Ian's birthday party is over, and the Holiday season is now officially allowed to commence.  To inaugurate this year's festivities, I have applied a lovely holiday theme to the journal, and will now post the traditional favorite story of the season.  Try to read it without tearing up--yeah, right. 

Oh, more on Ian's birthday later, but in a nutshell, it was fun!

( Visions of Sugarplums )

I'm off to visit family, and hopefully get some well-deserved coddling and fussing over, given our recent roller coaster ride. I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend, and if necessary, is able to kill or otherwise remove from action those who are causing you problems. ;-)

Despite the lurvely news coming out of the financial world, today I shall abstain from doom (don't worry, I'm sure it'll be back soon). Instead, I will leave you with the wit and intelligence of my favorite blogger Sharon Astyk, at her blog Casaubon's Book:

( Screwing it up: a manual for the new home preserver )

I just got a thank you card from the in-laws for our christmas gifts (we didn't get to see them over the holidays).  Becky effused appropriately over her knitted grocery bag, saying that all her friends will be so jealous at the farmer's market (yeah, she knows the way to get right into my heart!).  Pat loves his scarf, which is good.  Then she said something that really surprised me.  She wrote that Pat wanted to make sure I knew that this is the first piece of handknit he's ever owned.  *gawp*  I'm just... speechless.  I don't even know what to say.

I've now been at my mom's house for 14.5 hours.  So far it's going reasonably well--at least, I'm still in a pretty good mood.  Admittedly, while cooking last night she turned down the burner temp TWICE while I was cooking (maybe you've guessed this by now, but I do in fact know how to cook all by myself), and tried to instruct me on how to vacuuum (*NB:  besides having been a professional cook, I've also been a professional housekeeper), and she's thrown 3 underhanded jabs at dad that I've heard, but really, that's doing pretty well.  If we keep up at this pace, I should be able to leave for home tomorrow with minimal bloodletting.

Of course, soon my grandma will be here, along with numerous other relatives, most of whom I really don't like very much. *sigh*  If you've not heard from me in 24 hours, send a rescue mission, a small cheesecake, and some shackles.

At this moment, we have:

Cocoa snowflake cookies
Old Fashioned Sugar Cookies
Double chocolate-peanut-butter chip cookies
Oatmeal Raisin cookies
Gingerbread cookies (rolled out, chilling in the fridge for cutting & baking later)

We also have a few dozen more of each (except the snowflake) in the freezer ready to bake at a moment's notice.  The only cookies on my slate left to do are Glazed Lemon Cookies, and maybe some Pecan Sandies.  Then I'll have to start branching out...  Heheheheee

So I've been thinkin'....

 

When making butter spritz cookies, be sure to use the correct sized tip in your pastry bag.  The tip I used was too small.  This meant that (1) it was amazingly difficult to squeeze the dough out, and my hands both feel like they're going to seize up, and (2) the cookies are all bite-sized, rather than "eating" sized.  Ah well, you live and learn.

Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow...

http://sassymama.ca/fairytale.mp3

"Fairytale in New York" by the Pogues and Kirsty MacColl
"Ah, the sweet song of a sensitive poet who fucked up his life and the lives of everyone he touched.  The kind of person for whom a gambling addiction is a good thing, because it takes time away from his drinking, and any other addictions he had which might've killed him faster."  --Brian

(Thanks to beantree for the link--if you don't want this reposted, lemme know and I'll take it down)

And another one:

http://profile.imeem.com/j7eq3/music/XE4SQUfJ/christians_and_pagans/

"Christians and Pagans" by Dar Williams (damnit, this one actually makes me tear up)

And, of course, that classic from the '80's:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bP_WH4heId4

"Christmas Wrapping" by the Waitresses

Wow, talk about making a purse out of a pig's ear (note to K:  this is not a suggestion, step away from the pig!).  I managed to avert total dinner disaster, and make some really yummy yummy foods.  Okay, let's do this stepwise:

1. Utterly fail at making paneer for Palak Paneer.  NB:  do NOT NOT NOT use ultrapasteurized milk to make paneer.  Heck, if possible, do not use ultrapasteurized dairy products at all (unless you really enjoy milk that tastes of chalk-coated cardboard).  Anyway, I did not make a lovely chunk of mild, cut-able cheese.  Instead, I made something reminiscent of ricotta, but sweeter.  So my dinner plans collapsed.  What to do?
2. Dig through the Thai cookbook that K just loaned me and find three recipes for which we have, more or less, within acceptable tolerances, all the ingredients, mostly.  The dishes in question:
   
• Thai corn fritters
• Sesame Thai egg noodles
• bananas poached in rose-water coconut milk
3. Okay, total yum, all of them. 
   
4. This morning, I take the "ricotta-esque" mixture, heat it with some cream, honey and (it turns out) a bit too much vanilla.  Spread in fresh crepes, top with heated peach preserves.... *swoon*

And now we're watching Ratatouille again.  Yay. 

This afternoon B is going in to work to start his grading.  The kids and I will probably go hunting for a few more xmas decorations, maybe some walking shoes for me, boots for Alex, and then it's home to make spice cookies and write our letters to Santa!  So far Alex has a fairly specific list:  piano lessons, rollerskates, and to be turned into a superhero.

Yeah, it's long, but it's worth it.  Thanks to earthwomyn06 for posting it.  Enjoy, and Merry Christmas.

I have discovered Education World!  Oh wow, what an awesome store.  A lot of the stuff is for teachers, which means there's going to be 30 of them in any pack, but most of the stuff would work perfectly well in a home, too.  And, get this, the vast majority of the stuff is designed to be actually useful and fun to play with while simultaneously not breaking in 5 seconds.  Things like durable wooden toys, high-quality paints & watercolors, fun science toys, oh the list goes on and on.  And none of that stupid, contrived stuff designed to "teach your kids while they play!" which every parent knows is nonsense.  These are the fun toys you remember from your own kindergarten classroom, not the crud that comes from ToysRUs (which, btw, I went inside the other day--bizarre, bewildering, and full of CRAP).  I wish I'd found this store sooner.

Yeah yeah, so it's late, what can I say?  Anyway, Thanksgiving was generally great.  We got to relax a bit, and we even got on well with everyone (at least, I think we did).  There were a few "incidents", notably one between B & I, but things were resolved and we still had a good time.  Brian's mom seemed to have come with the intention of getting each of us some big thing that we want, but perhaps wouldn't buy for ourselves, which was cool.  So now I've got an AeroGarden--a somewhat silly, quite expensive thing that I've lusted after for years.  It costs far more than it's really worth in some ways, but I'm gonna have fresh lettuce in December, so I think I'll try to cope.  =)  Brian got a gorgeous pair of Harley-Davidson boots, which was really great as his old boots were actually split all the way up the back.  The kids had a blast, and it was nice to see how well Alex and his cousin Sophia play together--I don't think they fought more than once during the whole weekend (of course, they were both programmed for auto-destruct, so everywhere they went looked like a tornado had hit).

I was reminded of how very fond I am of College Football as I watched Mizzou take the Big 12 North title, and the first #1 BCS ranking in over 40 years.  Now I'm hunting for a TV to watch the Big 12 Championship game on--damned Dish Network doesn't carry ABC?!?!?!  I think we're gonna end up at BW3's.  Ah well, there's worse fates.

Sunday will be Ian's birthday celebration.  Ian's actual birthday is Dec. 24th, but I think there are pretty obvious reasons why we might want to celebrate it early.  Christmas season will start in our house after his birthday party.  Alex and I are going out shopping tonight for him to get Ian a present.

Check out McKibben's latest article on Christmas at Grist:

http://www.grist.org/feature/2007/11/20/say-no/index.html

Man, McKibben just rocks.

EDIT:  I simply must quote my favorite paragraph from his article:

There are, of course, some who will say that a course like the one I'm describing here will damage the economy -- that anyone who proposes a different Yuletide is a "grinch." (This, by the way, is a major literary faux pas. Close reading -- even cursory reading, or even viewing the annual television special, will remind one that it was in fact the grinch himself who believed that Christmas came in a box. He turned out to be wrong, as the Whos of Whoville, those communists, made clear.) You could answer those people by saying, "Well, it won't all happen at once, and the economy will have time to adjust." Or you could answer by saying, "Maybe you're right. And maybe the economy isn't therefore quite as rational and as obvious as we would like to believe, if in fact it depends on a corrupted celebration of Jesus' birth to stagger on for another year."

I just got back in touch with a good friend of mine from college (Hi Melissa), and this was in her email to me (geez, I hope you don't mind me sharing this...):

"One of my favorite times with you was after you graduated with your philosophy degree, I asked you "Why are we here?" and you told me to fuck off.  Man, I've missed you."

I don't think I've changed much.  =)

As Thanksgiving is around the corner here in the U.S., for those of us who have problems feeling thankful on demand (like, oh, I dunno, ME for example), I re-post the link to Miniature Earth:

http://www.miniature-earth.com/me_english.htm

And now I'm going to go be thankful at my father-in-law's house, with many relatives surrounding me, and hopefully a lot of knitting to do.

The Christmas Reclamation project has come to an end, and I think we've won.  There are now only two Christmas-related objects remaining in our house--one snow-globe, a concession to Alex, and the Advent calendar, which I just plain forgot.  We only had to endure one-half-hour of full-on meltdown from Alex, so I'll call that a success.  However, I'm now cursing the fact that I'm not part of the bagless-vacuum revolution.  I SWEAR I had more bags somewhere... I even tried to empty out the old bag a bit just to finish the vacuuming for today, but that was a no-go--it's like the vacuum has a little sensor that says "Huh-uh, that's an old bag, you can't pull that one on me!" and shut down.  Drat.

I am in the middle of making seitan for the first time.  There's a reasonable-sounding recipe for it in Vegan with a Vengeance, and since the tempeh sausage crumbles rocked so much I thought I'd give it a shot.

Brian and I are now well and good involved in Final Fantasy XII.  Gee, there's an unfortunate name, eh?  My knives are also so sharp now that you can practically hear the air singing along the edge of the blade.  Seriously, stop using those stupid sharpening steeles (unless you actually know what you're doing), and stop paying that guy down the street $30 to sharpen your knives.  Go down to your local upscale kitchen supply store, plunk down $70-150 (depending on what additional features you like) for a Chef's Choice Electric Knife Sharpener, and keep your knives sharp!  I got the one that has just the sharpening and honing blades, and it rocks.  And eventually you'll make your money back on the purchase.  The only caveat is that it doesn't work on serrated knives, but you only use those on breads & tomatoes, right?  Right!

Gotta go stir the seitan.  I had a country-fried seitan dish at a veg restaurant over Christmas, which I completely <3'ed.  I'll probably try the Jerk Seitan, since that's the dish Brian had wanted there and they were out.  The kids even liked the fried seitan, but then I guess they'll eat anything if it's deep-fried.  And, somewhat creepily, we may have converted Brian's dad & stepmom into once-a-week vegetarians.  Hey, that's where it all starts.... from there, it's downhill.  Things like seitan, tempeh, and TVP start sounding reasonable, and then you've just had it.

R.

'Twas the night before Christmas and all through the nation
Friends of Freedom knew it was a special occasion.
Lady Liberty stood taller just off the shore
Her torch shining brighter than a few weeks before

But it wasn't the flame turning her cheeks all rosy
It was thoughts of Snowe, Feingold and Nancy Pelosi
And leaders from every side of the aisle
Who would soon bring the Bill of Rights back into style.

The Amendments had all hurried out of their beds -
Which was no easy task, they were nearly in shreds -
And they rushed to the window on papery feet
As a jolly old man flew right over their street.

"Could it be!?" they inquired as the roof shook and trembled
And they crept toward the mantle, peaceably assembled,
Just as someone emerged from the chimney with flair
In a shiny red suit, with a shock of white hair

And a top hat, and pants all in red, white and blue -
"Wait a minute," the Amendments exclaimed, "Who are you?"
"Don't be frightened my children," he said, "it's no scam.
"You can't have forgotten your old Uncle Sam!"

"Holy crap!" said Free Speech. "Stop right there!" yelled Bear Arms
And Privacy cried "Who shut off the alarms?!"
The Fifth remained silent, but Uncle Sam said
"We've been having some trouble, but Freedom's not dead."

The Amendments were cautious. "It's just been so long
"We've seen Liberty lost, we've seen so much go wrong.
"The President's trying to mangle and warp us,
"The Fourth is in tatters, so's Habeas Corpus!"

The old man sat down - he had had quite a ride -
But he told them "Don't worry, the Law's on our side,
"'Cause the nation's fed up and more people are crying
"For Justice and an end to illegal spying,

"And secret abductions by the CIA,
"And laws that would take women's choices away,
"And Gitmo tribunals and secret detention,
"And other intrusions too numerous to mention - "

"Not so fast," said a grinchity voice from above
And Don Rumsfeld pushed past the Fourteenth with a shove.
He was covered in soot and he looked kind of scary.
It seemed like his Christmas had not been so merry.

The Amendments said they weren't happy to see him:
"You tried to throw all of us in the museum!
"You've done so much the Constitution forbids!"
"And I would have gone on, but for you meddling kids!"

Uncle Sam told him "Rummy, your plans just won't do,
"So we've got a brand new timetable for you!"
And as Rumsfeld retired and crept into the night
The Amendments cried out "Have a good secret flight!"

From the distance they heard him reply with a snort.
"Bye-bye, Rummy!" they answered, "we'll see you in court!"
Uncle Sam rode the chimney up out of the room
And, like Frosty, he said "I'll be back again soon."

But they heard him exclaim "Oh, and just one more thing!
"This year, when the holiday bells start to ring,
"Try to honor religion. Honest faith can't be wrong.
"It's America, can't we all just get along?

"So, on Christian," he cried, "Muslim, Hindu, and Jew!
"On Quaker! On Shaker! And Atheist too!
"On Buddhist! On Taoist! And to show we're not chickens
"We'll file a few lawsuits defending the Wiccans!

"Your belief is your right, so get out there and savor it.
"Uncle Sam's not a preacher, and he doesn't play favorites!"
So this holiday season, whatever you do,
Warmest wishes for Freedom, from the ACLU.

Last week encountered a truly reckless abandonment of our scheduled menu, so some of that will be showing up on here.  In other words, no, I do not make eggplant parmesan every week.

• Ian's Birthday:  Waffles and chocolate chip cake
• Yule Feast:  (potluck) Mashed potatoes, sechuan green beans, and Buche de Noel
• Paneer Masala
• Eggplant Parmesan
• Christmas Eve dinner:  PIZZA!  sausage & mushroom, and feta & onion

Erg!  I found the perfect book for my dad for xmas, and I order it off of Amazon.com.  They claim that this book usually ships in 6-12 days, and as such I cannot use the SuperSaver FREE Shipping (tm), cause it won't arrive in time.  Fine.  I choose the standard ground shipping.  No dice--still won't arrive in time.  FINE.  I up it to 2-day ground.  NOW it will arrive in time--had to compensate for the 12-day delay in initial shipping, right?  For an extra $10, right?  So what happens?  The damned book ships TWO HOURS LATER.  What delay?  6-12 days?  I could've gotten it shipped for free you *#)@)$)!  There's nothing like blowing an extra 10-spot for no good reason--especially around the holiday season.

And on the topic of fun holiday antics, my mom is pushing new boundaries of annoyance.  While chatting the other day, she tells me about several things from a conversation she had with my dad.  Okay, great.  There is a problem that I need to deal with regarding my dad--but it's minor and easily taken care of.  Frankly, I was gonna call him anyway, and it would've resolved itself without my ever knowing about it.  THEN she tells me that dad had specifically requested she not discuss this with me.  O-kay.  THEN she starts councilling me on the *best way to lie* to bring up the subject with him without letting him know that mom talked to me about it.  This is just fricking great.  So now I have to lie to my dad about a conversation I had with my mom that I had no way of knowing I wasn't supposed to be having, to keep my mom's butt out of the fire for lie-ing to my dad, all for a topic that WOULD'VE RESOLVED ITSELF IN ABOUT TWO DAYS!!!  I'm beginning to think my family's favorite holiday pasttime is finding new and funner ways to lie to each other... grrrr.

On the plus side, lo tho the universe conspired mightily against me, it did not derail me from doing yoga today!  It tried choking on the DVD, twice--but I switched players!  It tried getting Alex up, but he settled back in for nap!  It even tried a phonecall from the school psychologist about the Annual Conference Review for Alex transitioning to Kindergarten--nope!  I persisted in a nearly bloody-minded fashion to continue my yoga routine!  Sure, I'd lost my rhythm.  Sure, I had to go back a few scenes to restretch.  Sure, I was now distracted thinking about finding childcare for Ian for the conference--but all to no avail!  The yoga was done!

R.

Houston, we have a problem. The problem is that, lo, though my due date with Ian was Dec. 6, 2004, he was forced out via induction on DECEMBER 24TH!! This is a shi-ity day to have a birthday. While in the future this will cause us no end of problems I'm sure, it's already rearing it's ugly head and he doesn't even understand what a birthday is yet.

So here's the situation. I just looked up today and realized that we have done NOTHING towards planning for Ian's 2nd birthday. Now, we're not big-party-havin kinda parents, especially when the kid's only two (maybe when they turn 8 or something...), but still, we like to have some sort of recognition of this momentous occasion.  Last year we actually had Christmas Eve designated as Ian's birthday, without much issue.  But this year one of my in-laws wants to have the whole family out to their farm for Christmas.  Now, let me be clear here, by "the whole family" I mean:  the hosting in-laws (Brian's mom & stepdad); Brian's dad & stepmom; us (Brian, me, Alex, Ian); Brian's brother, wife, 2 daughters; my mom, dad & grandma; and SIL's mom, dad and stepdad.  Truth be told, I'm looking forward to that.  But we do NOT want to have the kids receiving all of their gifts at this time--that would be just completely overwhelming and really unfair to them.  So it was suggested that we do our gifts and my family's gifts on Christmas Eve, and save one or two big ones for Christmas morning from Santa.  Great!  What about Ian's birthday?  We can't do it at the same time--that's just mean to Ian.  Should we try and do it the week before?  After?  What should we do?!?!  I'm just now entering panic mode, since I realized today that if we do it early I have less than no time to plan.  And our families will be all cranked off, since whatever we do they probably wouldn't be able to come (too difficult to come out to visit for a birthday, go home, then come out again in a week, etc.).  Argh!  Why oh why couldn't that little boy have exited the womb in a timely fashion?!

On the other hand, I've just gotten confirmation that Ian is the one who's been messing with the thermostat (yesterday it was turned up to 85 degrees F), so maybe he won't be having a birthday.... I'll just give him our gas bill as a present.

R.