the middle of the Christmas tree.
Anyhow the rest of the week: Two days at home with a sick kid, with a trip to the pediatrician whose verdict was some kind of virus. We watched a lot of Snoopy. I tried to convince him to watch Steven Universe, but he was reluctant. I did watch one holiday movie as I worked – Steppin’ into the Holidays.
The the five year old got better just in time to go back to school for the scheduled half day. (I’m a little baffled by all the random half days and days off that the kids get…) With the half day, I took the five year old and his friend on a walk on a trail nearby that I’m sure is lovely in the spring, but in the winter, it is pretty clear that the trail is mostly a cover for a sewage pipe that runs the length of the creek. While it was nice to be out an stretching our legs it wasn’t the most picturesque winter stroll. But we went to Sweetfrog after, and that was a nice treat. My favorite Sweetfrog combination is: plain yogurt, mochi, fresh fruit.
Thursday night I had a super title gig. The featured singer was someone I had worked with before so that was fun to hear her sing. I’m always unsure if singers I work with remember me because I feel like a lot of my job is to be in the background, but this singer gave me a huge hug and was really happy to see me, so that was nice. It was a lovely program, the theme of which was “nomads” so a lot of the pieces had some kind of mystic/Orient flavor to them. Beautiful music, but also some of the translations/texts were definitely a little cringey in how they exoticize women of eastern cultures.
World cup + Laundry. A good combination.
Random thoughts on watching the World Cup. I wouldn’t call myself a sports fan, but I am a “big event” fan, and the World Cup certainly is that. Despite playing soccer for much of my youth, I am definitely not up on any of the soccer language or subtleties. I don’t have a favorite team and usually root for the underdog. This week, I watched most of the quarter final games and it was harrowing. Talk about underdog stories. What I’ve discovered about me and soccer: – Seeing athletes cry gets me every time. Not in an “they shouldn’t be crying” kind of way, but more like a “That’s so sad” kind of way. Disappointment is I think the one emotion that I find the saddest. -Athletes are really good looking. There’s youth on their side, of course. But they all have a certain glow about them. Maybe it’s that light of determination in their eyes, or the glint of optimism. Maybe it’s just sweat. Anyhow. Gah. I feel so agist to have said it, but I do feel like I spend a good amount of my soccer viewing time just marveling at how beautiful these players are. -Soccer is a game of instants. It’s not a million instants like basketball or glacial instants like baseball or football. It’s fast but sometimes it takes a while to score so you have to stay glued to the set, or you will miss a goal. After missing one goal by going to the bathroom, I did not move off the couch again while play was still going on. And when a team does score, it’s always breath taking. Every single goal was deemed beautiful and amazing and perfect by the commentators. -Watching soccer is really stressful for me! Especially having to decide the game in penalty shoot out. Soccer is such a team sport, and the penalty shoot out- where it’s down to two people – just seems the wrong way to decide things. It’s nail-biting and I hate nail-biting.
Grateful for this week: – That my friend decided to throw herself a birthday gathering and I got to see some friends that I’d fallen out of touch with. It was so nice to see everyone. -Hulu. Or rather being able to afford Hulu so I can watch the World Cup. – The Husband for putting the kids to bed while I worked in the evenings. – my food mill. I had bought at bushel of seconds at the farm stand at the five year old’s request for apple sauce. The Husband bought a food mill for me for Christmas one year when the ten year old was a baby and I wanted to make my own baby food. These days I only use it to make apple sauce, but oh how easy it is to make apple sauce with it. All I have to do is remove the stemps, quarter the apples, cook them down with about 1/2 cup water until they are soft, then run them through the mill. No peeling or coring.
Half of the bushel left after the first batch of apple sauce made.
Looking Forward to: -Tuba Christmas! I really hope we can get tickets. This year they have a system where you can reserve your free tickets, which is different from in the past when you just showed up and tickets were just handed out. (We did this last night and it was awesome.) -The ten year old’s school choral concert. – Christmas baking. I’m starting to work on my list. -World Cup semi-finals and finals.
And then Christmas is in less than two weeks. Eeep! Gotta to start thinking about what we are going to have for Christmas Dinner – I think it will be ham. And then finish with the Christmas shopping – I have the list, just need to buy everything, and also gifts for teachers. And do festive things and do cozy things.
What We Ate: Pretty much everything we ate came from Jenny Rosenstrach’s The Weekday Vegetarians. I didn’t think I would like this cook book a lot, but it’s proven to have some rock solid easy recipes.
Saturday: I went out to celebrate a friends’ birthday and I probably ate five plates of truffle fries.
Sunday: Cheese and cracker and snack dinner as we tried to put lights on the tree.
Monday: Quinoa and Roasted veggie salad. This was really tasty. The roasted veggies were carrots, cabbage, and beets.
Tuesday: Pinto Bean bowls. Pinto beans eaten over rice, topped with avocado, pickled onions, pickled jalapenos, sour cream, radishes.
Wednesday: Charred broccoli and tofu with spicy peanut sauce. Eaten over egg noodles. Simple and really tasty.
Thursday: I was working and got a grain bowl from Beefsteak, a vegetable heavy restaurant. I made up my own bowl combination today and liked it so much, I took a picture of the recipt so I could order it again. For the record, it was: Quinoa, butter poached sweet potatoes, cooked cabbage, steamed kale, edamame, sauteed mushrooms, scallions, kimchi, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, toasted seaweed, miso dressing and garlic yogurt sauce.
Friday: Pizza (take out) and the Guardians of the Galaxy holiday special – which was hilarious and festive and touching.
