Stalker

Most days, Tiger the cat spends some quality time lurking under the tree. JT thinks Tiger is checking to see if there are packages for him. I think that Tiger has more nefarious purposes.
Each morning I walk downstairs expecting to see that the tree has been tossed over so the cats can have their way with it.

Brrrrrrrrr!

When I was in the 2nd grade and living in northern California, my grandmother came to visit and we went to San Francisco to enjoy the sights of the city at Christmas. So it seemed only fair to continue the tradition more than 30 years later.

The city this time around is New York. The scenes: Rockefeller Center's Christmas tree and Santa at Macy's on Herald Square. And did I mention the biggest cold spell of the season? The temperature was below 20 degrees as we set off on the city-bound train Monday morning. JT's Grandma is a California native and not used to temperatures below 40, let alone below 20. But she had a warm coat and gloves and we hooked her up with a hat and a fleecy scarf. She was quite the trooper.

We saw the tree and walked around to view the windows uptown.
We braved the crowds at Macys....
....and patiently waited to see Santa.
Once we were in Santa's innner sanctum, JT gave a shy smile and let the man in red know that he'd like some Playmobil toys.
A most lovely way to spend the day.

Real Life Conversations with Dad: Smart Mouth Edition

The backstory: Last' weeks adventures in furnace repair ended with the discovery that I have been somewhat remiss in my furnace maintenance duties. The boiler which serves up the steam heat in my home needed some cleaning and general attention that my friendly PSE&G repair man completed under the watchful eye of my father. The end result of repair number three: a much, much warmer home. It's like the furnace has been waiting for years to serve up this much heat.

I came home from yesterday's shopping adventure to a warm and toasty home. So toasty that when I started to make supper, I needed to take off my sweater (relax, I had on a shirt underneath).

Me: It's so hot in here that I feel like I'm in Florida.

Dad: Yeah, well if we're in Florida, where are the damn bugs?

As they say, the apple didn't fall far from the tree.

Sassafras Clone

Sitting around is not exactly my style. In fact, I'm the sort of person who is always hoping to have a little extra time to get a few more things done. I have often thought about how much more efficient I would be if only I had a clone on hand.

My clone could grade papers while I do the laundry. The clone could change the sheets while I grab a shower. The clone could get supper on the table while I clean the bathroom. Really, the prospects are endless. Yesterday morning I needed to bake some cookies for the basketball game bake sale and I also wanted to work out. This job really called for a clone.

So, while I got in a run, my clone (also known as my mother) baked 6 dozen cookies.
I could get used to this sort of thing.

Snow Day!

On Friday, instead of having our last day of classes before Winter Break, we had a snow day. No complaints from me, as I was pretty tired out. By the afternoon, I'd had a nap and was ready to take on the in-house snow monster.
He'd used his snowball molding device to build up our arsenal. Then we engaged in a little snowball fight. He's got a good arm for this sort of thing and it must be said that he's a lot faster than me.
But little boys should never underestimate their mama's cunning desire to win a round or two. Or aim a snowball at a retreating backside.
Photos were snapped by Grandpa, from the (relative) safety of the front porch.

Grandparents

More than ten years ago, when my sister was pregnant with the boy who is my parent's eldest grandchild, I recall my father gently mocking my mother and me for our excitement about the coming baby. "It's just a baby," he reminded us.

Then that baby was born and my father had cause to eat his words. When I paid my first visit to meet the new member of the family, my father was flush with joy in his grandson. And Mr. Ho-Hum had become Grandpa Euphoric. "I thought you girls were pretty special," he told me, "but this boy...." the sentence went unfinished, as normally talkative Grandpa was overwhelmed with love and pride in his tiny grandson.

Within two years, two more grandsons joined the family. And now my father is rich in grandsons, God's payment for having endured teenage daughters, I expect.

While his cousins live in California, just down the street from their grandparents, JT lives across the country. We visit often and he's gotten to be a pretty chatty phone buddy, but there is no substitute for having your grandparents at hand. Yesterday, they flew in from California to spend the next two weeks with us.

On Thursday, JT flew out of bed, excited about the afternoon's airport run. When he joined me in my classroom yesterday, he announced that "this is the longest day EVER," excited as he was to fetch Grandma and Grandpa. They are here now, ensconced in our care for the next two weeks.

Let the spoiling begin!

A Question for the Universe

Why is it then when I get in bed each night Lucy the cat decides that she must join me? And by join me, I mean climb on my chest. So there I am, snuggling under the covers, reading the book du jour, and here comes Lucy.

She fusses and meows at me and then steps (none-too-delicately) all over my sternum, sometimes sticking her bootie right in my face. This is neither comfortable nor pleasing. And when I gently push Lucy over, she is irate, returning for another stomp on my sternum.

Memo to Lucy: I do not find this to be a comforting routine. Please stop.

Ironic?

One of the things my students quickly learn about me is that I like a cold classroom. I always joke that I keep it cold so that they stay awake to prevent hypothermia from claiming them. The truth is that I move around a great deal when I teach and I don't like to be over-heated. Risk of hypothermia is funnier.

But things around here are not so funny at the moment. On Monday, it was 60 degrees and raining. Yesterday the rain switched to a slurry of snow and ice and the temperatures sank to right at freezing. My furnace chose this moment to quit heating my home, which I discovered when I got home last night. I think that pilot light is out. Actually, I hope it's just the pilot light as that's a fairly inexpensive prospect. Furnace repair comes between noon and 4 pm later today. It's quiet around here without the furnace. No roar as it snaps to life. No clinking pipes. Just a quiet cold and the sound of my chattering teeth.

3:45 pm, furnace update:
Happily, the repair man showed up within seconds of my arrival home. He headed downstairs to check things out. The pilot light (which JT calls the pirate light) was working so then he did some stuff. And then the furnace was furnacing.

The diagnosis: not sure. I have a steam furnace and sometimes you need to drain the water. He did that and then re-filled it. Flipped the breaker; turned on the thermostat and bingo! back in business. It took a bit to get the water heated and the steam moving through but within a couple of hours, the house was warm again. Or warmish, anyway.....the thermostat is still set at 65, after all.

Let's not get crazy.

8 pm furnace update: Ummmm. Not working again. So.....repair version 2 tomorrow morning. Let's hope I meet with greater success.

And So It Begins

Small children are always fascinated by dinosaurs and garbage trucks. Both are loud. Both are large. And in a few quick seconds, both could kill your mama, that woman who frequently says no to you.

Happily, JT has largely outgrown his fascination with large objects that could destroy Mama. Sadly, a new obsession has replaced it. He's fascinated by a series of books he found at the school library. The premise of the series is an exploration of things "You Wouldn't Want to Be" and the illustrated and fact-rich books feature a range of things you really would rather not endure: being a pirate's prisoner (keel-hauling sounds dreadful); being the sheriff in a lawless Wild West town (bad guys abounded and would often try to shoot you); being an American pioneer (those wagons could have used some shock absorbers); or serving in the Civil War (death from your gangrenous seeping wound totally bites). His appetite for these sorts of details is impressive. So I knew it would happen one day: he'd bring home a book about the Egyptian pyramids.

I may be a History teacher who has taken any number of courses in ancient history, almost all of which mention Egypt. But...I don't really care about ancient Egypt and the pyramids. Mummification? Whatever. King Tut? Yawn. Marvels! Wonders! Amazing! How did they manage to build those pyramids? Actually, I don't much care. I'm down with the plague and castle invasions that feature boiling oil sloshed over the side. When it comes to studying the Druids or the Crusades, I'll get on board with the human sacrifice and suffering. I'll pony up for some good old-fashioned Inquisition torture. But Egypt is just not my thing. Sadly, JT brought this book home from the library last week:
I'm fearful of years and years of those amazing pyramids in my future.

Yeah.

JT's Advent Calendar

Lately, I've been thinking about the tiny things that help to make the holidays special for a child. I know that nothing can quite compete with the excitement of Santa and Christmas morning and I'm not looking to de-throne the big man. But some of my best holiday memories are the little things that went along with Santa: the lovely paper advent calendar my sister and I opened each day in December, the Christmas eve snowball treat, the fresh, cool evergreen smell of the Christmas tree. As an adult, these moments mean as much to me as the shiny bike or the smiling doll that I received one year. So I try to create small moments of pleasure to go along with the big. One of those small moments comes from JT's advent calendar.

When JT was three years old, some friends sent him a beautiful advent calendar. It's a real marvel; a lovely wooden box that contains a small drawer for each day before Christmas, a total of 24 in all.
Its annual appearance on the 1st of December is one of the very first signs that Christmas is coming. The calendar may be filled with treats for JT, but it's one of the holiday traditions that I enjoy the most. I look for tiny toys or Christmas ornaments to fit in some of the boxes. Other boxes have a note with a little treat: extra reading time at night; a trip to Dunkin Donuts for breakfast; an invitation to play a game on a weeknight. JT is always excited to see what prize the day's tiny box holds.

And it must be noted that the one thing that this advent calendar guarantees is a boy eager to get out of bed with lightening speed each morning. That is a miracle of its own kind