I love Christmas. Like, really-really-want-to-hug-and-kiss-it-and-wish-it-happened-every-weekend love it. And this one was so damned perfect that not only does it make up for last year's stressed out debacle, it really sets the standard for years to come. Joshua and I are here in New England, where I have spent 21 of my 22 holiday seasons, and I'm not even going to pretend to be unbiased here. Christmas is just better here.
No, seriously. I think Chicago is brilliant, with the lights on Michigan Ave, the Marshall Fields store windows (Macys? Never heard of them), Christkindlmarket, and ice skating in Millennium Park, and everything else that is so lovely and frantic about the holidays in a big city. It's festive and crazy and I really did enjoy being in the city in the holidays. But Chicago doesn't have rambling old farmhouses with wreaths and candles in every window, and it doesn't have forests of pine trees, and it doesn't have mountains, like the one we drive up every year to my grandparents house.
Most importantly, Chicago doesn't have my grandparents. Or my parents, two brothers and future sister-in-law, and a crazy bunch of aunts, uncles, cousins, and one very perfect and adorable second cousin who turned 12 days old on Christmas Eve. It doesn't have my grandmother's Swedish meatballs (which I made last year, and I was such an emotional wreck I froze them in paper towels instead of wax paper and had to pick bits of paper out of them as they defrosted. While my mother in law watched. Luckily, they turned out amazing).
I could write all about the wonderful time we had at my grandparents last night, passing around the baby, playing with the little kids, trying to manage a gift exchange for 28 people that lasted well beyond the attention span of those under age 8. Or I could write about what a joy it was to open presents with my husband and my brothers and my parents this morning, wearing matching pajamas from my mom. Our tree is short and wide and my dad had this brilliant idea to put it up on a box, which gives the illusion that it is a well-decorated, floating shrub. It has been the butt of many, many jokes and it looks hilarious, but I don't want to write about that either.
It's 11:26, which means there are 34 minutes of Christmas Day left, and like everytime I visit my family, my memories are wonderful and bittersweet. Because we'll leave in a week, and then we have the busyness of the New Year, and a new semester, and suddenly six months will have passed and my baby cousin will be rolling over and I will have missed it all. I absolutely love Chicago, and our life there, and I can't figure out how to have the best of both worlds. How can I have the life I want with Joshua in a city I love and would happily stay in forever, when most of the people I adore are a thousand miles away? This is what I want to write about - this tug I feel between the place we live and the people I love. Despite my feelings about the obvious superiority of New England holidays, Joshua and I both agree that we can't picture ourselves living here. The schools are bad, the economy is bad, we can't move to Boston because Joshua doesn't like their accents (seriously.) and that would put us an entire THREE thousand miles from his parents.
But it's Christmas, and that's depressing. This has really been a perfect holiday and I haven't gotten out of my pajamas in 24 hours and I'm thrilled to pieces about that, and I'm sitting here looking at our Christmas shrub and loving the fact that we don't have to make any decisions right now. And my whole family is around, and things really could not be better.
Merry Christmas!
25 December 2006
19 December 2006
The Very First Blog
So. I have started yet another blog. I keep leaving people hanging with the other ones, and I can't promise any sort of success or even consistency with this one, but apparently I love me a clean slate.
I'm not sure if I should introduce myself - that seems strange, seeing as how no one knows me in the blogging world (yet!), and if you do know me, an introduction is sort of redundant. I could post one of those nifty surveys that ask you questions like: Favorite Reality TV Show? Most Desired Superhero Power? And of course I would answer, America's Next Top Model, and Being Invisible. I know everybody wants to fly, but I have an almost panicky fear of heights and I would probably be flying along with my Superhero Power and look down, and pass out, and then - YIKES.
See? Now you know so much more about me. I also think those surveys are lame, so that's why I only made up and answered two questions.Again - you have learned.
Now that we're such good friends, let's discuss what I did today. Holiday Shopping, or as it's known in my home, Maniacally Depleting the Bank Account. People are crazy out there right now! I was almost sideswiped twice in various parking lots, and a woman with painted on eyebrows followed me around the frame section of Kohls attempting to get my opinion on photo albums she was purchasing for a friend. Being the generous and friendly Christmas shopper that I am, I assumed she was really out to snatch my purse and tried to end that conversation quickly with my bag clutched to my side. This is a dangerous city, after all.
Anyways, all threats to person and property aside, it was a pretty successful trip. The key to Holiday Shopping is of course, gift cards. We have personally received $100 in Starbucks gift cards so far this season, for which I am super duper grateful and caffeinated. They are a wonderful (although not mind-blowingly creative) gift. But since I just finished up an incredibly draining semester of nursing school that involved waking up before dawn 5 days a week, dozens of tests, and real live patients with incontinence problems, NOBODY is getting anything mind-blowingly creative.
Every year, someone makes out good. Do you feel that way? And it's not usually me. Two years ago, it was my dad with a brand spanking new computer courtesy of my brother and I, who totally could not afford it and should never have even been allowed on www.dell.com. Last year, it was my brother-in-law and his fiancee, whose upcoming wedding was of such joy to my inlaws that they got the happy couple about twice as many presents as the rest of us. This year, it's my littlest brother (read: age 16) who's getting an iPod from my other brother and I, who are apparently so generous we can't be trusted to look at our bank accounts first.
No, I'm not bitter.
Really, I'm not. I know the Reason for the Season -although I'm not fond of that poetic term- and getting gifts is really not as important as other things, like, ok, Jesus? And salvation? And my mom's blueberry coffee cake that we eat every Christmas morning? And my wonderful family and cousins who I live 1000 miles away from but will be hugging and kissing and slobbering over in just a few days? (especially the brand-new one, who arrived Dec. 10 and made it just in time to get not only a bajillion Welcome Baby Girl presents, but Christmas presents too!?!)
Like I said, not bitter. I mean, it is bad form to be jealous of a 7 day old baby.
Back to blogging. Oooh I love it.
I'm not sure if I should introduce myself - that seems strange, seeing as how no one knows me in the blogging world (yet!), and if you do know me, an introduction is sort of redundant. I could post one of those nifty surveys that ask you questions like: Favorite Reality TV Show? Most Desired Superhero Power? And of course I would answer, America's Next Top Model, and Being Invisible. I know everybody wants to fly, but I have an almost panicky fear of heights and I would probably be flying along with my Superhero Power and look down, and pass out, and then - YIKES.
See? Now you know so much more about me. I also think those surveys are lame, so that's why I only made up and answered two questions.Again - you have learned.
Now that we're such good friends, let's discuss what I did today. Holiday Shopping, or as it's known in my home, Maniacally Depleting the Bank Account. People are crazy out there right now! I was almost sideswiped twice in various parking lots, and a woman with painted on eyebrows followed me around the frame section of Kohls attempting to get my opinion on photo albums she was purchasing for a friend. Being the generous and friendly Christmas shopper that I am, I assumed she was really out to snatch my purse and tried to end that conversation quickly with my bag clutched to my side. This is a dangerous city, after all.
Anyways, all threats to person and property aside, it was a pretty successful trip. The key to Holiday Shopping is of course, gift cards. We have personally received $100 in Starbucks gift cards so far this season, for which I am super duper grateful and caffeinated. They are a wonderful (although not mind-blowingly creative) gift. But since I just finished up an incredibly draining semester of nursing school that involved waking up before dawn 5 days a week, dozens of tests, and real live patients with incontinence problems, NOBODY is getting anything mind-blowingly creative.
Every year, someone makes out good. Do you feel that way? And it's not usually me. Two years ago, it was my dad with a brand spanking new computer courtesy of my brother and I, who totally could not afford it and should never have even been allowed on www.dell.com. Last year, it was my brother-in-law and his fiancee, whose upcoming wedding was of such joy to my inlaws that they got the happy couple about twice as many presents as the rest of us. This year, it's my littlest brother (read: age 16) who's getting an iPod from my other brother and I, who are apparently so generous we can't be trusted to look at our bank accounts first.
No, I'm not bitter.
Really, I'm not. I know the Reason for the Season -although I'm not fond of that poetic term- and getting gifts is really not as important as other things, like, ok, Jesus? And salvation? And my mom's blueberry coffee cake that we eat every Christmas morning? And my wonderful family and cousins who I live 1000 miles away from but will be hugging and kissing and slobbering over in just a few days? (especially the brand-new one, who arrived Dec. 10 and made it just in time to get not only a bajillion Welcome Baby Girl presents, but Christmas presents too!?!)
Like I said, not bitter. I mean, it is bad form to be jealous of a 7 day old baby.
Back to blogging. Oooh I love it.
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