cat named pig

It’s been a while since Halloween, so why not break out the costumes for Father’s Day?

Hoo boy. I think this is the longest I’ve ever gone without updating. And I’d like to say that I’ve been busy doing important, life-dream-fulfilling and community-bettering types of things with the time that I normally use to blog, but in reality, all that time has gone to vampires. Seriously, all of it.

I seem to be having a sort of mid-life (one-third-life?) crisis that makes me act like a teenager, staying up waaaaay too late reading first the Twilight series and then the Sookie Stackhouse mysteries (HBO’s TrueBlood is based on these). I made Matt reopen our long-expired Blockbuster account to rent the movie version of Twilight, because I just couldn’t wait for it to come in the mail from Netflix. (I had to watch it before I went to the theater to see New Moon, obviously.) And then all this week, we’ve also been watching the Vampire Diaries Marathon on the CW.*

Needless to say, I am not proud of any of this.

A year ago, I would have totally made fun of anyone over the age of seventeen who was this thoroughly on board the Vampire Train. But I have to admit, this stuff takes up exactly the right amount of brain space at the end of a long day of bundling Elliot in and out of his snowsuit, playing Goodnight Moon the board game (seriously, who turns a soporific bedtime story into a game, for crying out loud, and expects it to be entertaining? Yet Elliot, strange child, seems to enjoy it), and trying to peel clementines fast enough to keep up with the demand.

The holidays are definitely the Busy Season in my job as a housewife (the very funny Julia used the phrase “Housewife Midterms” a while ago and I keep thinking of it as I add yet another item to my To Do/Buy/Wrap/Clean List). But it’s fun to be busy with gifts and cookies and making the kids’ holiday decorating look less, well, less like it was done by kids. I might even mail some holiday cards as early as tomorrow, which would be a personal record. (Although, now that I wrote that, it is equally likely that I will watch TV for two hours tonight before reading Club Dead into the wee hours, willfully ignoring the pile of unaddressed envelopes until New Year’s Eve.)

So that’s what’s going on with me. What have you been up to this December?

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*To give you an idea of just how teenager-y I’ve become, I actually found myself complaining out loud this week because So You Think You Can Dance and The Vampire Diaries were on at the same time. This is not a problem I would have had a year ago.

Every year, we have the kids dictate letters to Santa. This year, Siena wrote her own, complete with phonetic spelling and inventive punctuation. Elliot dictated his and then signed it with a bunch of capital E’s. Because if one is good, several more are better. Kind of how I feel about chocolates, or hundred dollar bills.

Anyway, here are their letters, painstakingly tapped out with two fingers onto my iPhone (random capital letters by Elliot and extraneous hyphens and apostrophes by Siena included as seen in the originals).

Elliot:

Dear Santa,

I have a Wall-e and I want Eve. I have been a good boy. I I OOO t
E E E EVE

Siena:

Dear Santa,
I want ‘ Eve. I want my one [read: own] computer. And I also want a magniflying glass. I love- you.

Love – Siena

Yeah. I think they’re getting Wall-e’s girlfriend Eve. And I don’t think Siena’s getting her own computer, although it would be kind of nice not to be pestered about PBSKids.org while I’m doing something important. Like scanning Facebook and giving the thumb’s up to people’s pictures of kids in holiday outfits, while ignoring the fact that I still need to order our stupid holiday cards that I made back in October and even bragged about in a fit of smugness on this very blog, before ignoring their existence for six weeks and oh, crap, they’re going to be late again and WHEN will I learn? Smug never works out for me.

Yeah, I know. November 17th today. And not that anyone even cares about Halloween anymore at this point, but here are some pictures anyway. I would hate to deprive anyone of seeing this sad chicken:

Because I am in a great mood, here’s a little Sunday night round-up of things that fall solidly in the plus column:

• It’s officially Chili Season — a bigger deal to me than Football Season, although they definitely overlap and both go well with beer. We kicked the season off this year with the classic vegetarian chili recipe we’ve made so often we can do it without thinking. Or while watching football, as Matt did this weekend. (I would argue that’s the same as not thinking; he might disagree.) Sunday nights and one other meal a week are now accounted for, from now until spring — wahoo!
• It’s also (duh) Pumpkin Season — I made these on Friday night and they’re almost gone. And if I’m honest? I’m totally having one for breakfast in the morning. (For lunch I’m eating the leftover cream cheese frosting with a spoon.)
• Sara and Avery were in town from South Dakota, and the girls didn’t even destroy anything while Sara and I sat around and talked about foods that taste good. We also enjoyed a pumpkin ale, because, you know, ’tis the season.
• This weekend we went to: the farmers’ market, Trader Joe’s, and Rainbow Foods. We are ALL SET, grocery-wise. We won’t need to leave our house for a month. Which is fine, since it’s supposed to snow again soon. And that cuts my will to leave the house in half every time.
• In a burst of Martha-esque inspiration, I threw my customary laziness to the wind and worked on our holiday cards for this year. IN OCTOBER. We might just send them out BEFORE the holidays this year, instead of just pretending they were supposed to be “New Year’s Cards.”

Wow, this is a fairly boring list that in no way justifies how happy I feel right now. I think this sudden joie de vivre is mostly due to the fact that I was sick earlier in the week and then a miracle took place and now I AM NO LONGER SICK. I CAN DO ANYTHING. (If you read this blog last winter at all, during the Great and Tedious Chronicling of Minor Unwellness, you might understand why the simple fact of recovering from a cold feels miraculous. I AM HEALED!)

(Whoa. Calm down there, Self.)

Here are some pictures of kids with pumpkins. Happy mid-October!

My friend Jamie wrote a blog post on a topic I had been kicking around in the back of my mind on Easter Sunday. I chose to rant about the bat in the wall instead, but when I read her post and started to formulate the world’s longest comment, I decided to just write about it here after all. 

I think religion and how to celebrate holidays are tricky subjects for many parents, especially when the parents’ religious beliefs differ or when the family does not attend services/belong to an organized religion, yet wants to have something to celebrate at festive times of the year. We fall into both categories, as do many people we know. 

In our non-religious household, we celebrate the arrival of Spring at Easter-time. We celebrate light, warmth and gathering with family at Christmas-time. A winter holiday of light and a spring holiday celebrating the life cycle of birth, death, and rebirth/renewal exist in many traditions in addition to Christianity, so it makes sense to us to mark these holidays. And whether it’s because we grew up with it or because of some innate human need to imbue certain times of the year with religious significance, it just feels right to be celebrating at these times. 

Families are all about compromise and blending. Holidays, to us, are all about family and tradition. While a Solstice celebration would probably be more in line with where I am on the religious/spiritual spectrum, Matt and I chose instead to pass along many of the Christmas traditions we grew up celebrating in our own families. Same with Easter: we don’t go to church but we do dye eggs and get together with both our families. By incorporating some of the popular elements of these holidays, I feel we honor the families/traditions we come from, and by adding our own unique elements and explanations, I feel we are adapting these traditions in a way that is meaningful for us. (I look forward to further “customizing” our family celebrations as the kids get older. This whole topic is something I very much want to discuss with them, when we get there.) 

I do wonder sometimes if it seems hypocritical or even offends people that we celebrate Christmas and Easter without much mention of Jesus. When we talk about Jesus, we describe him as a great teacher and leader, who emphasized peace and love. We’ve told Siena that Christmas celebrates his birth and Easter commemorates his death. (Sort of like a Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, she probably thinks.) 

As she grows older and learns more of the story behind these days, she will come to understand that many, many people see Jesus as much more than a great leader. And she may decide she agrees with them. Or she may decide she believes something totally different. We just want to be sure she is the one deciding what feels right for her. (Elliot too, of course, assuming he ever sits still long enough to learn anything about any religion.)  

The last thing we would want to do is offend anyone who sees these holidays as sacred and our interpretation as irreverent, but we feel like this is a good starting point. We’ve tried to be age-appropriate and sensitive to all beliefs in our explanations. We look forward to our kids’ experiencing many different religious traditions and teachings, and we look forward to hearing what they think and what answers will resonate with them.