decking my boughs

We have a lot of fun picking out our Christmas tree. We’ve fallen into something of a tradition, going with friends and making an outing of it; we’ve been known to drive well across county lines but this year we managed to find a cut-your-own lot tucked away in the middle of an urban neighborhood just a few minutes away, conveniently located not far from a great pizza joint.

Megan is our tree-picker-outter; our only parameter is that she has to be able to reach the highest branches (not the top).

Kira liked this one

In my ongoing recovery from Grinchdom I’ve amassed a number, though not a huge one, of ornaments. For some years the MPM and I bought ornaments for each other; often wooden, always meaningful. Now I buy sweet personalized ones for the girls each year, petite Lenox, small silver bells, that sort of thing.

Of course the ones closest to my heart are the kid-made variety; we are slowly amassing those as well, and I can hardly wait to give them to the girls to hang on their own trees in a few decades.  But other than that it’s obvious to anyone observing that I favor a “simple/natural” concept, e.g.:

handmade, handmade, nature-made (hand-dipped)

This would be my tree. Small, simple, natural, meaningful. Non-commercial, to the greatest degree possible.

Now, however, the girls get ornaments each year from my MIL. I’ve maybe mentioned before that our tastes are… divergent from one another?

I give you:

(wooden "joy" for scale)

Taste in these things is personal.  I truly say this without judgment; there’s no real involvement of ethics in the matter and it’s not my intention to malign Precious Moments/Hallmark et al. They gladden many hearts; you may love them and I’m entirely supportive of that.

But they aren’t me, and yet they will appear forevermore on my tree. I can’t bring myself to do them actual harm — just look at those eyes on the PM girls! — but I must confess to a certain lack of the proper spirit when they come out of the ornament box.

rules for random scenarios

I was just a few miles into my ride on this incredible day, in the 70s for heck’s sake, November or not, when I came upon a clutch of cyclists on the edge of the greenway. Usually signals a flat tire. I was slowing enough to ask my usual “Y’all got everything you need?” when I saw it was rider down, blood in evidence.

He was sitting, and had enough blood on his head that it was through one eyebrow and down the side of his face. Ear too. He looked confused; three other riders were standing around him. They’d gotten his bike upright, and obviously it had been a couple minutes since it happened. But they were, oddly to my mind, standing away from him, and it didn’t seem that anyone was really talking to him.

I dismounted. “Y’all called 911 already?”

Uh, no, not yet.

Rider tried to stand up, but not very steadily. His buddies weren’t stopping him. “Woah, now, let’s sit down right here in the grass. Just to be safe.”

Sitting again, he had his eyes closed. I asked his buddies, one now fumbling for a phone, his name.

“Jim, do you know what happened?”

He opened his eyes. One was bloodshot, or -stained; I couldn’t tell. He looked at me, obviously dazed. “No… what happened?”

I asked his buddies; they hadn’t seen it. “Did you hit something that made you fall?” He didn’t know. “Did your head hit the bridge, or the ground?” He didn’t know.

So we have an unknown cause of loss of control; could be the edge of the pathway, but equally could be a seizure or other loss of consciousness. We have an obvious head injury. If he had a helmet on, he hit hard enough to lacerate the top of his head anyway. If he didn’t have a helmet on, he smacked blacktop, concrete, or wooden pillars without a helmet. Dude needs medical attention.

Random Scenario Rule #1: Your friend is bleeding from a head impact? Call 911. Right this fucking minute. Do not pass go, do not wonder if it is the manly thing to do. Gitcher phone and call.

I rode to the nearby fire station and alerted their EMS. And then I rode on, a spectacular 25-mile loop with scenery and scant traffic.

Arrived home as the inlaws arrived. For my FIL, with Parkinson’s and COPD and macular degeneration — the trifecta of aging — the act of climbing the dozen steepish steps into our house is a Herculean task.

Given that and the weather as detailed above, we brought chairs and made ourselves comfy in the front yard. The girls brought out balls and a grand time was had kicking and throwing and chasing. Their grandma was nicely engaged in the playing and she had them both giggling. She’s a good grandma, she is, and loves those girls to pieces.

And then it was time to settle down a bit and visit. Both girls wanted to be on her lap, not mine or the MPM’s, and so they were there and tussling around the chair and suchnot.

And she opened with this gem: “Is that Harrington girl from this neighborhood?”

Most of y’all, even if you’re not from these parts, are probably aware that a lovely blonde Virginia Tech student went missing a few weeks back while attending a Metallica concert in Charlottesville (home to, confusingly, the University of Virginia). Morgan Harrington. She is indeed from our metro area, and her daddy is an M.D. and we have right many docs and lawyers and such in our ‘hood. But no, not the Harringtons.

Despite my curt negative, “No, I think they live in the County,” there was no pause in the media-tragedy-du-jour stream of What a terrible thing and Can you imagine and The mother just looks like DEATH, yada yada yada.

And the girls, my girls, age 3 and almost-seven, are now riveted, looking at her.

“Who are you talking about?” asked Megan.

A girl who’s disappeared, says the MIL.

I clarify: A college student, honey, from Daddy’s campus, is missing. Her name is Morgan Harrington and her mommy and daddy are very worried, and everybody is trying to find her.

And that, of course, led to more questions. And my MIL’s input: “There are bad people out there. That’s why Mom and Dad tell you not to talk to strangers.”

Well, no; actually we don’t tell her that. Since she is, and always has been, incredibly skittish about people she doesn’t know, we’ve never felt the need to. Frankly, we’re always with her; pickup at school is Gestapo-like in the scope of its security. And we’ve instituted the secret-word security measure, the one about If we ever send someone you don’t know to pick you up, they will know the secret word; if someone tries to get you to go with them and they don’t know that word, you don’t go. Period.

But that aside, after Megan’s questions were answered, the MIL veered back on course, nattering on about How Horrible and Wouldn’t you be sick, and Have you noticed the mother does all the talking, the father can’t even say anything he’s so… and the girls are looking at her, and Megan is forming another question.

And at that point I gave MIL a look, and a finger across the throat. The universal sign for Shut Up.

She looked at me so quizzically you’d have thought I’d sprouted antlers over my ears. I don’t know if she ever grasped why — certainly not immediately — but she did comply. It was soon apparent I’d hurt her feelings, something I manage with disheartening regularity, but good gosh amighty.

Random Scenario Rule #2: Feel compelled to speak of tragedy? For the luvvagod, don’t do it in front of children who are old enough and bright enough to understand just enough to be confused and scared about it.

I hope your day was free from vexation at those around you.

to veer

Were you up early enough to catch the sunrise this morning? Did it rise in the west maybe?

I ask because last night we’d planned to attend the premiere of this very cool new bike movie showing at the new art museum in town (the one with the, um, eye-catching architecture, feel free to click). We wanted to ride our bikes to the premiere, partly because it was a bike movie and partly because we believe in ridin not drivin when we can, but really mostly because I’d heard that they were having VALET PARKING for bikes. And that, in my book, is just too good to miss.

And because we wanted to ride down, the plan was to hire a sitter who would come HERE, to our house, as opposed to getting my MIL to cover the gig, because that meant we’d be expected to feed the girls and pack up their jammies and toothbrushes and take them THERE, spending some amount of time deemed appropriate on both ends visiting, ourselves, before bringing them home to wake up in their own beds. Because that’s the way it works. It is immutable and we do not ask the why. One might equally question gravity or photosynthesis.

But since, after umpteen calls, there was no sitter to be found, we called the MIL who obligingly said sure, we could bring them over. So we did. And then drove home again and got on our bikes and rode down, because we couldn’t possibly pass on that valet parking thing, even though it meant reversing the whole silly sequence on the back end.

We got settled into our seats and were well along into the fun when the MPM leapt up like something had bitten him on the butt and scurried out the door. He came back in but I wasn’t seated next to him so I couldn’t pinch him to make him give me the scoop, and he sat oblivious to the numerous “WTF??” looks I was beaming pointedly at him across the seat backs.

But after the lights came back on and we were collecting our bikes from the valet (THIS WAS EVERY BIT AS COOL AS I IMAGINED), he said, “Yeah, my mom called.” I waited for the bad news: the girls wouldn’t go to sleep, my FIL had fallen, something. She wouldn’t call for no reason.

What she’d called for, as it turned out, was to suggest that maybe the girls could STAY OVERNIGHT. Both of them. All night.

So indeed, I find myself this morning wandering about in a state of disbelief and, yes, questioning the stability of physical reality in the rest of the world.

And because I myself slept in well past sunrise, y’know, I just thought I’d ask: east? west?

degrees of difference

Occasionally — just occasionally — we arrange for my mother-in-law to babysit the girls when we go out. Because she does not drive at night, this entails some transportation logistics that make it, well, inconvenient, given that our other sitters all live within walking distance, but there are times when it’s the best option.

A dinner taking place an hour’s drive distant was a recent occasion for such. MIL drove over here before dusk and I frantically showered and changed after putting together a dinner for the girls. I’d been at a dead run most of the day between knocking out housework and laundry and what-all else, and overall I was in a self-congratulatory mode when I actually managed to hit the highway on time to pick up the MPM on campus, per plan.

I drove for half an hour in blessed silence, seeing a few flakes of snow smack the windshield in the dark and just generally enjoying the time alone, when suddenly I realized I’d forgotten to turn the heat up at the house. And since I’d been “doing around” at a pretty high intensity, I’d gotten right warm mid-afternoon and bumped the temperature down a few degrees from its usual mid-sixties setting.

Despite the fact that she’s been coming to our house for, oh, five years now, left alone I know that my mother-in-law will barely turn on a light, let alone get a drink from the fridge or touch the thermostat. And they keep their house at a Floridian 72 degrees. So I picked up the cellphone and got her on the line and told her I’d forgotten about turning up the heat for her. “Oh, my hands are like ICE! I’m practically shivering! I was just asking the girls if they were cold!” she said. (Yeah, ask away; they never are.)

So I exhorted her to set it wherever she needed to be comfortable, telling her I’d been working so I’d turned it down, etc, etc. We hung up, me saying I was glad I’d remembered, her saying she was too, and me reminding her for the umpteenth time that she should ALWAYS feel free to make herself at home, quackity-quack, regardless of what that might be, blah-bitty-blah, now go and TURN UP THE HEAT, lady, please. Wherever you want it.

And I felt relieved to know that I’d forestalled a calamity, a la the time she called and told her son they couldn’t come over any more, since we wouldn’t turn up the heat for them. (We’d turned it up, but apparently not high enough: If you love us, honey, you’ll read our minds.)

So imagine my surprise when we arrived home to a house that was exactly two degrees warmer than I had left it. And a mother-in-law on the couch in her coat and scarf, with a blanket over her, happily telling us how cold she’d been all evening, her hands were just like ICE, she couldn’t believe the girls had gotten undressed and then run around naked before getting in pajamas!

I think I made some feeble noises about having said she should turn up the heat as high as she wanted it, but honestly? I don’t remember. Because that kind of passivity is galaxies away from me, and I don’t have a way to engage. We’re so far apart on the spectrum we’re obviously speaking different languages — perhaps living on different planets.

The surface temperature over here on mine measured in Kelvin, of course.

post-dinner post

We had about every last inlaw I own for dinner tonight. These events are Perfectly Pleasant (for which I am duly grateful) but they are a good day’s drive from deeply engaging or raucously amusing. So I concentrate instead on the food, on making something that I’ll enjoy while working within the confines of what others will. The cousins were having a blast playing together, and I made some entertainment for myself by creating a new pasta salad recipe to accompany the safe grilled chicken and fresh green beans (I do grow my own but have been fairly accused of some stinginess about sharing them with Just Anyone; the ones we passed around the table tonight came from friendly and fascinating Tim Belcher, down on our Farmer’s Market).

My mother-in-law makes some mean yeasted dinner rolls. I don’t have the recipe because a) they are her standby contribution and b) I’m too lazy to make anything with yeast, but I’ll try to finagle the recipe from her sometime so you can try it, because they are worth the effort. As long as it’s your effort and not mine. For now, here’s this instead:

Greekish Pasta Salad

(all amounts are approximations, since I tend to cook by eye and not by measured line)

Cook in water as salty as the sea:
12 oz amusingly shaped pasta

steam for 3 min:
1 zucchini in bite-sized pieces (one is plenty, no matter the superfluity of your garden or your neighbor’s)

Chop:
1-2 lg tomatoes (or a double handful of cherry ones halved)
1 sweet pepper (any color will do)
fresh basil
handful kalamata olives
tender green onions if you have them

shake up well in an old peanut butter jar or somesuch:
1/4c seasoned rice vinegar
2T Dijon mustard
clove garlic, minced/chopped/mushed
2 grinds black pepper
glug olive oil

Drain and rinse pasta; add veggies and dressing; toss gently together. Sprinkle most generously with feta cheese (or serve on the side for palates unaccustomed/unwilling, of which I had both at my table tonight). Even MIL asked for the recipe.