Speaking of holidays...

This is me and Frankie, rocking Pilgrim Chic:

Then, my first turkey. (Thanks be to Alton Brown and his magical brine recipe.)

I overcooked the Brussel sprouts (dang!), but they were still pretty darn tasty.

Everybody made one or two dishes for Thanksgiving dinner, and they were all terrific, Among the highlights: we had some fantastic stuffing from Matt, out-of-this-world cream cheese potatoes from Jo, super tasty yams with marshmallows from Grandma Mary, and sticky toffee pudding from Jim.

I'm just about burnt out on leftovers-- I've eaten them every day since Thursday. Great meal, though. A very nice, relaxing turkey day.

Holiday Spirit

In a festive mood, Matt put Christmas lights up outside the house, and Frankie and I hauled out the boxes and started to put up the Christmas tree. We worked for about an hour, assembling the giant white tree that we've used for the past five years. Each branch has to be individually placed and fluffed, and the process is just tedious enough to take most of the fun out of the job.

After we finally got the tree together, I put it in its place in the bedroom and felt a little pang of regret, because after all of the work we had done de-cluttering the bedroom, the white tree took up all of the newly-freed space. It was kind of a bummer.

I steeled myself for the lengthy task of stringing the lights. It's my least favorite Christmas job-- Walking around and around the tree, getting dizzy, obsessing about how to get the lights perfectly spaced. I sat at the bottom of tree, looking up with a wad of tangled lights in my hand, and just...couldn't....bear it.  I lasted for about three minutes of untangling and winding, and finally said FORGET IT and immediately drove to Target to buy a pre-assembled, pre-lit tree about 1/3 the size of the white monstrosity.

I'm totally over the white tree. It was great in a retro kind of way, but this new tree takes up way less space, took five minutes to get out of the box and light, and made the decorating process much more enjoyable. I'm all about simplicity these days, and the white tree was cramping my style.

Tah-dah!

Colorado Sunrise

Isn't this amazing?

Almost makes getting up at 5am worth it.

Headed to market!

We had a marathon 2 1/2 hour meeting with our realtor today, and signed all of the paperwork to put our house on the market next month. It's exciting, confusing, and stressful all at once.  I mean, I know that people buy and sell houses every day, but for me the whole endeavor seems pretty epic and overwhelming. The timing is just so hard to wrap my head around. We have to follow Frankie and Roscoe around the house constantly picking things up and wiping things off, keeping perpetually poised for spur-of-the-moment showings, braced for the magic day when we finally get an offer. Then...BAM! We're homeless, and we'd better find ourselves a new house to live in immediately.

I guess it wouldn't be so overwhelming if Matt & I weren't so picky about our next house. If it was as simple as just waiting for our house to sell, looking over the houses available at that random moment we go under contract, and choosing the best of the batch, that'd be manageable. But, I don't want to settle for something that I don't love. I want the next house to be the one we spend the next ten years in. I want to fall in love. So, it has to be just right.

I think Matt and I have both come to terms with the fact that we might have to spend a few months in a rental once our house sells. (And, knock wood, I hope it'll sell soon. We are out of space, on top of other, and consequently facing a winter of boxed-in Cabin Fever.) But, the rental will be ok. Heck, if we can move to another country for seven months, surely we can do the same thing across town.

Wish us luck! The next few months are bound to be a bit of a roller-coaster. I'm looking forward to it, though.

 

Back in Black

I have to confess that I find all of the hubbub over "Black Friday" shopping to be somewhat insane. How good could the deals possibly be to justify crawling out of bed before sunrise and fighting crowds of people over a bunch of stuff that I probably don't need? It's just not appealing to me. I'd much rather do all my shopping online in my pajamas.

I saw an ad last night for Kohls where a happy suburban mom gleefully announced that the store would be opening at 3am for Black Friday shopping. 3am. Why would anyone get up that early to go shopping??? Do they shower you with gold coins an soon as you walk into the store? Is there a giant stack of free HD televisions? Unless you're a shopaholic insomniac, what could possibly be the draw?

I went to bed last night with all of this on my mind, and had a crazy vivid dream. I totally recognize that dreams are only interesting to the dreamer. There's nothing more boring than listening to someone go on and on about their weird dream-- It's what makes David Lynch movies so darn unbearable. Still, I can't resist sharing. Feel free to tune out.

In my dream, I woke up at 3am and had the uncontrollable urge to go Black Friday shopping. I hopped in the car and drove to Best Buy (which is already weird because I would *never* shop there in real life).

The store was all set up like a movie premiere... Searchlights, paparazzi, you name it. The line was one of those red-velvet-rope Disney-esque deals, and the queue stretched around the block. Fortunately, I found a secret way in at the back of the store where a pack of shoppers had pushed over a chain link fence like a pack of zombies in a Romero movie.

When I got in, the store was darkly lit, but basically the same as always. I had this overwhelming feeling of disappointment. Like, ...This is it? Tom Selleck was shopping in the aisle next to me, and he was really mean. I couldn't wait to get home and back to bed.

On my way out of the store, I got in an argument with a horrible woman that was elbowing shoppers out of the way to push her way to the DVDs. I tried to punch her, but totally whiffed my swing and missed her by a mile, just hitting air. I high-tailed it out of the store, and took a wrong turn. Suddenly, I was lost in some sort of vast industrial complex. There were warehouses and dark alleys everywhere. It was the dead of night, and I had absolutely no idea of how to get home. I wandered around, confused and panicked, until Roscoe finally jumped on the bed and woke me up.

So, yeah. Pretty clear, even in dreamland, how I feel about Black Friday.

And Tom Selleck, apparently.

The budding vegetarian

No turkey for Frankie today. She informed me yesterday that she would never, ever eat a turkey because it makes her too sad to eat things that somebody killed.

If this keeps up, Frankie's in for an eye-opening conversation about where chicken nuggets come from.

Gobble Gobble

Here's the most important lesson I've learned during the last few weeks: When I'm unemployed, life is way less stressful.

It's really great being home, and not having to go in to school to teach. After Frankie goes to bed at eight, I don't have to gear myself up for all-night marathon grading sessions. My inbox is free from the dozens of panicky/ passive-aggressive student emails that usually take up all of my time and energy. I actually have time to plan meals and pick up the house. I feel much less resentful when Matt goes away on business trips, because I don't have to juggle all of the childcare and housework with teaching.

In short, being unemployed is pretty awesome.

I know that I'm in a very fortunate position, not having to have a job right now. Matt works really hard, and it's because of him that I have the luxury of forgoing a paycheck and staying at home. So, yay Matt.

Being at home also makes prepping for Thanksgiving so much easier. In years past, I remember being so exhausted and overwhelmed with grading over Thanksgiving break that the thought of making anything for the big family dinner made me want to curl up in a ball in the corner, weeping. This year, I'm totally looking forward to the big meal. I'm in charge of the turkey, and have the whole 19 pound she-bang currently brining in the kitchen. (Thanks, Alton Brown!) I got the cranberry eggnog salad all whipped up this morning. In fact, I'm so ahead of the game, that I'm planning to run back out to the store to buy the ingredients for a last minute addition to the roster: roasted brussel sprouts.

It feels good to be able to take such a relaxed approach to Thanksgiving. And for that, truly, I'm thankful.

Long time, no blog

I can't seem to get motivated to write lately. I see my computer sitting there on my desk, and feel guilty for not writing... Like I've missed some sort of important deadline. It's similar to the feeling I used to get when I needed to grade a giant stack of papers but couldn't seem to get motivated to get started.

Maybe it's because there's not much going on around here lately. Well, ok. That's not exactly true. There's just nothing especially interesting going on. I've been trying to get the house organized, running a bunch of errands, cooking, cleaning, blah blah blah. Nothing that seems like it would be interesting to an audience.

Still, I've been feeling guilty about not updating, so here goes:

Frankie is back at school, and is doing great. She's made a bunch of new friends, and always seems excited to go to school in the morning. I was really worried that the transition would be tough on her, but she seems remarkably resilient. She still talks about her Dearham friends, but not with sadness. It's been a real relief to me. It's so great to see her having fun at school and making new friends. Last Friday was "crazy hair day" and this Friday is "lunch with a loved one." It seems like there's always something for her to look forward to. Go, Putman School of Science!

The only potentially dark cloud on the horizon is that Frankie's school, Putnam, has been put on a list with five other schools in town for potential permanent closure. I'm trying not to get too worked up about it yet, but it would really be awful to put Frankie through yet another transition next year. I know she'd be fine, but I hate to push her capacity to adapt too far. We won't know anything about the closures until January, but one of the five is definitely going to go. Keep your fingers crossed that it's not Putnam.

Speaking of changes, transitions, and adapting....

Matt and I have been making a lot of progress in getting the house ready to go on the market. We spent the day on Sunday cleaning out the storage shed and clearing out the boxes we've been storing underneath the house. I can't believe some of the stuff that we've kept stored down there over the years. I mean, how many boxes of VHS cassettes does one family need? (Answer: ZERO.)

I'm a bit of a pack rat, so it's hard for me to throw things away. One of the reasons that it's so hard for me to let things go is that even years (sometimes decades) after I buy something, I can still remember exactly how much I paid for just about everything. It's like the worst superpower ever. When I throw a sweater in a bag for Goodwill, in my head I add it to a mental mathematical list of how much it cost, and how much it plus all of the other items total. I know it sounds weird, but sometimes throwing away stuff feels like throwing away money. Even if I haven't worn the clothes or used the items in years, I still have a hard time with it. I know it's ridiculous, but I can't help it.

I found a solution, though. Instead of throwing stuff out or giving it to Goodwill, I've started taking the things that are especially tough to part with to consignment shops. It's not much... $30 here, $40 there, but it takes the psychological sting out of it for me. And when I'm done running things to the consignment shops around town, anything they don't want or need goes right over to the Salvation Army. And I'm ok with that. Great, even. Plus, it's really liberating to leave the house with a carload of stuff and come home with nothing plus fifty bucks.

So, that's what I've been doing. Boring, you say? I told you so. But I sure do have a lot less junk stuffed intro the nooks and crannies around here. And that's a very good thing.