It's beginning to look a lot like drama...

MIL has stopped speaking to Pants because of Christmas. Isn't this exactly what we wanted to avoid this year?

I thought we had solved our problem by announcing loudly and often that we were not going anywhere on Christmas day. At all. Apparently we are being unreasonable.

You may remember last year's Christmas debacle that left us all tired, cranky, and hating Christmas. And I swore it would be different. We decided that we would not go anywhere on Christmas Day and would not go more than 1 place on any given day.

Let me explain my reasons. When we were married without children, we went wherever the winds blew us and just tried to make everyone happy. If there was a ham, turkey, or roast, we were there.

Small children can't be yanked around like that. It's way too overstimulating, they don't get naps, and everyone thinks it's their right to feed them candy and cookies with impunity because it's Christmas, for crying out loud. There are so many presents they can't even focus their eyeballs anymore and they have no idea what is from whom. All manners (please and thank you) go out the window and they end up asking for more more more at the end of the day. It's too much. It's disrespectful to the gift-givers - the kids don't even enjoy the gifts until much later, if ever.

So we made a decision after last year to respect our children, our families, and our kids, and we made the rules about how we would conduct the holidays. But our plan apparently doesn't work for everyone.

When I was a kid, we stayed home for Christmas. We often went somewhere the weekend before or after, but Christmas was sacrosanct. Pants had the same thing as a child. Why is it that parents want to keep us as children, whims to their replays of holidays past?

This is what we want for our kids - we want our presents to them and Santa's presents to mean something and not be overshadowed by 45 other gifts. We want them to be able to play with their gifts. We want each time they receive a gift to be special, we want them to understand that the giver loves them and gave them something they hoped would make them happy.

We don't want gifts to be just one more thing to tear the paper off of in a long string of noise. We don't want them to expect another and another because that is how the whole day has gone.

I thought what I hated about Christmas with my children was the lack of meaning, the endless stuff that was just plastic junk. I think what I really loathe is the poor lessons, the spoiling, and the rampant more more more. I don't mind them getting stuff - they're kids! And I figured out it's not about the cheap plastic junk - some of that stuff is their favorite stuff. It's the expectations that we all better show up and be merry, dammit, or we're ruining Christmas. We better love everything like it's the perfect gift, or we're insulting people who love us. We better smile and go along or we're ungrateful and rude.

What I hate is that Christmas is so festooned with expectations tied to emotion that it turns into a landmine. No other time of year is so fraught with unspoken rules and hurt feelings. The wrong word, the wrong action, the wrong gift and it is all ruined. That is so not me. Or Pants. And we don't want that for our kids.

Please pass the forgiveness and love. Um, no guilt for me this year, thanks. I'm trying to cut back.

I'M NOT POOR

So, I finally started journaling today and the reason is money. I have issues with money. For some reason, my brain has equated watching your spending and sticking to a budget with being poor.

But we're not poor, we just have more financial responsibilities than we've ever had before. We spent $16,900 on daycare last year. Our mortgage is more than it was in the townhouse. We're still paying off the Scion. We're paying for diapers and about 500 cows'-worth of milk in a year (you think I'm kidding, but I'm not).

I have wondered why I couldn't stick to a budget. Why I couldn't keep from spending. Why we can't make ends meet with 2 perfectly good jobs.

But much of it is me. And the short-term fixes like "no spending month" are not going to fix the problem. The problem is the shame I have always had over being poor, growing up poor, and my fear that I will end up poor again. And my brain decided that not being poor meant that we wouldn't have to watch what we spent, or stick to a budget, or care what things cost. Those were for poor people. Those are poor thoughts. We are at least middle class and we should not have to do those things.

So now that I got it out, I know where the thoughts are coming from and can combat them with reason. Thank you once again, Molly Blackmore, Psychologist, for setting me up to work through these things. I swear I'm leaving my vast estate to you.

Best Gift Ever

My mom gave these sweaters to the girls for Christmas this year, but it was really a gift for me. You see, these are my sweaters. My grandma knitted them for me when I was little.

Grandma had tons of grandkids and she used to knit us sweaters all the time. When her Alzheimer's began to advance, it broke her heart because she couldn't keep her place in her knitting or read a pattern anymore. Grandma died in summer of 2006 from the disease and I felt like she had been lost a long time.

I had no idea my mom kept these sweaters - I haven't seen them since childhood. I feel like I got my grandma back, the one I remember.

And to me, that's what Christmas is supposed to be. Getting something you didn't even know you needed. Something special you can't buy in a store.

This year for Christmas, I got back the love and memory of my grandma, built into two sturdy little cotton sweaters she knitted for me by hand.

Turn back time

I've been kicking this around for awhile, but Dooce's post today has prompted me to finally post it.

Dear 19-year-old self:

You will begin a period in which you have horrible insomnia, and yet can't stay awake for anything. AKJ will have to wake you up because you are snoring in class. You will miss many events and appointments because you take a nap and can't get up. You will be tested several times for mono.

After many months of this, you will go through a whole battery of medical tests, and the idea will be presented to you, however incompetently, that you might be experiencing depression. Before you dismiss this idea as a suggestion that you are crazy, or that all of this is in your head, stop and listen for a minute.

Although this idea is presented to you as if it actually means you are crazy, or are just wasting everyone's time, hold this diagnosis tight. Hold onto it so tightly that you refuse to listen to anything else and insist that you get help for it.

Even though you hate this idea, let someone who knows what it is explain it to you, explain what it's doing to you, and explain that they can help. Get medicated. Go to therapy and let some of those demons out for a walk. They're not so bad when you can see them in the daylight.

So take my advice and go get treated. This is a disease like anything else and you've been suffering long enough. You're desperate for a name for what is ailing you, and now you have one: dysthymia. You have depression.

Treat it now and you'll get 10 years of your life that I missed out on.

Tis the Season to be Guilty

So here we are, smack in the middle of the holidays again, and Pants and I are smack in the middle of our annual guilt trip about where we spend the holidays.

As a caveat to those reading who might be part of this decision - the guilt is solely our own and you should not feel guilty for inviting us. You are doing something nice and we are the schmucks who can't say no when we want to.

That being said, does anyone else have this dilemma around the holidays?

We have three immediately families and some extended family, and all want us to come to their house at some point around Christmas. We already dealt with the Thanksgiving debacle and our current decision to spend the day at one place and no longer drive from house to house to appease everyone. Someone always gets the short end anyway, no matter how hard you try. So I guess we're switching off on Thanksgiving and trying to hit the other groups some other time during the weekend.

So, back to Christmas. We have put Christmas morning until at least noon off limits, as this is our time at home with the kids. We invited MIL and SIL over for cheap coffee and cinnamon rolls from a can, and anyone else who wants to partake is welcome. You know where we live.

The problem is Christmas afternoon. We were spending Christmas Eve with Pants' family, but then BIL's wife said her parents would not give up Christmas Eve this year, so it got moved to Christmas afternoon. That same day, my dad called and wanted to have everyone over at the same time. So who do we say no to? The person who scheduled last, or the person who changed their mind after the date was set? With Pants' family we draw names, so it might be awkward to split up the party. But my dad always get the shaft with the holidays and I want that to change.

Maybe this is why I'm so conflicted about Christmas. What happened to families staying home and grandparents doing the traveling? Isn't that what happened when we were kids?

Celebrating our independence by prostrating myself to the children

Ah, Independence Day:

The signing of the Declaration of Independence? No. It was signed mostly throughout the next couple of months. No email, folks, no fax, just horses and long days of travel. It took awhile to get everyone's John Hancock on the document.

Fireworks. And not the "ooh ahh" kind of way. Pants is outside right now making sure the house isn't on fire. It appears that our neighborhood did not learn last year's lesson of the house on the cul-de-sac burning down from wayward fireworks. The whole neighborhood is pulsating with illegal fireworks. I'm so glad we have been left with Jesse Ventura's legacy of legal fireworks so that every dork thinks they have a right to buy illegal fireworks because "no one will notice."

Went to a parade in Afton today. Other than driving an hour to sit out in the super-hot sun for an 8-block parade stacked 6 people deep where the floats have to double back on themselves because they have nowhere else to go, it was a nice day. Jeff James (friend of Pants) was playing outside the Afton Inn and Catfish Saloon, which is what we really went to see, and oddly, SIL's quasi-boyfriend/whatever-boy works at the Catfish Saloon, so she is already there with his kids watching the parade. And Jeff's wife is there with their two kids, and then a friend of hers that we also know showed up too. Fun day, buy very hot and tiring. Once again, my kids rock. They were perfect!

One year, when we lived in North Dakota where fireworks are legal and they send you catalogs, my parents ordered a batch of fireworks and we set them off on the quiet street in front of our house. We had a great time, my parents played it pretty safe (although I now know it's an illusion, the neighbors thought they were safe in the cul de sac). But we had fun and I still remember that July 4th.

Why not Hyde?

We were watching TV yesterday after we got home and Kitten was eating snacks and Meimei was eating her bottle and That 70s Show was on. And Kitten looked up and said, "Jackie." And then she said it again. Now, they had been talking about Jackie on the show, but clearly Kitten was listening.

Pants and I looked at each other in shock. "We should NOT be watching this." And I turned the channel to Sprout's Goodnight Show. It was so mind-numbingly, goobery childish that I jumped at the chance to turn the channel to Wheel of Fortune at 6:30.

So I don't think we'll be watching TV when we get home anymore. I can't take the Goodnight Show. And I can't subject Kitten to That 70s Show.

See, when I was little, I watched a lot of TV. I will never know how warped I am because of Three's Company. Hours and hours of Three's Company. And I can't let that happen.

Why not Hyde?

We were watching TV yesterday after we got home and Kitten was eating snacks and Meimei was eating her bottle and That 70s Show was on. And Kitten looked up and said, "Jackie." And then she said it again. Now, they had been talking about Jackie on the show, but clearly Kitten was listening.

Pants and I looked at each other in shock. "We should NOT be watching this." And I turned the channel to Sprout's Goodnight Show. It was so mind-numbingly, goobery childish that I jumped at the chance to turn the channel to Wheel of Fortune at 6:30.

So I don't think we'll be watching TV when we get home anymore. I can't take the Goodnight Show. And I can't subject Kitten to That 70s Show.

See, when I was little, I watched a lot of TV. I will never know how warped I am because of Three's Company. Hours and hours of Three's Company. And I can't let that happen.

How I spend my free time

• The fifth Stephanie Plum book - she's currently living with a Little Person FTA and Ranger's getting a bit frisky. And her dad reminds me of Kashka's.
• People Magazine. Damn Cub, they didn't have the new one this evening.
• Taxes - working a tougher case, but almost done.
• Obsession over the state of our money, but not nearly as much as Pants.
• Thinking that one day, one glorious day, we will actually be able to make a real dinner again instead of slapping something together because both children are crying.
• Picking out a patio table and chairs set from IKEA. Pants immediately said yes just from the price.
• Wondering if I should take a landscaping class or if I should just wing it. Wondering how I would go about measuring my lawn so I can lay out a plan.
  
• Wondering why the cat is howling at me today.
• Planning what I would like to do with my bathroom remodel when I finally, actually, get to do it. Which will most likely be done before the kitchen. And hopefully next year, but probably not.
  

A Very Special Family Ties

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, Jennifer ditched her real friend to hang out with the popular kids, and Mallory helped her get all dressed up and crimp her hair just right (with the top, off-center ponytail).

Sadly, this coincided with my mother and brother's efforts to get me to try to be popular. "You're just as good as they are, you should just go sit at their table at lunch. Just go sit with them, you'll never know until you try." But I did know. I knew how the high school caste system worked and it wasn't in my favor.

I can give you some spiel about how I knew who I was and wanted to be more "real", and on some levels that was true, but there were certainly days when I really did want to be popular. Like the day in 7th grade when I naively asked the cutest boy in school to go to the homecoming dance with me and he said, "Sure," and I thought for several hours that day that I was going to the dance with him because my sarcasm meter wasn't real fine-tuned yet. Only to be mocked in the lockerroom after gym class. Tragic, I know.

This is how I initially uncovered the knowledge that, once you are in a social group in high school, you can make lateral and downward moves, but rarely does anyone ever move up to Popular.

At the end of the episode, Jennifer realizes that the popular girls are really fake and her real friend is who she wanted to be with all along. Which apparently escaped my mom, somehow. Even though all of these episodes end this way (13 Going on 30, anyone?). Hmmmm.

And of course, there were those times that I was glad not to be popular. Like in 9th grade one of the popular girls was announcing in the lockerroom that she was afraid she was pregnant. Nonissue for me. (By the way, said girl later went to Denmark the year after graduation and was sent home. Early. She was EVICTED from the country. Yeah, I want to be her.) And the time when another popular girl asked in class one day why all the guys she dated thought it was really funny to fart and burp at her and how none of them really acted liked they cared, they were all just children. This is one of the perks of dating dorks - at least they try. They hold the door, they save their more base bodily functions for when they are in the car alone. Apparently, popular boys did not have to try so hard.

So I wasn't popular. I was a band geek. A theatre dork. A know-it-all nerd that answered too many questions in English class. Despite the urgings of people who shall remain nameless. Unless you want to refer back a couple of paragraphs. Sorry Mom. But in the end, I was who I was. I didn't pretend to be anyone else. I mean, I probably tried, but it never worked. I always ended up being the same person.

So what made those other girls popular? Family history? Some of them were from the "prominent" families in Monticello. Can you be a legacy, like in a sorority? Was it that they were more social? Like extroversion automatically makes you popular? Were they just pretty? Cause I didn't look so bad in high school, but I was probably already pigeon-holed by the time I outgrew my awkward phase (see social movement rule above). They certainly weren't more together. And some were smart, but many weren't, or at least didn't want anyone to think they were. Was it confidence?

So, who were you? And if you know what makes people popular in high school, I'm actually genuinely interested and will promise not to mock you.

My mommy never read to me

I don't remember my parents reading to me. I don't know how I got my love of books, probably because they didn't make fun of me [You, reading this book, you suck!]. But my parents didn't read to me. I just don't think it was done very much then.

I remember, though, maybe I had a sleepover at the girl's house, maybe I was just there really late, but I was at the girl-down-the-street's house and her mom read to us. We climbed up on her bed and she read us a chapter from The Hobbit. It made me want to read it and I started it a year or two later. I never forgot how exciting it was to be read to.

I read to Kitten as much as she wants, and she wants to do it quite a bit. It makes me pretty happy that she likes books and that they make books that are so good.

Tails Are Not for Pulling
Sometimes I Like to Curl Up in a Ball
Jamberry
I Love You Stinky Face
Tails

But I do remember this: I had more books than I could read as a kid. I had my mom's books from when she was little, books that included Treasure Island and compilations of stories like the Three Billy Goats Gruff. And she signed us up for a book-a-month club, or something like that, because I had a lot of books from the same company and I think they came in the mail. This is where I got my love of Encyclopedia Brown and Cam Jansen. We weren't rich, or even middle class at the time, and I don't know why she chose to spend the money on my books. She always let me pick books from the book ordering thing at school, too, and I got to read Bunnicula and The Celery Stalks at Midnight. As a tween, I got several of the (now defunct) Canby Hall series books.

My dad let me read his Hobbit and Trilogy, even though I lost one of his books. My mom would not let me read her book on demonic possession, but did let me obsess over the creepy pictures in The Lincoln Conspiracy.

Even though I wish I would have been read to, it clearly hasn't stunted my desire to read or learn. And although my parents didn't know to read to me, or weren't really interested, I had more books than most kids, even with our extremely limited funds.

So you can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need.

The MILF of 1985

One night, probably a Sunday, in 4th grade, I remembered our science projects were due the next day for the science fair. It was about 7 p.m. and I panicked and cried. But my mom built me a solar system out of old shirt boxes that we saved for Christmas, a long strip of wood to steady the thin cardboard, and several styrofoam balls she ran out and purchased from who-knows-where. We colored the whole thing with a black marker and painted orbits on with white-out.

Another time, I told mom in the morning that it was my week to bring a snack for Girl Scouts, which was immediately after school. There was, again, crying involved. I don't know how she did it, but she showed up with cookies for the meeting.

And for Halloween one year, I insisted on being an Ewok. Yes, Jedi had just come out, my brother and I had seen it 3 times in the theater, and they were the cutest little beings ever invented (to me, all you cynical Star Wars snobs). I still have the surprisingly good stuffed Ewok I got for Christmas that year. But the stores did not have Ewok costumes, unlike today when they would capitalize on the popularity shamelessly until every kid hated them. So my mom bought yards of fake fur and MADE me a costume. I believe she even took the day off on Halloween to finish it so I would have my wish (there might have been some procrastination involved on her part, but this is her post, so we won't beat that horse, just know that I come by it honestly). And I had the coolest costume ever. And the warmest.

And yeah, my mom was the hot mom.

(Something reminded me of the science fair project and all these other things came back. You rock mom!)