Thanksgiving Narrative

Here is the account of what we did for Thanksgiving.  Much less because you want to know, rather more of a time-capsule record so that in 20 years when The Professor and I ask each other, "what did we do for Thanksgiving in 2010?" we can come here and find out.

Will life as we know it still exist in 20 years?  Will Blogspot still exist?  Who knows.

This year's Thanksgiving was great.  The Professor and I had talked about going up north to see his uncle\cousins\grandpa.  But as the time drew near, we each individually began to get disillusioned with the idea.  I was going to have to work at 6:45am the next day, so we weren't going to be able to stay very late.  And the thing with that crowd is that everything runs at least an hour behind schedule.  So if they say they will eat at 3pm, it's really 4.  So we started picturing the vast load of BabyGirl gear required for a daytrip, and then realized we'd have to bolt right out of there after wiping the last morsel from the corner of our mouths, and the plan lost its appeal.  We LOVE the people up there.  But the hassle was going to outweigh the quality time, you know?  The Professor and i both have been feeling very run-down for the past, oh, 7 months since the BabyGirl blessed our lives, and we weren't in the mood for a whole lot of fanfare.

Coincidentally, as we had these thoughts but had yet to verbalize them to each other, Sue happened to ask me at church what our Thankgiving plans were.  Then she told me the plan that she and Molly had hatched for a completely no-pressure, non-stress Thanksgiving.  It sounded like a dream come true.  I was immediately on board.  I told her that i would double-check with The Professor.

Of course he loved it.  We started calling it "Thanksgiving in Your Jammies" (and yes we really did wear our jammies).  The plan was for everyone to cook their food several days in advance so that there was not a single thing to be done the day of.  It was like a true Jewish Sabbath; no work was allowed.  And since no one was cooking on Thursday, there were no time limitations.  The food was already ready, so you could just show up whenever.  I made the Bourbon-Cranberry Sauce on Tuesday and Chocolate Delight on Wednesday when i got home from work.

Thursday morning, we woke up promptly at 7am, thanks to the BabyGirl's internal clock.  No sleeping in for us for the next 15ish years!  We all had a nice leisurely morning complete with pancake breakfast.  I put some cranberry sauce on my pancakes and it was delicious.  The Professor and i both took nice long showers, a rare treat.  He skyped with his side of the family and I called mine.  Except i only spoke to my dad.  Then, when the BabyGirl woke up from her nap, we loaded up the Green Warrior and hit the road!

We drove, now pay attention here because the following information is so beautiful, 0.6 miles to our destination.  Oh the delight.  Last year we drove EIGHT HUNDRED MILES.  Allow me to tell you about it.  This year, i got off work at about 3pm on Wednesday.  It was grey, raining, with traffic everywhere.  I drove home on Lakeshore Drive, and opposite me on the south-bound side it was bumper to bumper in the nasty rain.  It caused me to remember that on exactly this day, and exactly this time last year, Mark picked me up from work and we began the drive in the gray rain with traffic, traffic, traffic.  We drove until our favorite Comfort Suites a few exits south of Indianapolis, and it rained the entire way, bumper-to-bumper.  And as i headed home from work, i thanked the dear Lord that i wasn't going through that again.  I love my family dearly and i miss them every day, but some hardships just aren't worth it.

So yes, we drove 0.6 miles.  We unloaded all our stuff: the Bourbon Cranberry Sauce, the Chocolate Delight, the BabyGirl in her 50 pound carseat, the Pack-n-Play, the Bag 'O Games\Movies, the Pinot Noir, the diaper bag, and The Professor's bag of personal Thanksgiving snacks.  You see, The Professor has certain idiosyncracies when it comes to food.  See example below.  This is his idea of a holiday meal. 

Yes, that would be Oreos, Coke, Jack Daniels, Milk Duds, and potato chips.  Despite the fact that we had a full Thanksgiving meal, The Professor wanted his junk food.

We got inside and Anne was there!  She stayed for only a few minutes and then she left.  The BabyGirl was due to eat as soon as we got there, so we fed her while the food was set up.  After that, we ate!  Yummy! There was turkey and gravy by Sue, mashed potato heaven by Molly, green beans by Audrey, my cranberry sauce, am i missing anything?  Also there were carrots\onions by Sue.  We enjoyed the food and also had great conversation.  I like small groups.  Normally at Thanksgiving meals, there are about 15 people at the table, which makes conversation difficult.  The worst is when you are on the border between two different discussions.  The people to your left are talking about one thing and the people on your right are talking about something else.  And you are positioned so that you can't participate in either conversation.

Once we finished eating and clearing away the plates, Sue set up a big fancy projector and we watched the movie "The Family Man" with Nicolas Cage.  The BabyGirl had such a great time.  She had all the room in the world to crawl around.  We made a designated area for her by putting up a wall of pillows.  Mark and i laid on the floor to watch the movie and the BabyGirl played to her heart's content.  We ate dessert during the movie, and the Chocolate Delight was a huge success.

After the movie, we sat around to chat.  Then Sue drove Audrey home because she had to work the next day.  Now we felt hungry, so we got all the food back out and had another round.  We sat in the single's lounge and talked some more, until the BabyGirl woke up crying around 10pm.  I think she woke up and didn't know where she was and got scared.  Man was she crying.  Sue held her while we packed all our stuff up.  I couldn't help but laugh at her because she made the most tragic facial expressions.  She began by curling up her bottom lip and then the sadness slowly spread across her whole face.  When the face was 100% engaged, then the crying ensued.  Oh it was adorable. 

We drove home.  The problem with only driving 0.6 miles is that your car doesn't have time to warm up before you have to get back out in the cold again.  We planned to pull up to the front door to unload everything, and then The Professor would go park the car.  But we saw a parking spot that was pseudo-close and we had to carpe diem.  It would probably be gone by the time we unloaded.  The Professor carried the BabyGirl and sprinted (yes, sprinted) to our building.  Why?  Because it was 17 degrees.  It was such an act of love.  It's very difficult to sprint while carrying a BabyGirl.  He did it because he didn't want her to get cold.  One day when she's older I'll tell her about it.  "Do you know how much your Daddy loves you?"

It looked kind of like he was stealing her.  Some crazy dude running with a baby at 10pm.

And thus concludes the account of Thanksgiving 2010.



Interesting Life Anecdotes: Bourbon

What this blog needs is some funny stories!  The other mom's blogs consist almost exclusively of little tidbits and anecdotes of family life.  Cute stories about the kids.  And we're always trying to be like everyone else, right?  Therefore i will attempt to give you an Interesting Life Anecdote.  And what better topic to begin with than hard liquor.

There are two things you need to know as background info to this story.  Number one, I have very strong views about grocery shopping with a baby.  I did it once, and promptly swore i would never do it again.  Ironically, i had a conversation with my sister-in-law about this topic just last night.  Never again, i told her.  The baby behaves beautifully at the grocery, so it's not because of her I detest it so much.  It's because of street parking and 3 flights of stairs.  Unloading a very heavy baby carrier plus endless bags of groceries out of the car, walking 100 yards to the front door, getting everything thru two doors and up 3 flights of stairs - it's a Herculean task.  Never again.

Number two, recently I'm obsessed with cranberries.  They are so stinkin good for you!  Might I also mention, delicious!  I buy at least two bags every time i'm at the market.  You can understand why i volunteered to make the cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving.  I saw a recipe for Bourbon-Cranberry Compote in Real Simple, and had been dying to make it.

Well, Thanksgiving is close at hand, so it was time to get cracking.  I was pitifully sick all weekend, and wasn't able to run the errands i needed to.  So here it is Tuesday, and i haven't purchased the Bourbon for the Bourbon-Cranberry Compote.  My scheduling options for when i could go buy it were very limited.  Either, this very minute with the BabyGirl, or by myself at like 11 o'clock on Thanksgiving Eve.  I gritted my teeth and decided to go right now.  She and i threw on some clothes and hit the road.

There we were: two girls in the alcohol section.  The BabyGirl sitting pleasantly in her carrier, happily crumpling my grocery list.  As i stood there staring at the liquor shelves, I realized that i didn't know as much about bourbon as i thought i did.  Turns out, i don't know a dang thing about bourbon.  I've never purchased\drank it before, but i thought it would be self-explanatory.  You walk down the liquor aisle til you come to a glass bottle with "BOURBON" in big block letters.  Let me tell ya, it wasn't so easy.  We passed the tequilas.  We passed the rums.  We passed the gins.  We passed the vodkas (a whole lotta vodkas).  We passed the whiskeys.  I thought to myself, "I'm not going to spend any time looking at all those whiskeys since it certainly won't be there."

And that was the end of the aisle.  No bottles labelled BOURBON.  Hmm.  The BabyGirl was no longer content to merely crumple the shopping list; now she is eating it.  I snatch the remnants away from her, and we go down the next aisle.  Here we go, i thought, this one has promise.  This aisle has sherry and port, so i felt like we were on the right track.  I don't know why i thought bourbon was in the dessert wine category.  Sherry and port immediately gave way to tons of champaign.  No luck on that aisle either.

Oh dear!  Is the bourbon in the <gulp> locked cabinet?  Cause i'm not the kind of girl who buys the kind of liquor from the locked cabinet.  Meanwhile the BabyGirl, who now has no entertainment since i took the list away, has occupied herself by taking off one of her adorable pink kitty shoes and throwing it on the floor.  I bent over to retrieve it just as she threw the second one over the edge also, landing on my head.  Since her feet are now bare i was compelled to nibble her toes a little bit, which made her giggle.

Back to business.  Just to be sure, i looked at the locked cabinet, no bourbon there.  Great, now what?  We started over at the beginning: tequila, rum, gin, vodka, whiskey.  This time i looked at them all with intense scrutiny.  In the midst of my concentration i sorta forgot about the BabyGirl, until out of the corner of my eye i noticed that the whole grocery cart was shaking.  She was slamming her legs up and down in the carrier.  I finally took the hint that she was bored with this bourbon hunt, and gave her a toy.

And finally, after looking at almost every bottle, i found it!  Guess where?  In the whiskeys.  There you have it, folks, bourbon is a whiskey.  Yes, i am an airhead.  I think it took me a good 15 minutes.

Now i just hope that this is some dang good cranberry sauce!

Where is my telephone booth?

I had a horrible day at work.

This is our busy season, so it's really hectic.  Additionally, we are 2 staff members short.  Plus it's flu\cold season so someone is always out sick.

The first half of my day went really well.  I was in a good rhythm, i was working quickly, everyone i took care of was nice, it was a pleasure to serve them, and i was pleased with myself for doing a good job.  And then i was assigned The Guy Who Ruined My Day.  We'll call him Marty.  Marty was really, really, weird.  He was a talker, so everything you had to do took 5 times as long.  I said, "Marty, do you need a pain pill?"  And 10 minutes later after a non-stop stream of words that had nothing to do with pain or pills, I just walked out of the room.  Marty sucked up so much of my time that my other patients thought i had quit.  In a nutshell, he threw off my groove.

In the late afternoon, i was just plan exhausted.  Hours and hours of running my butt off without time to sit down or eat or even use the bathroom were starting to wear on me.  My patients were whiny and clingy and needy, needy, needy.  Obviously i get it, they are in the hospital so naturally they are needy.  My tolerance for neediness is pretty low when i myself am not able to meet my own physical needs.  I just wanted a  minute or two to sit down in peace and quiet without everyone demanding 8 things, simultaneously, RIGHT NOW. 

I'm telling you this tale like it's something new or unusual.  It's not.  We all know that.  It's not unique to my profession, everyone has days like this if they work in a field that requires them to interact with other human beings.  I've had these days before, and i'll have them again.  However, there is a new element to my life that made this experience at work new and confusing to me.

First I'll tell you how it used to be.  Used to be, I'd have a chaotic, crazy day at work filled with people demanding things from me.  They had to come first and i had to come last.  I'd bide my time until 12.5 hours was up and then bada-bing! I'm free.  I can go unwind however i want.  I could say to my husband, "people have been yelling at me all day long, and i need a break.  I'm going to have some quiet me-time now.  Please give me some time to chill, and most importantly, don't ask me for a bedpan\pain meds\barf bag\etc."  When my shift was over, I could be free of responsibility.

Now there is a development: I have a baby.  When i come home, she doesn't comprehend the fact that people have been sucking the life out of me all day long.  She doesn't care that I've already wiped 100 butts today.  I've already been thrown up on today.  I've already witnessed crying today.  When i come home, she's pooping and spitting and crying.  Now there is no chance of sitting perfectly still in a dark room and relishing the sound of silence.  I come home, and the neediness continues.  The demands continue.  The responsibility is still there.

I haven't adjusted to this yet.  I know that we all lead double lives.  We have work and we have family.  We wear multiple hats, and we have multiple selves.  Maybe it would be a little easier if my work life and my home life didn't involve the exact same tasks?  You know, like if i was a bank teller.  I handle papers and numbers all day long, and then i go home to feeding\spitting\pooping. 

Clark Kent had a creative solution to the issue of multiplicity.  When a situation required him to change from one role to another, he quickly ducked into a telephone booth and changed his clothes.  Presto chango!  Easy as that.  So really, what my situation needs, is a telephone booth.  After a full day of blood and guts, I simply swing by a telephone booth on my way home from work, change into my red cape, and then i'm ready to save the domestic world.

Naturally, i want to give all my time and energy to my precious BabyGirl.  I want to put her needs first and my needs last.  But what do i do when the entire world gets to me first?  When the healthcare industry uses and abuses me until i crawl home with nothing left to give to the people who mean the whole world to me?  Given the choice of that big drooly smile, or Marty the Rambler, I'll choose my bundle-of-joy every time.  Unfortunately, it's Marty who ultimately pays the mortgage and provides health insurance, so I have to keep going back for more. 

Before you have kids, you hear about all the sacrifices that parenthood entails.  In my mind, those sacrifices included things like sleepless nights, stains on your clothes, baby paraphenalia all over your house.  I only considered the types of sacrifices you make while you are physically with the baby.  Such as, "i've been holding you for an hour trying to get you to sleep, and i have to pee SO BAD, but I'll pee on this rocking chair before i wake you up again."  Now i see that there are sacrifices that drive us away from our beautiful babies.  Going to work to face the ever-needy horde is a sacrifice i make for her well-being.   And for as long as i have to make this sacrifice, Lord give me grace to do it.

We'll consider this a soft opening

I don't consider my blog to have officially launched yet.  I have a special thing in mind that i want to write for the launch.  But I'm not ready yet. 

However, I have something to talk about in the meantime, and I don't feel like waiting on myself.  So we'll go ahead with this topic of discussion and then do the official launch when i get around to it. 

I've been hunting down a specific quote in order to perform the Official Launch.  I was reading through the book that contains this quote, and i found something really interesting that i hadn't paid attention to before.  I will not be able to do it literal justice, but here's the gist of it:  a high school boy who is cool and popular randomly becomes friends with a girl who is not cool and not popular.  He is over at her house for dinner and says to her, "You're so lucky."  She basically says, "Umm, what??  I have no friends, am completely unsuccessful in school, and everybody makes fun of me."  He says the reason she is lucky is that her family all loves each other. 

As i read it i thought, oh that's nice.  Then later in the day i had an experience that allowed me to see it illustrated in real life.  I was hanging out with a 2-yr old boy who is the youngest of 6 kids.  I imagine that he doesn't get a whole lot of individualized time with his parents.  His parents most certainly love him, i know that to be true.  But he just doesn't get one-on-one time very much.  I was playing with him and giving him some attention, and he started opening up and being himself.  It was so adorable.  He transformed from just-another-kid-in-the-bunch into a unique individual.  I was able to observe his personality and discover that for all his rambunctiousness (I mean, he is a 2 year old boy), he is very sweet.

It caused me to daydream about the kind of mother i want to be, and the kind of family i want to have.  Of course i want to be the loving family that other people are jealous of.  Of course I want my little baby girl, plus any siblings that may follow, to know that i love her\them.  And i want to be the kind of family that draws others in.  The kind of family that when a kid's friend is over for dinner, the friend can sense our love.

I'm really worried though.  My mother, who loves me very much, is not an emotional or affectionate person.  So I don't have an example to follow for overt lovingness.  And I myself, being very cosmic, am the type that would be all stressed out about cooking dinner or a messy house or trying to get everybody to bed or something else equally as temporal, and would forget what's really important and would forget to show love.  Even now, I do it to my husband all the time.  I put tasks before love.  How much worse is it going to be as our family gets bigger and the tasks increase?

All i can hope for is that these types of little reminders will keep popping up.  It was pretty random that i came across that paragraph in the book.  Maybe i should just set up a monthly e-mail alert for the next 25 years.  I could use a quote from my dad: "Life is precious, and love is all we have."

Please listen to the music while your party is reached

There is an unexpected delay in getting this blog off the ground because the whole project hinges on a particular quote from a Madeleine L'Engle book.  I thought i would be able to find the quote quickly, but now it seems that i have to read the whole book.