Christmas Surprises

This year I didn't stress out for Christmas, I was so proud of myself. So grateful. In past years I've threatened to become Buddist. But this year I wasn't working, and altho I feel some anxiety about that, it was really nice. K has been working extra (basketball coaching), so I picked up the slack. Plus, the Girl is such a big help that I had presents ready and wrapped on time, cards sent out, everything.

In fact at one point I was remembering how sometimes Holidays have a way of telling me that I'm not important - over and over, and how much I hate that. But, no sign of that this year! I'm so lucky.

We had some work done downstairs which meant we moved lots of stuff to the garage, and our Christmas stuff is still stuck in the back. So I picked up some cheap decorations in blue (my favorite color) and our little tree looked so cute! But one day I was looking at it and realized - it's all blue! Is it a Hanuka tree? I still don't have the answer to that.

The Boy was home from college, desperately looking for a job.

A few days before the holidays we drove upstate to see K's sister & BIL who were renting a house in Cambria for the Holiday. No job yet for the Boy, so he came with us. They are dog friendly, so we took the dog and had a great time. Especially the dog, as he LOVES getting to run off-leash and especially at the beach. They'd already opened their gifts, and remarked about how generous my in-laws are. After all, they just gave everyone in the family a cruise. We'd expected them to cut back at Christmas. But no, it seems they were more generous than ever! I couldn't wait.

I'm really lucky that both my parents and my in-laws are so generous. It's something I had come to look forward to. But this year we tried to be generous too. I picked up an electronic photo frame for my Mom, and gave my Dad a CD of pictures to load onto it (plus some other stuff he likes). K decided to give his parents a TV. He gave them one about 20 years ago, and that's still the one they had! So he arranged for his Sister who lives nearby to pick it up and deliver it to them for Christmas.

With the kids I tried to give them ideas of what to get me, and I finally asked them for a magazine subscription that they would split the price. I didn't want to end up with a box of candy like I did last year. (My figure would protest)Then I felt guilty because $12.50 for half a present seemed like a lot for a 12-year-old, so I gave her a couple of books I had picked up for myself (at the $.99 Store), telling her she could just give me those. I talked to the Boy and gave him some ideas of things I might like.

The first sign of Christmas trouble came when my Mom called me. They'd received a package, but it was very light and taped and strapped strangely. There were no presents in it for my parents! It seems that someone opened the box, took out the heaviest and just a bunch of things, left a few gift bags and taped it back up, strapped it closed, and sent it on its way. WTF? The only thing of real value was the photo frame, the rest is a bunch of junk to anyone other than who I intended it for! SURPRISE!!

The Boy's birthday is a few days before Christmas, and when he opened his present from the in-laws, he was stunned. They gave him $1,000. That was a BIG surprise! He called them up to say thanks and ask why, and they were nonchalant, saying they had meant to give it to him in September for the school year. Wow! They really WERE being generous this year! That's just so crazy, I don't want to tell MY parents. They sent him a more reasonable amount of money, and I don't want them to think they have to compete. BTW, he is no longer looking for a job.

Then the day before Christmas Eve I noticed that I had what looked like a book from the Boy. So I asked the Girl, and she she'd given one of the books to him to give me. SURPRISE!! I know it sounds stupid, but I was really disappointed. SO disappointed, it brought tears to my eyes! After the year I've had with him, I was really looking forward to seeing what he'd get me. Instead I got something I'd bought myself. I guess I deserved that, for trying to control things so much.

Oh, and BTW, my FIL had bought my MIL a TV for Christmas! So it seems that even tho we both tried to be generous this Christmas, it was all for naught.

Stupid holiday.

Don't judge me. Sometimes we all need to vent.

Thanksgiving

The week before Thanksgiving, the Boy texted me that he'd gotten a piercing in his eyebrow. OK, I was afraid he was going to get a tatoo, so I guess a piercing is better than that. But he acted afraid of what his father would say, but what COULD he say? He just shook his head.

I love our turkey. I adapted an easy roast chicken recipe I saw on TV once (which is also great.) First empty out the turkey. Then I take apart at least 2 heads of garlic but leave the skins on, and scatter them on the bottom of the pan. Put the turkey on top, and pour a few cups of wine over the top of the turkey. Bake as directed.

Since I don't have a roaster, I also use those cooking bags for turkey, and a disposable roasting pan. It smells SO good once it gets cooking, and it's just so easy. Tastes great too. Yum.

I was telling the Boy about my recipe (once he got here) and how easy it was, and that song popped into my head, "Just put it in the bag." I heard Whoopi Goldberg on the View talking about how she gets up all night to baste the turkey (it's a tradition), and there's just no need for that. Just put it in the bag!

This year I noticed that I've been making the same mistake for several years now. If it says the turkey will be ready in 3-4 hours, I tell everyone it's ready in 4 hours. But it's always ready in 3! That's kindof OK, because I have to bake the sides, but that doesn't really take a whole hour.

And this year the Boy was a little late. He hit traffic, and his new girlfriend was bringing him. She couldn't stay, tho. So it was a little ackward. We were hungry, it smelled so good, but we waited for the Boy. When he finally got here, he introduced his girlfriend (v. pretty and seems nice), and we wanted to EAT!! So she kindof had to leave right away.

The meal was nice, and the Girl helped me quite a bit. It's a lot less stressful when I have such good help.

We had a nice visit with the Boy and I tried to be as pleasant as possible. He is really riding that line between childhood and adulthood, and even said, "I want all the perks of growing up but none of the responsibility!" when we were urging him to check something out with the school counselors.

We were asking him about his new girlfriend and he said he knew her last year, but she was dating a real jerk. The Girl and I both wondered aloud how he managed to do that again. He acknowledged that he only has to do the minimum and she thinks its great because she had such a bad boyfriend before him.

He also let it slip that he'd met up with her family a few times during the semester. I was surprised to hear that, as he only visited us ONCE all semester, when we asked him to come take care of his dog so we could attend a funeral in Indiana. He said it was because he was afraid of what we would say about his piercing.

He also surprised me by saying he needed to give us his Christmas list! We said, "What?!" We were already done and weren't planning on giving him much anyway. He's not a kid anymore! He doesn't get to give us Christmas lists anymore! He just doesn't know that yet. He asked us for things like presents for his friends and a plane ticket to visit his girlfriend!

I asked the Girl if I should tell him, and she said no. I said, "What if we just tell him we're already done shopping and he can use his money to buy what he wants?" and she said no. Next thing I knew, she was checking online and actually working to get him something he asked for (Clippers tickets). She offered to pay half. Isn't she the best?

On Sunday his girlfriend came back to spend the day and take him back to college (he still doesn't drive.) I had taken some steaks out for dinner, so I told him to let me know if they wanted to stay for dinner. They went out to the mall and visiting friends, and I didn't hear from him again until around 5, when he called to say he and his girlfriend would be there for dinner, and could he bring his friend too? (so his girl wouldn't feel put on the spot)

We went from 3 for dinner to 6, just like that! Luckily I had enough food and it came out well. I've been sauteing chard in garlic and olive oil, and it is SO good! It's good with rice or mashed potatoes.

The Boy called us a week later to ask what restaurant we go to in Chinatown and where it was. It seems he likes to show his friends the cool things we've done with him. I told K he'd probably do that with his kids too, and then they'll grow up and not visit him all semester.

But really, I'm thankful. I have a nice, handsome husband. A smart, charismatic son, and a beautiful, kind and helpful daughter. I have a roof over my head and more than enough to eat. I have my health.

Thank God.

Frayed Knot

Near the end of last summer, the Boy was really testing my patience. We'd have conversations like this:

Me: Boy? You said you would take out the trash. When are you going to take it out?

Boy: Why are you fighting with me? I've been trying really hard to get along with you today!

Plus I'd been angry with him about a few incidents in Europe. They weren't worth discussing after the fact, but it did change some things. Suffice it to say, he won't be going on any more vacations with us. I look forward to vacations too much, and they are too expensive to waste time being angry.

So I knew that there were problems, but it just seemed like a normal part of his growing up. But somewhere along the way I came to realize that he really has a problem with ME. Not BOTH of his parents, but me in particular.

So being a terrible curious snoop, I found something he had written about me. I found out that he's been telling his friends that altho he loves me, he doesn't really LIKE me as a person! And this particular rant went on to describe a fight that happened in Paris, and how it illustrates all that he hates about my personality.

Well, of course I was upset and my feelings were hurt. I hate the unfairness of it all - that his father could fight with him about basketball his last 2 years of high school, and he ends up angry with ME. And to think I tried to shield him from his father's pressure, which seems terribly disrespectful to my husband now in retrospect. Yet another thing he's made me regret doing for him.

But I tried to look at it all rationally. I've tried to tell him many times that altho I will try to respect his wish for information when he asks me "why?", I won't always be able to do so. Sometimes I'm under stress, in a hurry,
etc. Sometimes I only have a vague idea in my head of what I'm trying to make happen, so I don't even have a plan that I;ve verbalized to myself. But I always have a reason, and I wish he would just trust me.

But he seems to have decided in his head that I just make things up to mess with him, and just make decisions willy nilly because I'm mad and drunk with power!

Plus there's this whole thing about once you tell someone WHY you want to do something a certain way, that opens the door for them to decide for themselves whether or not they think your reason is worthy. Sometimes you don't want to open that door, you would just like things to go the way you are trying to make them.

By the way, this was all about sandwiches that I had made for everyone, and he wanted to eat early. I wanted to wait until we got to Notre Dame, and he asked me why. I was already feeling unappreciated for making these stupid sandwiches that people took for granted, so I just told him it was because I had made them. I thought I had the right to make that call because I had made the stupid sandwiches! I thought even in some kind of playground rules that making the sandwich should give me the decision-making power over them. So maybe I didn't articulate how nice it would be to sit down and eat them as a family, but I don't think he would have agreed that it was a good reason anyway.

Anyway, I know I'm not perfect. For instance, I'm an incurable snoop. I have a temper, but I don't beat my children (like I was) or verbally abuse them (like I was.) But here I am, thinking I have a fine life and how much I've overcome the bad temperment I grew up with, blah, blah, blah, and life slapped me in the face and said, "Your life is not what you think it is!"

One of my favorite movies is Another Woman by Woody Allen, where a woman finds out that her life is nothing that she thought it was. It was such a good movie, but it sucks when that is YOUR life, and you're completely surprised to find out it's not what you thought it was!

So anyway, I'm glad I got this out of my system before the holidays, because I knew I had to forgive him before Thanksgiving. I decided that he's still just a kid, looking at things from his kidlike point of view. I realized that I'm STILL very hard on my parents, and feel fully aware of their flaws even today. And all of our feelings are normal I guess.

I realized that a lot of the things I say discipline wise may seem funny to me, but not everyone thinks they're funny or no big deal. It's strange to me that as much as my kids seem to ignore me, on the other hand some of the things I say seem to loom so large for them, and have way more importance to them than I thought.

I remember once when I was little I told my mother I hated her, and she looked SO hurt! I remember thinking that she shouldn't take it so seriously, I was just a kid after all. So I try to remember that and rise above it to be an adult.

So anyway, I'm glad I was able to get over it so that I could be nice to him on Thanksgiving break. And for this kid anyway, my snooping days are over. I definitely got what I deserved!

Fall

The rest of our Fall has been very busy. After our trip to Indiana, I took Part 1 of a 3-part tax test that is pretty difficult. The whole time I was taking the test I was also praying to God to help me and cursing my bad luck that got me such difficult questions. But, I passed! I do tend to be good at taking tests, but still it was an accomplishment. I got to enjoy it for about 2 days before I had to start working on Part 2.

I'm supposed to be studying for that now, which explains why I am writing a blog post instead. Argh! I hate it!

Then we took a long weekend to visit some friends in Florida. Actually, one of my best friends has a senior attending Stetson Univ, and we went to see her play Vollyball before she finished school. We also have friends who have a condo in St. Augustine, and their son just entered school at Flagler. They were still in town, so we got to visit with them and eat some GREAT food, as well as see two games in DeLand. They weren't having a very good season :-(

I liked that the Charlotte airport had rocking chairs in it. I liked the outside of the Women's room in the Jacksonville airport. I especially enjoyed the BBQ we ate at the Charlotte airport and O'Steens (in St. Augustine), a place that takes no reservations or credit/debit cards. How good can shrimp be? Go there to find out! We really like it in St. Augustine, and it's really affordable housing-wise. I'd love to be able to buy a vacation home there.

That was Halloween weekend, so we left the Girl home to play in her soccer game and go out for Halloween with her friends.

I know I did some brave talking at the end of last season, about how if The Girl's soccer team lost a few girls it would be no big deal. Except that one of our best players left, and some of the others didn't leave until right before the season started. We played in a fun league last summer, where we played boys teams and learned some new tricks. But our official league started up, and we were short 1 player!

Lots of us had tried recruiting girls all summer, but ran into bad luck of one sort or another. We ended up getting our old goalie back, who we once considered too short, but we were now glad to see her. The coach actually recruited one girl at a taco stand, but her skills were behind the rest of the girls, and they were too hard on her. Finally we got a girl who only spoke spanish, but she showed up to almost every game, and that was great.

So even tho I predicted that this season would be a lot easier, it was brutal. We had barely enough girls and NO substitutes. If one girl didn't show up or got hurt, we played short. One ref went out of her way to tell me after the first game how well-conditioned our girls must be, to play a whole game with no subs.

I may have mentioned before that there are 8 teams in our division, and the top 2 go up to the next level (where we were last year), and the bottom two go down to the next lower level. The Girl said more than once that they did NOT want to go down a level, and if the team did, they would probably break up.

They tied the first game and then it was loss after loss. It was painful to watch and live through, and some of the parents took it the worst. One girl was sobbing after games because her parents were being so hard on her. What's the point in that? If I tried telling the Girl ANYTHING about how to play, I'm sure she would quit in a heartbeat.

When they got too negative, I reminded them that every great sports story starts out with a difficulty. I told the Girl, "Everything happens for a reason. I don't know what the reason is for your team to be struggling right now, but maybe it will make you stronger." And I think it did!

Then they beat a team in a game when they were short a player. Then they lost a game, then tied another one, then won again! Slowly, game by game, they clawed their way into the middle of the pack. Finally, in the last game of the season, they won 4-1. It was glorious, being able to score so many goals! It was truly the highlight of the season.

I don't know if they were happier about knowing they weren't going down a bracket, or finding out that their enemy Palmdale Thunder WOULD. Even the team we beat in that last game was happy about that.

Right before Thanksgiving we had some work done on the house. It turned out to be Asbestos in our popcorn ceiling downstairs, so first we had that removed. (Well, first we moved everything out of the basement! What a job!) Then we had the asbestos removed and primed the wall of my bedroom. Next we had a guy come in to redo the ceiling and also put in the new floor. He brought some relatives with him, and it was strange. At one moment they would be yelling at each other in Spanish (such language!), and 2 minutes later they'd be singing (in Spanish.) One guy in particular seemed to be behind most of the singing.

After they left, the weekend before Thanksgiving, the Girl and I started painting. She is really a blessing to me because she's so helpful and energetic. I couldn't have gotten it finished without her. We also roped K into helping paint every now and then. It still needs molding, but the walls and flooring now look great!

Just in time for Thanksgiving!