The eve of Christmas Eve

When I was a kid, World News Tonight was a staple in our house. I still distinctly remember the late, great Peter Jennings saying one December 23, "It's the eve of Christmas Eve."

And it is again. I type this from my phone, waiting in line at the post office to pick up a package that wouldn't fit in my mailbox. It's for the Boo, from an old friend who lives out of state. I've already been to the gas station (where I waited in line, big surprise) and iParty, which was like a ghost town, to get some supplies for Boo's (gasp) second birthday party. I also picked him up a snowman balloon as a surprise.

Christmas is special this year. Boo is so excited for Santa, and I am seeing Christmas through his eyes, remembering my Christmases with Santa of long ago. We open the advent calendar every day and eat our chocolate, and we talk about Santa. I can't wait to see his face Christmas morning.

If you celebrate it, merry Christmas! Enjoy this magical time of year.

Christmas wrapping

We're moving into the home stretch with our Christmas shopping. Tree's up, Christmas cards are sent. All that remains to be done are the baking, a few odds and ends for people and of course, all that wrapping.

Every year after Christmas, I go out and scoop up my cards for the next year as well as all my wrapping paper, gift bags, tags, bows, etc. As a result, I have enough wrapping paper in my basement for the next 20 years. Except I really don't like to wrap. My seams tend to be crooked, I use too much wrapping paper and have overstuffed ends, and I don't always pull the wrapping paper taut enough, so it looks baggy. The solution, of course, is gift bags, but not everything can go in a bag. So I struggle with this odious task every year, often putting it off until the last minute.

Except this year, I decided to jump on top of it early and do it a little at a time. I just spent hours cutting, taping and tagging gifts. I feel accomplished but tired. And I haven't even started Boo's gifts. Maybe I'll leave most of them unwrapped. Still, he loves the wrapping paper. Got to make the boy happy.

On an unrelated note, I won NaNoWriMo on Thanksgiving day. Was a good feeling. I'm considering cleaning up my manuscript and shopping it around. Because, you know, I still don't have a job, and how cool would it be to sell a book?

The top 5 most depressing Christmas songs

I'm a real upper, aren't I? But really, I'm just giving the people what they want (in a sense). According to my site stats, the number one way people find this blog is by Googling "how to survive depression." And really, there are so many uplifting Christmas songs. Why not focus on the soul-wrenching, overwrought ones that focus on the flip side of my favorite holiday: That it can be a damn lonely, depressing time of year? So in no particular order, here we go:

Merry Christmas, Darling by the Carpenters: Setting aside what happened to Karen, her voice has always haunted me. It's beautiful but full of longing and sadness. When you throw in lyrics like, "I've just one wish on this Christmas Eve/I wish I were with you," it adds a whole new dimension. A melancholy classic.

Miss You Most (at Christmas Time) by Mariah Carey: Mariah's now-iconic holiday album, Merry Christmas, came out when I was in college, and I quickly wore it out. She wrote three of the songs on the album -- the ubiquitous neo-holiday classic All I Want for Christmas Is You, Jesus Born on This Day (eh) and this one. This is prototypical Mariah, with sparse orchestration and that gorgeous voice. Take a listen and hearken back to the days when she could sing to make you cry and hadn't gone crazy yet.

I'll Be Home for Christmas (traditional): Like many of us, I have family in different parts of the country. But it wasn't always that way. This song, written originally for WWII vets, always chokes me up a little, remembering those sweeping Christmases of the past when we all were together. And it's especially poignant when you think of all the Iraq soldiers who won't be able to be home for Christmas this year.

Do They Know It's Christmas? by Band Aid: M and I have a grand old time pointing out the different voices in this song every year. But have you really listened to the lyrics?

There's a world outside your window
And it's a world of dread and fear
Where the only water flowing
Is the bitter sting of tears
And the Christmas bells that ring
There are the clanging chimes of doom
Well tonight thank God it's them instead of you

It's an important point, of course, but yikes. What always struck me about this song (along with Bono's screeching) was, yeah, they probably do know it's Christmas, but they probably don't care. I know when it's Ramadan or Hanukkah, but I don't celebrate those holidays, so they go right on by with very little notice. Weird logic, depressing song, but a cornucopia of '80s talent.

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas (traditional): This song always made me sad, both because of the tempo and the lyrics . But then I watched the movie The Family Stone, and there's a heartbreaking scene where the family is watching Judy Garland sing it in Meet Me in Saint Louis against the backdrop of a bunch of family drama, and I got it. Just an achingly beautiful song.

Hope your holiday prep is going well. And that you're listening to some good music while you get everything done.

A light December

Yes, I know. I have disappeared. Santa did not bring me a new computer, alas, so my posting from home has been limited. Not to mention the computer room isn't really a place for the Boo to hang out, so I have to wait until he's napping, and there's lots of other things to do.

Like clean up from our first Christmas as a family. Holy crap, Boo got a lot of stuff. My living room is overrun. It was an amazing Christmas.

Happy new year, everyone. Resolution: To post more in 2009.

Santa crazy

I love Christmas. I love Santa. I love presents. I love decorating for the holidays. (Although it makes me, as Avery said in Jerry Maguire, one of those people who starts decorating for Christmas a month before.) So I wanted my son to love it all as much as I do, especially the big guy who brings presents. So I took him to the mall a few weeks ago to meet Santa.

He freaked out.

Now, Santa is pretty funny-looking. He's big and hairy and red. And he talks funny. And many kids are afraid of him. But I didn't want Boo to be one of them. So I brought my dancing Santa up from the basement, the one that shakes his moneymaker to Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree.

At first, he wasn't quite sure about this Santa. He would crawl over and check him out, and then he would crawl away and hug me, which is a sign of fear. But then, since he plays music and Boo loves anything musical, he began sitting and watching him dance. Then he started dancing along. Now he crawls over and grunts at me to turn Santa on. And every time he sees one of the other bazillion Santas around my house, he smiles. I hope he loves Christmas as much as his parents do.

I probably won't be online tomorrow, so merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, a festive Kwanzaa and happy Festivus. Peace out.

Been a long time, been a long time

Been a long lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely, lone-ly time. (Well, for you, without a post from me. At least I hope not.)

I've been busy, to say the least. Work has been balls-to-the-wall nuts. We got power back Monday, but then it was a matter of playing catchup with the laundry, cleaning, etc., since we went to my parents' in Melrose while we didn't have power for four days. No power= no heat, and had it just been the two of us, M and I might have toughed it out. But I have a little guy to worry about now, so off to Nana's we went. And now we have another storm bearing down. My in-laws just got power back last night. Loverly.

And speaking of the little guy: I feel like he's exploding with his development. He's babbling, imitating sounds, and his latest trick is climbing the stairs. By himself. Of course, we are right behind him, but it's a bit nerve-wracking. Time for a gate.

It's amazing to me that this time last year, Boo was in my belly, and now he's crawling all over the place and pulling himself up on the cabinets and trying to figure out why there's an eight-foot lit-up tree in the middle of the living room. And he is going to be ONE YEAR OLD in about two weeks. Holy crap. They say it goes by fast, and they weren't kidding.

Have a fabu weekend, everyone, as we go into this last stretch before Christmas and start the Festival of Lights. And for my New England buddies: Stay warm, and drink lots of cocoa.

What I've done in the last 72 hours

Been a busy bee, although I am getting over a bad cold:

• Stripped my entire bed down to the mattress and washed everything in hot water to kill all the germs.
• Did obscene amounts of other laundry. How does a 20-pound person make so much laundry? Thank goodness for the HE machine.
• Cleaned the bathrooms and vacuumed.
• Raked the entire front yard (and then realized I didn't have enough bags for that amount of leaves -- d'oh).
• Made another Big Red run to get stuff for our church bazaar and other sundries.
• Went to a family birthday party on the Noath Shoah.
• Almost finished the Newsweek special issue about the election, with all the behind-the-scenes stuff (dense, but an absolutely fascinating read).
• Took out the baby gate and started thinking about putting it at the bottom of the stairs, as Boo has shown interest in climbing them.
• Went to the doctor and got some antibiotics for my almost-sinus infection.
• Started thinking about my Christmas list and my birthday plans.

So that explains the lack of posts. A lot more going on, and I'll tell ya as we go.

Our down-home Christmas

We had some decent, if different, holidays. M's cousin, who lives the next town over, invited us over for Christmas Eve, and while we initially were going to go out to dinner and stop by later, there's nothing more depressing than a restaurant on Christmas Eve. So we canceled our order, walked out and went over to visit and have dinner. It was really nice. After, we went to church, where the choir (myself included) sang a knockout version of "Do You Hear What I Hear." It is always such a powerful service.

Christmas Day was a lounge-around day. We slept until 9 (will be my last Christmas being able to do that for awhile, if Boo is anything like my bro and I were on Christmas morning -- we used to crawl into my parents' bed at 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 a.m. until we annoyed them enough to get up) and then got up to have breakfast. We then did gifts, and I took a nap.

Now, I am very excited, because M got me a gift I have been requesting for quite some time. Something I will really use and that is in harmony of our mantra of a gift that won't accrue useless stuff. Something I prayed someone would get me for my shower.

Are you ready?

M got me a cleaning lady. For six months. Halle-freaking-lluia! I was really dreading having to keep this house clean with a newborn, and letting it go to h-e-double hockey sticks is just not an option for me. I mean, people come over here and comment on how immaculate it is. I can't deal with dirt. So she's coming Friday night to give him an estimate. I think I fell in love with him all over again.

The other big thing we did yesterday was go out for Chinese food. Now, I never stay home on Christmas, so I didn't realize how deserted the streets are. It's like the world went to sleep. The Chinese buffet was pretty sparsely populated (not a big non-Christian population in these parts), but the most interesting customer was an old dude who was hitting on all the cute Chinese waitresses. "I'm going to marry one of them," he slurred. "I just don't know which one." Clas-sy.

I had today off, so I spent it at Target, Bed, Bath and Beyond, Kohl's and Macy's, nabbing the after-Christmas bargains and getting toiletries and stuff to wear for the hospital. Now I am tired and think I will take a nap.

Back to work tomorrow. Yuck.

Merry Christmas!

Enjoy your holiday!

Where I'm from

Every year at Christmastime, my parents would take my brother and me to look at the lights in Saugus, on some side streets off the Fellsway we dubbed Guinea Heaven. This Flickr member took some amazing shots last year. Check out the Vegas-ness of it all.

Hold on for more one day

This is my last day in the office until next Thursday (and if Boo decides to come in the next few days, my last day in for a few months). I'm trying to get stuff done today just in case, but man, I'm tired. I know it gets old, but it's the truth. My bones are weary.

As for Christmas, the doc has advised us that an hour away is not a good idea at this point in my pregnancy. So we are staying home this Christmas so we can be close to the hospital. We're going to live like Jews, perhaps have some Chinese food and go to a movie. I feel bad to miss Christmas Eve at my mom's and Christmas Day with M's grandma, then a visit with my grandma (been a tradition since I was born), but I really don't want to give birth on the highway. And sitting in a car for an hour is enough to exhaust me.

I will be 38 weeks pregnant on Christmas Day, and that's pretty big and full of baby. According to yesterday's ultrasound, the baby already weighs 7 pounds and could gain another half-pound a week. So we could have quite a butterball on our hands.

Have a great weekend. We're having Christmas with our families (both are coming to visit) and finishing up with wrapping, etc.

Something to make your heart sing

RIP Maestro.

Snowbound

We woke up this morning to a snowblowable amount of snow. Damn. M sighed and fired up the snowblower. I decided to lay low today, since it's supposed to snow all day. Yucky.

So what's on my mind nowadays:

Baby (who is doing great, according to today's ultrasound and checkup)

Christmas (looks like we ain't traveling this year -- 'rents are an hour away, and that's too far from the hospital)

Work

This blog

Sorry. Will try to keep you updated as much as I can. And don't worry -- Boo comes out, you will know about it.

A long December

Was so nuts at work Friday that I missed posting. Well, here I am at the tail end of the weekend. A snowy-ass weekend that caused a Christmas party we were supposed to go to today to get canceled and M's kids' Christmas pageant to get pushed off to next weekend. We did errands yesterday, mostly at Babies R Us (this kid is well-supplied), went to lunch at Red Robin, did laundry (that would be me) and some last-minute Christmas shopping (that would be me again; M's finally done). Today was sleep, the Patriots game, cleaning, wrapping, baking and a turkey dinner, courtesy of M.

OK, I've had enough of snow. Could we just get a week without it? Seems early this year. And I feel doubly bad, because I can't exactly help M clean up with my belly sticking out to kingdom come.

Best and worst Christmas movies, sez the Globe

This is a good list, since it includes one of my all-time favorites, A Christmas Story (how could it not?). But it's missing Trading Places, which takes place Thanksgiving through the end of the year. How could they forget "Merry New Year"? And the quotes are hysterical. Another one of my all-time favorites.

What I did for love

God help me, but M convinced me to sit through the Larry the Cable Guy Christmas Spectacular last night on VH1. It included:

• A roast of Santa Claus (played by Norm himself, George Wendt), complete with Lisa Lampanelli, Jeffrey Ross and Flava Flav
  
  
• Performances by Tony Orlando (yes, that one) and Kid Rock (the latter of Rock N' Roll Jesus, which is pretty offensive on a Christmas special)
  
  
• The old visits from the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future (played by someone I didn't recognize, Penn Gillette and Carrot Top, respectively).

It was so bad it was good. Git R Done!

How long can I hold this over his head?

The 12 daze of Christmas

I've heard this on the radio a few times, but the video is pretty damn funny. Watch it and see why I usually stay sober -- I have more fun watching other people get stupid shitfaced.

Christmas political correctness run amok

At Samoset School here in Leominster, so many people complained that a giving tree was associated with Christmas that they had to take it down. Stuff like that makes me mad. This is why:

1) Most people celebrate Christmas. Yes, I am one of them, so maybe it's hard for me to understand the other side. But if you live in a predominantly Christian country, you need to get used to seeing Christian symbolism. That doesn't mean you need to believe in it. Besides, I know Jews who put up a Christmas tree, because it's pretty. There is so much that's secular in Christmas that I also have atheist friends who do up the holiday as much as I do (minus the nativity scene, etc.).

2) This was a giving tree. For charity. Taking it down is depriving the charity of needed funds.

Complete bull.

Now the calendar's just one page

I cannot believe it's finally December. I'm now 34 years old, have been in my house for five years and as of a month from this week, I could be a mom. Christmas is three weeks away. The nursery is three-quarters done, and I've got a house full of baby gifts I need to find homes for. At least the tree and indoor decorations are up at home, and my cube at work is all bedazzled. Time to get the inflatables on the front lawn and hang garland everywhere.

Do you hear what I hear?

WROR has been playing the Whitney Houston version of that song almost nonstop. I know, because I spent a good chunk of yesterday in my car. I've got it in my head:

Said the shepherd boy (stops to take a toke) to the might-y king
Do-you-know-what-I-know? (gospel choir echoes: what I know)
In your (toke) palace warm, (another toke) mighty king?

It's really something. Check it out (Rhapsody player needed).