All roads lead to Peoria. And then they lead away.
We drove down to Chattanooga for Christmas this year, the first time my side of the family has gathered south of the Mason-Dixon Line for Christmas since, well, ever. My Uncle Bob and Aunt Linda had just moved into their new house a few months ago and since they had never once in their married lives celebrated the holiday in their own home - alternating between Philadelphia and, on Linda's side, Nebraska - they wanted to have us all come there.
Well, when you put it that way, how could we say no?
So arrangements were made, cars brought up to vacation trim, school calendars scrutinized, bags packed, and the family made ready to gather from the four corners of the US, or at least from the Northeast Corridor and the upper Midwest.
We have never packed light in our house. And with two growing children, a packrat and a wife whose motto is "It could be useful," packing light is no longer even a goal. Throw in the fact that it was Christmas, with all of the gifts and paraphernalia attendant upon such a holiday, and we had more baggage than a medieval trading caravan. Silk Road, here we come!
I am the Baggage Loader around here. It is my job to figure out how to fit it all into the car and still have room for the people. Like George Carlin and his refrigerator, I decide what stays and what goes. It's not much power, but I'll take it.
Fortunately, loading cars is one of my talents. I once fit an entire dorm room - including the refrigerator and stereo system, back when stereo systems did not slip easily into your shirt pocket - into a 1979 Mercury. If I could do that, then certainly I could fit a week's vacation into a station wagon, couldn't I?
Well, yes, it turned out. It's just a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle, really. Don't ask me to retrieve anything - Kim made the mistake of leaving her book in her bag when I was packing, and it was just easier for her to go get another book - but for packing a lot of stuff into a little area, I am The Man.
All hail me.
We set off fairly early on the 23rd, into the teeth of what weather forecasters call "snow showers," which for those of you not familiar with the term is the preferred jargon phrase for "not enough snow to provide an excuse for staying home but too much to drive at normal speeds." But we were headed south, so it fairly quickly turned into rain. And rain can be driven through at normal speeds.
Some observations from the drive:
First, Tabitha and Lauren are the world's best travelers. We set them up with a book full of DVDs and their movie player, a bag full of actual books as well as paper, pencils and assorted activities, their DS players, and a pair of binoculars. We were on the road for about 12.5 hours, including stops, and they did a marvelous job.
Second, what is it about the South and churches? We have churches up in the North too, but few if any have 40'-tall white aluminum crosses looming over them. Such things dotted our route like standing stones. I'm sure they were meant to inspire awe or something like that, but all I could think of was the scene from Shrek, where the ogre stares up at Lord Farquaad's castle, turns to the donkey and says "Think he's compensating for something?"
This sort of thing continued once we got to Chattanooga, too. The churches in that part of Tennessee are uniformly huge, prosperous and shiny - several that we passed had separate entrances for children, which I thought was a bit much really, though that might have been because the church I grew up in had about ten kids in it and such an entrance would have been overkill. They were quite the sight, these churches.
Our favorite church sight, though, was one we saw on the way from one place to another down there. The church had a parking lot right next to the street, and they had erected signs there to let you know where to turn, if that was where you were going. The name of the church was in tiny little letters on the bottom, though, so from any distance all you saw was a sign that said "CHRIST -->" . Whoa, nelly! In person, no less!
The oddest thing we saw on this topic was on our way over from Elizabeth and Brian's house (where we were staying) to Bob and Linda's on Christmas Eve, where we passed a man dressed in a white robe dragging a 9'-long cross behind him along the road. Brian and I sort of looked at each other when we saw this. "Isn't the whole point of the season that somebody else has already done that?" we asked each other. Oh well.
Third, nutritional rules are always suspended on long drives. When the best thing you can hope for is a roadside meal of fast food, there is no real point to worrying about it. Nutrition can resume at your destination. So we hit the road with a dietician's nightmare of salt, sugar, fat and carbs, all neatly packed in a bag along with some clementines for appearances' sake, and we lived like kings all the way down.
Come to think of it, medieval kings were also round, short-lived and gout-stricken. Maybe they traveled a lot too.
Fourth, if it's not churches, it's fireworks. Tennessee has more fireworks stands per mile of interstate highway than can possibly be healthy. They all feature a smiling antebellum white man in a white suit on their logos, and they all promise to have the lowest prices of any other such establishment, even those in Alabama, which must be the benchmark in cheap fireworks once you get outside of China. The highlight is a stand not far north of Chattanooga that, because of the way the road bends, looks like it sits smack in the middle of the highway, and as you drive up to it you get this odd feeling like you're going to be driving right through the checkout lanes. Maybe they just throw stuff into the trunk as you drive by and debit you at highway speeds the way Illinois does with tolls now.
We finally found our way to Elizabeth and Brian's house around 10pm EST. They have a wonderful house that is far neater than we could ever get our house to be again even with a crack squad of combat housecleaners and weapons-grade solvents, and we were glad to be there.
More Christmas to follow!
Friday, January 1, 2010
Welcoming in the New Year
It's a brand new decade, and the house smells like cheese.
We had a quiet New Year's Eve last night, in keeping with our recent traditions. Our friends Dan, Theresa and Grace came over, and while the kids tore around the house doing the sorts of things that kids do, the grown-ups played cards and consumed food and drink.
Win all around, I say.
The evening started with a small family cake-fest for Tabitha, to celebrate her newly-acquired double-digit status. Kim and Tabitha made the cake - a deep chocolate with homemade butter cream icing - and we had cake and ice cream for dinner, because it's New Year's Eve and Tabitha's birthday and sometimes you get to do things like that.
And then it was fiesta time!
This year we decided to have fondues, because they are easy to make and easy to eat and we're all about the easy. Theresa made the cheese fondue and brought over an entire tray of goodies for dipping. I made the chocolate/orange/brandy fondue with an entirely different group of goodies for dipping. Plus there were chips of many kinds, chocolates, salsas from the local Mexican grocery store (green this time - sometimes I wish I could remember all that Spanish I sat through in 8th grade, if only to ask what variation of salsa we're getting this time), and a wide assortment of adult beverages. It would have served two teenaged boys quite nicely, but was far more than four adults and three kids could possibly consume.
Leftovers!
Except that you cannot have leftover fondue. You just can't. Not that you can eat it all at once, but whatever you don't eat you have to bury in a landfill or it evolves and tries to have you evicted from your own house. We've done that, thank you, and the legal bills are prohibitive. So we eat, drink, and are merry, and the rest of it goes out the door.
We played many rounds of cards. We played 31, which is a game we learned in Chattanooga from one of the Uncles Chris (more on Christmas to follow in future posts...). The girls got Theresa and Dan to play Uno for a while. And then Kim brought out the Mille Bornes for the adults to play.
Sweet dancing monkeys on a stick, but that game has a lot of rules.
We played several hands, not one of which would have been sanctioned by any Mille Bornes governing body, but we had a good time.
When the ball dropped in NYC we had the television on and the pots and pans out. There was due cacophony, and then we settled in for another hour of cards and random child activities before it was actually midnight here in the nation's tender midsection. We fired up the television for another round of ball-dropping (they helpfully rerun it every hour for those of us behind the times), but two minutes before midnight our cable had one of its periodic blackouts that it really must start going to meetings about, so we were left on our own as to when the new year started.
We have a lot of clocks in our house. But as the old saying goes, a man with one watch always knows what time it is, but a man with two is never sure. None of our clocks have the same time on them. So we pulled out our cell phones, on the theory that they synchronize with the time on the cell tower and therefore are more likely to be correct than anything we have here, and we counted down that way.
There followed a parade.
And then it was time to fold up our tents and call it a decade.
Happy New Year, folks. May your roads rise up to greet you.
We had a quiet New Year's Eve last night, in keeping with our recent traditions. Our friends Dan, Theresa and Grace came over, and while the kids tore around the house doing the sorts of things that kids do, the grown-ups played cards and consumed food and drink.
Win all around, I say.
The evening started with a small family cake-fest for Tabitha, to celebrate her newly-acquired double-digit status. Kim and Tabitha made the cake - a deep chocolate with homemade butter cream icing - and we had cake and ice cream for dinner, because it's New Year's Eve and Tabitha's birthday and sometimes you get to do things like that.
And then it was fiesta time!
This year we decided to have fondues, because they are easy to make and easy to eat and we're all about the easy. Theresa made the cheese fondue and brought over an entire tray of goodies for dipping. I made the chocolate/orange/brandy fondue with an entirely different group of goodies for dipping. Plus there were chips of many kinds, chocolates, salsas from the local Mexican grocery store (green this time - sometimes I wish I could remember all that Spanish I sat through in 8th grade, if only to ask what variation of salsa we're getting this time), and a wide assortment of adult beverages. It would have served two teenaged boys quite nicely, but was far more than four adults and three kids could possibly consume.
Leftovers!
Except that you cannot have leftover fondue. You just can't. Not that you can eat it all at once, but whatever you don't eat you have to bury in a landfill or it evolves and tries to have you evicted from your own house. We've done that, thank you, and the legal bills are prohibitive. So we eat, drink, and are merry, and the rest of it goes out the door.
We played many rounds of cards. We played 31, which is a game we learned in Chattanooga from one of the Uncles Chris (more on Christmas to follow in future posts...). The girls got Theresa and Dan to play Uno for a while. And then Kim brought out the Mille Bornes for the adults to play.
Sweet dancing monkeys on a stick, but that game has a lot of rules.
We played several hands, not one of which would have been sanctioned by any Mille Bornes governing body, but we had a good time.
When the ball dropped in NYC we had the television on and the pots and pans out. There was due cacophony, and then we settled in for another hour of cards and random child activities before it was actually midnight here in the nation's tender midsection. We fired up the television for another round of ball-dropping (they helpfully rerun it every hour for those of us behind the times), but two minutes before midnight our cable had one of its periodic blackouts that it really must start going to meetings about, so we were left on our own as to when the new year started.
We have a lot of clocks in our house. But as the old saying goes, a man with one watch always knows what time it is, but a man with two is never sure. None of our clocks have the same time on them. So we pulled out our cell phones, on the theory that they synchronize with the time on the cell tower and therefore are more likely to be correct than anything we have here, and we counted down that way.
There followed a parade.
And then it was time to fold up our tents and call it a decade.
Happy New Year, folks. May your roads rise up to greet you.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
A Decade In the Making
It's Tabitha's birthday today!
Somehow, without ever quite being aware of how the time has passed, I have become the parent of a 'tween. I'm sure there will be all sorts of interesting things coming my way in the next few years, but so far it's all been good.
Happy Birthday, Tabitha.
Love, Dad
Somehow, without ever quite being aware of how the time has passed, I have become the parent of a 'tween. I'm sure there will be all sorts of interesting things coming my way in the next few years, but so far it's all been good.
Happy Birthday, Tabitha.
Love, Dad
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Down On the Corner
The cat is high.
A friend of ours gave us a catnip mouse a while back. It is a particularly snazzy catnip mouse, in the colors of the local minor league hockey team because, really, that's something the cats would enjoy. Well, we enjoyed it, anyway. The cats were more interested in the catnip, because they are JUNKIES, the both of them.
If you don't talk to your cat about catnip, who will?
Unfortunately, when we talk to our cats about catnip, mostly what we say are things like "Hey, wanna get some quality nip?" or "Dime bag, go on, you can pay us later." We are bad, bad people that way.
The thing about Mithra, though, is that she clearly has some bear in her ancestry. She likes caves. She likes enclosed dark spaces. And when she is wasted on catnip, her definition of "enclosed dark spaces" gets awfully loose.
So there was this paper bag, you see. An ordinary grocery bag. But not an ordinary grocery bag! No, not under the influence, it's not! It is a cave! A cave filled with things to hunt! Twitchy things that need to be batted down!
Whap! Zing! Whap again!
That other sound? That's us, falling onto our backsides laughing. Fortunately the cat is so far gone that she does not get offended at this. Rather, she redoubles her efforts at hunting whatever is in the bag making that noise. It's kind of a feedback loop, really, because eventually we can't even get up off the floor from laughing at her.
It takes some time, but we stand up after a while, still chuckling in a pointed manner.
Eventually the bag ends up standing upright, with a very puzzled-looking grey cat with saucer-shaped eyes staring out of it. Mithra looks behind her to see what is there, but it is just out of her vision, so she looks a little further behind her, and after a few rounds of this the bag is no longer upright and neither are we.
The cat is in the bag, in more ways than one.
A friend of ours gave us a catnip mouse a while back. It is a particularly snazzy catnip mouse, in the colors of the local minor league hockey team because, really, that's something the cats would enjoy. Well, we enjoyed it, anyway. The cats were more interested in the catnip, because they are JUNKIES, the both of them.
If you don't talk to your cat about catnip, who will?
Unfortunately, when we talk to our cats about catnip, mostly what we say are things like "Hey, wanna get some quality nip?" or "Dime bag, go on, you can pay us later." We are bad, bad people that way.
The thing about Mithra, though, is that she clearly has some bear in her ancestry. She likes caves. She likes enclosed dark spaces. And when she is wasted on catnip, her definition of "enclosed dark spaces" gets awfully loose.
So there was this paper bag, you see. An ordinary grocery bag. But not an ordinary grocery bag! No, not under the influence, it's not! It is a cave! A cave filled with things to hunt! Twitchy things that need to be batted down!
Whap! Zing! Whap again!
That other sound? That's us, falling onto our backsides laughing. Fortunately the cat is so far gone that she does not get offended at this. Rather, she redoubles her efforts at hunting whatever is in the bag making that noise. It's kind of a feedback loop, really, because eventually we can't even get up off the floor from laughing at her.
It takes some time, but we stand up after a while, still chuckling in a pointed manner.
Eventually the bag ends up standing upright, with a very puzzled-looking grey cat with saucer-shaped eyes staring out of it. Mithra looks behind her to see what is there, but it is just out of her vision, so she looks a little further behind her, and after a few rounds of this the bag is no longer upright and neither are we.
The cat is in the bag, in more ways than one.
Ready for Her Close-Up
It was show time at Not Bad President Elementary yesterday!
The NBPE first grade class was putting on a performance of the new off-off-Broadway musical, The Unity Tree, and Lauren was the Kitten.
This was a big deal.
The play revolves around the trials and tribulations of the Kitten and the Puppy, two innocents who through their eagerness to play with each other manage to heal millennia-old divisions between their respective tribes. It is a fable for our time.
It also contains the line, "We could welcome our diversity! Maybe even embrace it!" so you know it has the intellectual heft that musicals are famous for.
Lauren has been practicing her lines for months now. As one of the two stars of the show, she had a lot of lines. And despite sharing the fear that every actor has, she remembered them all come performance time.
We have long suspected that Lauren is headed toward the stage. She keeps us entertained all day long with voices, faces, characters and entire routines. Someday, when she is up there all dressed up and thanking the Academy, I hope she remembers where it all started - the All-Purpose Room of NBPE.
We got there early, as we have learned by now that you do not show up to these things 15 minutes ahead of curtain time if you want a seat. On the one hand, this is a lot of time to spend in the All-Purpose Room. But on the other hand, it is good to see that people come to these shows. The other things will wait - it's important to go to the show and see your children perform. So. Early.
The show went smoothly.
There were songs, all cleverly choreographed to keep the children's arms busy so they wouldn't get bored and whack each other.
And Lauren looked like she was having a good time up there playing the Kitten. She said her lines well, tossed a ball around with Puppy (without dropping it!) and dashed about the stage in a most Kitten-like manner.
After the show they let the paparazzi approach the stage to take pictures, and a more polite midwestern scrum you will never find.
And then it was off to class again. Thank you! Lauren has left the building!
Naturally, with a foot of snow still on the ground here in Out Little Town and the temperatures hovering in the mid-20s, we celebrated Lauren's play by going out for ice cream. It is always ice cream time in Wisconsin, especially after Kitten and Puppy have showed us the way.
You did good, Lauren. I'm proud of you.
The NBPE first grade class was putting on a performance of the new off-off-Broadway musical, The Unity Tree, and Lauren was the Kitten.
This was a big deal.
The play revolves around the trials and tribulations of the Kitten and the Puppy, two innocents who through their eagerness to play with each other manage to heal millennia-old divisions between their respective tribes. It is a fable for our time.
It also contains the line, "We could welcome our diversity! Maybe even embrace it!" so you know it has the intellectual heft that musicals are famous for.
Lauren has been practicing her lines for months now. As one of the two stars of the show, she had a lot of lines. And despite sharing the fear that every actor has, she remembered them all come performance time.
We have long suspected that Lauren is headed toward the stage. She keeps us entertained all day long with voices, faces, characters and entire routines. Someday, when she is up there all dressed up and thanking the Academy, I hope she remembers where it all started - the All-Purpose Room of NBPE.
We got there early, as we have learned by now that you do not show up to these things 15 minutes ahead of curtain time if you want a seat. On the one hand, this is a lot of time to spend in the All-Purpose Room. But on the other hand, it is good to see that people come to these shows. The other things will wait - it's important to go to the show and see your children perform. So. Early.
The show went smoothly.
There were songs, all cleverly choreographed to keep the children's arms busy so they wouldn't get bored and whack each other.
And Lauren looked like she was having a good time up there playing the Kitten. She said her lines well, tossed a ball around with Puppy (without dropping it!) and dashed about the stage in a most Kitten-like manner.
After the show they let the paparazzi approach the stage to take pictures, and a more polite midwestern scrum you will never find.
And then it was off to class again. Thank you! Lauren has left the building!
Naturally, with a foot of snow still on the ground here in Out Little Town and the temperatures hovering in the mid-20s, we celebrated Lauren's play by going out for ice cream. It is always ice cream time in Wisconsin, especially after Kitten and Puppy have showed us the way.
You did good, Lauren. I'm proud of you.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Economics 101
The terrorists are surely on the run now. I have gone Christmas shopping, and the economy should be booming.
Or at least crackling, the way small bits of paper do when you throw them in the fire.
Especially when those small bits of paper have presidents on them.
I really haven't had much time or inclination to go Christmas shopping lately. To be honest, I really haven't had much time or inclination to do anything Christmas-related lately. If it weren't for the fact that I have children, the entire holiday might well have passed me by without my noticing at all. But we have the tree up now, and there are lights hanging from our eaves, and someday I really must look into why they don't actually light up but they're there and that has to count for something.
So. Shopping.
I walked into the mall this morning to find the Fighting 314th Mechanized Combat Band and Show Choir engaged in a furious assault on Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. It was difficult to see who was winning but there were obviously many casualties, one of which was the melody. For some reason this cheered me up immensely. I felt ready to do some economy-stimulating after that. So I suppose the 314th accomplished its mission, Rudolph notwithstanding. Don't mess with the 314th, is all I'm saying.
It is astonishing just how busy shopping was. After all, it's a Thursday. Why aren't these people working? They can't all be history professors at the end of the semester, waiting to give their finals.
Well, actually, given the nature of the job market in history, I suppose I wouldn't be all that surprised if they were. Right, then. Carry on.
I spent most of the day darting in and out of stores, trading crackling bits of paper for swag to be distributed to family members. Progress was made. There is still more to be done, however.
I'm not sure I'm up to this kind of pressure.
Or at least crackling, the way small bits of paper do when you throw them in the fire.
Especially when those small bits of paper have presidents on them.
I really haven't had much time or inclination to go Christmas shopping lately. To be honest, I really haven't had much time or inclination to do anything Christmas-related lately. If it weren't for the fact that I have children, the entire holiday might well have passed me by without my noticing at all. But we have the tree up now, and there are lights hanging from our eaves, and someday I really must look into why they don't actually light up but they're there and that has to count for something.
So. Shopping.
I walked into the mall this morning to find the Fighting 314th Mechanized Combat Band and Show Choir engaged in a furious assault on Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. It was difficult to see who was winning but there were obviously many casualties, one of which was the melody. For some reason this cheered me up immensely. I felt ready to do some economy-stimulating after that. So I suppose the 314th accomplished its mission, Rudolph notwithstanding. Don't mess with the 314th, is all I'm saying.
It is astonishing just how busy shopping was. After all, it's a Thursday. Why aren't these people working? They can't all be history professors at the end of the semester, waiting to give their finals.
Well, actually, given the nature of the job market in history, I suppose I wouldn't be all that surprised if they were. Right, then. Carry on.
I spent most of the day darting in and out of stores, trading crackling bits of paper for swag to be distributed to family members. Progress was made. There is still more to be done, however.
I'm not sure I'm up to this kind of pressure.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)