Maternity Left

Suddenly I only have a week and a half left of maternity leave.

I know I'm very lucky that I got to take ANY maternity leave and get paid for some of it, given the experiences of so many. However, (1) my leave sucks when I compare it to Niall's sisters' over in Ireland and (2) I'm still sad that it's almost over. I've wanted this baby FOR FUCKING EVER and it just seems unfair that I have send him to full time daycare before I'm ready.

I know HE will be just fine. He's little enough that he won't remember, plus he's getting to an age where he probably could do with more stimulation and interesting things. The daycare we're sending him to is local and really nice. On his first day they had a little welcome sign up for him and I do love seeing his little cubby with his name on it and all the cute little things they have there. So far he has been to four days over the last 2 weeks. I go back to work on March 8, so we are easing in. That's all good and fine [weep].

Now that it's mostly slipped away from me, I did not realize how much of maternity leave I would spend physically recovering from Baby Clover's birth. As someone who had never given birth before, I sort of thought that as long as I could avoid the major surgery option of baby removal, the recovery wouldn't be so bad. Ha. Ha ha.
After 43 hours of labor, with two nights of painful contractions that went away by dawn tacked on before that, my body was wrecked by the time Baby Clover made his debut. And I didn't realize it.
It felt SO GOOD to have the baby out and to be sitting up on the bed, holding my wee babe while Niall fed me my breakfast tray that I didn't so much notice the steady increase in pain and exhaustion until WHAM it hit me two days later. My whole body hurt. My arms and legs and back and business district. And I hadn't slept for a week before Clover was born, so I was already starting out sleep deprived.

I just hadn't realized how hard that would all be, even though everybody warns you how sleep deprived and exhausted you will be. It also didn't help that certain family members of mine have repeatedly told me that I have an easy baby. Oh, great! So it's me, then. I'm just a failure because I feel like this is hard.

I think I finally felt mostly physically back to normal after about three months. Clover is four months old now and seems to have started in on a sleep regression (?), but can it really be a sleep regression when his sleep has NEVER BEEN THIS SHITTY BEFORE? He has started waking up about every hour or so and I just want to cry. It's suckey but fine for NOW, but when I'm expected to function at work I don't honestly know how I'm going to do it. It's a good thing my job doesn't involve life or death situations! Oh, wait.

I suspect that he also might be teething because he is drooling all over the place and gnawing on everything.
He has also discovered his toes, which is just about the cutest thing ever.

And he babbles and laughs and holds his head up. He loves his bath and he hates his car seat to the point where he arches his back and scootches down to avoid being buckled. He's a tiny little PERSON with opinions and having him is everything I ever dreamed it could be and more. Going back to work full time is going to suuuuuuck.

Baby Clover

Baby Clover was born on October 14 at 9:36AM.
He weighed 8lbs 6oz and was 20 and 3/4 inches tall.

Now that he's out in the world, his name is Tiernan. But I think he will always be my Baby Clover.
I love him so much.

Dishes

Niall pretty much let me take the reins when it came to our wedding registry. Registries aren't common in Ireland, so he was pretty unfamiliar with the concept. I decided that our china pattern was Wedgwood Butterfly Bloom because it was pretty with just the right amount of whimsy. Niall shrugged and said that was fine.

I ended up putting a lot of fancy dishes on the registry, because they were nice and also the kind of things we would not buy for ourselves but that other people seemed to enjoy buying for us. (I hate the way that sounds, like I'm deigning to LET people buy nice, expensive things for us. But I had initially put only this set of 4 plates on the registry and at my bridal shower my mom's friend told me flat out that I needed to add more fancy things to the registry because I didn't have enough nice stuff on there. So I added a lot more of the fancy china pieces (i.e. sandwich plate, teacups, teapot).)

Anyhow, this is the pattern:

Image from Amazon.com

Pretty, right?
We received several of the above sets of plates and when we got the first one I opened the box and started loading the dishes into our kitchen cabinets.
Niall, horrified, asked what the hell I was doing.
"I'm... putting these in the cabinet? So we can use them?" My thinking was that we had the dishes and I liked looking at them, so we should use and enjoy them. Niall's thinking was that they were very expensive dishes and that's not what his mom one does with fancy dishes-- one is supposed to put them away and save them for a special occasion.
So we compromised and put the dishes away for a special occasion, but also got a china hutch to display some of my our favorites.

You may also spy some Belleek items. It's possible that I... got a little carried away with the registry.

We've been using my mismatched Goodwill dishes for everyday use, until I got the following BRILLIANT IDEA.
I ordered this plate making kit and these markers and brought them to Thanksgiving weekend with my family. The kit just consists of circles of paper that you color your design on and it turned out to be the perfect activity for kids aged 3 through 16. They all loved it! And it was a good activity for them while dinner wasn't ready yet. And they even liked the idea that the plates were for me.
After the kids finished their designs, I sent the paper circles along with my payment and the order form back to the company. The finished plates arrived last week!

Here are some of my faves:

I LOVE THEM SO MUCH. They're melamine, which means you can't put them in the microwave, but they go in the dishwasher just fine. And they're very sturdy. And I just. LOVE THEM SO MUCH.

Oh, you don't want to use the fancy plates on a daily basis, Niall? Challenge accepted.

Engaged

So.

I’m engaged!

I’m getting married!

Can you believe it? It happened in September and I sort of still can’t.

Niall and I had gone on a couple of fancyish vacation-type trips, but he picked a regular old go-to-LA-and-watch-a-USC-football-game weekend to propose. It was perfect.

It was also a complete surprise.
I wondered why he was acting so weird and kind of hurrying me along in the bookstore when he KNEW I wanted to try on a tee shirt. I didn't clue in when he asked me what my favorite spot on campus was (I answered “Right here in the center, where everything is going on!” So then he asked me where my favorite place on campus was that I hadn’t shown him before-- I thought he was interested in learning my favorite haunts, but apparently he was trying to subtly get me to lead him to a less crowded area. (It worked.)). We wandered over to the alumni house and apparently while I reveled in the thought of standing in the very room where the first USC students lived and learned, Niall was gathering the courage to ask me a Very Important Question.
We walked outside to admire the statue of Joseph Widney and his dapper pocket watch, and Niall turned to me and told me that he loves me and he wants to spend his life with me. "Will you marry me?" He asked.
And then I gaped at him and said "Really?" for about two solid minutes before I came to my senses and said YES.
We’re getting married in June, which, I have learned, is not six months away.

 

Story Time

My sister told me a story about her friend who lives down the street from a cemetery:

Her friend bought a house down the street from the cemetery and a couple years later she and her husband started noticing bubbles forming in the epoxy floor of their garage. They had builders out who discovered that under their house is a natural spring and the water had caused damage (and epoxy bubbles). So they had the floor dug up and the garage, basement, and foundation redone.

And under the foundation they found miscellaneous horseshoes, pottery, tombstones, and, oh oh, not to mention several BODIES. Evidently their property was part of the cemetery back in the 1900s. The bodies were supposed to be moved when the land was re-zoned, but evidently someone fell down on that job.

So, what would you do in this situation? (Move, right? You’d have to move.)

Apparently the land/remains/odds and ends were deemed as not historically significant, so the builders diverted the spring water to the neighbor’s yard for their garden, and then DUG THE FOUNDATION DEEPER, TOSSED IN THE BODIES AND CEMENTED OVER EVERYTHING. And then told my sister's friend afterward.

Me: “OHMYGOD.”

Sis: “Right? I couldn’t make this up. It’s like the legless man who robbed the bank in Crescent City.”

Me: WHAT?

Sis: Oh, there was a legless man who robbed the bank in Crescent City. I don’t know why he didn’t just pay someone to drive him away because he got away with 35,000 dollars but then he waited for the bus and they had to lower the handicap lift for him since he was in a wheelchair.

Me: …. O_o

This is what conversations with my sister are like, you guys.

Potpourri

You know what I don't understand? Those newfangled car key doodles that are not actual keys but instead electronic fancy car remote thingies. What... why? I have a whole list of reasons I don't like or understand them: They're expensive. You can get a key made for a couple bucks, but those stupid electronic NON KEYS cost a couple hundred. Oh, and water ruins them. And what if you forget them somewhere, which is much easier to do since you don't actually have to get them out of your pocket to unlock the car, start it, or exit it. What if you're locked out? Exactly whom does AAA send for you, because I feel like it wouldn't be a locksmith.

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The last guy I dated told me that one of the reasons he didn't want to date me anymore was that he wanted to be the funny one in the relationship. I had decided to end things, but that was his parting sentiment to me. Great.

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Today I learned and performed the Dix-Hallpike test and Epley maneuver on a patient with vertigo. It's a way to diagnose vertigo and then to treat it. It's super weird because maneuvering the person around with their head and body in certain positions ACTUALLY does help vertigo. I know that it's supposedly science or physics or whatever, but it really seems like the maneuvers are sorcery. Which, given the names, I'm semi convinced they are.

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This past weekend I spent a lot of time with my sister. Communicating with my sister is like... Well. It's like communicating with my sister. If you ask her a direct question she might answer, or she might answer a totally unrelated question (Me: "Hey when are you buying your ticket for the 4th?" Sis: "I don't have diabetes!"), or she might just NOT ANSWER AT ALL. And you know she heard you. And it's not out of malice, it's just... how she is.

She will often tell you only part of the story and assume that you already knew the rest. I am constantly getting texts from her that read like we were in the middle of a conversation.
Sis: IV fluids.
Me: What? Who is getting IV fluids? What's going on?

This weekend she tried to tell me a story, but I got all hung up on what she apparently thought was a minor detail.
Sis: So I was walking home and I caught a snake right over there. And it was so weird it-
Me: Wait, what? You caught a snake?  How?
Sis: I was just walking and I saw a snake on the sidewalk, so I grabbed it. Anyhow, it-
Me: Why did you catch a snake?
Sis: To show it to the kids.
Me: Wait. You saw a snake and so you GRABBED IT?
Sis: Yes. Anyhow, it was so weird when we let it go in the yard it slithered all the way from the rocks to the bushes.

Scavenging

I have crossed off a few more items from my Birthday Scavenger Hunt!

16. read a book- I zoomed through Ready Player One and thoroughly enjoyed it. It was perfect for airport/plane reading, as well as staying up too late on a school night reading.


17. go out on the town with my ladies

Vegas!

23. make plans to go to at least one USC football game this year- 9/22 vs Cal. Gotta buy my plane ticket, but I have a place to stay and a friend with whom to go-- my old roomie of 4 years. Here's a throwback pic of us:

On the fountain run. A grand USC tradition.

21. make plans to visit my sisters- My mom bought me a plane ticket so that now for my actual birthday weekend, I can do my patented get-the-hell-out-of-town maneuver. Much like Valentine's day. And I have very fond memories of visiting my sister for what ended up being about two weeks around Valentine's day. I did a lot of lounging, hanging out with my nieces, going out to lunch with my sister, taking baths, reading, going to Target, wearing lounge pants, and other things I love to do. Her house feels like a home away from home. Or, more precisely, a my-parents'-house away from home.

8. drink a glass bottle Pepsi
2. eat at Hector's

Nom.

18. hold my baby niece
19. use my new hair ribbons

Check.

notes

I love giving gifties. It brings me joy to pick out a present for someone, to find something that I know they will like. For me, giving someone a gift shows the person that I care about them-- I was thinking of them, I know them, and I listen to them. I guess that makes gift giving one of my love languages, or however that's supposed to work.
Anyhow, I love giving gifts! So I would definitely continue to give my nieces and nephews presents either way, but receiving the thank-you notes they send me? Icing on the cake.

Remember the little basketty thing I bought Princess for her 11th birthday? Well she liked it!

I've also recently gotten a bunch of notes from my other nieces and nephews, for their Christmas gifties. It has been really fun for me to open my mailbox and find little kid-handwritten cards inside it.

I taped the notes up on my kitchen cabinets, and they make me smile every day. I love those kids dearly, and I love that they enjoy the presents I got them.

Dollhouse Love

My 10 year old niece got a cell phone for Christmas. I, her 29 year old aunt, got a dollhouse. No, really.

This is from a post a couple years ago that I think should illustrate why I love dollhouses so much:

My grandmother built my dollhouse and I remember it being spectacular. I think I probably remember it as more spectacular than it actually was. But that is because I loved it so much.

It lived at my grandma's house and I played with it pretty much every time I went over there. So, a lot. I would make up stories and scenarios for the dolls. I would arrange them in the various rooms. I would make extra things for the house-- a mailbox made out of a clothespin, a tiny drawing to hang on the wall. I would act out the storybooks my grandma read to me. I would take out all the furniture and things and use my grandma's cleaning products to scrub the carpet and clean the floors and then I would put the furniture back in and arrange everything nicely.

My grandmother died when I was 12 and I was devastated. I miss her more than I can accurately describe. She was really the only person I was completely myself around, when I was younger. I know our relationship would be different if she were alive today. I know that I would never appreciate her more than I did when I was a child.

I'll spare you the rest of the post, which basically describes how I was SOBBING HYSTERICALLY when I found the remnants of my dollhouse furniture mixed in with the rest of my nieces' and nephews' toys. The post was written right around the time of THIS, so I think it is safe to assume that my emotions were all over the place and I may have been expressing some displaced anguish. But. My dollhouse was a big part of my childhood. In some ways I guess I considered it a physical object that represented my relationship with my grandmother. Dollhouse = LOVE.
I was devastated when my grandmother died, devastated again when the dollhouse broke into pieces, and devastated again when I found out that the pieces had been either lost or thrown out over the years. The furniture was all I had left, and so I was happy to see it again, but also disappointed and sad that so much of it had been broken or lost.

In November, my mom and I went to the antiques faire to do some Christmas shopping. We spotted a very sweet dollhouse at one of the stands and went over to admire it.
"It's so cute," my mom said.
"I love it," I said.
We admired it some more and then went about our business. My mom bought a fancy chess set for my dad for Christmas, I bought a couple Breyer horses for my nieces.
"That dollhouse really was cute," my mom said.
"It REALLY was," I said.
"I think maybe you need a new dollhouse."
"I think maybe I do!"

And so, Christmas morning, I came out to the living room and found this by the tree:

Dollhouse = LOVE.

Thanksgiving Potpourri

We had two, count 'em, TWO turkey dinners last week. Like, with a whole new turkey and everything for the second go-round. I am very, very full.

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I slept in the pool house at my parents' place, because all the bedrooms were taken. The downside was that it tends to get rather cold out there, since it's not actually attached to the main house. The upside is that it is quieter and I could sleep in past 6 am, when all the kids got up. The space heater out there is possibly Bowie's favorite thing, ever.

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The whole family was home and it was lovely. [Insert here something vague about how spending time with my extended family tends to be stressful.] I'll refrain from remarking on the presence of my aunt and uncle, but suffice it to say that after Thanksgiving dinner I had to go midnight Black Friday shopping with my sister in order to UNCLENCH.

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For the purposes of this next story, let's give my nieces some names so they don't have to go by their ages. I'll call one 10 year old niece Princess, because she put on the best puppet show in the history of the universe. I'll call the other 10 year old niece Lucky, because she just got a new pony. I'll call my 12 year old niece Sassy, because she's at that sassy age and also that's the name she gave her video game horse. The 10 year olds aren't twins, by the by, they're cousins. Are we all following along?
Okay, so. I was in the car with a couple of my nieces, driving them somewhere. They wanted to listen to different music, and I had to explain that almost everything in my car was stolen, so I only had the one CD. The asked lots of questions about the robbery and I answered them. Then, the conversation took a different turn....

Sassy: Where was your car when it got broken into?

Me: Oh, um. It was by KC's house. I was, uh, dropping off some stuff for him. When we were still together... [sarcastic jazz hands].

Sassy: Don't worry. Lucky never liked him anyhow.

Me, laughing: What?!

Princess, piping up from the back seat: Yeah she was the only one at the time, but now we all don't.

Sassy: He was nice to us, but I remember Lucky was always like "I GUESS he's okay."

Me, laughing: Wow.

Princess: He gave me the creeps once, too.

Me: Well. I guess that means I'll have to bring any new dude around you guys so you can tell me what you think before I get too attached to him.

---

You read that right, my 10 year old niece, whom I shall now refer to as Lucky, just got a new pony. A PONY!!! A whole crew of us went out to the barn on Wednesday to check her out and watch Lucky ride her. The barn people were all super nice and brought out four old, fuzzy, Western horses for the rest of the kids to take turns riding around the arena, while the rest of us gazed at Sugar.

If my sister thought she was bringing me along for a fair, level-headed second opinion, she was mistaken. I took one look at the pony and started whining that I wanted one, too.

The vet gave his opinion, the barn people, gave their opinions, my sister hemmed and hawed, and I said helpful things like "She's so pretty!" and "I love her!" and "BUY HER!!!"

There was also a RIDICULOUS pony at the barn. He was like a Corgi-- regular sized body, fat belly, and teeny stubby legs.
For reference, here is a nearly regular-proportioned horse.

And here is the Corgi pony.

!!!!

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As part of an elaborate scheme to keep the children out of the house so the adults could have thirty seconds of peace and quiet, my parents built a tree house in the back yard. IT IS THE COOLEST THING EVER. The list of reasons to be jealous of my nieces and nephews is getting progressively longer.

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My sister did my hair in a side braid for Thanksgiving dinner. I have since incorporated it into my limited rotation of hairdos. It makes me feel prepared to represent my district.

Or something.

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We took the whole crew of kids to see The Muppets on Thanksgiving day. I took them all into Rite Aid beforehand to buy sodies and candy. I tried to crack the whip a little and say, hey, no you guys can't ALL get king sized candies. But that quickly fell to pieces as the line grew longer and we had to make our selections and leave because Grandpa was trying to save 11 other seats by himself. So I bought them whatever they wanted, which turned out to be pretty great. My littlest nieces both chose giant king sized candies, but Princess picked Mentos, Lucky wanted ChapStick, and my tiny nephew chose Tic Tacs.

I've had "Life's a Happy Song" stuck in my head on and off since Thursday. It makes me smile. Because it's true: I've got everything that I need. Right in front of me.

Fairy Tale

My 10 year old niece put on a puppet show this morning.

Niece: [Long winded but properly arced story involving a prince and a princess. The cliffs notes version is that the princess is trapped in a tower and the prince must fight a three-headed dragon in order to rescue her. He rescues her, they fall in love, and get married.]

My mom and me: Yay! [clapping]

Niece: Wait wait, it's not over!

My mom and me: Oh.

Niece: So then the prince and the princess lived in a beautiful castle and the prince went to work every day.

My mom: Well that's good.

Niece: And the princess stayed in the castle. And then one day she had a baby. See? Here it is [holds up tiny doll]. A child of her very own to love.

My mom and me: Awww.

Niece: But then the prince said that he did not like the baby. He didn't like seeing the princess with a baby and he didn't like all the noise the baby made.

Me: Huh.

Niece: So the princess took the baby and moved into her own house. She started working and took care of the baby, too. And she lived happily ever after.

My mom and me: YAY!!! [clapping]

The End.

aloha, cousin

This is my cousin, Christopher.

We were at the beach in Hawaii, so the shaka sign is very appropriate. He was probably taking a break between surfing and skimboarding, hanging out in the shade for a little while. I think this photo is from our family vacation when I was about 8, which means he was about 16.
That vacation was pretty awesome, as you might expect. I don't remember a whole lot of details from it, just little snippets here and there... swimming and splashing in the warm ocean water... eating shave ice... collecting macadamia nuts and avocado pits from the ground... walking around downtown and buying shell necklaces... drinking big glasses of POG and playing cards or charades....

My family lived pretty far away from Chris's while we were growing up, so vacations and visits were pretty much the only times we saw each other. Chris would tease me and goof around, in a big brotherly sort of way (or at least that's what I imagine, having never had a brother). Since I was so much younger than everyone else I was treated like a baby a lot of the time. But not by Chris-- he was somehow always able to make me feel included and special.

Seven years ago we all flew out to Hawaii for Chris's wedding.
Six years ago we all flew out to Hawaii for Chris's funeral.

There's not much else I can tell you about Chris. I'd love to talk about his music and his jokes and his beautiful wife, but those stories aren't mine to share. And there are so many things about him that I don't know myself, that I'll never know and I can't ask.
I'll never truly know him. I'll never understand what was going through his mind the night he walked into his garage and ended his life. I can't tell you about his struggles, his pain, or his anguish because I never knew about any of it.
The last time I saw him he seemed like the same old Chris, lighthearted and laid-back. Joking. Smiling. Happy.


After his memorial, we buried Chris's ashes on a hill overlooking the a sugar cane field and the sea. We cried and laughed and told our favorite stories about him. No one asked those difficult questions that I'm sure we were all pondering.
Why...?
and How could he...?
and How could we not have...?



When I tell people about Chris, they sometimes ask me if we were close. It happens more often than you'd think."I was really shaken up-- my cousin committed suicide."
"Oh... were you close?"

They say it sympathetically, like it is meant as a condolence, but the words catch in my ears and infuriate me.
Was I close? To my cousin whose death makes me physically ill?
DOES IT FUCKING MATTER?

Also: It's complicated.
To say that Chris and I were close would not be true. But to say that we weren't doesn't acknowledge what he meant to me, what he still means to me.

He was my cousin.
He was the only boy amongst a whole mess of girls.
He was our grandmother's clear favorite.
He was a jokester, a buddy, a nomad.
He was a musician and an artist and a surfer.
He was... different. I remember knowing that he was different before I knew what that meant or how hard it could be to be different from your family. He was unique and unapologetically himself.

Our family is loving and supportive, but Chris was someone who truly accepted and, for lack of a better word, celebrated people and their individual choices. I don't know how to say this without making the rest of my family sound like a crew of jerks, so let me be clear: I love my family dearly and I know they love me and are very proud of me. But Chris was, as I said, different. I don't think he would have cared that I have tattoos or that I've made some mistakes and done things of which I am not proud. Even if I had done something like quit school, I think he would have been nothing but accepting and supportive.

I remember that while all of us were getting caught up and stressed out about the little things, Chris was always there to see the bigger picture, the important piece.
Until, one day, he wasn't.

So, I feel like Chris and I could have been close. But of course I'll never know.

Looks like I'm the asshat.

Now that I am at my sister's house, I am happy to report:

1. She doesn't use paper plates on an everyday basis. She uses regular dishes.

2. She recycles.

3. She uses rags for cleaning instead of paper towels.

4. She uses cloth napkins. I saw them sitting on the table tonight, all pretty and flowered and soft from repeated uses and washings and, ding!, I remembered: I started using cloth napkins a few years ago AFTER I SAW MY SISTER USE THEM AT HER HOUSE.

Mother's Day

I wrote this mostly yesterday and then Blogger crapped out, ate my most recent post, and wouldn't save this one. So here it is, only slightly delayed.

OHMYGOD let's focus on something else for a moment, shall we?

Would you like to see what I gave my mama for Mother's Day?

I painted her a picture.

My mom loves gardening and flowers and trees and flowering trees so I thought she would like it. (She did.) I'm not any real sort of artist but I enjoyed painting this. It was a nice evening of listening to music, doing something creative, and thinking about my mom.
The canvas is small. I meant to include some 'for-scale' item in the pic but I forgot, so I'll just tell you that it is approximately 5x7 inches. I've found that the littler canvases are a good size for me. I think bigger canvases can be overwhelming for painting (aack I have to fill ALL THAT SPACE) and also for displaying (aack this is going to take up SO MUCH SPACE) and also if I make some big mistake it doesn't take long for me to paint the small one all over in white and start again.

I wrapped it up in one of the scarves I bought at the white elephant sale. I thought my mom would like the scarf and also appreciate that its purchase benefited the Oakland Museum. (She did.)

Little Fish

My dad used to call me Little Fish when I was a baby, swimming around in my mom's tummy, and when I was a little girl, swimming around in the ocean or a lake or a pool or anywhere because I just loved to swim. He used to say "Little Fish, Little Fish, fly away home!" I didn't know until MUCH later that the actual nursery rhyme is about a ladybug and woah, is it creepy.

My dad. He has always worked long hours, weekends, and holidays. Sometimes that meant celebrating Thanksgiving early or Christmas late and it often meant waiting to eat dinner until around 9 or 9:30 so that he could be there. Even after working 12-hour days my dad was never too tired to spend time with me or play with me or help me with my homework. On the weekends he would take me swimming or on bike rides or we would work in the garden.

"Inch by inch, row by row, gonna make this garden grow. Gonna plant these seeds, I know," he would sing.

My brother-in-law once told me that one of the reasons he first started liking my sister so much was because of how much she loved her dad. "Most people grow up and stop thinking of their dad as a hero," he said," but it seems like you guys still think your dad is the best guy in the world." He's right. We do. When I was just about thirteen years old my dad had a heart attack and was very sick, so we all know how lucky we are to have him around.

My dad. He writes poetry. He does magic for my nieces and nephews. He surfs every weekend and does triathlons with two of his friends (he's the swimmer). He plays the piano and the guitar and the banjo and the harmonica. He makes up words and often unconsciously makes sound effects for things he does (like if he's pouring something he'll say "glub glub glub"). He calls pancakes flapjacks and an umbrella a bumbershoot. Once, when I lived in LA and had to drive back down there after Christmas, my dad went with me at the last minute. He had to work the next day so I drove him straight to LAX where he caught a flight back home. He had wanted to go with me so I didn't have to drive by myself. When I was in high school he used to drive two hours to come watch my diving meets or my field hockey games (my school and his work were both an hour from our house, in the opposite direction of each other). He taught me to read when I was three by writing and illustrating a story about a dog. He taught me to make a long blade of grass into a lizard-catcher. He taught me to surf and to duck dive. He taught me to change a tire and to drive a stick shift car (although I'm still learning that one). Whenever he calls me on his cell phone he says "Hey Jules! I'm talkin' to ya cordless!"

I think my dad can be difficult to shop for. My mom is easy-- she likes flowers, knick knacks, aprons, scarves, bubble bath, etc. But my dad? He never wants anything. My sister usually buys him clothes, but I think clothes are hard to buy clothes for someone else. I could get him a tie since he wears one to work every day but he already has a lot of ties. Socks? Got him those for Christmas. A book? He has a million books.

So for my dad's birthday this year I decided to paint him a picture. I'm not much of an artist but I'm happy with how it came out. The canvas is small, only 5 x 7 inches.

I call it "Little Fish."

Holidays

I know it's a bit late to talk about them but it is easier for me to remember my holiday traditions once they've freshly occurred. So! As my sister says, you get what you get and you don't make a fuss.


Thanksgiving

• Turkey with all the trimmings. Our stuffing always has pieces of sausage in it. I thought everybody's did but I guess that's not the case?
• A pre-dinner walk on the beach.
• This year was the first time I actually did any Black Friday shopping-- my sis and I hit up Target a 4am and then Toys R Us at 6am (I had my eye on a temporal thermometer because I am super awesome). It was actually really fun to do that once. Plus if you spent $100, which I OFTEN do at Target, they gave you a $10 gift card. You could theoretically buy something, get the gift card, and then return the stuff you bought. I didn't do that but I'm just saying-- you COULD.
• I like to make Thanksgiving leftover sandwiches: sourdough toast with turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, and a smidge of cranberry on it.
• KOIT starts playing Christmas music the day after Thanksgiving. So that's the day my radio station gets tuned to  96.5 until they stop.

Christmas

• My mom and I pick up crab for dinner and eat lunch at the Fish Market on Christmas Eve.
• Christmas stockings always have an orange in the toe.
• We have Christmas dinner and open presents on whatever day everybody can be together. This year was the 26th.
• Champagne.
• We open one present on Christmas Eve. Maybe two. Okay, maybe three but that's IT.
• My mom's gingerbread cookies. She starts making them every year around October. They're heavenly. This year I helped frost and decorate (with M&Ms only) the last of them. These were the cookies that had been at the very bottom of the foot-tall cookie tin. My mom kept pulling out handfuls of broken gingerbread bits and saying "well we should just throw these away." But I talked her into frosting and decorating ALL of them since they're so delicious. So this year we had a lot of gingerbread amputees and miscellaneous gingerbread appendages.
• Christmas Eve children's mass with the kids and Christmas Day mass with my parents.
• Christmas Day breakfast of eggs, sausage, OJ, and homemade brioche. OMG so delicious.
• Watching the Muppet Christmas Carol.
  
• My newest tradition that I definitely plan to continue is buying lots of toys for the tots.
• I give my parents and my sisters photo calendars that I make every year. I used to just give them to my parents but then everybody liked them so now everybody gets one.
• My mom made a family cookbook that she adds to each year. It's actually just a binder and she gives us 3-hole-punched pages for it with favorite family recipes like fat-free scalloped potatoes (they're seriously num), stuffing, gravy, ratatouille, brioche, cinnamon buns in the shape of a lamb for Easter, butter in the shape of a lamb for Easter, and of course her gingerbread cookies.
• I give gifties my parents, sisters, all my nieces and nephews, whichever friends I currently see the most, plus my two neighbors I see every year at Christmas. My family used to try and do some type of 'pull a name out of a hat' thing but it somehow ended up being more complicated and less fun so we just went back to getting everybody gifts. I don't get gifts for my bros in law-- I usually get my sisters the calendar plus some other thing and I figure the calendar is a 'family' present.
• Martinelli's sparkling apple cider.
• My parents always have a big, tall Christmas tree decorated with strings of beads, white lights, ornaments we made as kids, ornaments the current kids have made, store-bought ornaments, silver bells (one for each year our neighbors have lived nextdoor to us), and a ballerina on top. This was the first year I got a tree of my own and I LOVED having it. It certainly put me in the Christmas spirit all month long.
• One of my family's favorite Christmas songs is Joy to the World. We sing it in church every Christmas but sometimes they don't have everybody sing all the verses. If that happens we tend to say "We didn't get to repeat the sounding joy," which is an expression that can also be applied to other instances. Like if I'm frosting the gingerbread cookies and someone trying to interrupt me I might say "just give me a minute, I'm repeating the sounding joy over here."

New Year's

• Chinese food. I don't know why but that's what we always have.
• A New Year's Dip. It counts if you either jump in the ocean or a pool and you can wear a wetsuit.

Sharing the Zen

A couple weeks ago, I visited my sister and her family. I had a lot of fun going out to eat and staying in to eat and playing with my nieces and wearing silly bandz and snacking on girl scout cookies.

And I was telling my sis about my organizing project and the magic book I'm reading and how the chapter I'm on now has me working on going through my collections of stuff and my photos and memorabilia. And she started asking me questions about THE ZENNING and before I knew it we were going through her kids' school stuff and artwork. We categorized it all and created seasonal decoration piles and then put those decorations into plastic storage bins and then we organized two closets and the toy loft.

I know it is going to sound like I'm a huge Nerdy McNerdpants but I had a REALLY FUN TIME helping my sister get organized. Also, I'm jealous of her vacuum.

Some photos from my weekend

My weekend involved quite a variety of activities....

First there was the Academy of Sciences with some of my favorite people.

(photo stolen from Miss Grace)

And then some gorgeous, cold hiking in Marin county. So. Many. Salamanders!

Then I went to my parents house and spent some time playing with with my niece and her new toys.

We had a pretend picnic-- she served me the plate on the right and herself the one on the left. One of these things is not like the other.

Bowie was quite relaxed (jeez, wouldja look at him? Acting as if he doesn't get ANY rest in my apartment, which I assure you, he does).

And so was I. And then my dad asked me to help him take down the Christmas tree. "Just stand there with your arms out, okay? I'm going to cut the wires and push the tree over, you catch it." And then he did. Let me tell you, a prickly, heavy, awkward TREE is one of the most difficult things I've ever had to catch.

Overall, I had a good weekend. How was yours?

advice from my mama

We don't call boys.

Bubble baths are amazing.

Don't be such a smart alec.

Learn how to cook one thing really well so you can always bring it to parties.

When the person on the phone asks for you, you say "This is she."

If you find a pair of jeans you like, buy them.

Try new things.

Talk to your teachers.

If a relationship doesn't seem like it's going anywhere, get out.

People would rather hear wrong information than none at all.

You catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar.

Go to college. Major in something academic.

Someday you'll be happy you had braces as a kid.

Celebrate holidays whenever the family can be together, God will understand.

Reward yourself.

Always bring a bathing suit.

Try to do something you love, but you're going to need money too.

Every woman alive loves Chanel No. 5.


(inspired by Miss Grace & Mighty Girl)

Touché.

The following is a conversation I had with my smarty pants little niece:

Are you ever going to have babies?

Well, yes, I want to have babies. But first I have to wait till I have one of these (indicating my empty ring finger) like your mommy has.

You DO have a ring right there on your other finger.

That's right, I do. But it's not quite the same thing. First I want to get married and then I'll have babies. I'll give you lots of little cousins, okay? Does that sound good?

No.

Why not?

You don't even have a boyfriend!