The day after Thanksgiving is kind of a big deal in our house. Yes, my wife drags me out of bed to enjoy black Friday shopping with everyone else in town and all the neighboring towns and burbs. Black Friday has got to be the highest population day for us. The streets are full, the stores are full, the parking lots are full, and all the shopping carts are used up. We need to put up road blocks and charge admission one day a year. No more taxes for us!
But better than shopping, it’s really a big deal for the kids. It’s the day we put up the tree and start listening to Christmas music.
I love Christmas music, around Christmas time, not before. When the stores start playing it early I just get sick of it by the time the holiday rolls around. So in our cars and in our home its bah-humbug on the festive tunes until after Thanksgiving. Even when the six year old boy starts singing Jingle Bells in July, (hey, it happens more than you would think) the older kids pipe in with the rule and our Christmas season is musically preserved.
As for the tree? A month before Thanksgiving the younger ones are already asking if we can put up the tree. And when I say asking I mean every five minutes. They ask and I repeat the plan: after Thanksgiving. But that’s not the end of it. They ask where it’s going to go, if it’s in the garage, if I’m going to dip it in chocolate and hang it upside down this year, and on and on and on. Together they’re like little project managers working their way down a list to make sure everything is in order and on schedule. I wonder who they get that from, (role eyes toward wife here) Yea, I wonder…
We have a fake tree so it’s not like it’s a hard thing to do. I know, fake trees are an abomination. No pine smell, no big family outing to find the perfect tree, no pictures of rosy cheeked kids in the snow. I’ve learned my lesson on that idea, over and over again.
The first clue was fifteen years ago right after Thanksgiving. My wife, Tracy, and I were going up to get our first Christmas tree together long before we had kids. Back when we still had hopes and dreams.
I had a 1964 Ford truck that didn’t have a working heater, defroster, or windshield wipers. It was raining that day as we headed out of the valley and up the mountain to cut down a tree from the forest with our $10.00 permit.
We each had a shop rag and we would constantly wipe down the windshield on the inside so we could see. This was fine until we got up high enough for the rain to turn to snow. Then I had to stop and wipe the snow off the outside of the windshield every five minutes. Eventually I was driving with my head out the window like a dog with my tongue flapping in the breeze.
Did I mention I had on a thin sweat shirt and jeans and she was freezing in her leggings, no socks, slip on shoes and no jacket? We drove up until the road ended and found other tree hunters enjoying the snow in full winter ski gear drinking hot cocoa and riding quad runners and snow mobiles. Envy much?
Our permit said we had to go 100 yards or 100 feet or 100 miles from the highway to cut our tree. 100 something, I can’t remember. This was fine anyway because all the other Christmas trees close to the road had already been cut. We were just too late to break the law. Story of my life.
We started our hike into the winter wonderland with snow up to our unprepared knees. Ten yards in we were up to our necks. Tracy got her foot stuck on some stick underground, thought she might lose her shoe, and actually said, “Just leave me here.”
At that point I wasn’t really sure if she meant for me to just go get a tree without her and meet her back at the truck, or just leave her there to freeze to death and go on with my life. I’m still not sure to this day and I don’t know if she knows either.
Another year, another truck. She asked, “Should we get gas before we leave town?” and I said, like an idiot, “Oh noooo, we’re fine, plenty of gas.” Thirty minutes later we were walking to Placerville in the cold.
We called it quits on the forest one year and went to a small cut-your-own Christmas tree farm. It was tons of fun. The kids got to see Santa, we overpaid for delicious hot chocolate, and found a great tree.
At the end of the season it was time to take the tree down and clean up Christmas. I grabbed the trunk and my hand was instantly covered with tiny black beetles. Some type of bug had hatched in the warmth of our home. The poor little critters probably thought it was spring. I had the heebie-jeebies till Easter.
I romanticize everything. I think the kids are going to have a blast on these fun family outings. But they just aren’t too wild about driving for an hour to the woods, tromping around looking for a tree, going potty in the wild, and freezing their cheeks off (both sets). I’m slowly learning how to control my problem. I’m in a program and the kids are helping, boy are they helping.
One year after another failed forest trip we decided to go fake. Too many disasters with old trucks, crying kids, and tons of gas money. It was time for a new tradition. We bought a beautiful eight foot pre-lit tree at Costco.
I would guess that about 90% of our Christmas décor gets unpacked every year from boxes with Costco’s Kirkland brand on the side. Our Christmas tree, nativity set, Whimsical Santa, Whimsical Reindeer, and Whimsical Tree (notice a theme here?), and even the ornaments come in Kirkland labeled boxes. Our whimsical kids are growing up thinking that Kirkland means Christmas. Yesterday the boys were actually singing, “We Wish You a Merry Kirkland.”
I do miss that pine tree smell that fills the whole house with Christmas memories. But now, instead of borrowing an old pickup and leaving a warm home to head up to the mountains and brave the elements on an all day trek, I just pull out the biggest box in the garage, open it, assemble four pieces, stick it in the corner, right side up, chocolate free, and ta-da! Instant Christmas. I love tradition.
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Minivan Dad
I wrote this a few years ago, before we bought the big SUV. I miss that minivan!
I’m starting to realize that I am no longer cool. I used to have a vague sense of coolness. I was kind of cool most of the time and once in a while I was really super cool. Now, I’m beginning to think that not only am I not cool now, I haven’t been cool for a very long time.
It began as a vague kind of spidy-sense. I felt the winds of change, I just didn’t realize what it was until a few days ago. A friend of mine just bought herself a new beamer. (Yes I have friends in that crowd, thank you very much.) She joked about a relative who suggested a sporty minivan and then said something in a lilting laugh that included the phrase “Brain damaged moron.”
I was suddenly struck with the idea that the minivan today has the same stigma as the station wagon did when I was growing up. I confirmed this with a few other sources (the next two nearest people) and was astounded to find this to be the case. The minivan is no longer cool. I was blown away. Upon expressing my surprise I was greeted with “When was the minivan cool?” (He’s off my Christmas card list by the way.)
I remember when my Dad had a four wheel drive station wagon and he thought that was the best thing ever. We just sat still in the fold down seats and hoped he never had the desire to test its all-terrain capabilities.
My buddy’s dad used to brag on their family wagon “This is the heaviest production car ever made. We’ve put so many miles on it, we could have driven around the world seven times. This car has the same engine that they used on Apollo 13.” And then our eyes would involuntarily roll from one side of our head to the other and a sigh would force its way out of our vocal cords only to fog up the untinted windows. I seem to remember Convoy was always playing on the 8-track too.
So when the mini-van came on the scene I was enthralled. You could leave the station wagon world behind and ride in total family car coolness. As a teenager I had this grand dream (some might call it an ungrounded illusion, whatever) of a sporty minivan pulling a trailer holding a pair of jet skis, all custom painted to match. I had never even been on jet skis before but when you’re dreaming you might as well go for jet skis, I always say.
As I grew up I never lost interest in the desire to own my piece of family car heaven. When our clan finally reached minivan proportions--three girls with one boy on the way--we bought the American dream with one sliding door and a rear lift hatch.
How can you go wrong with a V6 roof racked forest green window tinted beauty? This thing had cup holders for every seat! Cup holders man. How cool is that? Did your old bubble window station wagon have cup holders? Ours didn’t. Tinted windows? What’s that? Our mini machine even has a tow package. I can tow stuff. I want to see you throw a trailer behind your beamer sedan. Yeah, that’s what I thought.
Nowadays these new mini-treasures are coming out with the fold down seats that give you over 351,770 different interior configurations, including the Las Vegas Lounge and Military Bunker styles. And double sliding doors are almost standard now. Could it be any cooler? Apparently the general consensus is, “Yes, is can be cooler.” Heresy, I say, Hair-Us-E.
I’ll tell you why the MV and I are loosing our cool. Guys with more money buying those huge SUVs made by Freightliner, Mack, and Peterbilt. Sure, more room, more power, and more other stuff. But cooler and sexier than a minivan? P’Shaw! I say you can’t simply buy coolness with more money on the sticker price and more cash down the gas tank.
Just the other day my sweet princess suggested that we might look at one of these SUVs when its time for us to buy again. Betrayed by my own love, the agony. This isn’t the first time she’s gone against my grain either. Just last year it was she who “suggested” I lose the parachute pants look. Like her painted nails and capris make her the cool police. Oh well, maybe I’ll be cool again if I just do what everyone else is doing. Hey, do you need two gas cards for an SUV or do you just get a second mortgage?
I’m starting to realize that I am no longer cool. I used to have a vague sense of coolness. I was kind of cool most of the time and once in a while I was really super cool. Now, I’m beginning to think that not only am I not cool now, I haven’t been cool for a very long time.
It began as a vague kind of spidy-sense. I felt the winds of change, I just didn’t realize what it was until a few days ago. A friend of mine just bought herself a new beamer. (Yes I have friends in that crowd, thank you very much.) She joked about a relative who suggested a sporty minivan and then said something in a lilting laugh that included the phrase “Brain damaged moron.”
I was suddenly struck with the idea that the minivan today has the same stigma as the station wagon did when I was growing up. I confirmed this with a few other sources (the next two nearest people) and was astounded to find this to be the case. The minivan is no longer cool. I was blown away. Upon expressing my surprise I was greeted with “When was the minivan cool?” (He’s off my Christmas card list by the way.)
I remember when my Dad had a four wheel drive station wagon and he thought that was the best thing ever. We just sat still in the fold down seats and hoped he never had the desire to test its all-terrain capabilities.
My buddy’s dad used to brag on their family wagon “This is the heaviest production car ever made. We’ve put so many miles on it, we could have driven around the world seven times. This car has the same engine that they used on Apollo 13.” And then our eyes would involuntarily roll from one side of our head to the other and a sigh would force its way out of our vocal cords only to fog up the untinted windows. I seem to remember Convoy was always playing on the 8-track too.
So when the mini-van came on the scene I was enthralled. You could leave the station wagon world behind and ride in total family car coolness. As a teenager I had this grand dream (some might call it an ungrounded illusion, whatever) of a sporty minivan pulling a trailer holding a pair of jet skis, all custom painted to match. I had never even been on jet skis before but when you’re dreaming you might as well go for jet skis, I always say.
As I grew up I never lost interest in the desire to own my piece of family car heaven. When our clan finally reached minivan proportions--three girls with one boy on the way--we bought the American dream with one sliding door and a rear lift hatch.
How can you go wrong with a V6 roof racked forest green window tinted beauty? This thing had cup holders for every seat! Cup holders man. How cool is that? Did your old bubble window station wagon have cup holders? Ours didn’t. Tinted windows? What’s that? Our mini machine even has a tow package. I can tow stuff. I want to see you throw a trailer behind your beamer sedan. Yeah, that’s what I thought.
Nowadays these new mini-treasures are coming out with the fold down seats that give you over 351,770 different interior configurations, including the Las Vegas Lounge and Military Bunker styles. And double sliding doors are almost standard now. Could it be any cooler? Apparently the general consensus is, “Yes, is can be cooler.” Heresy, I say, Hair-Us-E.
I’ll tell you why the MV and I are loosing our cool. Guys with more money buying those huge SUVs made by Freightliner, Mack, and Peterbilt. Sure, more room, more power, and more other stuff. But cooler and sexier than a minivan? P’Shaw! I say you can’t simply buy coolness with more money on the sticker price and more cash down the gas tank.
Just the other day my sweet princess suggested that we might look at one of these SUVs when its time for us to buy again. Betrayed by my own love, the agony. This isn’t the first time she’s gone against my grain either. Just last year it was she who “suggested” I lose the parachute pants look. Like her painted nails and capris make her the cool police. Oh well, maybe I’ll be cool again if I just do what everyone else is doing. Hey, do you need two gas cards for an SUV or do you just get a second mortgage?
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Four Letter Word
It was a relatively quiet day in my household with the TV on and piano practice quietly making a racket in the after school hours. One of the girls was at the table doing her homework and vigorously scratching her head. With her pencil down and two hands running through her hair she turned to my wife to complain about all the itching. In only a few short seconds my wife was uttering the four letter word all parents dread: Lice.
We are not talking about a few pioneers here either. These little empire builders were so plentiful they had cities and suburbs, apartments and urban sprawl. We can’t be certain but we think we may have interrupted them during the primaries for the lice elections. They were well established and thriving.
I share this with you reluctantly. Nobody wants to admit that they have lice in their home right? I mean, we’re clean people. We take showers once a week. Well, we at least play in the sprinklers outside once in a while and the kids do get all soapy when they wash my car. How could we get lice? How could this great misfortune fall upon the head of one of our household? Oh the horror.
And guess what? Our family had just spent the weekend at my brother’s house. No, she didn’t get it there; the bug city was too far established to only be a few days old. We were forced to call their house to let them know we may have infested them with the terrible biohazard. That’s a fun call to make.
So first you the buy the little comb and the napalm for hair. You wash the heck out of that little kid’s hair until you decide it just may be easier to shave it all off and start over. Hey, it may grow back in a whole new color. Unfortunately the little one is not ready to go for the Mr. Clean look and she vetoes that plan.
Of course, the bottle says that you can’t re-apply this radioactive biohazard to the little licetopia for at least another week. So you start looking for back woods herbal remedies that promise to not give your child the ability to glow in the dark and read minds.
Friends and relatives share their lice fixes. From tomato juice to tea tree oil you try them all. At least the little buggers might drown in all this stuff. Soon your child’s head smells like a freshly tossed green salad and you are seeing fewer and fewer lice in your four-times-a-day inspections.
While hers are treatable, the rest of the family has another problem. As soon as you see bug number one you develop a deadly case of the heebie-jeebies. Don’t give me that look, you know exactly what I’m talking about. If you see a spider on your friend’s shoulder you instantly start to feel like there is a spider on you too.
Only, it’s worse with lice. When you see a small industrial complex of tiny bugs building condos in your child’s hair the schizophrenia starts to set in. Your head starts to itch and you imagine a superhighway of little lice commuters traipsing along your cranium on their way home from a long hard day of chewing through your skull to your brain.
Everybody in our house caught this imaginary infestation. Of course, my glass-is-half-empty wife had it the worst. Every day for two weeks I would come home from work and be forced to inspect her hair for those tricky little critters. I felt like I was living the nature channel. Just like the monkeys, I was looking for bugs on my mate. Sexy. And when I couldn’t find lice in her hair she actually seemed disappointed.
Her disappointment was baffling until I realized her dilemma. Every time I didn’t find anything it just reinforced what I have been saying for over fifteen years now; she’s crazy. So, if I was able to find bugs in her hair, yeah she’d have lice, but at least she wouldn’t be crazy. You can treat lice quickly. Crazy is a lot harder to fix.
She never did get those lice and I am now glad to announce that our home is once again lice free. Heads only itch when we don’t know the answer to something or we get syrup in our hair. Just like normal. My wife is back to her self again; beautiful, wise, lice free, and still crazy. Just like normal.
We are not talking about a few pioneers here either. These little empire builders were so plentiful they had cities and suburbs, apartments and urban sprawl. We can’t be certain but we think we may have interrupted them during the primaries for the lice elections. They were well established and thriving.
I share this with you reluctantly. Nobody wants to admit that they have lice in their home right? I mean, we’re clean people. We take showers once a week. Well, we at least play in the sprinklers outside once in a while and the kids do get all soapy when they wash my car. How could we get lice? How could this great misfortune fall upon the head of one of our household? Oh the horror.
And guess what? Our family had just spent the weekend at my brother’s house. No, she didn’t get it there; the bug city was too far established to only be a few days old. We were forced to call their house to let them know we may have infested them with the terrible biohazard. That’s a fun call to make.
So first you the buy the little comb and the napalm for hair. You wash the heck out of that little kid’s hair until you decide it just may be easier to shave it all off and start over. Hey, it may grow back in a whole new color. Unfortunately the little one is not ready to go for the Mr. Clean look and she vetoes that plan.
Of course, the bottle says that you can’t re-apply this radioactive biohazard to the little licetopia for at least another week. So you start looking for back woods herbal remedies that promise to not give your child the ability to glow in the dark and read minds.
Friends and relatives share their lice fixes. From tomato juice to tea tree oil you try them all. At least the little buggers might drown in all this stuff. Soon your child’s head smells like a freshly tossed green salad and you are seeing fewer and fewer lice in your four-times-a-day inspections.
While hers are treatable, the rest of the family has another problem. As soon as you see bug number one you develop a deadly case of the heebie-jeebies. Don’t give me that look, you know exactly what I’m talking about. If you see a spider on your friend’s shoulder you instantly start to feel like there is a spider on you too.
Only, it’s worse with lice. When you see a small industrial complex of tiny bugs building condos in your child’s hair the schizophrenia starts to set in. Your head starts to itch and you imagine a superhighway of little lice commuters traipsing along your cranium on their way home from a long hard day of chewing through your skull to your brain.
Everybody in our house caught this imaginary infestation. Of course, my glass-is-half-empty wife had it the worst. Every day for two weeks I would come home from work and be forced to inspect her hair for those tricky little critters. I felt like I was living the nature channel. Just like the monkeys, I was looking for bugs on my mate. Sexy. And when I couldn’t find lice in her hair she actually seemed disappointed.
Her disappointment was baffling until I realized her dilemma. Every time I didn’t find anything it just reinforced what I have been saying for over fifteen years now; she’s crazy. So, if I was able to find bugs in her hair, yeah she’d have lice, but at least she wouldn’t be crazy. You can treat lice quickly. Crazy is a lot harder to fix.
She never did get those lice and I am now glad to announce that our home is once again lice free. Heads only itch when we don’t know the answer to something or we get syrup in our hair. Just like normal. My wife is back to her self again; beautiful, wise, lice free, and still crazy. Just like normal.
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