Vocabulary with T: Unlikely Event

There's an old joke about Congress which compares lawmaking to the production of sausage and argues of both that it's best not to see either being made.  As the nation prepares for the self-induced wound that is the fiscal cliff, it seems apt to review the notion.  Congress has landed us in this situation and its their responsibility to get us out.  That they seem determined to do it in a fashion that will leave the national electorate both exhausted and disgusted is no surprise to me.

I could add my voice to the chorus of Congressional critics blaming the Republicans for this mess.  I could wring my hands and wonder why it is that Grover Norquist and the Tea Party Republicans feel that compromise, a principle at the very core of our Constitution and government, is suddenly a dirty word and unthinkable concept.

But human relations are messy at best and these days politics are a mirror of the worst of human relations, so I am not surprised at the painful ordeal Congress has constructed for the nation.  And since crying about it won't change things, I am inclined to find some ways to laugh instead.

Here, T has a phrase that's useful.  Time and time again, I have heard her say it of an unlikely event.   When she says it, the image is always quite clear in my mind.  And these days, as Congress haltingly considers doing the job they were elected to complete, it's a pretty useful notion.  And so I turn to T's phrase and suggest that the specter of Republican members of Congress cooperating and compromising to get their work done will be like seeing a "leprechaun riding a unicorn."

Mother Nature

I am a girl who loves her traditions.  Among my favorites is setting up a Christmas tree.  Each December I enjoy the magic of a Christmas tree with its sparkling lights and its collection of ornaments guaranteed to trigger some happy memories and at least a few good stories.  Even so, once Christmas day has passed, the tree and my holiday decorations are on borrowed time.  This year, our early return from winter vacation (thanks, Sandy) made it all the more urgent that the tree come down in a timely fashion.  With my mother on hand to help out, the tree came down on Friday.  Then I had JT remove it to the back deck in preparation for hauling it to the curb for the recycling truck pick-up.

At that point I realized that Saturday's snow would be a terrific chance to enjoy the tree for a few more days.  So we left the tree on the deck and the piney boughs collected some snow.  It was a lovely sight as the snow fell all afternoon, a welcome reminder that Mother Nature's powers also include great beauty.

Packages!

I love wrapping paper and ribbon and have a collection of Christmas gift tags that represents a wealth of Etsy dysfunction.  So it should come as no surprise that one of my favorite holiday traditions is wrapping up packages.

So, before I pack away the last of the holiday decorations, I'm admiring some more pictures of Christmas packages.

And, yes, I've got a thing for stripes and polka dots.

Squirrel Action Shot

My old friend Pesky is seen here helping himself to a holiday treat in the form of tulip and daffodil bulbs that I planted in the month of December.  It's a lucky for him that I find him charming and that I employ a tolerant policy toward garden pests because this is the sort of behavior that could cause a squirrel some real trouble.

No Longer Welcome at Hobby Lobby

Though we try to be decent people in the public space, T and I are sometimes challenged by the opportunities made available by retail establishments.

Note: This is Jersey, so we could hear other shoppers laugh as they walked by the altered display.

Merry, Merry

I had worried that his newfound knowledge that Santa was really me would leave JT less excited on Christmas Eve.  It turns out that I needn't have worried.  The boy was all spun up with holiday excitement on the 24th.  That night, there was a bit of snow.  My California-bred mother was delighted by this development and so we took Grandma for a walk outside to admire the town luminarias and catch a flake of snow on her tongue.

We came back inside and received our marching orders from JT: we would be awake no later than 7:30 am to check out Santa's largesse.  The next morning, we complied with the boy's orders and hit the living room right on schedule for Christmas morning.

JT was very happy with the contents of his Christmas stocking.

We enjoyed a relaxed day with a mid-afternoon Christmas feast of ham, potato casserole, roasted parsnips, green beans, and hot rolls.

It's nice to have a houseful of loved ones and many blessings in my life, not to mention a day to marvel at my good luck.  Here's to hoping that y'all enjoyed your holiday as well.  Cheers!

Happy Planner

I especially enjoy organizing the details that go into getting ready for the holidays.  So I got up early this morning to bake a pumpkin pie and get things in order for our coming celebration.  The cookies are baked and the Christmas ham is awaiting my attention.  I've a few more Christmas packages to wrap, though many are already safely deposited under the tree.

Later tonight, we'll set out paper bag luminaries, a tradition in our town.  Then we'll take a walk in the cold to admire holiday lights and decorations.

JT has unfolded the Santa story for most of the month, asking for details of the secrets that went into the mystery.  He's been delighted to learn the truth.  But I'm betting that this evening we'll still watch the NORAD Santa-tracker and set out a generous snack (and whiskey!) for the man in red.  It's a happy day for a planner like me.  I intend to enjoy every bit of it.

"Mama, this is Bad"

Every parent recognizes a special tone of urgency in her child's voice.  It's a sound which indicates trouble beyond the usual garden-variety level of concern.  That's the sound I heard last Thursday, at 10 pm, when JT summoned me by saying, "Mama, this is bad."  The boy spoke the truth.

My first thought when I realized that the cracked bathroom sink had finally given up the ghost was, "I don't have time for this."  That rather says a lot about how my December played out.  Though I didn't have time, I do have the phone number of a good plumber.  Within a few days, we were back in business with a new sink that looks a lot like the old one, albeit one that doesn't have a giant missing piece..

Rest & Relaxation

I am long-accustomed to being a very tired Mama when the holiday break rolls around.  But this fall has been one hell of a semester (see: Sandy, Hurricane) and as winter break finally loomed on Monday, I found myself struggling mightily to reach the finish line.  December is usually a crazy, busy month in my life and this year is no exception.  Each day this past week I got up to a long list of tasks that must be accomplished before I could crawl back in bed and I moved through the day attempting to succeed.  At one point, JT asked what we planned to do on Friday and I replied that we'd deal with Friday when it arrived.  Until then, I was on a day-to-day plan.  Quite frankly, sometimes it was just hour-to-hour.  Break arrived on Thursday evening and it is most welcome.

I still have plenty of small details to wrap up before Christmas Eve but I am closing in on getting those tasks done.  Most of them are actually things I look forward to and now that alarm clocks have been turned off and daily lessons set aside, it is a  happy prospect to have packages to wrap and holiday food to prepare.

Yesterday, we went to the market to secure the holiday feast.  Today is set aside for making some (more!) cookies and wrapping some packages.  If I play my cards right, I may even find time to read a book and have a nap.  That's happy!

Real Life Observations of T

The backstory:  On Sunday afternoon, T, JT, and I went to the movies to see "Lincoln."  We chose our seats and then watched as the theater filled.  After a few minutes, it became clear that we were the youngest people in the theater by a distance.  You could add up the ages of all three of us and were were still younger than the rest of the viewers.  At which point, T wryly observed, "If you voted for the man, please have a seat down in front."

And that's why she's the girl for me.

Cookie Day

One of my weekly reads is "Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me" and their Sandwich Monday report.  Last week, Sandwich Monday led me in the direction of a story on latkes and holiday cooking traditions by writer Rob Eshman.   When he wrote, "If you want your grandchildren to remember you fondly, learn a good cookie recipe," I was in earnest agreement with the sentiment.

I don't have any grandchildren and with any luck Baby-Think-It-Over has ensured that I remain some years away from that set of problems.  But I do love a good cookie recipe and the power of a nice batch of cookies is not lost on me.  Each year, as December approaches I get started baking up a collection of cookies to be shared with my students.  Cookie Day is my annual holiday treat for my classes; my way of thanking them for the enjoyment I receive from working with them.  As the name suggests, it features a whole lot of cookie goodness.

I make enough cookies for each student to eat three and I like to have a bunch of choices on hand.  This year, that meant that I needed about 15 dozen cookies.  JT and T were drafted to help out and we made sugar cookies, molasses cookies, Tollhouse bars, oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, almond biscotti, cream cheese pecan shortbread, and peppermint chocolate chip cookies.   My cookie sack was plenty full.

Each class got its own plate of cookies a tasty thank you for making my days so bright.  That's happy.

Haven't We Had Enough?

In the aftermath of the Colorado "Batman" shooting, I wrote a blog posting urging that yes, it's time to politicize this horrible event in the hopes that we can engage in some gun control policies that might help us to curb the violence.  I wasn't the only person to make this suggestion, of course, but it should be noted that our plea fell on the usual deaf ears.  Which is not to say that we don't have an established problem with mass shootings in this nation.  As this Mother Jones article ably proves, this nation has a problem.  It's made worse by our unwillingness to take action.

Earlier this month, when Bob Costas had the temerity to suggest that easy-access to guns might have contributed to the violent shooting by Kansas City Chiefs linemen Jovan Belcher, a furor ensued.  How dare he politicize a tragedy?  Sunday Night football halftime isn't the time to discuss gun control, critics shouted.  I don't happen to agree, of course.  I think we are long-overdue for a discussion about guns and violence in our nation.  But I had resigned myself to the fact that changes were unlikely.  Now I'm ashamed.  If people like me don't demand change, who will?  

Less then two weeks later, 26 people, 20 of them school children, are dead at a school in Connecticut.  When mass shootings happen, I think about the victims and their families. As a teacher and a mother, this time around, I'm overwhelmed.  Tears and hand-wringing are not enough.  How do we absorb and move on from a tragedy like this?  I lay in bed last night, sure in the knowledge that my own son was safe for the evening, and feeling acute misery for the parents who don't get to make that assumption any more.  What has gone wrong in our nation?

This morning, I'm not just filled with sadness about the tragedy.  Now I'm red-hot mad.  As news of the Connecticut shooting filled my e-mail and consumed the headline of the NY Times yesterday afternoon, I sat in a class with a room full of 17 year olds taking a test.  As they quietly filled pages with their thoughts and ideas and, dare I say, their brilliance, I was ashamed of the world we are handing them.

It is time to take action.  If it were up to me, we'd amend the Constitution to change the second amendment: Individuals don't need to own weapons and we should collect them all.  I would permit hunters to keep their rifles at established hunt clubs where gun safety is the rule of order.  It's not up to me, of course.  But these problems aren't going away and we can certainly agree on some real changes in our laws and our policies.

1.  Rigorous gun registration laws, longer purchase waiting periods, and detailed background checks in every state, at every venue, including private gun sales and gun shows.

2.  An end to private ownership of certain types of guns: no assault weapons, no semi-automatic weapons.  None.  

3.  If we decide we will continue to permit private ownership of guns, then let's require gun owners to attend gun safety classes and regularly certify that their guns are being safely stored.

4.  Ban internet and by-mail sale of ammunition. Limit ammo sales at gun shops; regulate the kinds of ammunition available for purchase and set a fixed limit on those purchases.  

5.  Let's agree that we need quality mental health help more readily available in this nation.  Let's remove the stigma from getting help, and let's commit to our community obligations on this front.  This will require money and resources and yes, we can afford both, largely because the alternative has cost far too many lives.

Tell your members of Congress they must act now.  Don't know who your Senators and Representatives are?  Find out here.  Check Open Secrets to see if those members received campaign funds from the NRA in 2012.  Join the Brady Campaign's "We are better than this movement" and combat the power of the NRA.  

Make this issue your priority.  Go to a rally.  Vote only for officials who will take action.  Tell President Obama that he has your support for changes to our laws.  He said yesterday that, "these neighborhoods are our neighborhoods and these children are our children. And we’re going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics."  I agree.  For the love of God and our children, let's make sure that we mean it.

Real Life Conversations with JT: Political Context edition

The backstory:  It's Friday morning and NPR has yet another story on the so-called fiscal cliff.  This one features Speaker of the House John Boehner announcing that talks are going nowhere; he's headed home to Ohio for the weekend.  But, Boehner says, President Obama can fly to Ohio or give Boehner a call if he wants to talk.  I am annoyed.

Me: Look, Boehner, the president won re-election last month.  He isn't going to fly to Ohio to talk to you.  You aren't in the driver's seat here, pal.  You're a fucking idiot.

JT:  Whoa, there, Mama.  All love, no hate.

Me:  I wasn't hating on Boehner.

JT:  You called him a "fucking idiot."  That's not love.

He may have a point.

Sign of Our Continuing Decline

I have borrowed the title of this post from "News of the Weird" a weekly collection of real-life news.  Chuck Shepherd, the curator of the collection, often groups together stories and one of his favorite categories is "Signs of Our Continuing Decline."  It's a fitting designation for so many features of modern living.  Today's tale is case in point.

On Monday, JT and I headed over to the local mall to hear the school's Madrigal choir sing holiday songs.  As we were getting out of the car, a family pushed their stroller past us.  None of this was remarkable but when the family was out of earshot, JT said to me, "Those people had a dog in their stroller.  Either that, or that's the hairiest baby I've ever seen."

It was dark and I figured that JT hadn't seen things clearly.  I suggested that the stroller didn't have a hairy baby.  "Maybe the baby had on a snow suit with a furry hat," I cheerily announced.  But when we got inside the mall, there were several dogs in strollers.  Even more in purses.  Dozens on leashes.  It was "Take Your Pet to Visit Santa" night.  I turned to JT to confirm that I hadn't gone mad.  People are waiting in line to take their pets to see Santa.  Then we texted T to share our horror.

Me: Just saw a dog in a stroller.  I worry about our nation.

T:  Are you worried our dogs are getting soft?

Me:  Dogs are soft and people are worse.  The decline has begun.

I don't know much, but I do know this: a nation who encourages people to bring their dogs to the mall to visit Santa probably deserves to lose its status as a world super-power.

Presents!

I've found some time to start wrapping packages, one of my favorite parts of the holiday season.

Each day this week, I plan to find time to wrap a package or two.  That's happy!

We Believe

I learned the truth about Santa's existence when I was 9 years old and in the 4th grade.  In so many respects, I was an immature 9 year old but in one respect I was 9 going on 39 and that had to do with reading material.  So it was that I was reading my mother's McCall's magazine and I came across an article entitled "How to tell your child the truth about Santa Claus."  The truth?  Horrified, I read on.  Turns out that my parents had been playing Santa.   Though I surely must have had some inkling, what I most remember from the experience was the crushing sense that Santa wasn't real.  I wasn't disheartened by the lie so much as terribly sad to say good bye to Santa's mystery and the excitement that believing had brought me.

As a parent, I found the notion of Santa powerfully real again.  I relished the role and cherished JT's sense of Santa's magical charm.  In some of my darker moments as a mama on her own, it was the satisfaction of playing Santa that saw me through.  JT's belief in Santa was powerful and real.  I remember one year when he announced that he didn't need to make a Christmas list "because Santa knows my brain."  Each year, I'd acquire a collection of items just perfect for my boy and his imagination.  I'd plan every detail and relish the late-night Christmas Eve set-up.  I'd love the excitement of Christmas morning viewed from my boy's thrilled vantage point.  So I encouraged him to believe.  I didn't go of of my way to develop elaborate scenarios, instead relying on his own own fanciful imagination to sustain the magic.  And sustain it he did.  Year after year, JT believed.  

After awhile, I began to worry about how to let him know the truth about Santa.  I remembered how sad I was to learn that Santa wasn't real.  I was hoping for JT to have a more gentle realization about the man in red.  But I was unsure how to get there and I wasn't quite ready to give up the magic a second time.

Earlier this year, at the ripe old age of nearly 12, JT tentatively admitted to me that he no longer believes in Santa Claus.  He seemed almost afraid to tell me, as if he didn't want to shatter my belief.  Then he asked if we could still pretend that Santa was real.   "Because it's so exciting," he said.  "Yes," I answered though I have to admit that I was a little sad to let go of this vestige of childhood.

As the holiday season neared, JT began to ask questions about how I played Santa.  And so I have unravelled for him stories of secret gifts and late-night construction of Playmobil wonders.  

I've had the chance to tell him how much I enjoyed planning surprises and watching his Christmas morning excitement.  We've laughed about some moments, especially the year we were driving home from singing carols on Christmas Eve and heard a radio story that Santa was already in New Jersey.  In the backseat of the car, JT began to panic that Santa would skip our house.  But if Santa was in New Jersey early that year, he waited until JT was asleep to stop by our home.

Last week, JT told me that a friend of his who hasn't believed in Santa for several years frequently tried to get my boy to see the truth.  However, instead of accepting the logic of the friend's arguments, JT opted for the richness of his imagination, steadfast in his confidence that Santa existed.  

While I feared that our first post-Santa Christmas season would be a little bittersweet, it has instead been one filled with rich and happy memories of Santa, of the joy of giving, and the magic in believing.  In an interview I read a few weeks back, Ken Noda, thinking about the power of imagination in children, said something that has lingered with me as JT and I have been talking about the power of Santa in our lives.  To paraphrase a bit, Noda says that a child's imagination must be replenished with experience as he matures into adulthood.  

This year's post-believing Christmas proves the truth of Noda's lesson, as JT explores the ways in which he loved believing in Santa.  He's finding that Christmas traditions can still be magical and fun; that Santa is as much an ideal as a real person.  Together, we're finding new and wonderful ways to believe.

Note: In order, the pictures above come from Christmas morning in 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011.  The final two come from Christmas tree shopping and setting up in 2012.

Crime Spree

My cats love Christmas tree season and for the first few days after the tree is set up, they bask in its presence, lolling about under the tree and sniffing its needles.  Then, having grown accustomed to its presence, the assaults begin.  The other day, we came home to find the most recent victim.

The accused wasn't talking.

The injustice was righted (and hung a little higher in the branches for her own safety).

If history is any guide, this won't be the last of the crimes.

Winter

After a brief hiatus of warmth and sunlight, a gloomy and cold winter sky has returned.   But don't worry, Internet.   My hot cocoa-making skills are solid.

Holiday Sweets

Last year, T and I made cookie kits in mason jars and we gave them away as Christmas treats.  This year, we decided to dial it up a bit and we are planning to give away little collections of homemade goods.  We started our preparations in the summer, when we made homemade jam.  Over Thanksgiving, we found some glass jars at Hobby Lobby and organized ourselves to make vanilla sugar.  

We plan to make additional treats later this month and then we will have an assortment of holiday treats to give away.  It's becoming our holiday tradition and that's most happy.

The Things We Don't Discuss

In my work with young women, I spend a lot of time treating their minds as equal to the minds of the young men in my classroom.  In other words, I hold boys and girls to the same standards, as well I should.  However, this Mother Jones graphic representation of gender equality in the social world drawn from a recent UN Report conducted by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender and Media suggests that I am living in a dream world.

In conducting my classroom as an egalitarian place, I may be doing the girls in my care a disservice.  I am certainly not preparing them for the real world.  Because the real world is a place where young women will be judged by the quality of their backsides and not their ideas, where they will find that their minds are sometimes not as valuable as their cleavage, a place where they will be required to work twice as hard for half the professional rewards that will more easily accrue to their male peers.  Those are the hard and real facts of life in 2012.

As a feminist of long-standing, I've been thinking about this for quite some time.  My largely unsuccessful campaign against "you guys" is part of my effort to combat stereotypes of girls.  But my careful decision to never gender my expectations of leadership or status seems almost quaint in light of the UN report.  And I find myself feeling disheartened and less willing to think in terms of how far we've come but more in terms of how far we must still travel.

Sigh.

Simba

Last year, Hurricane Irene uprooted my neighbor's tree and when they had the tree cut down, the stump remained.  Soon after that, they obtained a yard sculpture that sits on the stump and watches over their garden.  It's a gold lion and we immediately named it Simba.

Then we commenced to joking about it.  T started things by looking out the window, shaking her head and saying, "oh, Simba."  This brought JT and me rushing to the window to see what was up.  Nothing, of course.  We'd been bamboozled.  But the Simba jokes have continued.  This year, while moving stones in her garden for Hurricane Sandy preparation, T found our very own Simba.

He's admittedly a bit worse of the wear.  Between the cracked head and missing leg which causes him to lurch a bit, we think he fits in quite nicely at Sassafras House.  So now he watches over our backyard.  This month, he's tucked in some ivy at the base of the back deck stairs.  But's he's mobile, our crummy Simba.  Who knows where he'll turn up next?

December 1: Front Yard Flowerbed

For some time now, I have declared the first of the month a day for garden photos and reflections.  My 2012 plan was to make a picture of the front yard flowerbed on the first.  For 9 months, I was a success at this modest goal.  But things de-railed in October and I am just now getting back on track.

On October 1st, the house was in the midst of being painted and I totally forgot to post pictures of the front yard flowerbed.  I made so many photos of the house in those weeks that I have pictures of the flowerbed from that day, I just didn't get them posted.  When I realized this, I made plans to simply post them up on the 1st of November, along with a November 1 picture.  That didn't work out either.  Thanks, Sandy.  Before 2012 comes to a close, I figure that I'd better get my act together and do right by the front yard flowerbed.

It's worth having a look at this flowerbed in September, before T and I had taken the trimmers to the yard in preparation for painting.  To get ready for the house painting, October found a much-trimmed flowerbed, one still enjoying our lovely fall.

November found a flowerbed sorting out the aftermath of a hurricane and preparing for winter.

As for December, well, the cold weather has begun to make its claims upon us.  But there are new bulbs in the ground and the winter always ends with spring, so there won't be any complaints from me.