Seal

preparing for the big dive

the reward for a job well done!

The fondue turned out well this year, after the disaster of last year's Christmas Eve, I was determined to tweak the recipe and get it right.

wrapping and wrapping and mailing and wrapping and hiding and trying to remember where I hid stuff

some people are more excited about making Christmas cookies, than others.

I'm the one that managed to spill an entire jar of pink sprinkles, after cautioning Freyja.

Rolf laughing at my folly.

My continued love affair with Paul Klee

Today I am thinking of a friend that loves the notion color theory.

I just want to wrap myself up in the yellows and wallow a little.

I need a weekend from my weekend

What a totally busy weekend it has been so far, starting with my insane christmas tree decking Friday evening...
I feel a little like Henry from the last scene in Goodfella's, where he is running around doing all kinds of unrelated tasks while making spaghetti sauce. 
Saturday I met with a colleague to over haul our mission and vision statement and put some final touches on a new logo.  While we worked on our mission, I had a crew working on a new bike shelter, three new windows being installed, and a new partitian being built in the five year old class restroom!
We gabbed for about four hours, which was fun, but damn, I was tired when I left.

I headed home just in time to pick Maxwell up from a birthday party wayyyy the heck out in NE, and we hit the grocery store on the way home. 

When I got home I made two pies, set the table for the St. Nicholas fondue party, and started shedding cheese and prepping the other stuff.

We had a nice dinner with friends, cleaned up, played Wii bowling, and headed to bed.

Freyja woke me up at 5:00am, so we cleaned up the bedrooms, and the upstairs bathroom, ate breakfast and headed to Home Depot at 7:00am (who knew? Yes, friends you too can do your home improvement projects at 7:00am on Sunday! ), where we purchased sealant for a restroom partition at the school.  

Miss F and I headed down to the school and she played while I sealed the wood and did a little deep cleaning. 

I also managed to knock over a big bottle of eucalyptus oil along the way, so the school is smelling mightily minty right now!

We headed home, ate lunch and I sewed new curtains for the newly improved restroom.

Mark just peeked his head in to remind me that I have to pick his mom up in a half hour, so she and I can volunteer at Maxwell's school art festival until 5:00pm!

No rest for the wicked this weekend! 

getting things ready for St. Nicholas Day

the boring part

 We are doing a very scaled back St. Nicholas Day dinner this year. 

No goose.  

I can't deal with a goose. 

Rolf has insinuated that I am happy to dispense with the goose because I hate cooking them, and I don't eat them, which is somewhat true, but really it is a matter of time and my sanity, and the hefty price tag geese are sporting these days.   

$70? 

Really? for something I don't eat?

I think not.

I have to work today and work the art sale at Maxwell's school on Sunday, so we are streamlining things.

I ran around like a crazy person from 3:00-6:00 buying, decorating, cleaning up the mess from decorating the tree, yesterday. 
Thank goodness our neighbor sells trees, so I didn't have to drive far with the trunk open, which makes me nervous.

Then Mark came home and assisted with the gingerbread house.  

Maxwell lauded me for minimal yelling.  

Even when I spilled potting soil on the carpet. 

I was positively Zen.

re-potted Christmas Cactus

                           Freyja did a pretty good job of decorating the tree this year, and I did a very good job of not interfering. 

Mark brought home a sample of DOMO lights from work.  Oh goody...

resisting the urge to eat the house and the snow and the decorations!

the finished product

please don't take my picture when I have been running around like a crazy woman for three hours.

candy hands!

the great tree debate

Mark grew up with fluffy, conical Douglas Fir tree, bedecked in red and white with tinsel. 

I like skinny tall Nobles with lots of space for large mercury glass, vintage ornaments.  
The kind of tree to get is a struggle each year.  Some years I get what Rolf and I refer to as the "cone tree" which Mark and the kids like, and I wind up hating every minute I have to look at it, and other years we get my kind of tree and the children feel like it isn't a real Christmas tree.   Last year I got my choice, but I came home early, put all the lights on and Mark was so grateful not to have to hassle with it, that he overlooked my European tree.

I haven't made up my mind yet, on what we will do this year.

reactions and actions

Today one of our subs was hit by a van while crossing the street.

YIKES!

I took the call from the emergency room nurse.

We are listed as her emergency contact, as she is an exchange student.  Not a lot of contacts.

My first impulse was to get all the facts.

How bad is it? What do you mean by scull fracture, an open wound, a hairline fracture, what? Were the police involved, did the driver have insurance, etc.  

As a rule I am good under stress and in an emergency. I tend to be calm and unflappable, which is often construed as cold.  

I like to know the facts, to some people that quality is interpreted as uncaring. 

When someone is in the hospital, it is not my instinct to go visit them.

Is that weird of me?

Apparently is it.

The few times I have been in the hospital, the last thing I wanted was visitors.

I don't like people seeing me weak, or in my pajamas, or oozing bodily fluids. 

When I have visitors, I feel like I must entertain them, and when I am sick or injured I don't feel very entertaining.

I feel like being left the hell alone, which is what I usually do with sick people.

I am learning that my way is unusual and makes me seem unconcerned.

I am a very concerned person, however I find idle concern without direction or a plan of action, highly irritating.  

I realize that it would be helpful to learn to gush and hand-wring and be more jumpy, so that I can convey the level of concern that is genuinely residing in my heart. 

I spoke with a colleague later to see how the teacher was doing, and she felt that she should be doing more, however undefined more is.  
I tired to reassure my friend that she was doing the right things, because she was.  She was being totally sensible.

What more can you do?  You live in a tiny place with steep steps, not suitable for someone with broken bones.  Your own health is poor.  


Should I offer to care for the girl myself?  It would be a totally impractical proposition, but again, it seems like one should make the offer, even though one knows that there is no substance behind it.   I won't but I did feel that I should, which made me feel very far afield from anything meaningful or real, which my concern and heartache over the injury was. 

Suddenly it was all about judgment and social convention and not at all about the welfare of one individual.

Thanksgiving 2010

 moving the food out of the kitchen

post dinner lounging

 wild children

the prep crew prepping veggies

The acorn tree

the loooong table

 between the extreme lameness of Blogger, taking 25 minutes to upload ten photos, and my camera's settings being all wonky, making most of the photos blurry, this will be a short post.

We had a big Thanksgiving dinner, with twenty people and lots of crafting on my part.   My name tags were not exactly what I wanted, but they were close.

Thank you  to the fabulous artist, Katherine for helping me realize my vision.

Things went well, the food was great, lots of friends helped and brought things and that made my work pretty simple.

Holidays are always hard for me.

I am childish in my inability to ever get over having my own family of origin being all screwed up and fractured.

It messes with my head and causes me a great deal of pain around times like Thanksgiving.  I wind up feeling a lifetime of loss all over me and it often feels difficult not to cave in or be swept away by those feelings.

Thank goodness I have managed to accumulate a great and amazing body of lovely people that help insulate me from all that pain and make it feel somewhat manageable.

Thank goodness for my husband that totally gets me, and will tolerate me asking a million times "do you love me?" and will answer a million times, "yes I do."

the kid table

twenty people is a LOT! but they look pretty good by candlelight.

the pie and some cakes

the one year old's dad had to sit at the play table, to get her to eat.
It was fun to have a little one around, but she made me tired, just watching.  I am glad my children are bigger these days!

the leaf garland was lovely

the guests watching Maxwell's movie

baby wrangler's doing dishes

the turkey and the ham

Heidi wayyyy out of focus, damn camera

Don and Freyja

I need some inspiration

the stupid living room that I hate,  yes I do need those giant speakers, because I like to listen to records, rather than CDs. 

 Our house is large, which I like, but we have this really stupid living room that is an odd shape with a fire place and big windows, that make furniture placement really hard.
I am not one of those talented design people, either, so that contributes to the problems, as well as a the fact that our furniture is old and funky and shitty and ugly.
The livingroom is making me insane, just bothering the hell out of me every time I walk into the room.  The giant wooden box, with the curtain, is hiding the tv.

The living room  becomes an issue for me every year around this time, when I am about to host people. 

I feel ashamed of our crappy living room, and the shabby furniture and become totally overwhelmed with schemes to make things better.  I have washed all the curtains and slip covers this week, which makes things slightly less dusty, but hardly better looking. 

the sun room, with windows on three sides, and the green sofa that Mark will not let me get rid of, despite the fact that I hate green.  In his defense, I do like to lie on that sofa and read sometimes.

 The living room is attached on one end to what is supposed to be the dinning room, but we use it as a sort of library / playroom for the kids, we use the sun room for our formal dining room, and mostly dine in the dining area in the kitchen.

Freyja and the dog have nothing to do with this post, she is just demanding to be shown, in return for letting me type.

looking into the playroom, and seeing a king's ransom worth of Playmobile houses and castles, people and animals. 
The arch is making the ceiling look low, it is acually a nice high ceiling,
which almost makes up for the lack of decent overhead lighting. 

Some day my children will be older, and I will not have to have toys in the playroom and then perhaps I will use the dining room to dine and the sun room to read and bask in the sun.

another birthday cake

lanterns drying on the "lantern drying racks" AKA bowls

 I am preparing for Thanksgiving, my big holiday, my thing, and this year I am making paper lanterns for the table.  They are simple to make, with tissue paper and glue. 

I forced Mark and Maxwell to help me one evening, and Mark's came out the best.  

Who knew?

the finished product with candles

 I had to do a birthday party for a friend last week.  I made a very fancy complicated dinner, and a very fancy complicated layer cake, with a Bavarian cream filling. 

 It was all going well, until about 30 minutes before dinner, when I peeked in the fridge to check on the cake, only to discover that it has split down the center and had started to list to one side, rather pronouncedly. EEEK! 

A baker's worst nightmare! 

 I whipped a lot of cream, added some chocolate powder, used it to spackle the crack, then had Rolf hold the cake together, while I tied a grossgrain ribbon around it, to anchor the top layer, and make it look as though I had intended it to be that way... pretty freaking BRILLIANT if I do say so myself.  AND I do.

chocolate Bavarian torte with raspberry sauce

I have a crackling, barking cough. 

I never cough.

I have aches and pains, and the occasional shattering migraine, but never coughs. 

I associate coughing  with weak people, pigeon chested and snot nosed or dirty smokers. 

I think of myself, arrogantly, as strong and tough and free from coughing and sniffling.

Just one more indicator that things are not always as they seem, or as I need them to be.  

I am sitting in the office cruising fabric websites, feeling sick and worrying that my nose might rub right off the next time I blow it, and Freyja walks in wearing an aligator costume...

"Mommy can I ask you (she means tell me) something?"

sure

"I love you & this suit is choking my neck and scratching my neck"

There you go.  Sometimes things make perfect sense. 

just not good enough, I guess

Since November 1st, I have been unsuccessfully trying to login to

Apparently they really, really don't want me. 
I can't get signed in, and when I go through the considerable hassle of getting a new password, I can never get the page to load and finish.  I have wasted a fair amount of time on this, the more I am denied, to more I want it to work. 

Why do I allow something so foolish to annoy me so deeply?

It has been that kind of week. 

Lots of doors slamming in my face, a big dose of betrayal and a stupid head cold to top it off. 

This crappy week of waiting and disappointment reminded me of the very excellent Kevin Gilbert song, Waiting- and wondering what became of the CD the song was on?

I'm waiting for the apple, I'm waiting for the fall
I'm waiting for a renaissance to electrify us all
I'm waiting for the mailman to bring me news of friends
I'm waiting through the middle just to see how it will end

I'm waiting for the confidential files to be released
I'm waiting for the index on my fear to be increased
I'm waiting for the judgment of the living and the dead
I'm waiting for the Pagan times that surely are ahead
I'm waiting for the show to start, the one I paid to see
I'm waiting for the good things that are coming back to me

I'm waiting for the man made gods to do the will of men
I'm waiting for the CIA to cover up again
I'm waiting for the militants to lighten up a bit
I'm waiting for the mafia to make this song a hit

I'm waiting in the shadows with a chain around my wrist
I'm waiting with my best friend held firmly in my fist
I'm waiting for my heroes to tell me what to dream
I'm waiting for my neighbors to tell me what's obscene
I'm waiting for the apple, I'm waiting for the fall
I'm waiting for a renaissance to electrify us all

I'm waiting for love to come
I'm waiting for you to run
and I'm waiting for wonder to return.