Christmas reflecting.

Though at Thanksgiving I reflect a bit about what I'm thankful for, for the most part my primary goal is to stuff myself full of all the wonderful food that's around me that day. Christmas, however, is the holiday that gets me to thinking about my priorities, my goals, how I spent my last year and how I want to spend the upcoming year. I think about the good, the bad, and all that's in-between. I think it's because Christmas always sneaks up on me in a way that as a kid I never thought would be possible, and I'm always a little peeved that I didn't have more time to prepare. Or really, to celebrate. Didn't see any carol performances, didn't go to midnight mass to hear the music and smell the incense, didn't bake cookies, didn't carefully pick out the perfect gifts for people, didn't spend as much time wrapping as I would have liked to make the packages really shine. You know, that kind of thing. Gee, it sounds like my Christmases are now filled mostly with regrets.

However, that's not really true. By far, my thoughts are positive around Christmas, or at least get me to move in a positive direction. At Christmas, all I want to do is see family and friends, to hang out, to give gifts (but actually don't care to receive them. Getting gifts is nice, of course, but I don't want stuff. At Christmas, what I really want is human contact and emotional intimacy with those I care about the most), and to enjoy the lights, the trees, and the music. Really. And for the most part, this happens each year. This year included.

We spent a day in Monroe. We saw Doug's Grandfather and gave him a digital photo frame so that he can have a piece of Dedham in his home each day. We saw Doug's parents, whom we also gave a digital photo frame, loaded with 120 photos of us, the cats, the house, our friends... hopefully it will make them feel more connected to our world (as long as they can figure out how to use it).

We then spent a day in East Hartford. We spent quality time with my family - my mom and Tyrone my father my sister's family and my great-aunts, who despite a trying month were in good spirits for the holiday.

We also spent some time in our own home, in Dedham. We actually spent some time in our own home on Christmas Eve. It was lovely. The cats gave Doug a sweater and some random cat named Mr. Peepers gave me a gift card. It was so wonderful being in Dedham and celebrating around our own tree. Meg liked us being there, and so did the other cats, though Wyatt was non-plussed by Bret and Jemaine.

Now the Christmas reflecting can really begin. Are my priorities in order? Is my primary relationship being nurtured and cared for properly? Am I making decisions that allow me to be the best version of myself? Am I applying enough discipline in my life to bring me towards a common goal? Maybe this year I'm thinking more about things because I happened to stumble upon a great book called The Seven Levels of Intimacy, which if you can put aside your cynicism for a while is actually a very informative and useful book (and by "you" I mean me, of course). I knew a lot of the stuff that this book is trying to tell me already, but somehow reading it, and reading it at this time of year, makes it all click. The light bulbs go off and I am reminded that I've gotten a little off-track. That's the good thing about Christmas. Even if I know I didn't get to do all the things I wanted to do, I have hope that the next one will be better, and I can look forward to a year of getting back on track. I have hope that in 2010 I will steer this ship a little more towards my priorities and will not let the wind blow me off my charted course.

I can't believe I ate the whole thing.

I feel like the person on that commercial for Alka-Seltzer, who repeats "I can't believe I ate the whole thing." I feel like a dope. I knew my camera was running out of batteries but I figured I had enough for a few essential photos this weekend (I had two out of three battery bars left, after all). I was wrong. Saturday afternoon after three + hours of driving in really aggravating long-weekend traffic, Doug and I took the two kayaks out for a test run. I whipped out my camera to take a photo of Doug bravely paddling through the white-capped waves, and nothing. Zilch. No batteries. Not even enough for one photo! I can't believe I didn't bring the battery charger.

But the weekend was good. Very good. It's so relaxing in New Hampshire. Actually, it's just relaxing on a lake, and it doesn't matter where the lake is. The air is pure, the area is secluded and quiet, the loons make such lovely noise, and it just feels good to be there. I worked on some of my craft project (which I will finish tonight - so excited to be done with these, and they actually came out very, very good. I think I will consider the Etsy route...), read a little of my book, kayaked, climbed Mt. Cardigan and was super impressed by Doug's ability to keep up with the rest of us. Not that my mother and I are athletes by any means (my brother is, though), but Doug doesn't get much exercise. I was definitely impressed by his ability to get out of the car and climb up the mountain with seemingly effortless ease. We played a little Uno and a little Guess Who?, both blasts from my New Hampshire past, and walked around the Dartmouth campus to find a place to eat. Oh, and we also went to a guitar store, and to prove that the world is very small indeed, the proprietor of the little shop was born and raised in East Hartford. Class of '66, and my dad was class of '61. They enjoyed reminiscing about the old homestead (but that didn't give us any special discounts on any of the gear!), so the trip there was worth the time.

It just dawned on me that tomorrow is Tuesday. I have my bi-weekly meeting with my manager tomorrow morning at 10:30. Thankfully it will be a short one, but I was hoping to have a day to prepare for it - I don't really have that much time. Unless I want to start preparing tonight. Pshyeah! Not. I have a very, very, very hard time doing work at home now. Sure, I'll do it, but it has to be absolutely necessary in order for me to do it. Wanting to be better prepared for my meeting doesn't constitute a necessity. I'll survive. My night is too precious for me to give up! I have my project to finish and some TV or movies to watch. So since there are no photos to go with this blog, I'll end it now... not much more to say, anyway! My evening awaits.

Wow. It's hot.

I'm jumping on the bandwagon and will spend part of this post talking about the heat. The heat is the news everywhere... or at least at Boston.com, which is where I get the vast majority of my news. Today I called Doug and told him that we could turn on the air conditioner tonight. I was baking, literally, in my office, and then I went outside to quickly run across the Christian Science plaza to get some corn for dinner and must have sweated off five pounds in the 10 minutes total that I was actually outside of the air conditioning. I am not a fan of air conditioning. I will do whatever is in my power to avoid turning it on at home, and hate the way my body has to adjust to the heat outside when I leave work after having spent eleven hours in it. But it's just so hot today, so I've caved. The first time we'll have had the air on all summer. Not too bad! The cats will be happy. Right now they're just lying around, as most cats are in this heat, trying to press their upside-down bodies into any corner they can to try to absorb any bit of coolness they might find there.

So I believe I forgot to discuss our vacuum cleaner episode in my last post. Saturday morning I woke up and jogged around the track at the high school. This was ambitious of me, especially since at 8:30 when I was out there it was already 80 degrees. But when I came back I decided to spend a little time watering the flowers and cleaning up the back steps area. I neglect the outside of the house so much. I feel very guilty about this. All spring and summer I've been meaning to clean up the back vestibule area, the little back porch where you enter the house. And so on Saturday, once the endorphins kicked in from my jog, I tidied and vacuumed this space. Because I was on a roll I then moved on to vacuum the rest of the house. Thoroughly vacuum. Vacuum the moldings, the doorways, the tops of the cabinets, the ceilings... you name it, I was vacuuming it. And then, suddenly, the vacuum stopped. I had turned it off to drag it to another room and put on a different attachment, and when I tried to turn it back on again there was nothing. Just silence. So I fiddled with the cord, Doug tried out several different plugs, we shook it, we jiggled the on/off button... nothing. Doug decided that it had overheated, but I decided that it was broken. I called the help line that was pasted to the front of the vacuum and was told to take it in to Mr. Sweeper, because the Dyson helpguy had no idea what could be wrong. So at about noon Doug and I trekked out into the heat to visit Mr. Sweeper, bracing ourselves for when he told us that we'd be swimming in a sea of cat fur because he wouldn't be able to have the vacuum back to us for a week or more. Come to find out, that preparation wasn't necessary.

We get to Mr. Sweeper and a nice young man comes out and asks us what the problem is. We tell him our vacuum cleaner is broken; it won't turn on. I begin to tell him that we have three cats and I was spending quite a bit of time vacuuming that morning and then suddenly it stopped working, and he immediately said that he was going to check for clogs. He takes the vacuum into the back room and not a minute later comes out with a handful of junk, showing us evidence of our problem. Sure enough, our vacuum was just clogged. In his hands were four pens, about a pound of cat hair, a few twisty-things from the top of milk containers, and enough cat food to feed the cats for a week. Well, not really, but there was a lot of stuff. "Vacuums don't suck up pens, guys," was what he said to us. Doug and I look at each other and each turn a deep shade of red. I mean, really. Clogged! Our vacuum was clogged! And we were both convinced that it was broken, Home Depot had sold us a lemon, and that we'd made a mistake going with the Animal. Anyway, once we apologized for being so stupid about our vacuum cleaner, we paid Mr. Sweeper $5 for his time and effort and took our vacuum home. I haven't used it since. I'm still a little embarrassed about the whole ordeal.

I am no longer embarrassed by our fish tank, though. Doug picked up a tiny three-gallon tank this weekend and now our cory cats are living in style in the living room. They love hiding in the pirate ship. If we don't forget to feed them, maybe these three hardy little buggers will be with us for a while longer.

And then this past weekend I had a reunion of sorts with some friends from high school. It was Jan's 30th birthday party at Jason's apartment in Newton. Thanks to Facebook I was made aware of the party and invited, and I went. It was fun! I hadn't seen Jan or Karen since our five-year high school reunion, which is something like six or seven years ago. Jason I saw a few years back when I was working at the O'Neill Library at BC, but Jaime and Krissi I haven't seen since... well, high school at least. It was fun to catch up. They met Doug, I met their other halves... I'm glad I saw them and I was glad to wish Jan a happy birthday. Yay thirty!

Now pardon me while I finish melting...

Christmas in Connecticut

Hello! Doug and I are back from five days in the lovely Nutmeg State, and I have to say that our stay was indeed lovely. I've never spent Christmas in any other state, but somehow Christmas seems right in Connecticut. This doesn't mean that I would be adverse to a Massachusetts Christmas... someday I think it would be fantastic to have the families up to our house for the holiday celebration - for us to do the cooking, cleaning, uber-decorating, and for us to have the houseguests. Once we get that guest room all set there will be no excuse!

Christmas in Connecticut this year started on Tuesday, December 23rd, and lasted through Saturday, December 27th, and Doug and I, once again, had a whirlwind tour of the state. We started in East Hartford, then Hartford, then Monroe, then Portland, then East Hartford again, which is where we ended up for the final leg of our journey. We get our money's worth out of our car over the holidays, that's for sure. But while it is a lot of driving that we do, it's all worth it, because we get to see so many people, and that's what Christmas is all about - hanging out with friends and family.

Day One: Tuesday, December 23rd
Day one started with me working a half-day and Doug sleeping for a half-day. Once those two chores were out of the way we began to pack ourselves (including the cats) up to head down to CT for the duration of our holiday. We left Massachusetts (are we the Constitution State? No, that's CT. But CT is also the Nutmeg State. So what's Massachusetts, besides the Tax State? I'll have to look that up.) at about 4:45pm and made it to the highway at about 5pm, which is probably the height of rush hour. Traffic was particularly bad, though - didn't let up until we got through the Sturbridge tollbooth on the Mass Pike. This meant that we were going to be late for our dinner reservations with two of my friends from high school, Tamera and Shannon, and their respective husbands/boyfriends. Doug and I made a few calls to try to reach either Tamera or Shannon to let them know of our tardiness (with Chris to our rescue - THANK YOU!), and after dropping off the three beasties in East Hartford (as we were going to travel down to Monroe after the dinner and spend Christmas Eve with the Siskos, and the cats aren't allowed there) we headed over to the Trumbull Kitchen in Hartford for dinner. I had never met Tamera's boyfriend, Timothy, before, and while I had met Shannon's now-husband, Kevin, before, I'd not seen him for a year. And plus, Tamera had never met Doug and Shannon had never met Doug in context of me. So it was a big meeting for all of us. I'd say it went well, too, despite us being late. Conversation was good, meeting Timothy was great, and Tamera and Shannon looked wonderful, just like last year. We visited with Shannon and Kevin (and Marley, their wonderful lab) post-dinner, and then headed down to Monroe. I wish we could have spent more time catching up, but there wasn't really time. I will say this, though - Tamera seems very happy with Timothy, and he seems like a great guy, so I hope good things happen there. And Shannon and Kevin spent a little time in Belgium for their honeymoon this last fall, so it was fun to share stories. Yes, a fun evening, and here are some photos - note that Tamera is in blue and Shannon's in white.

Day Two: Wednesday, December 24th
We woke up in Monroe, CT, to pouring rain. Merry Christmas Eve! We had a couple of last-minute gifts to get for Grandpa and Uncle Bruce, so we got those, and then spent the day visiting with Mr. & Mrs. Sisko, Grandpa, and Uncle Bruce. Doug and I hadn't seen Uncle Bruce since last Christmas, so it was good to see him. He never stays long, though, and didn't stay long enough to open our gift of a whole year's worth of vintage farm tractors (a new one for every month!), but we were glad to see him nonetheless. As always, Mrs. Sisko put on a great show, with plenty, oh-so-plenty, of food and drink. We got a great lamp for Christmas from the Siskos (photos below), and it looks just like we thought it would in our living room - perfect. So thank you! Here's something I noticed while at the Sisko house this time, though - in every room there is the same photo of Doug - his senior year photo from Fairfield High. There's one on the refrigerator in the kitchen, one in the sitting room in the front of the house, one in Mrs. Sisko's bedroom, one in the upstairs bedroom where we stay, and one in the living room. Everywhere I go there's Doug's high-school self to greet me. I wonder how he feels about that... But anyway, here are some photos to document the day:

Day Three: Thursday, December 25th
Merry Christmas! There seem to be new Christmas traditions each year, and this year was no exception. I think that this year established the way Christmases will be for the next few years, though - Christmas Eve with the Siskos, Christmas Day with the Sheridan side of the extended family, and Christmas night at my parents' in East Hartford with my nuclear family (minus my sister and her family, who will come to visit either a few days before or a few days after Christmas day). So on Christmas morning we packed up, left Monroe, drove to East Hartford to drop off all of our presents for that house, collected my mom, dad, and brother, and then headed over to Portland to celebrate the holiday with my dad's two sisters and their husbands, his brother, his two aunts, and my two cousins. There's always so much to eat there, and always so many laughs. My mother always said that she loved hanging out with my dad and his sisters because it was a laugh a minute, and it's true, really. Margaret and Mary have such great senses of humor. Christmas is always good for a little Elvis humor, too, and this year Elvis somehow showed up on the cover of Barack Obama's Dreams From My Father. Some scissors and a little tape can add humor to anything. Here's everyone hovering around the desserts:

After celebrating in Portland, we came back to East Hartford to exchange gifts between my nuclear family - Doug, my mom, dad, my brother, and me. My mother, the lucky one, is going on a cruise to the Caribbean in January, so she got a new camera to take along. Now we just have to teach her how to get the photos from her camera to the computer and she'll be set. My brother got a cool Monet figurine, Doug got a Chumby (that, unfortunately, came with a bum AC adapter, so he won't be able to really use it until he gets the replacement in the mail), I got a new coat, and my dad got socks, a sweater, a book, new shoes... we all made out well. Even Tyrone got something - a giant rawhide bone that will keep him occupied for days. Santa was good to everyone this year. Now for the photos.








Day Four: Friday, December 26th
What better way to spend the morning after Christmas, after eating all that food and sitting around on our butts, than to go for a brisk hike? There isn't a better way as far as I'm concerned, so we all got into the car and went to Gay City in Hebron to burn off some Christmas calories. After our hike we tried to go see Tom Cruise in Valkyrie, but it was sold out! We were amazed that there were that many people willing to get up and go to see Tom Cruise in a movie on the day after Christmas, but then again, we were there trying to do it so why wouldn't other people? We ended up getting tickets instead to the 7:10 show and then went to Marshall's to check out their wares before we went home to plan for my sister's family to come over the next day and to grab some quick dinner before the movie. Sasha posed for a few photos before we left for the movie, and they're inserted below. As far as the movie goes, we all liked it, some of us more than others. I actually liked Tom Cruise in it, and so did my brother. Doug was a little iffy on whether Tom was the right guy for the part, and my mother definitely did not like Tom cast as a Nazi (albeit a "good" Nazi). We were all weary of sitting through a movie that was going to try to be suspenseful even though we already knew how it would end (Hitler wasn't assassinated, everyone, sorry to say), but I think the movie was pretty good. It got 2.5 stars from Ty Burr in the Boston Globe, which was a very accurate scoring - not good enough for three stars, but not bad enough for two. All in all, we were very entertained so felt we got our money's worth. Now for the photos for the day (unfortunately none of Tom with his eye patch!):









Day Five: Saturday, December 27th
Saturday finally rolled around, the last day of our holiday visit to Connecticut. My sister, Mike, and the kids (oh, and Rose the golden retriever, too) came to my parents' house for brunch, and then opened all of their presents (there was no evidence of an ailing economy on this day, that's for sure). Uncle Jimmy and Madeline and Anna came over for the festivities, too, and we had a good day. Here are some photos that will give you a good idea of how we spent our time:













So, that's the end of Christmas 2008. Doug and I have yet to exchange gifts, but we may do that later this week. We're tired, and to be honest I'm a little tired of presents. Christmas is not about the presents to me. It's about sitting by the lighted Christmas tree in a warm room with family around, having good conversations, telling funny stories, taking lots of pictures, and listening to some Christmas music in the background. Oh, and of course eating Christmas cookies and wishing I had on elastic-waist pants. That's what I like the most about Christmas. So thank you everyone for your gifts, but thank you even more for letting us spend our holiday with you and for making Christmas 2008 such a good one.