Calm & love
Posted on 2012.12.08 at 08:30
I want to admit how happy I've been lately. (What a gruesome confession.) Since probably the beginning of November. August and September were both so hard, feeling like shit and the weather being so hot, and being overwhelmed at work. October was somewhere in the middle. But November was peaceful and happy. December too, so far.
I think Texas becomes rather beautiful in the winter. It looks grim and cold, because everything is dead. Brown fields are very pretty against the blue sky. It doesn't feel like winter - highs in the 70s and 80s - but it looks like winter. (Unlike Florida, which stayed lush and green all year round. Unlike Michigan, where winter meant that everything gained this gray film, as though thick car exhaust had condensed on your eyeballs.)
This car has been parked down the street for a while. It's been so long since I've seen a car with wood paneling on the sides. And this is a convertible, no less. Someone thought that it was a great idea to design a wood-paneling convertible.
We took the kids to Santa's Ranch
Where you pay $24 for a mile of lights. You drive along at idle speed for a half-hour and oooh at the elaborate scene after scene made entirely out of Christmas lights. What a miracle! The shitheads in front of us kept stopping every three seconds to take photos. We could tell, by the flash going off from their car.
We could either get out of our car and go give them a lecture, or start taking photos ourselves.
Santa's Alamo.
Then the New Testament, culminating in a dramatic baby Jesus display. After the birth is the afterparty.
He is Ryan!
The car in front of us stopped taking so many photos once Ryan rose, so we did too.
Carb-o-starch-ment.
Things I have made for dinner this week, which the savage kids wouldn't eat: chicken fried rice, mashed potatoes. I get that you have delicate widdle palettes, but give me a fucking break. They were very melodramatic about how gross it was, with lots of crying and chugging milk after touching the poison with the tips of their tongues. I might as well make kimchi with siracha sauce, little cretins.
What they really want is bananas. It's hard to make a nutritional case that they should eat my chicken fried rice over a banana. So we don't. Once they've tasted the starchy fried mess and choked it down with a gallon of milk, they may have a banana. Or three.
When Hawaiian Punch was a baby, I had two songs I used to put her to sleep. The first went:
Good night, Baby Lorraine.
Baby Lorraine, good night.
It's to the tune that grandfather clocks or church bells play sometimes: E, C, D, low G. Low G, D, E, C. I don't sing it anymore, and I want to remember that I did, at one time. While holding her and standing up.
Then as we walked towards her crib and I laid her down, I chanted:
It's time for little babies
To go to sleep.
It's time for little babies
To go to sleep.
It seems like too much work to work out notation to record the rhythm; I think I'll remember. Or maybe not.
Hawaiian Punch always went to sleep with no fuss after that. Hokey Pokey does too. I wonder how much that contributes to our plan to have four kids. When other parents describe their harrowing nighttime routines, it sometimes sounds gruesome.
I think Texas becomes rather beautiful in the winter. It looks grim and cold, because everything is dead. Brown fields are very pretty against the blue sky. It doesn't feel like winter - highs in the 70s and 80s - but it looks like winter. (Unlike Florida, which stayed lush and green all year round. Unlike Michigan, where winter meant that everything gained this gray film, as though thick car exhaust had condensed on your eyeballs.)
This car has been parked down the street for a while. It's been so long since I've seen a car with wood paneling on the sides. And this is a convertible, no less. Someone thought that it was a great idea to design a wood-paneling convertible.
And right they were! It is a masterpiece.
We took the kids to Santa's Ranch
Where you pay $24 for a mile of lights. You drive along at idle speed for a half-hour and oooh at the elaborate scene after scene made entirely out of Christmas lights. What a miracle! The shitheads in front of us kept stopping every three seconds to take photos. We could tell, by the flash going off from their car.
We could either get out of our car and go give them a lecture, or start taking photos ourselves.
Santa's Alamo.
Then it got very religious. It took you through the Old Testament, including pharohs and pyramids and David and Goliath. No Sodom and Gomorrah, though, which probably indicates progressive values on behalf of Santa's Ranch. Just kidding.
Then the New Testament, culminating in a dramatic baby Jesus display. After the birth is the afterparty.
He is Ryan!
After the New Testament came Secular Sin-ville, with lots of toys. Toys being made by elves. Santa playing a bunch of sports. Elves going skiing and sledding down a hill of snowy lights.
The car in front of us stopped taking so many photos once Ryan rose, so we did too.
Carb-o-starch-ment.
Things I have made for dinner this week, which the savage kids wouldn't eat: chicken fried rice, mashed potatoes. I get that you have delicate widdle palettes, but give me a fucking break. They were very melodramatic about how gross it was, with lots of crying and chugging milk after touching the poison with the tips of their tongues. I might as well make kimchi with siracha sauce, little cretins.
What they really want is bananas. It's hard to make a nutritional case that they should eat my chicken fried rice over a banana. So we don't. Once they've tasted the starchy fried mess and choked it down with a gallon of milk, they may have a banana. Or three.
When Hawaiian Punch was a baby, I had two songs I used to put her to sleep. The first went:
Good night, Baby Lorraine.
Baby Lorraine, good night.
It's to the tune that grandfather clocks or church bells play sometimes: E, C, D, low G. Low G, D, E, C. I don't sing it anymore, and I want to remember that I did, at one time. While holding her and standing up.
Then as we walked towards her crib and I laid her down, I chanted:
It's time for little babies
To go to sleep.
It's time for little babies
To go to sleep.
It seems like too much work to work out notation to record the rhythm; I think I'll remember. Or maybe not.
Hawaiian Punch always went to sleep with no fuss after that. Hokey Pokey does too. I wonder how much that contributes to our plan to have four kids. When other parents describe their harrowing nighttime routines, it sometimes sounds gruesome.