The Finish Line is in Sight

I am really itching to take the Christmas decorations down. This actually has nothing to do with my somewhat disappointing holiday (more on this in a minute) but happens every year around this time. The tree dries out horribly, the house feels cluttered, I feel like I need to enter detox from all the cookies and champagne, etc. Yesterday I bought "clean scented" candles which I burn every January (this year, the scent is grass) and some new ornament storage boxes in an attempt to be more organized next year. I can't bring myself to take everything down until after New Years, though. Even in my eagerness, it seems a little wrong to discard of the holiday too soon.

But I don't think I'll miss this holiday season too much. Don't get me wrong- we had some good laughs. Our holiday open house was a success (I think) and people actually cleared out ahead of schedule which meant I had time to clean up and put the kids to bed before the cookie swap the next day. The cookie swap was tremendously fun. We had a good time in NY visiting with my family and the girls had a blast dancing the night away at my dad's office party. We had a good dinner Christmas Eve and the looks on the kids' faces on Christmas Day when they came downstairs to find Santa had come were priceless. And then there was Isabel's first holiday concert (thanks to NAEYC, the theme was one that even Irving Berlin could be proud of- winter. Izzy still says her favorite song is "Let it snow" which she and her friends sang for the parents.) And Isabel's newfound love of puzzles, Candyland, and Peter Pan has made the evenings alot of fun lately. Ok, so it wasn't all bad. But the holiday did have a weird feel to it- as if no one, other than the kids, really cared that much. Ryan admitted to being distracted at work and not really "into" the holiday this year, my in-laws decided to forgo wrapping most presents so we ended up handing around cardboard boxes (not that the kids cared that much). My poor niece was thrown off her schedule, left without her usual toys, and probably teething, so spent the better part of her stay with us balling her eyes out. I got myself so distracted with everything that I ended up missing our Christmas Eve outing after forgetting my wallet at home.

And then there was the dreaded stomach bug. Lottie caught it first Monday night last. A few episodes of puking all over our bed in the middle of the night (one of her specialities), some runny BMs, and she was fine. Next to go down was Ryan on Tuesday. Dry heaving, stomach craps, and fatigue for several days, but by Thursday evening, he was more or less in shape again. I went down Thursday night. It was ugly. As usual, I got the triple strength dose. I was prone Friday, up a bit Saturday, prone Sunday, and tied up in knots yesterday. Today is my first day "back in the saddle." I hope I am able to stay upright.

I suppose if everyone holiday was picture perfect it wouldn't be memorable. But I'll be relieved when the last ornament is off the tree. Then I can start planning for Easter... (just kidding!!)

So this is Christmas

Things are definitely looking up.  With the open house and cookie swap behind us, the presents wrapped, and the house generally in order, the girls and I have decided to have some fun before our extended family arrives for the holidays.  I decided to keep Izzy and Lottie out of school this week to enjoy a little time alone before the next round of madness descends.

Today we went to see the train exhibit at the Botanical Gardens downtown.  This is our third year attending so I wasn't expecting magical but then again, I'm not a kid, so what do I know?  Clearly, as you can probably tell from the pictures, I was in the minority with that one.  It's bitter cold here in DC today, like much of the rest of the East Coast so we decided to drive into town and to forgo foraging at the outdoor Christmas market near Chinatown.  (I guess there's always tomorrow for that.)  But despite the wild winds and the itchy wool hats, the girls had a magnificent time.  And the trains, which were all indoors this year, were lovely.  It is, after all, the little things that make up memories worth remembering.

Bah Humbug

I feel a little bit bad about even broaching this topic since it doesn't seem to be in the proper spirit of things, but I am really sick of Christmas. I fully recognize that I do this to myself and do it almost every year, but this year it seems a bit worse. My problem is that I take on too much, start too early, and by the time the actual holiday is here I want it and everyone else to go away. This year we packed in birthday parties, a boat parade, a dog parade, dinner with friends, our anniversary, a trip to NY, a holiday open house, a cookie swap, and soon, a visit from my in-laws all before the 25th.

It seems that we add on some more to this crazy list every year and every year Ryan seems to disappear a little bit more from the holiday planning part of the whole thing. He'll claim this is totally unfair (and it probably is since I am so stressed out and tired right now that I want to crawl under my desk, have a good cry, and then fall asleep), but I think my breaking point happened last week when he sat around complaining about my liberal use of bookmarks on my bookmark bar while reading a Sherlock Holmes website while I sat in a giant pile of gifts that needed to be wrapped. Sound familiar to anyone? To make matters worse, it seems that few people around me think of themselves as organizationally challenged at best and at worst think that I am insanely anal. I have tried the Schroeder method of waiting til the absolutely last minute to get anything done and, in it's own way, the Schroeder method has driven me to the brink. I am one of those people who compile a list of gift ideas, scout the Internet and my favorite stores for the best deals, order the Christmas cards before Thanksgiving, and hopefully have everything in place with a few weeks to spare. Needless to say, I have been having dark thoughts lately about being surrounded by procrastinators. I do believe I sounded quite shrill at 11 PM the other night as Ryan agonized over getting his grandparents another food basket for Christmas. My response was that it didn't matter anyway since they would never get it in time unless he was willing to pay $40 to ship the damn thing.

Oh the holidays. If it wasn't for the girls, I would be on the first cruise ship to Bermuda right now. And poor Izzy is sooo into it this year. She keeps running around saying "this is going to be the best holiday ever." Meanwhile I am in the kitchen pouring myself an increasingly large glass of scotch.

What is it about Target?

Have you ever met anyone who doesn't like Target?  Who would rather say, "no thanks," when someone asks if they want to do a run?  For a long time, I just went along with it, not questioning the universal appeal of a mass market chain retailer.  But lately, I am finding it kind of weird. People with a wide range in tastes, incomes, geographic locations, family status, etc, all say the same thing- Target has everything and I never go in without spending at least $100.  I should admit here, at the risk of sounding like a snob, that I am decidedly NOT a Walmart person so Target is about the closest I have to an obsession with mass marketers.  I'd like to think my Walmart antipathy is not a class thing but more the result of being a textile analyst in the mid to late 1990s and watching one textile mill go out of business after the other.  Every last person at those mills blamed the loss of business on the mass market retailers with Walmart being chief among them.  Anyway- I digress.  This isn't about Walmart but why everyone loves Target.  

I admit to being a late comer to Target mania.  I didn't start shopping there until after I moved to VA from DC in late 2001.  Course before then, I didn't own a house and was furnishing my apts mainly out of family cast offs and quirky finds from Urban Outfitters (a definitely misguided attempt at hipness.)  But the addition of a (town)house and four years later child essentially solidified it for me.  I need Target.  I need to feel economical but still somewhat stylish.  How is it that a mass marketer can lure you in by feeding your need to feel quirky and a little different from everyone else?  The Target addiction is so bad among my peers that there have been days when Isabel has walked into preschool wearing the exact same shirt as three of her classmates.  

Today I made a Target run and ended up spending $170.  I still am not sure how.  Somewhere between the silver reindeer statuette, the Archer Farms caramel apple pancake mix, gift cards, gift tags, and cat presents from Santa, I spent way more than I should of.  There are some days I want to cry over the general homogenization of taste and shopping impulses, but then I grab my latte, fill up the trunk with goodies from Trader Joe's and get over it.

My Lovely Man

Prepare yourself for some gooey stuff here.  (I promise not to make this a habit.)  Ryan and I celebrated our 8th anniversary yesterday.  We went out to dinner last night and after a strict rejoinder that we would not talk about work (which of course was broken by the time desert came), I thought I would offer a quiz to get the conversation started: what are your three favorite memories from our eight married years together?  Ryan's were sweet and not necessarily predictable: scenes from our honeymoon, the surprise party I threw for him for his 30th birthday, our trip to California.  He said when you add in the kids, hands down our annual pilgrimage to apple pick is among his favorite collection of memories.  I, of course, countered with mine- celebrating our first anniversary in our new house, California, and telling him I was pregnant with Isabel.  

But here are a few more that I didn't share with him:

--Watching him swaddle Isabel in the hospital, a job he took very seriously

--Listening to him tickle the girls.  Somehow he can make them shriek with laughter so much better than I can

--Watching him hoist Lottie up to the upper levels of our mammoth Christmas tree this past Sunday so she could put her ornament on

--His omelets and pancakes, which are way better than mine

--How any and all car rides are much more preferable when he's along, even if he passes out faster than the girls

--His willingness to try and teach me to play golf, ski, throw a baseball properly

--And the way he sniffs new tennis balls before serving.

WTC?! (What the craft)

I think there is something wrong with me. I can't stop crafting these days. I think my latent desire to quit my fairly good-paying job that makes me generally happy and give myself over to crafting in some backwoods town in Vermont must becoming not-so-latent. Got all that? It really started innocently. Before I left for a longish business trip this past spring, I took a book out of the library on knitting. I started knitting a few years ago and after a disastrous start (a woman teaching knitting at a local Michaels in northern VA shook her head when she looked at my attempts and said "I've never not been able to teach someone to knit), I got the hang of the scarf thing. But I got bored. And Isabel still refuses to touch the scarf I knit her a few years ago. So I took the book out to learn to knit something else, anything else. I was happy to discover that I could actually make a hat out of a basic scarf. So I did. Four of them. And then I made a blanket. And now I am knitting a dress for Isabel's bear. But it doesn't stop there. I found a pattern for a sock puppet that Boden (a great clothing line btw) most unhelpfully sent me so now I have a stack of socks and buttons to create a family of sock puppets. Never mind the excessive amount of time I've been spending in AC Moore these days. I have ornaments to make with Isabel, candy cane reindeer for Lottie and her friends, and endless amounts of gingerbread men over the next few weeks.

This craftiness is starting to get in the way of relationships. My mother-in-law warned me off my craft habit after I showed up in Kansas with a stack of kits to make pilgrim and Indian hats for the kids at Thanksgiving. Eight pilgrim girl and boy hats and Indian headdresses later (as well as some finger cramping from holding scissors), m-i-l, who perhaps unwisely volunteered to help, was done with me and my campaign to "Do something creative everyday." Damn The Paper Source. (Want any more evidence of my addiction?)

Seriously, every time I read an article in the New York Times about some supermodel who goes to upstate every weekend to run her own bakery (such a story exists- see here), I get woolly-eyed about being surrounded by cupcakes and knit goods and books. Ryan likes to add here when I pine in such manners that a good bottle of scotch would also be necessary for happiness. Maybe someday when I don't have to worry about sending kids to college or affording "high heels" for this year's Christmas party. High heels for Izzy and Lottie, of course. I already have quite a few in case you're worried. In the meantime, folks will just have to suffer my habit. Until I move onto something else!

Btw- want a totally trashy, beach-read-y, Christmas diversion? Try "Bergdorf Blondes" by Plum Sykes. It's obnoxiously awful but somewhat fun, especially if you are secretly addicted to Vogue like I am. (Not that you would ever be able to tell from my closet.)

My New Image

Just a quick note to comment on the new Codename Pinkerbelle look. After envying other blogs with quirkier titles or graphics, I had to find something that encapsulated the true meaning of Pinkerbelle-ism. I think my fairy does the trick. She looks happy enough but do notice the menace to her wand. Hope my girls don't find this one day and think I was totally off my rocker.