Home from Brussels.

It was beautiful. I loved it. If only on my first day did I not eat something that was to wage war on my stomach for the rest of the trip. Thursday night in the hotel, the Soprano’s episode where Christopher’s fiancee has IBS was on tv. Christopher tries to reassure his fiancee: “[so and so's] grandma had colon cancer and her entire asshole rotted out!”

I don’t think we’ve ever laughed harder at anything on tv.

Anyhow, an actual blog (with pictures!) of our Belgian adventures is up at The Loch Ness Blog. Enjoy!

15 years ago, Anthony and I were opening our Christmas stockings when our brother Julian, squished within our mom’s protruding belly, heard the commotion and wanted in on the action. Anthony was sticky with spit from a fruity candy cane and I was savoring my millionth Andies mint chocolate of the morning when mom clapped her hands and announced: “Okay. Let’s get showered up. I’m going to have a baby today.”

She was so calm that I wasn’t sure what to think. But I wanted to do a better job of welcoming my second brother in to the world than I did my first. So I dressed in my favorite outfit, a hot pink maternity sweatshirt with giant black dots that I got from a garage sale, worn as a dress over black leggings. I crimped the ends of my hair and gelled my bangs back. Surely my fetus brother, roaring to get out, appreciated this effort.

If I remember correctly, once we were showered up, Anthony and I were allowed to take one present with us to the neighbors place, where we waited until our Uncle John picked us up to take us to Grandma Pacella’s house to join the rest of the family for Christmas. I’m a little fuzzy on that though.

I do remember being at Grandma’s and leaving to go to the hospital to see mom and Julian. Anthony was too little, I think, or had a cough or something–I don’t know for sure, but I don’t think he was allowed to come. Or maybe he just wasn’t allowed in the room. I only remember getting to hold my new brother. He was a dark haired, warm little bundle. I loved him instantly.

When mom and Julian came home from the hospital, he was put in a little brown cradle set up in mom and Tony’s room. Anthony and I peeked in at him, squirming around and squinting at us curiously. He was a calm little bean. I remember Anthony looking at our new brother; his long lashed little boy eyes wide with wonder, his stubby little boy legs running in place with goofy excitement.

I remember cuddling baby Julian while I read in my bedroom. There is a picture of us in one of my mom’s albums, where the two of us have fallen asleep that way, my cheek on his fuzzy little head.

When Julian was a toddler he had a stuffed animal dog called Doggy, pronounced “Goggy.” Julian liked the taste of the leather paws on Goggy, so he sucked on the dog’s legs relentlessly until the toy carried the reeked of rancid milk, halitosis, and mildew. Goggy “disappeared” one day. Jujie got over it eventually.

Aside from chewing the dog, Julian didn’t do much as a toddler. In fact, he was so chilled out that everyone was starting to worry about him. But soon enough, he found joy in making people laugh. He was such a goofy, funny, sunny little boy. And to this day, he is still the only one in our family who truly knows how to relax properly.

One summer, when he was still in diapers, Julian used to run away all the time. Our family would innocently be going about our business, when you’d hear my mom cry, “where’s Julian?” We’d all scatter and search the neighborhood for him. Most of the time we found him laughing, running naked and free in a neighbor’s yard, having discarded a poopey diaper on somebody’s front porch. Once we found him inside the rabbit cage in the back yard, cuddling the terrified bunny.

That same summer, Julian was completely obsessed with the book, and especially the movie, Ricky Ticki Tavi. It was on his mind every waking second, it seemed. One evening, Julian was dismissed from dinner early to play in his room. Mom was enjoying some quiet time in the living room and I was going about my chore of loading the dishwasher after dinner. Things had been quiet for some time, when suddenly things got too quiet.

“Where’s Julian?”

We went outside, calling for him, searching the rabbit cage, peeking over the neighbor’s fence. Then mom checked the garage. The van was missing. We ran out to the front driveway and saw something that made my mom’s jaw drop to the ground.

The minivan was crashed into the Dixon’s house, which was kitty corner and across the street from ours. At the very moment we laid eyes on the disaster, Julian squirmed out of the driver’s side, unscathed, running towards my mom.

“It’s okay, mommy! I wore my seatbelt!”

How Julian managed to put the key in the ignition and get the car rolling downhill in neutral is beyond anyone. And even though he ended up crashing, he did a pretty good job of steering. He stayed on the pavement and avoided the big trees in our yard near the end of the driveway. When asked by a family friend a few days after the incident why he stole his mommy’s van, he replied in earnest, “I was going to the library to rent Ricky Ticki Tavi!”

For a while when they were elementary aged, my brothers decided that they would only wear robes in the house. They called their felt robes “robe-ins” and wore them unashamed, totally nonchalant. Anthony would usually change into clothes and hide if I had people over, but not Jujie. He would wear his robe and chill with me and my friends, joining in the conversation as if he were seventeen instead of seven. My friends thought this was hilarious. My brother’s nickname among my friends is “The Little Heffs,” referring of course to Hugh Heffner, who also enjoys a wardrobe comprised exclusively of robes. Whenever I get to see people from back home, one of the first questions I get asked is, “how are The Little Heffs? How is Jujie?”

I hope Julian doesn’t mind me writing all these potentially embarrassing things about him for his birthday, but something tells me that he won’t. Julian’s heart is light and friendly. He knows funny well. And these stories of his boyhood are just that: funny.

Julian (also called Ju-ju, Ju Ju Bear, Bear, Jujie, and sometimes, by my friends who found my family’s endless use of pet names for Julian hilarious: Jujamakooge, and Joojamakige) likes art (his imagination is endless and his style is original and textured and really good), music (he plays violin and not in that screechy, dreadful student type way; in an award winning, beautiful way), and Monty Python. He was looking forward to German class this fall.

Julian is fifteen this Christmas morning. He is entering that beautiful, amazing, frustrating time when we figure out how our identities, our uniqueness fits into society. A time when we might feel pressured to change, to be things we aren’t.

To Jujie, from Truje: this fifteenth year of your life will be grand. Be you. Who you are, what you like, what makes you laugh is more beautiful than you can imagine. Big hugs!

Julian (foreground), with cousins Nick and Alex
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The day Julian was born was my favorite Christmas. Do you have a favorite Christmas?

::Random Tangent::
This Christmas, Shaun and I are nestled in our Glasgow flat with movies, neglected New Yorker magazines, long walks in the fog, and good cooking. Christmas Eve I cooked up some delicious salmon with ginger/orange marinade, purple sprouting broccoli, and runner beans. For Christmas we’ll be eating fresh tortellini with garlic spinach and sun dried tomatoes. And lets not forget the Queen’s Speech, 3 pm on Christmas day! The BBC will be streaming it online (we don’t own a TV, so this is good), for all who are interested. I miss my friends and family heaps, but our upcoming vacation has proved to be a fun distraction from the homesickness. Tuesday (Boxing Day!), we are off to Brussels. (YAY!!) Pictures and stories coming soon.

And last but certainly not least: Happy Holidays to all in Xanga-land. Thanks for reading. Thanks for writing. Thanks for sharing. Human connection is alive and well here. And I am really grateful for it. I hope 2007 is charmed for you all.

Last night Shaun and I played pool with an English couple. They called the “solids” “spots.” I wondered if they also called “shirts vs. skins” “shirts vs. pants.” Of course, that would require Englishmen to go shirtless and centuries of stereotypes make me think that would never happen anyway. The English couple we hung with were nice people. They do not swear. I feel like a potty mouthed, raunchy, vile thing around them sometimes. I feel American.

In other random thoughts, my favorite word in a Scottish accent is “girl.” Say it with two syllables and flip the r: girr-el. It sort of rhymes with squirrel, but not if you say squirrel in a flat, American way. Squirrel also has two syllables in Scotland.

I do not like how the word “idea” is pronounced in a Scottish accent. Idears. Even if only one idea is being discussed, someone has “an idears.” With an r. Plural.

I like watercress as a regular sandwich topping. I like wild rocket as a side salad. I like Cadbury chocolates and cheap bags of kiwis. I like delicious prawns. I like the giant hill that we hike up on evening walks. I miss being able to drink coffee at night; diner culture is non-existent here. It’s all about the pub. A proper pint is what you get. Cafe’s close at 6.

I like lots more. I miss lots more. But it is early. And my breakfast blogging time is drawing to a close. Now its time to put on my makeup and head to work. I’m hosting a press conference today. Time to play nice!

One last thing: this book I’m reading? It blows chunks. I see this Jodi Picoult person everywhere and thought I’d give it a try. I hate it in the same way I hated the movies Love Actually, The Holiday, and What Women Want: I wonder if the raw stupidity of the fluffy story will actually kill me. I try to get through it to see what the general public is in to these days. So I can relate. And I leave understanding why my friends are few. God, I am a snob. Sorry kids. Especially if you like those movies and Ms. Picoult. I’m sure you are a very good person with exquisite taste.

Which reminds me: in high school I once sincerly loathed a girl because she thought the [brilliant, spectacular, genious] movie American Beauty was lame. What does that say about me as a person? Judegemental much? Yikes! Must get better about this kind of thing….
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What’s on your mind this morning?

For nearly seven years I’d been happy as an only child. I had my cousin Sheri to keep me company at my dad’s house and my overactive imagination to keep me occupied elsewhere. But then one morning, eighteen years ago, I padded down the kitchen stairs for breakfast and my grandpa told me that my mom went to the hospital in the night; I had a new baby brother. Then grandpa gave me a plate of sunny side up eggs and I cried. I was convinced that the baby in my mom’s tummy was a girl. And I liked my eggs scrambled.

Waaaaaa!

When Anthony came home from the hospital, his head was shaped like an egg and he cried until he was purple. Late at night, Mom would hold him to her while she swayed around to a Van Morrison CD in the living room; it calmed him.

When Anthony was learning to hold his head on his neck unassisted, I was learning to read. I remember sitting on the nubby old couch, my googley, squirming new brother in one arm and an unwieldy hardcover (sharp-cornered!) book in the other. I was as frustrated with the awkward seating arrangement as I was with trying to sound out the words, but I remember wanting so bad to share the book with him. I wanted to make it work.

When Anthony got a bit older, he had a yellow playpen with white mesh sides. We liked to make each other laugh by smashing our faces against the mesh; I can still feel his damp little palm running over my mesh-mashed face, laughing hysterically.

One summer, when Anthony was a toddler, I had set up what I liked to think of as a sort of sorcery nook, on the side of our house by the chimney. I had collected Anthony’s baby food jars and filled them with grass, pine cone bits, feathers, and other items that I liked to pretend had magical properties. One afternoon, Anthony wondered back there and managed to break the glass and step on it with his bare baby feet. My parents whisked him away to the ambulatory clinic; when my step dad told me how he’d been cut I felt like a murderer. My face was hot from shame and I cried alone in my ex-sorcery nook, chucking the hateful jars into a garbage pail, cringing to think of my new brother’s little feet stumbling onto glass.

For years, Anthony hummed and slammed his face into his pillow to get to sleep at night so we nicknamed him The Hammer. Then it became Hammer, than Ham Bone, then Hammy, and sometimes just Ham. I wonder if anyone but me calls him that anymore…

So what’s he like? It’s a hard question for me to answer. I left home at 18, when he was 11. I’ve missed a lot. Too much. But here’s what I know:

He’s tall. Really tall. And handsome. Sometimes he’s shy. But sometimes he’s the first to shake your hand. He likes to look nice; even when he was little, he’d always want to change into something fancy-ish before seeing our grandparents. Now he pimps any car he owns, he buys teeth whitening strips, he uses hair product. He is funny in the same dark, goofy, irreverent way that is as hereditary as height in our family, but some people will never know that: he is a pretty guarded person. Babies and toddlers flock to him, inexplicably. Any family function we go to, his little cousins (the girls especially) squeal with delight when they hear that Anthony has arrived. He shrugs and blushes and does absolutely nothing to deserve the attention. But the kids just like him. And so he doesn’t fight it and he lets them. He is smart. Really smart. He hates school more than anything in the world. He’s had an astoundingly glamorous girlfriend for a few months now; he loves her, truly. There are other, sadder things about my brother, but on his birthday they are not important. Especially not this birthday.

My brother is eighteen today. An adult with a whole world of choice and no real past to speak of. I want him to know how sacred that is and how gently to treat it. I want him to feel new again, clean and good again. I want him to know that being a sister is one of the happiest, saddest, biggest, and best things about my life.

Happy Birthday, Hammy. I love you.

The siblings three: Julian, Anthony, and Truly

I came home from a very good day at work today to find a Christmas card from my dad and step mom. I’ve always loved Christmas cards–they are a nice little thing to get when you lived apart from family and friends–but I found this one especially touching.

As usual, the card featured a photo of my dad and step mom’s favorite dog, a barking boxer named Major, now dead. (I don’t think they realize that this pooch used to scare the living hell out of me.) The note inside was the longest correspondence I’ve ever received from my dad and step mom.

Apparently, my step mom is quilting with the mother of one of my high school friends. This is interesting because I went through the entirety of high school without contact with my dad and step mom. (Long, boring story. I’ll skip to the moral: disowning family might seem logical and just, but in my experience it’s more energy than its worth and leaves you feeling emptier than if you would have just dealt with whatever made you want to disown them in the first place.) In a way, my step mom hanging with my friend’s mom is like my step mom going back in time and getting to know me; getting to hear about what I was like as a teenager. It made me smile.

It also made me smile to think about my old high school friend. He was hilarious and a complete brain, a sharp writer. More importantly, he did the best imitation of Zorak from Space Ghost Coast to Coast I’ve ever seen. Once, I dressed like an old lady with a huge, saggy chest and did a swing dance with him for a play. Another time, he played my dad (or uncle was it?) in You Can’t Take it With You. I googled him for the hell of it, to see if he was floating about cyberspace: he’s not. So Kevin, should you ever stumble across this, consider this your message in a bottle from Mrs. Harcourt. You don’t have to find me and “catch up.” Just know that I’m thinking of you and that you are perfect and cool always and forever.
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Have you gotten any surprising hoiday mail?

::Random Tangent::

I’m feeling better today! My nose is still chapped and I’ve coughed a few times today, but I sound and feel much better. I’m still playing it cool tonight (no meeting Shaun and friends at the pub to celebrate his last day of the winter term), but I see a healthy weekend in the forecast.

In other news, there is a sandwich shop here (a chain) called Prêt A Manger. It is delicious. I’ve never seen a Prêt in the Midwest, but perhaps they are elsewhere in the States. If so, go to one: they are DELICIOUS! I usually always brown bag my lunches, but the past two mornings we’ve been grocery-less and I’ve been in no health to walk to the grocery store in the bitter, ever present rain and carry home loads of bags. So I went out to Prêt for lunch today and yesterday. And let me tell you: I want to eat Crawfish Salad everyday for the rest of my life. Imagine a plate piled high with little pink, peppered sea lovies (no yucky mayo!), salad greens, whole basil leaves (that’s pronounced “baZil” not “bay-Sill”), avocado slices, and sheer joy. I love eating the sea.

Tomorrow I am going to Stirling for a meeting. Even though it’s a work thing, I’m excited because I’ve not yet been to Stirling. After the meeting, my colleagues and I will enjoy a late lunch in lieu of a holiday party. After that, people are going for drinks, but I think I’m going to skip out and wonder the town, see the sights, pay a visit to the castle if there is time. Not to be anti-social or anything (I truly like all who I work with), but I’m not a fan of drinking with any co-workers (aside from a scant few true friends who I happen to meet at work). Bitching and gossip is inevitable when drinking with work buddies and when I drink, I prefer to get silly, play word games, make plans, and try to solve the world’s problems. I like happy hour to be happy. And Stirling Castle is sure to make me happier than a wee drink with my fellow 9-5ers.

What’s your policy on eating out at lunch and happy hour with co-workers?

Riddle me this: who schedules an important “brainstorming” session for an integral event from 4.30-5.30 in the afternoon? (Which will undoubtably run over to at least half six.) Why, when I’m already exhausted from the day, when my energy is at its lowest, when all I want in the world is a mouthful of extra chunky peanut butter on a spoon washed down by some cold milk, do I have to pull a winning idea out of my ass? What kills me the most is that my ass has plenty of winning ideas in it. But not at 4.30 in the afternoon. I’m done. I’m wrapping up. I’m thinking about home, where I get to fling off my bra and have a beer.
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When is your mind off duty, whether you want it to be or not?

::Random Tangent::
I’m still sick with the Hong Kong Flu-ey. (Good bloody greif.) Achoo.

On lunch today I found a shop called Long Tall Sally. Like me, Sally is an Amazon with 36 inches of leg; a body type that 99% of clothing retailers are able to justly accommodate. (Although I’ve heard that most stores do not accommodate most women. That’s what society gets for ditching seamstresses and going store-bought.) Sally’s clothes are fine enough and I bought two pairs of pants that fit like a dream. A dream about pants. I guess that would be a really boring dream. But not as boring as going from store to store trying to find pants that fit and finding nothing so making due with floods. But I think they need to rename that store. Long Tall Sally sounds like some plain, potato-faced wallflower. What about “Long, Leggy Sally” or “Tall Glass of Water” or “Luscious Leggy Sally”?

Leave your suggestions for Long Tall Sally’s new name in the comment box, will ya? That girl needs some help.

Some readings make you want to pee your pants, just so something interesting can happen.

Now I’m not talking about Readings: events where people like David Sedaris rant hilariously at great length about butt boils before reading a selection from Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim; or where Margaret Atwood, before reading a painfully honest section from Cats Eye, explains that when she told people she wanted to be a writer, their eyes glazed over and she could see them mentally retrieving a pre-formed image of her as a housewife from the back of their mind and injecting a dusty type writer into the scene, as if writing were something to keep her occupied while the children napped, a hobby, like knitting.

Nay. I’m talking about readings. Lower case. Not so hot. In fact, there is nothing worse than hearing 20 minutes worth of some shitty story about a warrior described with repressed homoerotic savor (“the leather straps of his battle gear chaffed his sweaty, ham-like pectorals vigorously”) saving maiden princesses from robots from the future. (If you are wondering, this actually happened at my first and last visit to the Twilight Tales reading series at the Red Lion pub in Chicago.)

Even though I use Sedaris, Atwood, and Robot Warrior Boy as examples, the difference between a reading and a Reading has little to do with how big of a name the author is. In Chicago, I loved going to Bookslut readings at Hopleaf, and the writers who read there were a range of first-timers and established authors.

What really makes the difference between a reading and a Reading is how well organized they are. Is seating well provided for? Are there sufficient breaks to socialize? Does the pub serve food? How is the atmosphere? How is the sound? Do you really need that mic? Has the work been pre-screened to ensure quality? And most importantly: do the authors reading respect the time limit?

The reading organized by fellow students of Shaun’s graduate program at The Liquid Ship last night was a Reading. Capital R. The private room was intimate enough while providing seating for all. The room was light almost entirely by candles, creating a warm, happy glow. Food was avalible to order and was great. The company was lovely. And best of all, the work was amazing. Two women read brilliant poems (I rolled with laughter at one bittersweet poem called Love & Drudgery which contains this delicious line: “beat the rugs, beat the child, boil the kettle, boil the baby”), one man read a fabulously funny vingette from a series he’s doing about psychics, and at the end of the evening, two women even sang songs (one being a really funny Christmas song about giving the gift of lice). It was a great event.

While he reads aloud in school all the time (the program he’s in is workshop-based), before last night I’d never heard Shaun read his work before. He read a piece that he wrote during our first few [tearful, difficult] months of marriage. It’s about Adam and Eve being cast from the Garden of Eden. The story is beautiful, touching, and is one of my favorite stories of all time.

Alone with Adam and Eve in the void of the desert, the reader is thrown into the complex logic of their coupledom; the ways that they blame and scowl and surprise each other with tenderness, with bad timing, with good timing. By moonrise, they fall into forgiveness, accepting that what makes them sin and what tempts them is intrinsically tied to what makes them love and be loved. Darkness co-exists with light, inseparable and unmistakably human. The writing is intimate and honest and really, really good.

When Shaun first told me he wanted to be a writer, we were teenagers sharing a banana split in a brown vinyl booth at a cafe called The Village Place in our hometown. Shaun was 18, weeks away from graduating high school at the top of his class, and needing ice cream to recover from the embarrassment of having articles about him in local newspapers for having never missed a day of school (since kindergarten!). While Shaun was just as good at Physics and Calculus as he was English and Theater, he loved the creative stuff more. But he’d told his arts-weary parents that he was going to study business at college.

As for me, I was a pixie-haired, combat boot clad 16-year old theater fanatic with a sketch book bursting with drawings, sheet music, half finished scripts, stories and poems; I was unabashedly convinced that fame was probably just around the corner.

Anyway, so we’re two oddball teenagers at The Village Place. Shaun leans across our ice cream with such an odd, serious look on his face that I thought he was going to break up with me.

“I need to tell you something,” he began. He paused. He held his breath. He winced. “I don’t want to study business.”
“You’d be a horrible business man,” I said.
“I know. And I don’t want to be a teacher.”
“You hate talking. That’s what they do. All day long.”
“I know. I want to be a writer.”
“Good. Then you’ll be a famous one.”
He smiled. “Do you think I can?”
“Why not? Just think of all that you read in a day–someone’s go to write all of it. And you’re good at it. And you like it. Why be bored your whole life? Do it. And do it big.”
He laughed. But then his face grew quiet again, “but don’t tell anyone, okay? Don’t tell my mom.”

The journey from then to now has been both slow and fast. I am a daydreamer of the future, gatherer of our histories, and happy in this minute all at once.
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What have you seen the beginning of?

::Random Tangent::
I wouldn’t have missed yesterday for the world. And I mean that because I went even though I spent all day Sunday in bed, with a million pound head full of snot and a body racked with chills, fever, and a painful, chest-seizing cough. But I nothing could keep me from seeing the Reading. It was too important. I peeled myself out of bed at 6 pm, put on some makeup and a cute outfit, threw a box of Kleenex in my purse, and braved the dark rain. And once at the Reading, I tried to sit as far away from others as possible, keeping my coughing as quiet as I could manage.

I’ve been sick all week, but Saturday, just as I was starting to feel much better, we went to Edinburgh where I stupidly over did it and paid dearly on Sunday. Today I called off work (apparently most of my department did the same; we’re all suffering from the hellish cold/flu that my boss brought back from the design expo in Hong Kong) and am spending another day in bed, haphazardly blogging, surrounded by tissues and medicine, and half-sleeping through rented movies. I haven’t been this knockdown sick in years.

I’m feeling a bit better, but I really need to baby myself today, as I have two out-of-town all day meetings later this week. And those who I’m meeting certainly don’t deserve to get sick. (If only those who were in Hong Kong and came into the office and coughed all over everything cared shared my concern!)

I hope you, dear reader, are feeling fit and healthy this December.

We spent today in Edinburgh, and although its only an hours train ride away, it felt like a little mini vacation.

Our purpose was productive enough. We went to the National Galleries of Scotland to pick out pieces to base a short story off of for a writing competition sponsored by The National Galleries and The English Speaking Union. I’m torn between a few, namely a Frans Snyder paining called Mischievous Monkeys, a Sir Frances Grant portrait of his daughter Daisy, and a hilariously provocative styling of Venus and Cupid by Lucas Cranach. I also like another Lucas Cranach called An Allegory of Melancholy. Apparently, in the late 1400′s, early 1500′s, when Cranach was alive, it was thought that four basic humours were thought to make up the human temperament: blood, choler, melancholy, and phlegm. This is the sort of thing that truly captivates me. I’m itching to write about it, but unlike the other paintings, I don’t know where Melancholy will take me. I find the most joy in writing when it’s like driving in the dark without headlights (which is a quote from some author whose name I’ve forgotten that my Story Studio writing teacher always used to say).

After soaking up the art, we walked up the mammoth hill to the castle and watched the sun set on the city (at 4 pm. Oh winter). Then we browsed the shops. We stumbled into a few mod, cute boutiques and Shaun was patient with me as I bought a cool new dress (purple dots with a olive green sash) and a fun puffy-sleeved teal t-shirt with a black cat silhouette on the side.

After our spot of shopping (which is a completely random and weird thing for me to be in the mood for–it seriously never happens, but it was fun today so I went with it), we came across a Scottish Arts Council sponsored gallery called Stills. There, three independent documentaries from the Middle East were on view. It was a really beautiful thing to see, especially for free, when you are least expecting it.

After the films, we went for a dinner at an Italian place and drank wine, which mixed pleasantly with my cough medicine, making me laugh extra loud. At the restaurant, we were given Christmas crackers, which are like little surprise packages that make a “pop” noise when you pull them apart. They have a crown, a toy, and a joke usually. I got a fake moustache. Shaun got a heart clip.

Tomorrow Shaun has his first public reading party and I am super excited to see it. Maybe Ill even wear my new wee dress!

Pictures from today:

The Winter Carnival is on now. These are the swings by the Sir Walter Scot monument.

The National Galleries of Scotland.

Cracker Prizes!

Look at the weird wallpaper: hams! Stylish.
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What’s your Saturday like?

Sometimes plans are just pointelss, aren’t they? My last blog entry had me enjoying an art opening Thrsday night, going to yoga tonight, and planning a trip to Lapland for the holidays.

But life had other ideas in mind for me.

Late Wednesday night, I woke with a horrible, terrible, very bad sore throat, cough, headache, and chills. Thursday at work was excruciating. I tried to go to the art opening, but I was so exhausted from hacking my lungs out all day, that at 5.30 pm I threw the towel in and went home. I was fast asleep by 7.30. Today I’m feeling a bit better. I’ve been drinking water, ginger ale mixed with OJ, and tea all day long. Soup and jello for dinner. Cough syrup every four hours with cough drops, immune system boosters, and tangerines as snacks. Needless to say, it was not a day for yoga.

However, it was a day for trip planning. After scouring the world for a Lapland holiday trip in our price range, I’ve come to the conclusion that comfortable visits to the Arctic Circle are only for millionaires. One day, when I’m rich, I’ll frolic with the reindeer and mush huskies on a dog sled. In the meantime, I’m more than happy (thrilled!!!) to roam European cities like a proper tourist. Shaun and I booked a three night stay in Brussels from Tuesday, December 26 until Friday December 29. So after a cuddly X-mas in Glasgow, we’re off to eat Belgium chocolates, drink Belgium beer, and hopefully (fingers crossed) see La Traviata at the famous La Monnaie de Munt opera house. I can’t wait!!! Our hotel is cute and cuddly and right in city centre.  And flights from Glasgow to Brussels are so cheap! And our hotel had a special “book two nights, get the third free” offer. Very nice. I can’t wait to wonder around and take pictures, see opera, and eat bon bons with my true love.

In other news, Shaun posted pictures and tales from our Isle of Sky trip on The Loch Ness Blog.
So go check that out and read my husband’s telling of the myths behind the places we visited. They are lovely.
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What do you think of making plans? Are you fine when they end up changing?

I could be completely wrong about this, but I’ve been told that in the Bible, heaven is described as a place where angels sing hosanna all day long for all of eternity. Now, forgive me if you hold that image precious, but it sounds like a very boring version of hell to me. For the longest time, when December rolled around and muzak versions of “Holly Jolly Christmas” wafted through every public space, I would think of those bored angels singing praise for the millionth time through painted-on smiles, worried that if they looked the slightest bit unhappy, God would get all wrathful. He’s an angry and jealous God, after all. Or something like that, I think.

Like the angels, I’ve spent most Decembers of my life faking enthusiasm for the sake of some mythical holiday family bonding. But to be honest, ever since I was a kid, I’ve been shuffled to dad’s house, then mom’s house, then grandma’s house; there was no time for family holiday bonding in that hit and run schedule. Not to mention the hurt feelings of whatever parent/family did not get me on that holiday. And now, with another divorce in my family and in-laws (also divorced), the holidays have been almost completely void of bonding; in fact, there has been a punctuated disconnect in recent years.

But this year is different. I am excited for the holidays.

For one thing, my family is happy. I don’t think they have been in a long time. My mom has a new housemate/boyfriend and they seem to love each other dearly. Last time I talked to them, I heard a story about the three of them (mom, new boyfriend, and my 14 year-old brother who lives with them) reading aloud to each other, putting on voices and laughing together. I almost cried when I heard that; as I said, it’s been a long time.

The man who raised me (my ex-step dad, technically–I just call him Tony) has a new girlfriend who he seems thrilled with. There is a light in his voice when I talk to him. My other 17-year old brother who lives with him (Tony is father to both of my brothers–they are half-brothers technically, but I seriously hate that word and never, ever use it) has a very glamorous girlfriend who he adores.

It’s been a hard couple of years. But I can feel their newfound happiness from across the ocean, bounding on waves, dancing in the wind, scooped up in the beak of a fluffy old gull. It makes me feel festive again. And although I’m far away, I feel that I’m more connected with them than ever. Everyone has licked their wounds from my mom and Tony’s divorce and is ready to hold each other close again.

Paradoxically, another reason why I am excited for the holidays is that I won’t be visiting my family. We are not going back to the states this Christmas, but we are planning a mini-trip, probably to Lapland, the true home of Father Christmas, where we’ll stay in a hotel made of ice (fingers crossed–plans are still in he works!), toboggan, ride on reindeer drawn sleighs, and mush dog sleds. I can’t wait!

Also, in early January, my homeslice Squee is coming to visit. We walked together at high school graduation. We lived in Chicago at the same time. She is looking over our kitty this year. Squee is one of my best friends in the world. And together, this January, we will find the Loch Ness Monster.

Anyhow, with all my presents wrapped and ready to mail tomorrow, I thought that I’d let my holiday spirit flourish by filling out this little holiday questionnaire that is going around the blogsphere. It was very cute and fun to do–you might also like to give it a whirl!

Holidaze
1. Egg Nog or hot chocolate?
Yes, please! Spiked!

2. Does Santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree?
Santa is a lobster. The gifts that look like they were wrapped with claws; Santa did those. Mrs. Claws did the rest. She is human.

3. Colored lights on tree/house or white?
Racist!

4. Do you hang mistletoe?
Only around attractive men named Shaun.

5. When do you put your decorations up?
When it’s party time. Shaun’s mom puts her stuff out for the Thanksgiving party she does. I like that idea and adopted it.

6. What is your favorite holiday dish [excluding dessert]?
My stuffing! Pears, Procsutto, Hazelnuts: oh my! Also, my grandma on my dad’s side makes this weird, semi-gross X-mass punch with sherbet that makes me smile. And Shaun’s aunt makes this weird, sort of wet blueberry bread thing that everyone hates but me. And my mom makes a breakfast on Christmas morning that makes me feel warm forever: scrambled eggs, OJ, coffee, and pipin’ hot cinnamon rolls.

7. Favorite holiday memory as a child?
I was an elementary aged girl, sitting next to my dad in his overheated truck, passing a dairy farm on the way to grandma Render’s house one Christmas Eve. It’s dark out and big, fat flakes of snow are whirling and twirling in the headlights. The radio is off. Dad and I are quiet. We look at the snowflakes together. The fragility and beauty and innocence of the flakes represent everything that he might break in me. And even though I am too young to form this feeling into words, and even though my dad is too inarticulate to say them, we feel them. I knew in that silence that he loved me. And was sorry.

8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa?
I was 4 or 5. My cousin, two years older, wanted to show me a weird vibrating pink thing she found in her mom’s closet. Reaching up on the high shelf to retrieve it, my eye caught sight of presents stashed up there. “Why are those up there?” I asked. My cousin sighed and told me that our parents were Santa and they hid gifts from us and put them under the tree and pretended they were Santa but who cares, just look at this long, weird jiggly pink thing. I shrugged and looked at the vibrator. Then my aunt came by and snatched it away and shut the closet and that was that.

9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve?
At my dads, Santa came to his house after we got done at grandma’s house on Christmas eve. He did not come to my mom’s house until the following morning. Sometimes, depending on family schedule, Shaun and I open gifts on X-mas eve with his mom, stepdad, and stepsisters. We open gifts whenever, since we’ve got to visit so many people over those two days.

10. How do you decorate your Christmas tree?
As a grown up, I’ve never had one. We used to put a paper star on our cactus, but then it died.

11. Snow! Love it or dread it?
Yay for it. I am a polar bear. Rar.

12. Can you ice skate?
Fo Shizzle. Although I always remember myself being a better skater than I actually am.

13. Do you remember your favorite gift?
My youngest brother was born on Christmas morning, so I’m gonna have to say: Julian. I also dig the food processor that Shaun’s parents gave us last year.

14. What’s the most important thing about the holidays for you?
Sanity. Pretty lights. Carols. New pajamas. Oh yeah: days off work!!!!

15. What is your favorite holiday dessert?
My apple oatmeal pie is da bomb, topped only by my step mom’s pecan pumpkin pie.

16. What is your favorite holiday tradition?
On the Christmas tree at my mom’s house, there is an ornament that my brother Anthony made in pre-school. It is a cutout picture of his face with a paper angel body. Every year, I arrange the glittery Nutcracker ballerina ornaments so that the dancers are swooning over my brother on the tree. It still makes me laugh. And it still makes him blush. Anthony turns 18 this month. I can’t believe it.

17. What tops your tree?
My mom’s tree has a cloth angel that she sewed. It’s cute.

18. Which do you prefer giving or receiving?
Yes to both!

19. What is your favorite Christmas song?
Little Drummer Boy. I like to think about the wise men; they’ve always fascinated me.

20. Candy canes?
Who ate all the chocolate?

21. Favorite Christmas movie:
A Christmas Story and A Nightmare Before Christmas. I have a Jack Skellington dressed as Santa wall hang that I like a lot.

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What is your mood this holiday season?

::Random Tangent::
It looks like this is going to be another fun weekend. Thursday night is the Winter Spotlight party at my museum; free cocktails, nibblies, and fresh exhibition openings.I’ve invited friends and am excited for my new co-workers to meet my husband. Fun times. Friday night I have an evening yoga class. Saturday Shaun and I are going to Edinburgh to soak up the National Gallery; there is a writing compitition where you have to write a short story based on a work in the National Gallery collection that we both want to enter. Sunday, if the weather is cute, I want to do a hike from my new book, 50 Walks In and Around Glasgow.
What are you looking forward to this weekend?