Over-Done, Garish, Italianate Splendor and Joy

 A perk of this move to IL is that I can be in Lancaster, NY after just an eight hour(ish) drive.  That might seem long a long day of driving, but it used to take twenty-four hours of driving to get there from Austin, so this eight hours seems like a dream! Five states, eight hours, and approximately $500000000 in tolls.  On my list of things to do?  Get an EZ Pass.

My person and I made a late-minute decision to go to Buffalo for the holidays as our children would be celebrating with their other parents and it is just us here and that seemed sad and there were old people at home who needed to be seen.  Many reasons, all of them good, and off we went.  

Old people who needed to be seen.

My person has never been to Buffalo before so I did the very responsible thing and ordered pizza before we even exited the highway.  Everyone has their favorite local pizza and mine is Grasso's cheese and pepperoni with blue cheese to dip it into.  There is something about the crust, that thick cheese, the way the pepperoni curls up into cups and gives you a grease shooter - YUM!  You just cannot find pizza like this anywhere else.

Pizza in hand, we went to check into our hotel.  Of course family offered us a room, but it can be a lot to meet someone's family on a short trip during the holidays, and I did another responsible thing and got us a hotel.  Not any hotel, but a hotel full of Italianate splendor!  Giant chandeliers greeted us in the lobby and there was an entire hallway of fake facades made to look like a street in Italy.  I sent a video of it to my friend and she correctly remarked that it looked like the Titanic.  You could buy a single red rose for $5 and many of the rooms offered a giant tub right next to the bed.  My person and I loved how crappy and over-the-top this place was.  I would not rate it five stars because during our three nights there, housekeeping never came in.  We had no shampoo and when I asked at the desk, I was given three bottles of body wash.  This left my hair looking like a river otter who escaped an oil spill but by God, we had splendor!

my heart will go on......

We went out for a few drinks that night and my person met my sister, her husband, her sons, and two cousins in rapid succession. The next day he met my parents and an aunt and uncle and then even more people at my sister's house for Christmas Eve.  The next day he met my sister-in-law and my niece. BAM BAM BAM!  New people, my people, and he was what he always is: wonderful,  charming, engaging, and funny.  Swoon. 

This trip was fast and furious and we did the holidays and are already home and had a nap.  I am so happy that we took this trip.  That we had time to sit with my parents and talk.  That an aunt made a special trip to see me.  That my person saw where I grew up and who I grew up with and that he liked all of it.  I find that despite missing my kids this Christmas, I had joy.  What a joy to sit across the table from my nephews who have grown into men and listen to them talk about jobs and women and life in their twenties!  What a joy to spend Christmas Eve at my sister Melissa's and it be so lovely, so inclusive, so filled with people, that I felt I had stepped back in time to the Christmases of my youth! (she makes a killer sauce too. I believe my father commented it was so good it would make an old Italian woman weep.) What a joy to see the joy on my parent's face as I stepped into their house!  What a joy to still be able to step into their house.  And what a joy to do all this with my person!

I hope that you also had joy this holiday season. Joy on Christmas is not always a given, so if you didn't have joy, I hope that you find a picture you took with a stranger in the background that cracks you up and you nod and say "I love Buffalo." Or Austin. Or Raleigh. Or wherever you are currently sitting.  If you don't have a picture that makes you laugh, I hope you had some over-done, garish, Italianate splendor.  And if you didn't have over-done, garish, Italianate splendor, I know place; just bring your own shampoo.

this guy!!

Carol of the Girls

I have not been feeling very Christmassy or in the season or even interested much in Christmas this year.  I have not been running around crazy trying to prepare for it, I know it will all get done, so seasonal frenzy is not the cause of my indifference.  It happens sometimes, but this is usually my favorite time of the year.  Actually, now that I think about it, I didn't feel much like Thanksgiving this year either.  I think the problem might be that I miss my family, or more specifically, holiday memories of my family.

Holidays growing up were filled with aunts and uncles and cousins in too small houses that grew too warm and loud as the night went on.  It was unlimited cookies and waiting desperately for that one last family to get there so you could open your present.  It was badgering Grampa slowly and steadily until he gave in and would put "Snoopy and the Red Baron" on the record player.  (record player, I am that old).  It was too much to eat, too many cookies to choose from, too many dishes to help wash and always too loud.  Holidays were full.

Holidays here are sometimes just the four or five of us.  There is too much food, too many cookies to choose from and because I am here, it is still loud.  However, they don't always feel full.  SG and I took a walk on Thanksgiving night and we passed a house that was packed with people sitting around a dining room table and we both sighed.  I am sure it was not as idyllic inside that house as it appeared from the road, but it sure looked full.

I took the day off recently and did a big portion of our Christmas shopping.  I don't know about you, but I find that there is nothing like Christmas shopping to strip away any Christmas spirit you may have.  Luckily for me I followed it with a lunch out with my best girls.  Lunch was followed by a two dog nap which led me to finally feel that thankfulness I was missing at Thanksgiving.  If thankfulness was three weeks behind I thought I might not find my Christmas spirit until mid-January.  

But then today happened.  Today my thirteen year old woke up happy.  I don't know about your thirteen year old, but mine never wakes up happy.  She wakes up with one eye and some grumbles and crazy lion hair.  She wakes up grouchy and moody and miserable. I cannot wait until she is old enough to drink coffee and I can hand her a steaming cup and know not to talk to her until it is gone.  But today is the last day of school.  Today is parties and cookies and reindeer antlers to school.  As we were leaving for school, I said the only way I would give her a ride is if she sang Christmas carols the whole way with me.  She instantly agreed.  So we sang our hearts out to "All I Want For Christmas" at least three times.  She tried to stop me from car dancing, but once started, there is no stopping.  The look of complete horror on her face only intensified my dance.  We laughed til we cried and we sang loudly, off-key and enthusiastically. My Grinch heart grew hundred times and for the first time this season, I felt joy.  

SG and me.

Now, I am not sure I can retain this joy for the next six days, but the fact that I have some right now is enough.  I will break if off into little pieces and share it with everyone I might see today.  This way, when mine runs out, maybe someone will have some to share back.  

This ten minutes of love and laughter have made me see that I don't need to be full to be happy for the holidays; I just need to be present.  I need to see an opportunity and take it.  I need to get out of my head and go with my heart or follow others even when I don't think I feel like it.  And, no matter what, there absolutely must be more car dancing.  

P for Parenting, P for Pride

Parenting: it is a mixed bag.  You are happy, you are sad, you feel like you own it, you feel like it owns you.  You are sure you are doing everything right, you are sure you are doing nothing right.  It is easy, it has never been harder, you love it, you want to run away from it.  It can seem like everyone around you has all the answers and are doing everything right, so you make snarky remarks about them to make yourself feel better.  This works for awhile.  

With a teen, a tween and a big kid, parenting lately has been something that I feel like I just joined.  I have felt at a loss on how to deal with bad behavior that doesn't stop. I have felt lost on helping kids through crushing blows. I have felt meaner than Cruella DeVil ever was when I yelled "This conversation is over!  You are doing it." and walked away.  I probably even kicked one of the dogs out of the way as I did it.  Bill and I have had countless talks about what it is, what are we doing, what are we doing wrong and wondering if parenting ever gets fun again.  We even started to wax nostalgic about the crying poop years; the 0-3 years when everyone is either crying or pooping or crying and pooing at the same time and you feel like your life is one vicious cycle of crying and poop and you will be mired in the poop years forever.  

Definitely crying and pooping.

But they pass; everyone eventually poops on their own and the crying tapers off as well.  So we know that these hard years of parenting will pass too and we will be left behind as the kids move on, so we try to find the joy in it.  Even the crying poop years had joy.  Small warm bodies fresh from a tub smelling like Johnson's baby wash and encased in ducky pajamas melting into you as you read a bedtime story.  Sigh.  But now, in all honesty, it can be awfully hard to find that joy amid the drama and confusion and hormones.  

This week I was incredibly blessed to find moments with all three of my kids that made me see the people they are becoming.  That made me realize all the drama, confusion and hormones and relative insanity that is our day to day is shaping these kids into the adults they will become.  As I realized this, I was overcome with pride.  The weary of the past few weeks was replaced with pride.  Glowing, heart-exploding, tear-leaking pride.  Not pride in myself or my parenting, but pride in what these kids are achieving, what they are doing and who they will become.  

The teen is a driver.  A registered, approved by the state of Texas driver.  She operates a motor vehicle mostly to take herself to and from work.  She may drive me crazy with her inability to pick up after herself or hear what I am saying, but I am so proud of how she handles responsibility.  She even drove her sister to school one day this week and treated her to Starbucks on the way. Glow.  The tween competed in her first ever athletic competition and while I am sorry for her it was 90+ that day, I was so glad for the excuse of the big sunglasses I got to wear that hid my my leaky-eye pride.  Sniff.  And the boy?  He stomped off to school because he was angry at me and in doing so ignored our neighbor who was telling him to have a good day.  When I told him later that day he had to go over and apologize, he didn't argue.  He went out the door and across the street and did it.  Heart-exploding.  A perfect trifecta of moments showing me that they do hear us.  They do get it.  They will be good people.

I guess that parenting goes through stages of development as the kids move through their stages.  Hands-on, hands-off, tolerant, involved, wait-and-see, jump right in.  It is confusing, it is hard and sometimes it is no fun at all. Maybe one day we will look back on these years of drama, confusion and hormones and think of the joy.  Ha!  Okay, I hope we can look back at these years of drama, confusion and hormones and remember the pride.  

Joy To My World

You know what emotion adults don't experience enough?  Joy.  Oh, we have joy on the days we are married and we are almost crushed by joy on the days our children are born, but day to day joy is hard to maintain in our busy lives.  

You put the dishes away? Hooray! Let's jump for joy!

Dogs feel joy every day.  Heck, they feel joy every ten minutes.  Owner comes home? Joy.  Food in the bowl?  Joy.  Door opened to go outside?  Joy.  What?!  A walk?!?!?  Uncontained joy making it hard to get a leash on due to excessive howling, spinning and merriment.  Well, from Bailey anyway.  Grommit (aka Eeyore) sits sullenly waiting to see if she will be leashed up too.

I am incredibly fortunate that I share my house with a nine year old boy who not only finds joy every day, but infects the rest of us with it.  Life has not been kind to my son and he has had a hard time of it since the day he was born.   Hernia repair and double eye surgery all before age two.  Delayed development due to the fact he couldn't see kept him a baby for a long time but my gosh he was a happy, happy baby.  It took him forever to reach milestones, but along the way, he smiled with his beautiful smile and laughed with a laugh that would just tickle your soul.  He brought us joy before he even brought us words.

School is hard, hard, hard for my boy and while it wears me down for him, he loves to go.  He feels he is very popular and there are cute girls to impress and off he goes each day with his Pokemons tucked under his arm and a smile on his face.  We tell each other our highs and lows each night at dinner and while he has many highs about the day, he rarely has a low.  We often say that God wrapped him in Teflon and the things that would crush the rest of us seem to bounce right off of him. His Teflon does occasionally get pierced and his sadness tears holes in my heart, but he recovers much quicker than I do and he is back to being exuberant and ready to keep going.

Sometimes his joy is misplaced and it is a struggle to get him to see what needs to be done.  He and I have been at loggerheads about homework all year.  "I did that last week" he will say and think he is done.  I will remind him he has to do it every week.  He will say "nuh-uh", and on and on until one of us is ready to pull her hair out.  He also drives his sisters crazy with his non-stop happiness and they either snap at him or let it beat them down and join him.  (I prefer the latter)  The boy with horrific vision who cannot catch a ball to save his life will tell you he is going to play for the NFL when he grows up.  Ouch says my heart.  He doesn't even play flag football because his foray into basketball one season left Bill and I crushed and depleted on the sidelines.  However, if you ask him about it, he was awesome.  And given that he can punt a football 35 yards easy, maybe he will play for the NFL.

We recently put up our Christmas decorations and he was a large help (hee hee) getting the tree up and the lights and decorations on.  Our kids have always liked to lay under the tree and look up at it and no sooner were they done decorating that he was off and running for blankets.  I am sure my daughter feels herself too old and cool to be hanging out under the tree, but she got caught up in his enthusiasm and was not only under there, but reading to him as well.  Enter Mom joy there.  Whose turn is it for the Advent calendar? He knows and informs me first thing every morning.  The boy I have to remind to put socks on each day is barrelling down the stairs and turning the tree lights on every day.  He also rushes in after school and turns them on then.  He is so excited about Christmas and about the tree and its lights, I find that I am happy because he is happy.  One morning this week we had extra time and I laid under the Christmas tree with him and we talked about the day and Pokemon and some video game and I tell you, it really lent an air of peace about my day.  Normally I tune that video game talk out, but I let him run on and on and it wasn't as painful there under the tree.

Best seat in the house.

I am sure this is probably his last year for believing in Santa and I am soaking it up.  He was very concerned wondering if Santa would still come given his bad behavior as of late.  We assured him that continued good behavior would go a long way for him and it was not too late to get off the naughty list.  He seems a little wary but has chosen to believe us.  Worry replaced with joy just a few hours later.  

We are blessed that he is joyful all year round, but I tell you, his joy is almost palpable this time of year.  The trees, the lights, the chocolate and sweets starting to pile up and the nervousness of Santa coming take his joy and turn it into pure magic.  He is so excited about the tree lights, I become excited about the tree lights.  He is laughing about something ridiculous and there is his sister laughing with him.  Dad is not feeling well but is still so caught up in listening to what he has to say because his eyes are shining and he can't get the words out fast enough.  Oh and Christmas morning!  He will not be the first one up, but he will be up in an instant when he hears his sister and will spring from the bed, smile on, feet hitting the floor and running.  He will be laughing and oohing and touching and even before he starts opening, he will be shaking.  All that joy, all that happiness, all that intensity too much to keep inside and he will shake all through opening his presents.  And we will laugh at first and then watch him some more and Bill and I will smile and feel our  hearts grow three sizes and think it is a very merry Christmas indeed.