Thanksgiving is better than Christmas

Over the River and Through the Woods

     No offense to Christmas... It is a wonderful holiday at its core but ever since I became an adult I've secretly held the  belief that Thanksgiving is actually better than Christmas.  Here are my reasons why:

1.  Reasonable expectations.  Christmas is lovely but for Christians, it's the pinnacle of holidays. Until you become jaded like me, you tell yourself that you "can't wait until Christmas," and that this will be the "best Christmas ever." You make insane plans that will take you weeks to execute, forgetting that you will also have to live a normal life (which usually in- cludes things like working and doing chores) in the weeks preceding Christmas. You spend weeks scouting out the perfect location for your Christmas card shoot only to find that it's now too late to actually send out the Christmas cards.  There are no such high expectations for Thanksgiving.  The biggest obstacle will be living out the song "Over the River  and Through the Woods,"  which is not very likely.  Then again, judging from what I've been learning on Discovery Channel reality shows, if you live in the Yukon or some where similar, you might be able to take a sleigh through white and drifted snow to grandmas house for Thanksgiving but you'll probably be having smoked salmon for dinner.

Carrots, Cauliflower, Lettuce and Potatoes

2.  Minimal advance preparations.  In theory, Christmas requires just an open, thankful heart and an appreciation for the miracle of Christ's birth.  In reality, Christmas requires all sorts of supplies: fake greenery, lights, sparkley decorations,   Christmas cards, hot chocolate, baked goods, children in cute outfits, snow, a guy with a snow white beard (I know lots of guys with salt and pepper colored goatees, but no snow white beards. This right here is a problem) and most of all,   an ability to see into hearts and minds of our loved ones so that we can purchase their Perfect Present. 

Thanksgiving, on the other hand, requires food and other people.   Even if you don't have any friends, if you offer food, you're quite likely to find some friends willing to eat it with you.If you're a horrible cook, you still have the option of being the guest.  For dinner, turkey is, of course, traditional, but if you are a vegetarian, you could call yourself a humanitarian  (or a turkeytarian?) watch the President pardon a turkey for Thanksgiving and then say you're following his example.   I  was thinking the only advance preparation you had to do was purchase your food the day before, but even THAT is not necessary - the grocery store a few miles from my house is open on Thanksgiving day from 7-3 p.m.  You can even for get the cranberries like the girl in the song by The Waitresses, as long as you remember them before 3:00 p.m. 

Colorful peppers - waiting for Thanksgiving Dinner!

3.  Food and conversation. Christmas traditions are varied but can be so complex, is it any wonder so many of them are bound to not live up to your expectations?  For example, when I was in second grade, I feel asleep watching the  moon through my bedroom window, just KNOWING that if I watched that exact spot and stayed awake long enough, I would  surely see Santa's sled fly by, since in all the pictures I saw, it was always flying in front of the moon.  Unfortunately, I fell asleep too early. When you get a bit older your "perfect tradition" might involve spending a little time with your significant other who probably has vastly differing ideas of what is the perfect tradition - any compromise would mean slightly mar  ring the perfect vision in your head.  When you have kids of your own, your tradition probably involves multiple families  AND running home in time ensure that Santa slides his fat self noiselessly down your too-thin-for-a-person chimney      and deposits his presents, eats the cookies, drinks the milk, takes the carrot for the reindeer, cleans up his mess and    does it all before the kiddies awaken at 4 am and decide that they want something they never put on their list, but it's  ok because "Santa will KNOW cause he knows everything."  In contrast, my friend, dear Thanksgiving involves eating, often to the point of feeling like a ball with a head, arms and legs poking out the sides, and then lingering around the table or family room, talking about inconsequential things while you digest your food and wait for the next round of stuffing yourself.  Can you handle it?  I can!

4.  Less shopping and no wrapping!  I don't know about you, but I hate shopping.  I hate it for two reasons:  I'm not sure what to buy, and I wish I had more money to buy it.  Christmas requires multiple trips to countless stores.  If you shop online, there is always the worry that the thing you ordered will arrive and not fit, or be broken and require a trip to the post office and more waiting for a return.  Also, I applaud anyone who can do all of their shopping this way.   Thanksgiving may involve more than one store, but that's pretty much at your discretion.  You can chose to run your Thanksgiving from one supermarket and no one would think you were a Thanksgiving Slacker, especially if you have a beautiful grocery store like Wegmans near your house, as my sister does.  If I had a Wegmans near MY house, I'd probably spend my holidays right there in the store.  As for the wrapping...  I usually kill my Christmas Eve wrapping instead of enjoying the day with my family.  I spend hours wrapping presents only to see them unwrapped barely 12 -24 hours later, and turned into a mess on the floor that invariably involves something important getting thrown out by accident.  The only wrapping I experience on Thanksgiving is me wrapping myself in a nice fluffy sweater when I become cold due to diverting all my body's energy to my stomach to take on the task of digestion.  

5.  On a more serious note, Thanksgiving makes you find something to be thankful for.  If you think to what we learned about how Thanksgiving began (even if it's embellished and not completely true), you realize there are things you can be thankful for.  The food on your table, the people you're sharing it with, the fact that you're alive.  If you're stuffing food in your mouth on Thanksgiving and sitting with people who are doing the same, you have something to be thankful for.  And that's enough to give you a reason to hope for the future.   

Motivating a Lazy Ass

I have a formidable goal ahead of me...  I have to run 2.5 miles.  Now, some of you out there are runners, so you're probably scoffing at me right now, but to ME, this is a formidable task.  I hate running... always have.  Even in high school I hated it.  I'd pace myself. "Don't start too fast,"  I'd tell myself, "Pace yourself."  I'd start slow, and on the last half a lap, I'd give it all I had, knowing the end was near.  Then I'd cross the finish line feeling like I could have gone faster earlier in the race, in spite of my runny nose.   Damn, I never DID get the timing right.  Now, I don't have to worry so much about over conserving my energy.  If I make it to the end of 2.5 miles without dying, that means I've succeeded.  If I make it to the end without FEELING like I'm going to die any second, that will be even better.  

Exercise in general kind of bores me unless there is a purpose to it.  Running for the sake of running feels pointless.  Now, if zombies chased me on a regular basis, I would have a much easier time training.  Raking the leaves in the yard makes sense.  Push ups - not so much although, I hate the blisters I get from raking and I love the defined arms you get from push ups...  just not enough to remember to do push ups every day.  Can't I just sleep late and dream about running and doing push ups?  I don't hate exercise all the time, I just hate it often enough to get really fit.  I admire my husband, who goes to the gym year after year and pumps iron and he looks better than a lot of guys 20 years younger.  So what if he quits every fall and reemerges at the gym every spring like a groundhog?  Me,  I'm like a smoker trying to quit smoking, but instead of quitting cigarettes, I'm quitting lazy.  I attempt to change my ways at least once a week, with varying degrees of enthusiasm.  By the way, I'm not doing dumbell curls with one hand as I type this, I'm eating ice cream. And I've got the ass to prove it!

In an attempt to conquer my lazy ways, in September I decided that I was going to walk every day during my lunch hour.  The short and long term plans were and still are as follows:  short term - walk often, building up speed and endurance, so that: Long term - I can actually run for 2.5 miles.  There were a few problems almost immediately, though.  The phrase "every day" was quickly amended to "three times a week," which seemed so much more realistic since there were bound to be times when it was raining or I had errands to run during that time.  I found a walking partner at work, who was equally enthusiastic and was willing to join me.  "Yeah, I'm THERE," she said, in September when I proposed this idea to her.   We planned a time to walk on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.  She is a social worker, however, and as you may have guessed, student issues take precedence over a walk in the great outdoors.   It's now mid November and we've walked together twice so far.

Most of the times I've walked, I've walked by myself, which was not bad... at first.  The first few times I appreciated the stretching of my limbs, my muscles in motion, the views of the surrounding neighborhood, the warm fall breezes, the smells of the plants and the nearby bay.  I felt like Walt Whitman in "Song of Myself."  Ah, it was wonderful!  And then, very quickly, it was boring.  I brought my camera.  I took pictures, which was fun, bbuuuttttt... it slowed down my walk considerably.  So I walked and thought about how every walk through that town reminds me of William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County...  But I'm no William Faulker, so that didn't stay interesting for too long, either.

Maybe if I got new sneakers...?  I imagined that new sneakers might make me want to walk.  When I first got my current pair of Adidas sneakers I remember thinking they actually felt springy, and maybe if  I got a NEW pair of Adidas, those would feel springy and they'd spring me right into that 2.5 mile run.  In theory, this was another good plan, but after several trips to the store, I couldn't decide which pair I wanted.

Then a friend of mine told me about the iphone app, MapMyWalk.  She showed me all the walks she had taken, all logged neatly and accurately in her phone.  Awesome!  I downloaded MapMyWalk... and proceeded to be unable to take a walk for the next week.  It was last week on Friday when I finally got a chance to go out for a walk with my new app.  I stepped outside, phone in hand, and loaded my app...  it was cold and windy as hell.  I didn't have a hat, and my ears were cold immediately.  Walking slowly so I could see what I was doing, I attempted to turn on the feature that would log where I was going and how fast...  I poked around some more, looking for that command...  Hummm...  Why does this stuff have to be so damn difficult?  My nose started running and I didn't have any tissues.  I walked down the street very slowly, still searching...  And then I got really pissed off and turned around and went back inside.  Dammit, if I couldn't get credit on my app for walking I was NOT GONNA WALK!  Why take a wasted walk when I could go inside where it wasn't windy?  This is the kind of exerciser I am.

I finally figured out how to use my app.  I just press the BIG yellow button marked RECORD and then the even BIGGER button marked START.  I must have been intimidated and distracted by the buttons marked distance, duration, calories, heart rate, pace, speed, laps, etc. under the LOG button.  Leave it to me to make a simple thing complicated.

So tomorrow morning I'm going to attempt to quit lazy again.  I have my app at the ready and my OLD pair of Adidas.  And I friend is joining me for the walk.  The Dunkin Donuts coffee after the walk is over is the real draw for both of us.  Ah, Saturdays!  I'll keep you posted.

Making Ursula's Trident (a Little Mermaid Jr. Stage Prop)

Ursula's Trident for The Little Mermaid Jr.

     If you've looked around only briefly, you know there are not too many pictures online of Ursula's trident.  Last year when I was an official scenery design person for the Little Mermaid Jr., I didn't even realize Ursula had her own trident.  If you want to find a picture of it online, search for the Little Mermaid on Broadway - it's a theater prop. The best picture I've seen is in the souvenir booklet you can buy when you see the professional theater production.  Now, as a parent helping out with props and scenery in a different school, when the director showed me a picture of this little known item, I said, 'Sure I think I can make that.'  

     She gave me a very nice, weathered-looking stick to use for the staff portion of the trident.  I took it home, and as soon as Crazy Dog saw it, she chewed a hearty portion off one end...

     I should have known she wasn't just photo-bombing my shot, here.  

     Luckily, I found a couple of alternative sticks in the yard. 

Here's a photo of some of what you'll need...

Subtract the duct tape (I didn't use it) and add: scissors, paper towels, a sewing machine and a drill with a drill bit slightly bigger than the wire of the hangers.   

     Since these tines are supposed to be in a flattened shape at the bottom, I took this stick over to my dad's house and had him drill a hole through the center of the stick at one end so I could thread a clothes hanger wire through the stick to make a nice, sturdy base.  

     I then added two more coat hangers - one on each side of the stick, carefully bending it in a U shape so they would stay stable, and look nice and neat.

I twisted all the wire hangers together using pliers.

     Unfortunately, I only asked Dad to drill one hole in the stick for me, having completely forgotten about the tine in the middle.    It would have been better to have a drilled hole, but since I couldn't find OUR drill anywhere, (we won't go into that topic now) and I didn't want to make another trip to Dad's house... in desperation, I made a hole in the end of the stick with an awl I found in the garage, and then I glued it in place with my friend, the glue gun.  

I also glued the other wires, just for good measure, and to prevent them from wobbling back and forth.  

     Next, I wrapped each of the tines with white paper toweling (another reason to love Bounty Paper towels.  They haven't paid me to say that, but Bounty, if you want to throw me a free roll or two that would be LOVELY).  Anyway, I wrapped and glued them down.  Careful!  Don't burn yourself with that killer hot glue gun!

     In the same way, I wrapped each tine with blue fabric and glued that down as well.  In hindsight, I probably should have used a different colored fabric for the tines as for the shells to give it a little contrast.  Or I could have covered the tines with shiny, copper colored duct tape - ooooohhhh - that would have been FANCY!  Oh well.  You might want to give that a try. 

     Next, I cut a shell shape out of both fabric, and interfacing.  My fabric was so thin and transparent, I used four layers of fabric (two on each side) and two layers of very thick interfacing. 

     Above is my initial shell shape.  I left the three middle points as well as most of the bottom open so that when I turned it right side out, the tines could poke through the holes.  I tried it on the stick and discovered that it was too big, so I turned it back and reworked it until I had a workable shell-shape.  

     Then I hand sewed the bottom closed, and added some vertical sewing lines to keep the shell in place and also give it some more definition.  

     If you're undertaking the creation of this prop, I'd go with a smaller shell to really show off the tines, and as I said earlier, I different color for the tines than for the shell.  All in all, I'm pretty happy with this one.  

Good luck, friends!  

As for me, I'm on to the next project!

  

When the Turkeys are in Charge...

     Some people are late to work when they get stuck behind a school bus.  Some people are late due to accidents, or just plain heavy traffic.  In my town, however, this excuse is not uncommon... "I'm late because there were turkeys blocking traffic."

     On my way to work, I see this almost every morning.  In one specific spot just a couple of miles from my house, turkey wander at their own leisurely pace, totally unintimidated by the traffic.  The cars line up half a dozen deep, waiting patiently for them to move to the side of the road... and patience is key here - you've never seen a large, wild animal move at a more leisurely pace.  Lately, I've been wondering what they could possibly be thinking, using the road as their own personal sidewalk...


"Oh man, I feel like I'm just going through the motions of having breakfast.  I really AM tired this morning..."

"Sam?  Is that you?  I just woke up so I'm still feeling a little sluggish..."

"Look at Mike over there on the other side of the road, trying to pick up women so early in the morning!"

"GOD...  Look at that woman in the car!  LADY! I know I look good, but put that CAMERA down before I come over there and MAKE you put it down!   Damn paparazzi!!"

     It's most common to run into these guys in the morning, but it's not unusual for them to stop traffic in the afternoon as well...

"Why won't this guy in the van just drive AROUND us? Can't he see we're BUSY?" 

"Just follow us guys and ignore those people... Maybe they'll just go away..."

     My wish for your day is that the turkeys in your life are entertaining, but not enough in charge to bring everything else to a standstill...

Make a Sharpie Tie-Dyed T-Shirt

     I started this project during the summer when I was still thinking I would be incredibly productive AND crafty during my time off, and not loll around drinking coffee and dreading September.   I had found this project on Pinterest, and I thought my daughter and I could each make a shirt while my son and husband went upstate on a guys fishing trip.

We started with these supplies:

     The site I found this on via Pinterest recommended an embroidery hoop to hold the shirt taut, but I was too cheap to buy two of those with my "I now have the summer off budget," so I used from flat pieces of cardboard instead.  

     I had no specific design in mind, I just wanted to make something with curvy lines that was colorful.  I sketched out a few lines with a pencil to make sure my center squiggle was roughly symmetrical, and then I started with the markers.  

     My daughter, who is now 11 and has a highly developed sense of crafting herself, rapidly got frustrated with this craft.  I think for something like this, since you will ultimately be using rubbing alcohol to spread and smear the colors, you need to keep that in mind when planning your design.  She picked a design that was dependent on precise line placement, so she wasn't happy when the marker started bleeding into the surrounding lines before she was done.  She gave up on her shirt way before it was finished.  

     It was hard for me to continue with this when she had given up.  I thought we would have worked on this project together! :-(  But kids move on from disappointment more quickly than we do.  She was on to another craft llooonnnggg before I was done with this one!

     Speaking of long, this took HOURS.  I can make a few recommendations, though.  Don't leave the markers lying around when you have a small dog that likes to chew things like markers...

"Zoey!  

 Zoey! 

Open your mouth!"

 (Oh good, her tongue's not blue!)

     If I do this project again, I would try the embroidery hoop or I'd cut the cardboard so that it's bigger than the shirt.  That would hold the shirt more taut, and I wouldn't get those annoying skips in my lines when the marker bunches up in the knit fabric. 

     I worked the design around the side of the shirt from front to back, over the shoulders and around to the back from the top, and also down the sleeves.    Below is the finished shirt - BEFORE the alcohol application...

     I like it with the rubbing alcohol applied - I like that smeary, blended look, but I also like the before version, too.  You decide which one you like better.   

     I think I'm going to wait for the rubbing alcohol to dry completely and then, just to set the colors, hit it all over with a dry, hot iron (with some paper towels or something between it and the iron - just to protect my iron!)

I want to see other shirts! If you've attempted this craft, let me know how yours went!

Vacation in a jar

     I have a jar of hand cream on my desk. It's officially coconut lime scented, but I like to think of it as...

 vacation in a jar.  

     The first time I put this stuff on my hands at work, the woman I shared an office with looked around, sniffing, like a bloodhound on a scent. "Ooohhh - what is that? That smells good." She said.

"Here, it's hand cream. Have some." I offered. She slathered it on and walked a round smelling the backs of her hands for the next 10 minutes.  When friends came into the office, I offered my tub of hand cream by way of greeting. "Hi - here, Smell this," I said to each friend as he or she stopped in. The reaction was always the same.

Yum.  

     I didn't care that it was so thick and slippery I couldn't grip my pen well enough to write...my mind was on vacation with each sniff.  Pretty soon I was just opening the lid of the jar and taking a quick sniff without actually applying the hand cream.  Sometimes you just need a quick pick-me-up without the mess and hassle of a whole moisturizing indulgence.  Feeling the pressure of ten hours worth of work when you only have two hours to complete it?  Close your eyes and take a quick, furtive sniff of coconut lime.  Immediately, it's as if you're sitting on a tropical beach, slathered in suntan lotion and holding a margarita in your hand...  You know, minus the sand in your bathing suit.

     Lately, though, I'm noticing the results I'm getting from my vacation in a jar are not quite what they've been on the past.  The scent seems to be waning... Or maybe it's me.  Now one sniff only seems to get me as far as Central Florida.   I thought the fragrance was getting old until a coworker of mine, whom I have successfully turned into another sniffing enthusiast, came up to my desk and said,

"Hey... Where's your vacation in a jar? I need a short vacation." 

     I took the jar out of my desk drawer where it had been for several weeks of the summer. Here. I handed it to him.  He unscrewed the lid saying,

"Ok... close your eyes... Ready to go to the tropics?"  

He stuck his nose a few scant inches from the goo inside the jar and inhaled deeply...

"Ahhhhhhh, I just went to Jamaica. 

Here. 

Take a sniff," 

he said, so I did. I suppose I should be changing to some fall scented hand cream soon, but I'm not sure it would be this much fun.


     Does anyone else out there have a scent memory in a jar?  Please share! :-)

Umbrellas, lunch boxes and and other back to school indignities...

     Way back on my first day of sixth grade, I took both an umbrella and a lunch box to school.  What was I thinking?  How was I to know that what was acceptable had changed drastically over the two months of summer vacation?

      I had walked to the bus stop and I was a little bit late, so my bus stop peers had already boarded the bus.  Had I arrived at the bus stop early enough to chat, they might have told me of my faux pas, but they were a quiet bunch, so I think it's equally as likely that they would have kept their mouths shut and blended into the scenery.   Although it was warm outside, it was and my walk was several hundred feet down the road, so that morning my mother had handed me an umbrella, which I took unquestioningly as I headed out the door.  How did I know the horror that awaited me?  I was the oldest kid in my family, and had no prior experience with "cool" versus "uncool."

     The bus approached before I got to the stop.  It rolled to a standstill, and the door creaked open loudly.  I could see the kids in the front of the bus leaning forward, craning their necks to see who I was, and what I looked like.  I asked, "Is this the bus to the middle school?" the driver said, "yes..." and then I heard it...

     "MARY POPPINS!  WHY DO YOU HAVE AN UMBRELLA?  WHAT, ARE YOU MARY POPPINS WITH THAT UMBRELLA?"  and even worse, "LOOK AT THE BABY WITH THE LUNCH BOX!"  

     ...and I still had to get on the bus. 

     I don't remember anything else about my day, just that first minute before getting on the bus.  That night I got home and I begged my mother to let me take my lunch to school in a brown bag, but she was not having any of that.  She was practical, and she has just bought the lunch box.  Besides, my lunch would get squished in a brown bag.  She made me a very large tote bag to carry the lunch box in, but it was like carrying a large grenade.  I had to make sure my tote bag was carried verrrryyy carefully, and remained zipped at all times except when I was removing my unsquished lunch.  It also didn't matter that I never, ever took an umbrella to school again, unless I could stash it somewhere before the bus rounded the corner.  I was still Mary Poppins, and I was Mary Poppins almost every day that year.  And the next year, too.  It was acceptable to be sopping wet upon your arrival to school, but it was NOT acceptable to carry an umbrella.  To this day, many decades later, I rarely remember to take an umbrella with me.

     The other day I stood in the backyard at a birthday party for one of my daughter's friends, and another girl's mother asked me, "So what are the COOL stores I have to shop in for school clothes this year?" I smiled wryly to myself and thought of the story I just told you...  Imagine someone asking me about being cool in sixth grade, even though I haven't been a sixth grader for decades?  

     My own kids seem to have a better handle than I ever did on how to refrain from becoming uncool.  Maybe it's because they're fairly close in age - even though they'd never admit it, they look after each other, cover each other's backs like soldiers in battle.   And I've always encouraged them to look out for other kids as well.   I was not very good at that.  Or maybe not as good at it as I would like to say.  When you feel like you're in the crosshairs, and the target moves to someone else, you generally don't feel like bringing yourself back into focus.  You're just relieved that they've finally laid off of you.   Still, we should all try to teach our kids to look after one another.  I tell my kids, "If you see a kid picking on another kid, tell that mean kid to cut it out."  You might have some influence, I tell them.  

Strong people stick up for themselves.

The strongest of people stick up for others.