Out and Back

Odd Thanksgiving

For the first time in my life, I will be observing Thanksgiving by myself this year.  My husband is in Brazil at a conference and won't be home until Friday morning, and a rotten cold has pre-empted my planned trip to Virginia to spend the holiday with my brother, sister-in-law, and three-month-old nephew.  (I'd be in for all kinds of bad karma if I were to infect my cute little nephew or his parents with this icky cold virus!)

Fortunately, I am starting to feel a little less ill so I think I will enjoy a solitary holiday -- just me, the Macy's parade, and some sort of pumpkin-oriented confection if I have the energy to whip it up.  (I have the ingredients for both pie and muffins; we'll see how ambitious I get.)  I'm enjoying not traveling somewhere for a change, particularly considering that my job takes me all over the place and that I've already got a trip to Seattle planned for the winter holidays.  The local news channel has had a crawl going all day yesterday with the latest flight status and airport delays and it is wonderful, for once, not to be in the midst of all that.

When my husband arrived in Brazil on Sunday morning, we discovered that the wireless carrier that our wireless carrier partners with down there didn't have coverage in the town where my husband would be staying, so we agreed that we'd only call each other if there was a major emergency.  My husband discovered that the pousada where he is staying had a computer with internet access that he could use, though, so he's been emailing me updates on his activities.  Last night I got an email with "Boa noite" in the subject line ("goodnight" in Portuguese.)

Christmas Day will always be, just so long as we have we

Every Who down in Who-ville, the tall and the small,
Was singing!  Without any presents at all!
He hadn't stopped Christmas from coming!  It came!
Somehow or other, it came just the same!
And the Grinch, with his grinch-feet ice-cold in the snow,
Stood puzzling and puzzling: "How could it be so?
"It came without ribbons!  It came without tags!
"It came without packages, boxes or bags!"
And he puzzled three hours, till his puzzler was sore.
Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before!
"Maybe Christmas," he thought, "doesn't come from a store.
"Maybe Christmas ... means a little bit more!"

Jeanne's Holiday Music Mix, 2006 Edition

Here's my personal holiday playlist for 2006.  Hope you enjoy!

Cool Yule - Bette Midler
River - Peter Mulvey
This Christmas - Donny Hathaway
The Man With The Bag - Jane Monheit
Bethlehem, PA - Logan Daniels
All I Want For Christmas Is You - Mariah Carey
It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year - Johnny Mathis
O Holy Night - Clay Aiken
Dominick The Donkey - Lou Monte
I Want A Hippopotamus For Christmas - Gayla Peevey
Grown-Up Christmas List - Michael Buble
Happy Xmas (War Is Over) - The Fray
Baby It's Cold Outside - Carmen McRae & Sammy Davis, Jr.
Christmastime Is Here - Vince Guaraldi Trio
We Need A Little Christmas - Johnny Mathis
The Christmas Song - Jo Dee Messina
Auld Lang Syne - Lou Rawls

Encore Presentation: The Cavalcade of Bad Nativities

My girlfriend Stacey and I spent an afternoon at work last year howling with laughter over this.  I blogged about it last December 24, and it's so good I thought I would bring it back for an encore.  So without further ado, please enjoy, once again, "The Cavalcade of Bad Nativities"!  Woo hoo!

On another holiday-related note, I've noticed that my blog traffic has gone up exponentially as Christmas approaches... seems everyone and their dog is looking for information about the Mel Blanc song, "The Hat I Got For Christmas Is Too Big," which I also blogged about last year.  In a gesture of holiday goodwill, I thought I would let everyone who stumbles across my blog while searching for this song know that you can buy a recording of it from Amazon.com.  Go here.  Don't say my blog and I never did anything for you!

Fish and chips and vinegar

It's official.  My cat, Tisbe, is the weirdest cat in captivity.

Yesterday afternoon, my husband and I put up our Christmas tree.  We've owned a six foot artificial tree for several years now, and we've used it (counting this year) four times.  Two years ago, we were away for Christmas so we didn't bother with putting it up, and last year I was determined to take advantage of the eight-foot ceilings in our house and have a live tree, so we didn't use the artificial one then, either.  Now that we're living in an apartment complex again (where there are typically rules that forbid live Christmas trees) we busted out our fake tree for this year's festivities.

Last year, Tisbe seemed pretty indifferent to the live Christmas tree.  She enjoyed sitting under it, posing royally on our red velvet tree skirt, but that was about it.  She sniffed occasionally at the needles and may have taken a taste or two, but in general she left the tree alone.  I was relieved, because given her propensity for erratic behavior, I would not have been at all surprised if she had decided to climb the darn thing.

We didn't anticipate any weirdness with the artificial tree.  If anything, its artificiality practically guaranteed that neither of our cats would be attracted to a piney scent.  Right?  Wrong!  Tisbe was very interested in the tree once we put it up, and she expressed her interest by a) lying under it, b) smelling it, and c) tasting it.  I saw her mouthing one of the lower branches and chased her away, assuming I'd stopped her before she'd had a chance to ingest any fake needles.  Wrong again.  A little while after we'd finished putting the ornaments on, she started making those telltale "cat about to barf" noises.  My husband swept her up in his arms and rushed her over to the linoleum by the front door so that at least her barf would be easy to clean up (I have yet to discover an effective way to totally eliminate cat barf stains from carpet.) She brought up a good mouthful of fake Christmas tree needles.  Delicious.  As if that wasn't bad enough, the UPS guy arrived with a couple of packages just after she finished, so I had to make him wait while we wiped up the vomit.

My husband and I both thought that Tisbe might connect the fact that she'd thrown up with the fact that she had tried to eat the fake Christmas tree, so we decided to observe her for a bit to see if she'd learned her lesson.  Wrong again.  Before we knew it, she was back to sniffing and nibbling at the tree, so we knew we would have to resort to extreme measures to keep her from both barfing up fake pine needles for the next week and potentially hurting herself more seriously by ingesting them.

I'd read somewhere that a good way to keep cats out of the garden or off of furniture is to spray distilled white vinegar around, so we got some, poured it into a spray bottle, and sprayed the lower branches of the tree.  Fortunately, it had the intended effect: neither Tisbe nor Dora showed any interest in going anywhere near the tree.  Unfortunately, our apartment (at least the downstairs) reeked of vinegar for the rest of the night.  I spent the evening pretending that I'd been eating fish and chips and burning a scented candle to eliminate the excess odor.

Who ever heard of a cat being more interested in a fake tree than a real one?

Postscript: The pictures are from last Christmas, when we had a real tree.

Yeah, I'm sure the Virgin Mary sent Joseph to Arby's when she got cravings....

On Sunday, hubby and I drove over to Anderson to pick up a few things at Target (I needed a vacation from Wal-Mart) and then decided to hit up Fazoli's for some fast Italian food.  After dinner, we decided to drive into downtown Anderson to see all the holiday decorations, and as we made our way there, we passed an Arby's restaurant with an electronic reader board that was flashing the following message:

Remember the reason for the season....

<pause>

Try our new Ruben wrap!

Meet me under the mistletoe

While waiting for the bus yesterday, I snapped this interesting photo (click to see it larger):

No, those weird clusters in the otherwise-bare tree are not birds' nests or leaves that have yet to fall.  They're mistletoe!  A few weeks ago, when the leaves finally started falling off the trees around here, my husband pointed the mistletoe out and explained what it was.  I have always been vaguely aware of the fact that mistletoe is a parasitic plant that feeds off of a host tree, but I had never actually seen any in person before.  You can imagine my surprise and delight to discover it growing near my bus stop! 

Anybody want a kiss?  (Strange, isn't it, that we're supposed to kiss under a sprig of a parasitic plant that is propagated by birds eating its berries and then pooping them out onto twigs.)

Merry Christmas from Payless....

Last year, I posted a very well-received entry about my favorite Christmas/holiday songs.  The entry still turns up in search results for people who are looking for information about "The Hat I Got For Christmas Is Too Big" by Mel Blanc, a rather obscure Christmas song in the vein of "All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth."

This year, I thought I would turn my attention to Christmas television commercials.  I'm one of those people that gets sucked right into the holiday cheer... I still get choked up watching that classic Folger's Christmas commercial.  You know the one... "Peter" comes home from college unexpectedly, and he and his little sister make coffee.  The parents wake up and come downstairs, and when Mom sees Peter she gives him a big hug and cries tears of joy.  Then they all drink coffee and open presents.  (I was surprised to see that commercial back on the air last year... maybe it will be back again this year, too.)

And how many of you out there remember the incessant "Merry Christmas from Payless... Merry Christmaaaaaas...." jingle?  That pops into my head at least once during the holiday season.  Not bad for a commercial for a drugstore chain that doesn't even exist anymore.  Somehow "Merry Christmas from Rite-Aid" or "Duane Reade" or "Eckerd" or "Walgreen's" doesn't have the same ring.

When I was growing up in the Seattle area, we had a drugstore chain called Pay 'N Save.  I still remember their kitschy blue and green signs and going shopping there on a regular basis with my mom.  Pay 'N Save's Christmas commercials were memorable, too.... they usually depicted Santa Claus finishing up his last-minute shopping, happily walking out of Pay 'N Save with his purchases to the sounds of sleigh bells ringing.

These days, the Gap's holiday commercials never fail to put a smile on my face.  I'm loving the new "Holiday in Your Hood" ad with Common's rap:

And, of course, this classic Gap ad from 2002:

Some random holiday humor

Laughter is a good thing on Christmas Eve, so without further ado, I refer you to two totally hysterical web sites that a co-worker and I wasted far too much time perusing earlier this week:

The Brick Testament -- a delightful look at the Bible through the medium of Lego.  Yes, Lego.  Check out the annunciation for a real howl... gotta love that Holy Ghost!

The Cavalcade of Bad Nativities -- Don't hesitate to check out the Passion of the Tchotchke and Angels We Have Heard Are High, as well.

Wishing you and yours a hilarious Christmas....

Walla Walla, Wash. and Kalamazoo

When I was a kid, my mom used to sing a fractured version of "Deck the Halls" during the holiday season.  It went, "Deck the halls with Boston Charlie/Walla Walla, Wash. and Kalamazoo!"  Those were the only words she remembered, but I have always been curious about where these silly lyrics came from, since I lived in "Walla Walla, Wash" for a number of years.

I did a little hunting around on the internet and discovered that these lyrics were invented by cartoonist Walt Kelly for the Pogo comic strip many, many years ago.  Is there anyone else out there who remembers hearing these as a kid?  I've printed the lyrics below (taken directly from the Pogo website) to see if they jog any memories...

'Tis the season...

When I was a child, it seemed as though Christmas took forever to come.  I had one of those cardboard advent calendars with the little doors that you opened each day, and every morning my mother would help me open that day's perforated door.  We also had a piece of felt with 24 miniature candy canes tied to it and a little bell at the bottom, and every night I got to untie a candy cane.  The idea was that once all the candy canes were gone it would be Christmas Eve.  There was a little poem that went with it, too:

December first 'til Christmas
Is the longest time of year
It seems as though Old Santa
Never will appear.

How many days 'til Christmas?
It's awfully hard to count
So the little pieces of candy
Will tell you the exact amount

Untie a treat every night
As the Sandman casts his spell,
And Christmas Eve will be here
By the time you reach the bell.

Back in the day, I needed the visual aids to get through the interminable wait for Christmas.  Now that I'm an adult, Christmas sneaks up behind me, gives me a swift kick in the ass, and says, "HURRY UP, BE-YOTCH!"

Decking the halls...

We headed over the hills to Slatington today to White's Christmas Tree Farm, where we got this beautiful 7 1/2 foot Fraser Fir.  Believe it or not, we actually managed to get it home in my little Suzuki Swift... we just opened the hatchback, folded down the back seat, and stuffed the tree in (baled, of course.)  It was interesting driving home with a Christmas tree between us (the tree reached all the way from the back of the car to the front windshield.)  As I said to my husband, "I've heard of piney air fresheners, but this is ridiculous."

Yes, that is me in the photo.  Tisbe is in my arms and Dorabella is on the floor by my feet.  I'm wearing my "Sodom by the Sea: Coney Island" t-shirt from Lola Staar and my Old Navy yoga pants.  I'm such a fashionista.

Back in Black

So here we are once again on what retailers refer to as "Black Friday" -- the (in)famous first "official" day of holiday shopping season and the day that puts retailers "in the black" financially.  Black Friday is a terribly appropriate moniker, especially when you consider that it applies both to the jump in sales for retailers and the absolute hell on earth that all shopping malls become on this particular day.  (Although I read somewhere that Black Friday isn't actually the biggest day for retailers in terms of profit.  People may be out in the stores then but they're not buying as much... the buying seems to happen most during the last two Saturdays before Christmas, according to an article I read a couple of years ago.)

When I was between the ages of 10 and 14, I loved nothing more than to go to my local mall, Bellevue Square, on Black Friday.  By the time I reached middle school, if I could find a friend to go with me, my mom would drop us off at the mall and pick us up later so she wouldn't have to deal with the thronging hordes.  I would usually have $5 or $10 in spending money, and I look back in amazement at how far I could make that money go.  I'd buy a couple of 99-cent soaps at Crabtree and Evelyn, or a silly gag gift at Joker's Wild (the late-80s precursor to Spencer's), pick up a couple of greeting cards, and would walk away feeling like I'd really gotten a jump on my holiday shopping.  While wandering through the mall, I would soak up the holiday spirit and revel in the sound of Christmas music as it played all through the place.

I come from a gift-oriented family.  My brother surely shares my memories of waking up on Christmas morning to a tree that was barely visible for all the presents that surrounded it.  I remember writing out a Christmas list every year, and even now my parents still bug my brothers and me for ideas for what to get us for Christmas.  As an adult, I still get a charge (sometimes literally... little credit card humor, there...) out of shopping for and finding the perfect Christmas gift for the people on my list.  I aim for the perfect intersection of a great surprise and a thoughtful and heartfelt demonstration of my knowledge of the receiver's personality and interests.  I notice when a family member admires something in a shop or mentions a book or CD they've been dying to read/listen to.  Or sometimes I see an item and think, "That's perfect for so-and-so," and under the tree it goes.  I love to see the faces of my family and friends when they unwrap their presents... and any presents I receive in return are nothing compared to the delight I get out of making someone I love smile.

When I was younger, retailers hadn't quite yet caught on to the idea of opening at 5 a.m. with special giveaways and discounts that were only good Friday morning.  When I was in college, though, a Mervyn's near us was giving away these little penguin snowglobes on Black Friday morning to the first 500 customers or something like that.  My mom and I thought they were super cute, so we got up at the ass-crack of dawn (I think the store opened at 7) and hauled our tryptophan-laced butts out to Mervyn's before first light.  An orderly line of shoppers had formed outside the store, and we dutifully joined it.  I sipped coffee from a thermal commuter mug I had thought to bring with me, and we waited patiently for the store to open.  At a couple of minutes to 7, an obnoxious, loud woman in a polar fleece walked right up to the front of the line and announced, "I don't care about the snowglobes... I'm just here to shop!"  The crowd would not let her cut in line, and people firmly insisted that she step to the back just like everyone else. "But I'm Jewish!" she protested.  My mother laughed and said, "I don't think the penguins are Christian!"  The interloper insisted on standing right next to the front door as we all filed in and collected our snowglobes, but not one person would let her "take cuts."

Just as there is some mysterious, divine order to the universe, there is an order to early morning Black Friday shopping.  You wait your turn, don't cut in line, don't push and shove, and try to be nice.   Sort of like Kindergarten, I suppose...

All the same, I'll be giving the malls a wide berth this weekend.

Christmas music

I know it isn't even Thanksgiving yet, but I find myself already starting to think about (and listen to, at least a little bit) Christmas music.  I LOVE Christmas music.  The trend among radio stations to play nothing but Christmas music 24/7 from the day after Thanksgiving until December 26th is fabulous, in my opinion.  There is nothing like tuning in to WLEV 100.7 FM (one of the local Lehigh Valley stations to have embraced this trend) during work to get a healthy dose of holiday cheer throughout the day, or to listen in the car during the hustle and bustle of holiday errands.

Given that I am such a fan of Christmas/Holiday music, I thought I'd share some of my favorite songs.  Some of them are traditional while others you may never have heard of before.  My tastes run the gamut, for sure.  So here are some songs that jingle my bells....