Watching The Wheels - John Lennon

This is how I am trying to respond to the holiday season this year!

Kneading Bread Dough and Holiday Traditions

When I first started this blog, I promised myself that it wouldn't become a "homemaking blog" although it is difficult for me to avoid homemaking altogether as I have three young children. So consider this a therapy post rather than a homemaking post.

It is that time of year again, the one where we get ready to celebrate Santa Lucia. This is one of the only holiday traditions that our family has carried over from my Swedish ancestors. This celebration includes the making of Lucia buns. Of course I could probably buy something similar to Lucia buns or we could just have jam and toast, but I started making them a few years back and found that I rather enjoyed the process.

Yesterday was a long day. I had a hair appointment and have determined that I just don't have the time to sit around getting my haircut by someone else. Perhaps it is time that I learned to do it myself. This set the whole day behind. We went to see Santa Claus and the line was long. My kids have pretty much started to not believe in Santa anymore, this whole process is more about me taking them to have their picture taken. In the end they had fun, I just wonder how many more years I will be able to drag them out to get their perfect Santa picture. There was a twenty-one-year-old in line ahead of us with her mother. She was giving her mother one last Santa picture, so this gave me hope!

Now back to bread dough! Last night I made up the dough for the Lucia buns and started kneading it. Once I started, I found that I didn't want to stop. My hands were a mess, but the feel of the soft dough, rolling it rhythmically back and forth and pushing it down at each turn was somehow therapeutic for me, I found that I started to actually relax. This got me to thinking about how the pioneer women must have made it through difficult times without support. Maybe kneading bread dough was part of what helped them through a difficult life. Maybe there are some other household tasks that have this same effect, but I haven't found them yet. In the meantime, during this busy holiday season, maybe I will have to find more time to knead.

Christmas Anxiety

It is that time of year again. The advent season leading to Christmas. I do like Christmas, generally, I love the warmth and celebration in the air, more festive gatherings in order to spend time with friends. The thing that I don't look forward to much is the gifts. More specifically, the gifts that I need to get for my children. My younger two are still at the age where they like to open a lot of presents and they count their gifts. This brings me to the anxiety that hit me today. It happened when I ordered a gift for one of my children on-line. I had wanted to get this and all gifts for my children at stores this year. When I reflect upon the "why" of this decision, I realized that it had to do with our Christmas in the Northwest last year.

We were pounded by snowstorms. Now I realize that in many areas of the country this is the norm this time of the year. It isn't the norm here. We have hills and lots of them. We also live in a damp climate. When it gets cold and snows and freezes there is ice everywhere. Ice and hills do not make for good driving conditions and as we are so unprepared in this part of the country roads are not plowed. They are not sanded or salted either because of our close proximity to Lake Washington. Suffice it to say, all of our on-line gifts, most were for the kids, did not make it in time for Christmas. I found myself going through the birthday gift bin, those pre-bought sale gifts that I sometimes keep on hand for birthday parties and those were their Santa gifts, not things that they had asked for, some of those didn't come until 2-3 weeks after Christmas. This is a lesson in delayed gratification if there ever was one.

Flashback to Christmas 2006. We suffered from a huge windstorm in this area right before Christmas. Our grid was out of power for seven days. Grids surrounding us were restored in 2-3 days. It took the energy company quite a bit more time to get around to removing the huge Douglas Fir tree laying on the power lines that supplied our grid. It was difficult to drive a block from our house and see everyone else's lights on and know that their house temperature must certainly be above the 45 degrees on our home register. The next Christmas, 2007, I felt stress when I took out the Christmas decorations because of flashbacks to that very challenging Christmas season.

Weather around this time of year has increased my anxiety level at the holidays. I feel myself going into prepared mode, I feel a need to have everything organized and done early in case there is foul weather to mess up holiday plans. I think it will be easier when my kids are older and I don't have to worry so much about the timeliness of the gifts. When they are older they will also have more resilience regarding changes in holiday routine and tradition. In many ways I don't look forward to my children getting older, holiday time is not one of them.

White Christmas The Musical On Broadway

We went and saw this production today in Seattle. Three years ago I took my oldest daughter to see it. Today all of my kids went. It was as great as ever-lots of talent in the show.

Fantastic Mr. Fox

What can I say about "Fantastic Mr. Fox?" It was, well, Fantastic! Quaint and artisitc animation and finally a childrens movie that my kids and I don't have to see in 3D! Mr. Roald Dahl you are (were) a genius of a writer for both children and adults. The world sorely needs more talent like yours! The sound track was pretty great as well, kind of matched the movie.

Tired of Writer's Block

Lately, I have been perusing different blogs. I need to do this every once in a while so that I feel like I am in touch with the blogging community and what is going on out there. I have come across a number of writer's blogs and I have to say that I am quite jealous. Damn you people who have time to write eloquent and interesting prose and dialogue. I am possessed of severe writer's block. Maybe writer's block isn't the correct term. I actually have things swimming around in my head that I would love to write about. In November I took a short-course on novel writing and came away inspired and filled with new ideas about how to approach the arduous task of putting pen to paper or fingers to the keyboard. Integrating writing into my life remains a challenge. Frankly I am not very disciplined. To be a successful writer, to start at least, usually requires one to make adjustments to their schedule such as getting up earlier or staying up later. I am good at neither. I am particularly not good at getting up earlier. I can always stay up later, especially if I am drinking red wine and in the company of good conversation. This is different, however, from staying up later to actually get some work done! The best gift that I could have for myself this holiday season is the gift of setting aside regular and consistent hours to write. This is currently my only goal for the new year. Wish me luck!

"Goodbyes" are the HARDEST THING!!

Today we said "goodbye" to our dear friends the Ady's as they make their way back to Meg's place of birth, the land of Oz. During the past several years, our families have gotten to know each other well. We were a good match, the parents and children. There would always be more good times to come. Now Meg is gone and I can't quite believe it. I have been in denial for so long, it feels like waking up from a bad dream. Ultimately, I sense that this move will be good for their family, not so good for ours. It is hard to be the ones left behind. Meg and I crossed over into many groups in each of our lives and that makes the leaving that much harder. She says that there is a string attaching us and this morning, while saying goodbye, she told me that the string was short and that it will get longer as she moves farther away, but it won't break. I hope it won't break. I will do everything in my power to keep it from breaking, but right now everything is just sad and I am sick at heart and just trying to keep moving through this day and the next, hoping to feel better.