Overtures

"My new phone has a reject call feature with text messaging." "That's cool. But I don't even know what that means."

"Like I can reject a call and the person will receive a text message. I'll have to write some automated text messages."

"Like 'Busy, banging my wife'?"

"Um, yeah. Like that."

***

I have felt utterly exhausted by the last two weeks. I've been pushing through a couple of projects that were, in themselves, behemoths. I've been stressed and cranky and waking up thinking it was Sunday, only to horrifiedly realize it was Tuesday. I've showered the absolute minimum that a first world citizen can shower without receiving deodorant samples sent anonymously to my mailbox. Yet. And I entered into a new, financially imprudent love affair with the creme brulee latte (with soy!) at Sixbucks. My lands, is that the tonic of the gods.

*** I recently discovered we have the Gospel channel. This is not your standard Jaysus channel. It has really good programming! Not just Southern evangelical preachers trying to drain your pockets. It's good! Not that I could name a single Gospel artist, but they have a lot of contempo Christian concerts. I've watched the Jars of Clay concert twice already. Excellent. Even though the lead singer is dressed like Mark from "Rent" sans the hipster glasses. I think they are a highly underrated band. Their albums are all quite different in sound but the lyrics are consistently excellent; they are good studies of the uncliched faith journey.

*** In the midst of this end-of-semester distress and the condition of what Loverpants called "living under a rock; you didn't even know Gisele and Tom had their baby two days ago?!" I have really been moved by moments of sweetness from my family. The moments with Baby Girl when she takes her little pincers to my cheeks and, pinching the Cabbage Patchy flesh of my face, says, "Cheeksies! You so cute!" The moments when I don't at all deserve a hug and Loverpants gives me several in a morning.

I have also been returning again and again to Micah 5. I never knew how explicit the birth of the Christ child was, in prescription and spirit. That He would be born in the smallest of the tribes, that He would release Israel, and that He would be their peace.

In the last two weeks of fitful sleep and ever-expanding belly, I have called upon this peace to continue to reign in my heart and mind. I think of the sweetness of holding my own baby, and just the profundity of the Lord sending His own baby to earth to be stewarded by mere mortals, and I am closer to understanding how precious is the peace that was sent here for us to hold, like a mild little infant that so needs us to be still.

Wha! December?

The month is allegedly December but I remain unconvinced. Not only was I driving around yesterday with windows rolled down but OTHER PEOPLE were, too! Usually it is just I, the hor-motional preggo, along with my usual crew of menopausal women drivers in Boston cruising with windows cracked while snowflakes fall all willy nilly around. Today was 60 degrees outside! That's considered humid and balmy in parts of Ireland!

But I am also stupefied that it is December because that means my students should know MLA citation backward and forward by now, and surely I should have my holiday cards addressed and my presents wrapped and I should actually be taking stock of the fact that my Baby Girl is going to be TWO YEARS-OLD in just over a month's time!?!

I don't know how it's the last month of 2009 Anno Domini but shoot. This year has been so much fun and the last few weeks have been a hoot and a half. I've been festivemaking and just being a busy social bumblebee of late. Here are a few snaps of the mischief:

Attended Kalev and Hannah's baptism. So proud of these kids. We have really watched them grow up, and grow up in the Lord which is indescribably sweet.

Watched Baby Girl and her gal pal Lily chase a cat up onto its perch at a holiday pahty.

Felt some faux wall grass.

Wore a pilgrim hat. Charged the camera.

Set the Thanksgiving picnic table eleventy-few times on the living room floor.

Ate some popcorn. Skimmed the catalogs. (This picture makes me melt.)

Decked the tree.

Toppled some pillow piles.

Took ourselves very seriously indeed.

Grumpsgiving

I must admit that I spent a great fraction of yesterday wearing my pouty-pants and had Loverpants been inclined to sell me on QVC (which totally would have been within his rights to do, so miserable of a living companion yesterday was I) I cannot even imagine how many freebies he would have had to thrown in - cashmere slippers and Flobees and boxes of Swiss chocolates - to peddle me off to the highest bidder. I love holidays in my mind. In my mind, there is garland hanging from every doorway, a potpourri of delicious smells wafting throughout our home, my family's countenance: pure joy. In reality, I wake up each holiday that I am away from my extendeds in a state of panic. I didn't plan any traditions! Why is my husband watching videos about Google Wave and why is no one else watching the parade with me?

So I end up taking a 3 hour depressive nap and waking up and eating a roll of OREOs and hating my holiday inadequacy and willing the day to pass so we can get back to regular life with my regular expectations thereof.

Much of this has to do with my parents and especially my father being a bona fide holiday freak, counting aloud the days until the next holiday, giving us permission always to sleep in, pig out, and make like the freaking Griswold's whenever the calendar called for it. And then my parents split and the holidays never felt the same because they never were the same and so I am forever trying to get back to reclaim my rightful holidays since I didn't ask for this and call me Veruca Salt but I want my childhood back NOW!

The other part of this has to do with marrying someone who is a pilgrim with no homeland. My husband is an immigrant, true, but he also grew up assimilated (see also: The Accidental Asian by Eric Liu). He does not have a memory of Korean traditions because he did not grow up in Korea. He does not have memories of American traditions because his parents did not grow up in America. Does anyone know what this is like? Does anyone know what it feels like to not want to have to fault your partner for his lack of traditional novelty, but also to not have to explain why you want certain things to just be automatic? Why you want to feel the special-ness of a day without having to put so much energy toward making it extraspecially special?

***

I went for a long walk yesterday afternoon and thought about my stocked cabinets and my beautiful daughter and my gorgeous husband and my bathroom that smells like baby pee and I truly was grateful for all of it. I decided that this would be my starting point in the future, that holidays would be a time for me to take stock of my blessings and to try to bless others in special ways.

That being said, I've got 10 of the 30 stockings claimed so far. I don't suppose you'd like to sponsor one, too? :)