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December 2nd, 2003 - Tuesday Spirit Something odd has happened to me. I am always a bit of a scrooge. We have our Thanksgiving back in October so we have Halloween things out in the stores until October 31st. Then, on November 1st, all the Christmas things come out on the shelves, carols start blaring in every store, and people start putting up their lights and trees. I always hate it. I hate seeing Christmas lights in mid-November, and I rarely get my own stuff up before the week prior to the 25th. This year, some good stuff has happened which will make the holiday a little better than we had anticipated, so I suddenly found myself feeling cheerful instead of cranky. Also, George is working on recording this guy who is doing Christmas songs, so every week I hear festive music from down the hall. I even got my lights and half my decorations up. I still need to put the tree up but that will be done tomorrow or the day after. I have lights strung across the front window and dangling over the painting that hangs next to Hayley's high chair. She loves the lights. That's another reason that I'm feeling more festive this year. Last year she was only heading towards 3 months of age at this time. This year she still doesn't understand the concept of Santa Claus or any of that but she loves looking at lights and decorations. Whenever we'd take a walk in the late afternoon, if people already had their lights turned on, she would laugh and laugh at them. She pointed at the huge plastic candles hanging on a neighbor's balcony. If she spots them while we're in the car, she'll point and yell "DAT!" Suffice it to say that every time I've turned our own Christmas lights on, Hayley has nearly lost her mind in her incredible glee over the event. God only knows what will happen when she sees our tree. I just hope she doesn't try to climb it. I'm going to strategically place the baby gate and not hang anything too low on the branches. I'm full of Christmas spirit, yes I am.    Now if only we can figure out what we're doing for the actual holidays it would be great. My family wants us to spend as much time as possible with them and George's family wants the same. It's understandable that everyone wants to see us but it's also very stressful. Everyone's close enough in proximity that we can't get away with things like "We'll do Thanksgiving with you this year and Christmas with them and next year we'll switch." On the other hand everyone isn't close enough to gather in one central location so that we can all celebrate together. I never really got prepared for this in any way. When I was growing up, both sets of grandparents had retired to the same small town. They got along pretty well and lived a five minute walk from each other so we always had Christmas at the house my last remaining grandmother lives in now. It was always her house because it was much bigger and could accommodate us all much easier. Then the only serious relationships that I ever had where I actually had to think about this were a little different from this one. One was with a Jewish boy, so obviously his family didn't mind if he came to our house on Christmas day for dinner, and I got to go to Hanukkah dinner at his place. Two other relationships were with French-Canadian boys. French-Canadians tend to do their biggest celebrating on Christmas eve, having their big dinner, parties, and gift exchanges then. Being English, I got to spend the 24th with them and they spent the 25th with me. Really easy. In this case though, both my family and George's family celebrate everything on the 25th and everyone wants us to spend a lot of time with them. As much as this is a wonderful thing, all this love and stuff, it makes me want to bang my head on the floor sometimes. In all honesty, as I told George, I'd really like to be at home on Christmas morning, having an un-rushed gift exchange with OUR family - him, me, and Hayley. I don't think that will fly right now, but when she's old enough to understand things, I'd really like to have that tradition. Anyway. Ho ho ho. I watched that new reality show "The Simple Life" tonight because sometimes you just need a good train wreck in life. Paris Hilton and Nicki Richie leave their life of (ridiculous) luxury, credit cards, and parties to live on a farm for six weeks in the South. They say money doesn't buy happiness. Apparently it doesn't buy you a clue either. I thought Jessica Simpson was dumb with her lack of understanding as to whether "Chicken of the Sea" tuna is chicken or tuna. I was wrong. She looks like a Rhodes Scholar next to these two over bleached morons. Paris Hilton actually wanted to know what a Wal-Mart was because she thought it was a place that sold parts to build walls. Uh? Both of them were sent to the grocery store with a list and fifty bucks. The price came to $65 and change. They were both appalled that the guy at the cash wouldn't just give it to them anyway. When he told them it wasn't a soup kitchen, they didn't even know what a soup kitchen was. Talk about living an extremely pampered and sheltered life. I wonder if they can even watch the show and realize that they're idiots or if they think they're incredibly clever. Of course I'll be watching it again, because it's good to laugh. Gratuitous pictures. 
Inspecting her lunch. I love how serious she looks.
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Reading: The DaVinci Code, Dan Brown.
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