Wishful Slacker

Christmas Came Early

First Christmas gift of the holiday weekend- a giant tub of Megabloks for Eleanor. We are hoping this will keep her occupied! We've been chasing her all day are tired out!!!

Baby Gear Lingo

 

I am home and trying to pack in prep for our drive to Michigan tomorrow.  Here is a series of text messages that I just sent to Jim:

Me: Do you know where I put the white plate insert to the travel high chair?  I had put it in the dry bar but must have moved it since.  Awesome. 

No answer (because Jim is working)

Me again: The green cover won't fit over the blue piece without the white part, apparently.

No answer (because Jim is working)

Me again: Not a huge deal, but it'd be nice to not have to wash it all from scratch each time we go somewhere.

No answer (because Jim is working)

So, anyways, I have a couple of thoughts on this one-sided texting conversation.  1) All of these thoughts about random toy pieces or stroller straps or sippy cups are in my head all of the time, and I think I am going crazy because of it.  2) Once Jim does get these text messages, he is going to know exactly what I am talking about.  And I think that is pretty darn amusing.  When else in our lives would we have understood that "the green part doesn't go on to the blue part without the white part" without needing any more explanation? 

And yes, I did originally keep this missing high chair part under the dry bar, along with all the cocktail glassware that we use so often now with all the parties that we throw. 

Seriously though, where the hell is it?

Here is a picture of our stroller, filled to the brim with the first load of gifts, snacks, gifts, snacks, and more snacks.  It reminds me of the Grinch's sled after he has stolen from all the Whos down in Whoville.  All I need is a skinny little dog with antlers taped to his head.  Oh Major....

 

Addendum!  Jim text back! 
Jim: It's above the fridge

And there it was!

Happy Holidays!

Okay, I am going to say this now, because who knows if I will have any other available moment at a later time!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS EVERYONE!  MERRY CHRISTMAS!  HAPPY HANUKKAH!  HAPPY NEW YEAR!  HAPPY FESTIVUS!

We are heading to Michigan at the end of the week, and I am hoping that the "lack of familiar environment/ plethora of Christmas tree hooks, stairways, and breakable items/ abandonment of our normal schedule" won't put my husband and I over the edge as we deal with our squirmy and now VERY active toddler.  It will be a blast at times I am sure, but I am guessing that we may also need a lot of coffee.  And alcohol.  Lots and lots of alcohol. 

But I digress!

This is a different Christmas season for us, because aside from one wreath that my husband purchased, we did not put up any Christmas decorations.  I think it was a good move on our part, as it is hard enough right now to keep Ellie out of the cat food, let alone away from any wooden reindeer that we could have introduced to the mix.  Part of us feels a little bummed out though, because there is no better feeling of coziness than the glow of Christmas lights on a dark winter evening.  It was a trade off, and it sounds like my parents have been decorating their house so that we can get our Christmas fill in Michigan.  Thanks to Pandora music and Spotify, we have been blasting holiday music through the house to make up for it. 

So-whether you are old or young, whether you believe or help others to believe- have a wonderful holiday!  Travel safely, drink responsibly, love profusely, and above all else, stick to your nap schedule!

Christmas is NEXT WEEK?!

I still have so much to do!

Santa! I know him!

Zoo Fail

On a cold and windy Chicago evening in December, 2009, Jim and I met each other after work outside of the Lincoln Park Zoo.  We were going to enjoy Zoolights, that annual Christmas light spectacle that seems to get even better year after year, the zoo emblazoned in millions and millions of Christmas lights, with ice carvers, hot cocoa, and Santa.

Instead, on that night we found ourselves standing at the black iron gates which were shuttered with a metal slap of finality.  Everything was pitch black.  And cold.  Did I mention it was cold?  "Damn..." we exhaled, our breaths melting into our heavy scarves.  "It's closed."  With a disappointed shrug, we turned and slunked to a restaurant.  "Why didn't we check the website?" we asked ourselves while slurping up noodles, "it must only be opened on weekends this early in the season."

I had completely forgotten about that evening.  But I remembered tonight, as we met at the Lincoln Park Zoo and stared at the black iron bars closed upon the even darker zoo behind them. 

"Crap...." we muttered, looking guiltily at the baby, bundled up in her stroller and wearing her ladybug zoo hat. 

At least we were not the only ones.  One poor Mom, pushing a small child in a stroller and holding the hand of a very impatient-appearing preschooler, slowed to a stop next to where we were standing. 

"It's closed?!" she looked at me in desperation.  "I had to run for the bus, get them all bundled up...oh my gosh how can it be closed?"  I then witnessed her trying to tell her son that the animals had all gone to sleep early tonight.  "I BET YOU TOLD THEM TO GO TO SLEEP!"  the son started to wail. 

I am thankful at these moments that we have a child who is of the age when explaining is not necessary.  Expectations do not have to be honored, at any point if Jim or I change our minds, we simply turn the stroller around with no argument.  Last weekend we took the train down to Macys on State Street, where, after glancing at their very, very disappointing window displays (which are usually so magical- what the hell, Macys?) we ventured inside to try to find Santa.  Ellie has not been to see Santa yet, and we were hopeful that this might have been her time to meet the big guy.  After roaming the first, seventh, and fifth floors, we finally found the line- nothing was signed, no Buddy the Elf was there to add any cheer, and after watching the parents who came out after seeing Santa (most rolling their eyes, most saying that it really wasn't worth the wait), we decided to call it a day and went home. 

So, in anticipation of the day when we will have a child who pitches a fit when we decide NOT to wait in Santa's line, this year, we will try again.  We will find Santa, somewhere....somewhere small and quaint and perhaps not in a department store.  And we will probably attempt Zoolights again, (checking that they're open before leaving the house), even though by the time the next weekend opportunity rolls around it may be freezing cold with a fierce wind coming off the lake and no available parking.

But we will try, damnit. 

And if we fail...well, at least this year, we won't have to hear about it the whole way home. 

Christmas Lights

Playing in our living room while my 5 week-old baby girl sleeps is the music from my favorite Christmas album.  I have many childhood memories of listening to this music, filling our home Christmas morning as we lay passed out on the floor in post-gift opening delirium, or playing on Boxing Day as my father’s shepherd’s pie beckoned to us from the oven.  But my strongest memory of this music comes from our family minivan, as the heat purred from the vents and snow crunched beneath the tires on icy subdivision streets.

 

Each December my parents, sister, and grandparents would begin the slow nighttime procession through the quiet neighborhoods of Macomb County to view Christmas lights.  There were always the older subdivisions like ours, filled with the decent attempts of Christmas light do-it-yourselfers, light displays containing personality through the uneven coverage of straggly evergreens and shrubs that dotted the lawns.  Plastic candy canes crookedly lined salt-sprinkled walkways.  At our own home, my father’s handiwork was sweet and conservative, with hints and warmth.  The bushes were evenly coated in multi-color, while fake candles glowed from each window.  A lone pine tree glowed in white at the bottom of the driveway.  Drivers passing our house knew that within there was a fire in the fireplace and tea steeping in the kitchen.   

 

We appreciated the modest light displays of families who observed Christmas with love before their gray American ranches or brown two-storey colonials with quietly manicured lawns.  While we didn’t ignore these lights, the real subjects of our car rides were the Clark Griswald homes that altered the landscape of the monotonous strip mall-rich township where we lived.  We sought out the big guns, the families who either budgeted throughout the year for their astronomical December electric bill or otherwise just decided on a whim to go for it and pay later.  These were the homes that diverted the little Cessna and Piper aircraft approaching the small Macomb county airport on 22 mile road, now long gone.  Lights streamed down from rooftops, wrapped around chimneys and exploded down the fronts and backs, illuminating all houses within a half block radius.   In use were little classic Christmas lights, large retro bulbs, blinking lights, twinkling lights, multi-colored lights, and solid color lights in whites, blues, greens, and purples.  Blow up Christmas Winnie the Poohs bounced and wavered in front lawns.  Wooden Christmas carolers sang dangerously close to sleeping baby Jesuses in handmade mangers. 

 

Because my dad did our lights, I always assumed that these projects belonged to the men in the homes, who perhaps sketched out on a sheet of paper where to place the icicle lights and Santa’s reindeer.  These were ESPN-watching, summer jet skiing American men.  These men invited over friends and neighbors each Sunday to watch football in their man caves, with chicken wings and celery sticks set out on the coffee table and bottles of Budweiser available for the picking in the fridge.  When Thanksgiving weekend rolled around each year, they had the opportunity to make a statement, one that would clog their street with crawling cars gaggling and gazing in disbelief, while at least one old woman on the street tsk-tsked and drew her shades tight to keep the light from reflecting off her television.

 

Our searching brought us to a sophisticated subdivision that contained huge sprawling houses and winding hilly streets with names like Buckingham Lane and Versailles Place.  This neighborhood banded together each year and decorated in only whites and reds.  These were not your over-the-top houses of Clark Griswald’s caliber.  This neighborhood was Grosse Pointe and Beverly Hills-esque.  The men in this neighborhood worked late nights at the firm and knew little about that year’s Detroit Lions team aside from the well-understood fact that they were losing yet again.  These men dared not put up their own lights.  No, it was very apparent that this was professional work.  A million white and red lights wove themselves higher and higher, up and up, to the very topmost bough of the towering trees planted throughout each yard.  Yard, what am I talking about?  These weren’t yards.  They were landscapes, tended to by professional landscapers.  Large (and I mean HUGE) wreaths circled the doorways.  The shimmer of lights seemed to continue inside these houses, bouncing off crystal and beveled glass.

 

This subdivision exuded sophistication and wealth, and we marveled at the cumulative beauty of these red and white homes.  Yet what we all loved even more were playful homes covered in color.  Christmas, my grandparents and parents believed, was that blessed time of year when our lives fill with a richness that is not measured and precise, but explodes in chaotic warmth every Christmas Eve.  Christmas is made of macaroni adorned ornaments and preschool hands sticky with glue and felt.  It is the morning of messy hair and footed pajamas and rambunctious cats leaping into piles of discarded wrapping paper. 

 

“See that house?” my grandma often pointed at houses with multi-colored lights glinting through the car window, “There’s a lot of singing and dancing going on inside.”

As the years went by, my sister and I not only got dressed but we even fixed our hair before venturing downstairs on Christmas morning, and we experienced a slow shift from multi-colored to mature white lights in our home.  Now I live in a city, and vast landscapes are few and far between.  This year the frigid cold has prevented us from venturing outside with our new baby to enjoy the ice skaters or to soak in the windows at Macys.  Out our bedroom window we see a house that has wrapped a single string of multi-color lights around the trunk of the only tree on their property.  This single string of lights is a stark contrast to the outdoor Christmas light explorations of my childhood, but it is my daily reminder that a world of neighborhood light displays still exists.  We will pass on the love of this season to our daughter and delight in her excitement each Christmas morning in future years.  Next December, our Christmas tree will be amusingly void of any ornaments within the grasp of a toddling one year old, but with joy we will be able to see its lights reflected in her blue eyes.

 

And we will make sure those Christmas lights are multi-colored. 

 

 

Christmas is coming!

We spent this past Thanksgiving here in Chicago, with both sides of the family.  It ended up being such a fantastic few days with everyone here (at least I thought so!).  The greatest part about the holiday season is how quickly Thanksgiving rolls right into Christmas.  We are heading to Michigan on Christmas Eve and I am becoming excited for us all to be together again!  I hope that all of you are also looking forward to this week!

                    Picture taken by my sister :-)

Website of the Week- A Sign of the Times

 

I have demonstrated this year the worst Christmas gift planning of my life.  Now typically, I am the type that keeps my ears peeled starting in the Spring for hints dropped here and there from family members regarding gifts they might like.  In the past I've kept track of all these ideas in writing.  There was even a year that I knit all the members of my dad's family scarves, and started the process in February.  So you get the idea.  Me + Chistmas gift planning= Done waaayyy ahead of time.

Well, this year I was caught a little off guard.  Perhaps I've just been oblivious to the people around me and not listening enough to their thoughts on what makes them happy.  Suddenly it was December, and not only did I have no gifts, but I had NO ideas.  Needless to say, I panicked.  I spent many weeknights scrolling through Amazon.com, page by page, hoping for some Eureka moment where I would conveniently come across my mother's gift.  It didn't really end up that way.  What made me feel like an even more self-absorbed inconsiderate person was the fact that I couldn't even think of things for my HUSBAND.  With whom I LIVE.

After many days of frustration, my gift finding improved.  My husband helped me with this, when he heard me freaking out about what to get different family members, and how I'm a bad wife, sister, daughter, etc.  "Look," he said, "What is your dad into?  He seems to like _____ recently.  What about your sister?  She's been into _____."  It was like a gift buying therapy session that I desperately needed, and from then on my thinking cleared and things began coming a bit more easily.  But dang, I did not enjoy the panic of not knowing what to buy people!

So back to the title of this post- I wanted to share with you a hilarious website that my sister- and brother-in-law found.  The four of us have decided to pull names Secret Santa-style this year.  And they found the site Elfster to help out with this task.  Elfster is an online Secret Santa gift exchange organizer.  It works a little like Evite.com, where we received an invitation to join the group that my sister-in-law had set up.  Tomorrow evening we will all be emailed the name of the person that Elfster selects and for whom we need to get a gift.  The budget was set for $1,000,000.50, which I somehow feel was my brother-in-law's influence.  I also suspect that he was the one that then messaged the group anonymously to ask if coupons count as presents.  Elfster is even sponsoring a conference call for the four of us tomorrow night to discuss whatever goofy criteria we apply to our gifts.  We have a 1-800 number to call with an access code and everything.  I think it's great! 

Step Aboard the CTA Holiday Train! Ho Ho Ho

In riding the train home this evening, I saw a sign posted inside the car that confirmed that the holidays are definitely here. 

For you Chicagoans, you know what this is.  Yes- the Chicago Transit Authority Holiday Train is on its way!  For those of you that have never witnessed this spectacle before, it is quite the sight to behold.  And as a recent immigrant of the Roscoe Village neighborhood, I think I may have a very good chance of spotting the holiday train this year during my morning and evening brown line escapades.

Photograph posted by 24gotham on Flickr

Photograph posted by jaytkay on Photobucket.

Three Decembers ago during our first Christmas season in Chicago, my parents came in for a weekend visit.  Now, perhaps I should preface this story with the explanation that anytime my parents ride the CTA with us, something weird happens.  And by something, I really mean someONE.  or someONES.  Just this past weekend my mother ended up next to a raucous group of fifty-somethings on the brown line who were cracking open cans of Miller Lite on the train.  I was half expecting her to be offered one.  Apparently the whole high school concept of hiding these items in brown paper bags or pouring them into unmarked containers was lost on these folks.  Where are the train police when you need them?

Anyways, back to 3 years ago- we had decided to take the #151 Sheridan bus downtown to Michigan Avenue.  While standing at the corner of Diversey and Sheridan, we noticed a man calmly walk up to the bus stop.  He stood outside the stop, rocking on his heels, seemingly minding his own business. He had shiny silver white hair that was cut chin-length with a center part and he wore a clean pressed pair of khakis with a coat.  Suddenly, out of nowhere, the man began to speak.  He spoke to no one in particular, though we noticed him making eye contact with the passers-by who watched him warily as the volume of his voice grew louder and louder, proclaiming how the "LORD HAS COME TO SAVE US ALL! AND THERE ARE MACHINE GUNS THAT MAKE 'DU DU DU DU DU' NOISES!  AND GOD HAS MADE FOR US A PLACE TO HAVE GARDENS!"

Yes, these were the things he was saying.  And no, they made no sense.

Keep in mind that my parents were with us, and that they had only come to visit us the city once before.  Standing next to a crazy person on the street when you are not used to city shenanigans is not a very calming experience.  Because it seemed that the man had chosen this corner for his quack church and out of fear of being selected for an exorcism, we ducked around him and made our way down to the next bus stop.  The Wrightwood stop was a good choice.  It was quiet.  The "Preacher" as we called him during our remaining 3 years in Lincoln Park, did not follow us.

Minutes went by, and along came the bus.  Well, not just any bus, but the CTA HOLIDAY BUS.  Tinsel trimmed every window, which were spray painted with fake snow.  Christmas music blared overhead.  The yellow poles that line the CTA buses were all trimmed in candy cane ribbon and tied with a big bow at the top, while other bars had lights strung around them.  Christmas cardboard cut-outs were stuck along any flat surface that was available.

So you get the picture I hope.

To add to this description, it is important for you to know that this bus was just PACKED full of people.  The 151 bus frequently gets that way on weekends when everyone heads down to the Magnificent Mile for shopping, since there really are no train alternatives in that area.  I've always hoped that the CTA would see this as a reason to create a train line going along the lakefront, a very underserved area when it comes to public transportation (reason #5,432 that Chicago did not get the 2016 Olympics). 

So to recap:
It looked like a Christmas fairy had vomited all over the place.
There was Christmas music blasting over the crappy speakers and people yelling over the noise.
There were 300 people on the bus and no where to sit or move.

My mom has bad knees and it's always such a pain in the butt when we get on a bus or train and there's no where for her to sit.  The bus always bobs and sways and hits every rut and dip in the road so that you might as well be on some type of trampoline.  We were forced to slowly creep our way toward the back of the bus with each stop as some people left and more piled in behind us.  Finally we were able to get my mom a seat, and as my dad, husband and I became separated by a few rows each as we all ended up getting more and more squished toward the back.  Because the music was so loud, it seemed that everyone on board was shouting.  It was loud, and it was hot.  

He must have been quiet at first, from his seat in the very back of the bus.  But then we heard it.  "THE LORD BLESS YOU AND KEEP YOU AND THE ARCHANGEL GABRIEL TOLD THE SOLDIERS FEAR NOT!"  I snapped my head toward my father, mouthing "Oh my god he's on the bus!"  My father then turned his head to make eye contact with my husband, who then glanced over at my mother a few rows away.  But my poor mother could not contribute at all, because it looked as though she had sat herself next to another somewhat-crazy individual, a woman who kept talking to her about something that we can't remember now (the Preacher used up all of our memory of that trip). 

Over the past few years, Jim and I bumped into the Preacher quite often at the post he seemed to frequent most often at Diversey and Clark.  At one time he cut his hair much shorter, then when we spotted him again it was even longer than it had been during that December bus ride.  In the summers with our windows open we heard his voice cutting through the sirens and other city noises.  But our favorite story is one that I am so sorry to have missed.  Jim was walking home one day and heard the ever-familiar noise of the Preacher bellowing out his declarations.  A police officer began walking over to tell him to beat it.  Holding up his arm like a crossing guard, the Preacher yelled "STAND BACK LAWMAN!" 



Once onto the Mag Mile, the Preacher exited the bus and quietly walked away.  Who knows what congregation of unassuming individuals became his new victims down in Streeterville.  A few stops afterwards, we too left the bus.  It pulled back into traffic, making everyone turn their heads to watch as it jingle-belled its way down Michigan Avenue.

In googling the "CTA Holiday Bus", the only websites that come up are from 2006, making me think that they must have discontinued the Holiday Bus after this particular season.     

But the train...the train is coming.  And it may be the train that pulls up to your platform.

ALL ABOARD!!!