It's official. I am a big liar, a really big liar. And your pants are on fire too, admit it. We've all been so caught up in the holiday spirit, how many of us have counted the number of lies we've laid out in the month of December? Surely it's above our quota.
The elaborate length of our trickery occurred to me as I walked around the house at 11:45 pm on Christmas Eve with a string of bells, gently shaking them outside my childrens' doors- loud enough to possibly invade their Christmas Eve dreams, but quiet enough not to get them awake too early to see the presents carefully laid out for them (or for them to see the crumbs on my lips from the cookies we set out). Oh the elaborate trickery we perform!
We stop talking like grown ups in the month of December. We differentiate between fiction on TV and a new so-called reality. "Sweetheart, this is a cartoon about Rudolf but that's not the Real Rudolf- it's just a cartoon." Which seriously begs the question: where is the real Rudolf? Does his nose really shine so bright? "This is just a movie about the Tooth Fairy. The real Tooth Fairy is much smaller". Since when does the myth become reality and the movie become the fantasy? Do we realize the price we pay when we blur those lines so fantastically? You can even ride on the Polar Express and meet up with Santa in the middle of the woods! But we see Santa everywhere we go now anyway, "Oh silly, that's not the real Santa. You wouldn't have to pay the real Santa $18 to take a photo of you on his lap!" So where's the real Santa then? Is this one of his minions or really is that just someone the mall hired? Grown ups... we need to get our stories straight if this hoax is going to last... how many times does Santa check his list? Who works for Santa and who is just in it for a pay check? How does Santa fit all the toys in his sack? There's so many versions of the story out there, we're bound to be discovered for the liars that we are if we don't all agree on something.
It's not enough that there is a Santa and his reindeer to conjure up. We also need to comply with our culture's insistence of piling up more lies... I mean traditions. Now we have an Elf to sit on our shelves and we all need to keep listening for the Polar Express too. I keep losing that damn little bell and putting it in places where Liam finds it before me even though everyone knows Santa is the one who is supposed to put the bell under a tree in a separately marked package. How can I keep up with the Elf if I can't even do the Polar Express bell effectively? Maybe I need a separate box to be kept under my bed labeled "LIES" where I keep my bunny ears, stash the Tooth Fairy's Sacajawea coins and hide that damn broken bell.
On a side, philosophical, note... don't think it goes un-noticed that I am actually Jewish here. I completely realize the irony as I carefully arrange my childrens' plastic Easter grass in their baskets. I won't apologize for this- I'll only say that I'm glad Judaism doesn't pile on any additional hoaxes that I'm aware of. I mean, there's Hannukah Harry but I have no idea who made him up and I have no intention of posing as a guy named Harry- I want to take all of the credit for the presents my children receive on Hannukah.
Maybe it's all the kids' fault. They're so gullible, they're asking for all these lies really. It's no wonder they believe in ghosts and monsters considering how we fool them into believing in all these other imaginary creatures and beings. For a child, it wouldn't be too far fetched to see a man in a sleigh; just like seeing an alligator under their bed or a monster in their closet seems like a possibility.
I teach my students in school about fantasy and realistic fiction. It takes quite awhile to get past the "It could happen" possibility that separates the two. They keep saying, "There could be a wizard named Harry" and "It's possible that a lion can talk" and I keep assuring them that no, these things are not known to be true so they therefore make the stories fantasy. Every year somehow it comes up... maybe as they're writing a book about Santa on their Reading Log or perhaps in conversation... "Is this book about Santa fantasy or realistic fiction?" And I have to stop talking like a teacher, put away all of my education that screams at me to say (obviously) Realistic Fantasy. Instead I say, "What do you think?" and I actually do smile when they write "Realistic Fiction".
There's still time to stand up against it all... but really, no, there isn't. I started with Joshua years ago. Santa this and "Ho Ho Ho" that. And my lies are propagated by just about everyone who met him this December. Santa even visited his baby sitter's house with his jingle bells and presents. Joshua and Santa go way back, and I haven't done a single thing to stop it, only to add more fuel to the flames by singing "Santa Claus is coming to town..." Why don't we tell our kids the truth about Santa? Hmmm
Here's my other confession... lying is so much fun. I mean, running around with jingle bells in the middle of the night... that's just plain silly fun. Not to mention how much fun it is to leave a trail of jelly beans throughout the house or to hide Easter eggs. Lying is so much fun, I'm considering buying a TuTu to wear when I get to make that first Tooth Fairy appearance! I am so complicit with all these hoaxes, I just can't help but think... maybe I'm making them true. Seriously, if I get that TuTu and I leave a coin under Liam's pillow, then technically I AM the Tooth Fairy, right? Which leaves Bill as the official Santa and me as the official Easter Bunny (Go ahead and laugh, I'm a Jewish Easter Bunny... what's bigger, my ears or my nose?)!
I know I struggle with the whole Polar Express bell thingy but I am seriously considering buying an Elf on the Shelf if I see one on the clearance rack this January. Afterall, what's one more lie?
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Craft Glue Doesn't Dry Clear
I'm in a rip roaring bad mood and I've got to tell you why. It's these holiday crafts. Every year we give a holiday craft to our loved ones. One year it involved magnetic picture frames. They were foam and Liam got to stick stickers all over them. I had to bite my tongue every night as we painstakingly made each frame with no regard for symmetry or color coordination. I've always been one for trying more creative crafts that don't have to turn out a certain way. I prefer the crafts that let you choose which colors to use and which holiday to celebrate. Several years ago we made marshmallow man ornaments. Some looked vaguely like Santa (again, with the asymmetrical arms and facial features). The ornaments we gave to Jewish relatives had Star of David foam stickers on their bellies (or backs or heads or feet). Last year may have been our crowning achievement. Liam used play dough cookie cutters to cut out ornaments. We stuck a straw in the top of each one to make a hole for a string. After the cut-outs dried we painted them with glittery paint. I think it's all going downhill after those ornaments.
This year once again, I walked straight past the cute foam ornament kits. Straight past them to another kit. I don't know what I was thinking. How would making bell necklaces be creative? At least I could have chosen beads or something but no, I chose bell necklaces. The bell necklaces are made of metal which meant we needed craft glue. Craft glue isn't pretty. I am assuming true crafters know how to use it effectively but then again, I'm not a true crafter. So instead we have craft glue smeared over our reindeers' eyes and pom pom noses. The snowmen were even harder than the reindeer. The snowmen necklaces came with tiny eyes poked out from foam and minuscule pieces of foam to make the mouth. I think the person who thought up that design clearly has coal for brains. You can't stick minuscule (ie less than a half a millimeter in diameter) foam onto a metal object, it just won't adhere. Check that, it will adhere to everything until it crumples up and gets lost under your fingernail. The necklaces were a bust. I may give them out anyway but let's be truly honest- they were not made by the children. They may look like they were made by children, but they were not made by the children. And I'd say they were made with love but they caused me a great deal of tension, which made me very caustic and sarcastic during the whole crafting session. So I'm not really sure you'd get much a love vibe from the necklaces either. Here's how I know it was a bad scene... Bill actually intervened and made the last snowman.
Here's the thing with Christmas crafts. You get inspired by the magazines or you do the foam thing in the aisle at the craft store. The magazines are just an abomination. Talented but out-of-work artists must pose as everyday moms to create "Beautiful Christmas Decorations On A Budget". And since when are the ornaments they show hanging from the tree made by anyone under the age of 22? I had a back up plan this year to make Q-Tip snowflakes from Family Fun. In the magazine they looked beautiful. I quickly found out that I could make the snowflake but it was a lot bigger than I thought it would be (obviously an oversight on my part when I looked at the photo). On the Internet one crafter said she makes Q-Tip snowflakes with her elementary school students every year. I find this hard to believe- first, because current academic standards are so high that there is barely time for a holiday party let alone a holiday craft and second, because unless she has three teacher's aides who are actually highly trained artists I can't really see how she could pull off this craft in her classroom. When I gave Liam some of the Q-Tips he poured mountains of glitter glue and ended up with a Q-Tip pile. Ironically, his pile-o-Q-Tips didn't look much different from Joshua's. I intervened and made the Q-Tip snowflake from the magazine. Liam agreed that it looked "prettier than pretty". We tried to glue the tips together but it was kind of a disaster and I ended up doing all the work. So once again we have a project that I did most of the work on and now it's taking forever to dry.
There's a morale to all of this, I know. It's probably that Christmas isn't about the crafting and that next year I should just take it easy and get the foam ornaments. Actually, just today I received a handmade foam ornament in the mail. For a moment I visualized all that went into making that foam ornament. I noticed how it lacked symmetry and color coordination. But I also noticed that it was clearly made by a child, which is more than I can say for our craft projects so far this year.
So back to the morals of the story...
(1) Christmas is about love so make a craft that brings you family together.
(2) Don't use any glitter on your projects or your relatives won't love you anymore.
(3) Avoid craft glue and instead of battling with a clogged Elmer's glue cap that just won't work anymore, buy a new glue bottle.
(4) Make crafts that can be for any holiday.
(5) Choose a craft that your child can actually do.
(6) Work on crafts before bedtime so if at all goes sour, at least you can have a glass of wine before bed.
This year once again, I walked straight past the cute foam ornament kits. Straight past them to another kit. I don't know what I was thinking. How would making bell necklaces be creative? At least I could have chosen beads or something but no, I chose bell necklaces. The bell necklaces are made of metal which meant we needed craft glue. Craft glue isn't pretty. I am assuming true crafters know how to use it effectively but then again, I'm not a true crafter. So instead we have craft glue smeared over our reindeers' eyes and pom pom noses. The snowmen were even harder than the reindeer. The snowmen necklaces came with tiny eyes poked out from foam and minuscule pieces of foam to make the mouth. I think the person who thought up that design clearly has coal for brains. You can't stick minuscule (ie less than a half a millimeter in diameter) foam onto a metal object, it just won't adhere. Check that, it will adhere to everything until it crumples up and gets lost under your fingernail. The necklaces were a bust. I may give them out anyway but let's be truly honest- they were not made by the children. They may look like they were made by children, but they were not made by the children. And I'd say they were made with love but they caused me a great deal of tension, which made me very caustic and sarcastic during the whole crafting session. So I'm not really sure you'd get much a love vibe from the necklaces either. Here's how I know it was a bad scene... Bill actually intervened and made the last snowman.
Here's the thing with Christmas crafts. You get inspired by the magazines or you do the foam thing in the aisle at the craft store. The magazines are just an abomination. Talented but out-of-work artists must pose as everyday moms to create "Beautiful Christmas Decorations On A Budget". And since when are the ornaments they show hanging from the tree made by anyone under the age of 22? I had a back up plan this year to make Q-Tip snowflakes from Family Fun. In the magazine they looked beautiful. I quickly found out that I could make the snowflake but it was a lot bigger than I thought it would be (obviously an oversight on my part when I looked at the photo). On the Internet one crafter said she makes Q-Tip snowflakes with her elementary school students every year. I find this hard to believe- first, because current academic standards are so high that there is barely time for a holiday party let alone a holiday craft and second, because unless she has three teacher's aides who are actually highly trained artists I can't really see how she could pull off this craft in her classroom. When I gave Liam some of the Q-Tips he poured mountains of glitter glue and ended up with a Q-Tip pile. Ironically, his pile-o-Q-Tips didn't look much different from Joshua's. I intervened and made the Q-Tip snowflake from the magazine. Liam agreed that it looked "prettier than pretty". We tried to glue the tips together but it was kind of a disaster and I ended up doing all the work. So once again we have a project that I did most of the work on and now it's taking forever to dry.
There's a morale to all of this, I know. It's probably that Christmas isn't about the crafting and that next year I should just take it easy and get the foam ornaments. Actually, just today I received a handmade foam ornament in the mail. For a moment I visualized all that went into making that foam ornament. I noticed how it lacked symmetry and color coordination. But I also noticed that it was clearly made by a child, which is more than I can say for our craft projects so far this year.
So back to the morals of the story...
(1) Christmas is about love so make a craft that brings you family together.
(2) Don't use any glitter on your projects or your relatives won't love you anymore.
(3) Avoid craft glue and instead of battling with a clogged Elmer's glue cap that just won't work anymore, buy a new glue bottle.
(4) Make crafts that can be for any holiday.
(5) Choose a craft that your child can actually do.
(6) Work on crafts before bedtime so if at all goes sour, at least you can have a glass of wine before bed.
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Decorating Our Home For the Holidays
For 11 years I've have free reign over decorating our home for the holidays. When Bill and I lived in our first apartment it was sparsely decorated. Knowing we would be sharing our lives together, I wanted to start with a cozy home for our first holiday. Being Jewish, I had inherited no Christmas decorations of my own and being the oldest in his family, Bill hadn't inherited any yet either. Actually, to be fair, most of their decorations were old art projects from the three boys days in day care and elementary school- touching but not a great start for us anyway. So I loaded up on coupons to my favorite craft store and spent a whole $50 on decorations. They all coordinated. They were red and gold, with white lights. I topped it off with a small Charlie-Brown-Christmas tree. I decorated our first home as a surprise. Bill came home and smiled but was not nearly as pleased with me as I was. Apparently he doesn't even think about Christmas until Christmas Eve so decorating just after Thanksgiving was unheard of anyway. But he appreciated the gesture.
Years later I found out perhaps the real reason why Bill wasn't jumping for joy over my decorations. He prefers those gaudy colored lights. Okay, I admit it, maybe they color coordinated a little too well. But colored lights? No, they just wouldn't go in our new apartment and they certainly didn't work in our new house a couple of years later.
But then what about the bushes outside. Okay, that was the compromise. Colored outside, white inside. Meanwhile I had come up with the perfect display of our Christmas decorations. I optimized my $50 worth of craft store decorations, a new bigger Charlie-Brown-Christmas tree and many Christmas trinkets given to me by students (actually that's not fair- some of my nicer decorations came from students) by displaying them strategically around the living room. I wound a set of white lights around a fake pine garland, hung red and gold tassels perfectly aligned on the entertainment center and windows, wound matching red and gold bows around the ugly banisters in my kitchen and even hung the red and gold ornaments on the tree. Yes, it was bliss.
Then we got a bigger tree, moved it to the family room and had our first Christmas with the whole family in our home. I broke down and agreed to colored lights in the family room- provided we could buy colored ornament balls (red and gold don't really match with the colored lights, in case you haven't noticed). With a new charge of decorating not one but two areas in the holiday spirit, I set about buying more items, including coordinating stockings, stocking holders and more (matching) garlands. Everything has its place as soon as it gets out of the Christmas bin.
I'm sounding more and more compulsive aren't I? Well whatever, I'd like to point out that the guy who lives two streets over still puts his inflatable Santa Grinch in the same spot on his lawn every year and the people across from him still have their blinking "MERRY CHRISTMAS" lights right over their garage... just light the years before. So it's really not too different, now is it? Although if I'm starting to gossip about neighbors anyway, I have noticed that each year they keep adding somethings to their displays with apparent disregard for coordinating colors. I can compromise with mixing those colored lights and some white lights, but adding the blue lights too and/or different size bulbs is excessively clashing, don't you think?
So what's the point of this blog post? I guess I needed to vent and put it all on the line. I was a little miffed this year when Liam, who has been "helping" me decorate for 5 years now, tried to take over decorating this year. Last year he was sooo compliant. I would tell him to put an ornament on the tree and he would do it just like I asked. It was the perfect balance of helpfulness and competence without interference. But this year he actually grabbed garlands and strewed them willy nilly across the Christmas tree. He tried to hold my breakable stocking holders. He placed stuffed snowmen and Santa who says, "The magic of Christmas lies in your heart" in clearly incorrect places. It was just... wrong. Then he grabbed gold ribbon and zig-zagged it tightly around the banisters separating the kitchen and dining room. Those things are ugly enough, now I had a tightly wound mess! I couldn't help myself, I redid the whole display. I spent about 1 1/2 hours on the ribbon alone, making sure the bows were perfect and the ribbon draped equally between each banister. When I was done, I had to credit Liam. I think it was cuter than the red bows I had put on the banisters for the past 5 years.
The next night was a Monday. Liam grabbed a spool of red ribbon and proceeded to tightly wind them through the stair banisters. This is in a much more visible location but the difference is... he did this on a Monday so I promptly put off fixing it for lack of time and continued to forget about it. And I have forgotten about it for the past 2 weeks. I haven't fixed it and it's kind of growing on me.
I wonder what decorations Liam will suggest next year. Possibly he will want to put the pine garland around our window or on the back of a couch. Whatever... as long as he doesn't try to put the colored lights upstairs.
Years later I found out perhaps the real reason why Bill wasn't jumping for joy over my decorations. He prefers those gaudy colored lights. Okay, I admit it, maybe they color coordinated a little too well. But colored lights? No, they just wouldn't go in our new apartment and they certainly didn't work in our new house a couple of years later.
But then what about the bushes outside. Okay, that was the compromise. Colored outside, white inside. Meanwhile I had come up with the perfect display of our Christmas decorations. I optimized my $50 worth of craft store decorations, a new bigger Charlie-Brown-Christmas tree and many Christmas trinkets given to me by students (actually that's not fair- some of my nicer decorations came from students) by displaying them strategically around the living room. I wound a set of white lights around a fake pine garland, hung red and gold tassels perfectly aligned on the entertainment center and windows, wound matching red and gold bows around the ugly banisters in my kitchen and even hung the red and gold ornaments on the tree. Yes, it was bliss.
Then we got a bigger tree, moved it to the family room and had our first Christmas with the whole family in our home. I broke down and agreed to colored lights in the family room- provided we could buy colored ornament balls (red and gold don't really match with the colored lights, in case you haven't noticed). With a new charge of decorating not one but two areas in the holiday spirit, I set about buying more items, including coordinating stockings, stocking holders and more (matching) garlands. Everything has its place as soon as it gets out of the Christmas bin.
I'm sounding more and more compulsive aren't I? Well whatever, I'd like to point out that the guy who lives two streets over still puts his inflatable Santa Grinch in the same spot on his lawn every year and the people across from him still have their blinking "MERRY CHRISTMAS" lights right over their garage... just light the years before. So it's really not too different, now is it? Although if I'm starting to gossip about neighbors anyway, I have noticed that each year they keep adding somethings to their displays with apparent disregard for coordinating colors. I can compromise with mixing those colored lights and some white lights, but adding the blue lights too and/or different size bulbs is excessively clashing, don't you think?
So what's the point of this blog post? I guess I needed to vent and put it all on the line. I was a little miffed this year when Liam, who has been "helping" me decorate for 5 years now, tried to take over decorating this year. Last year he was sooo compliant. I would tell him to put an ornament on the tree and he would do it just like I asked. It was the perfect balance of helpfulness and competence without interference. But this year he actually grabbed garlands and strewed them willy nilly across the Christmas tree. He tried to hold my breakable stocking holders. He placed stuffed snowmen and Santa who says, "The magic of Christmas lies in your heart" in clearly incorrect places. It was just... wrong. Then he grabbed gold ribbon and zig-zagged it tightly around the banisters separating the kitchen and dining room. Those things are ugly enough, now I had a tightly wound mess! I couldn't help myself, I redid the whole display. I spent about 1 1/2 hours on the ribbon alone, making sure the bows were perfect and the ribbon draped equally between each banister. When I was done, I had to credit Liam. I think it was cuter than the red bows I had put on the banisters for the past 5 years.
The next night was a Monday. Liam grabbed a spool of red ribbon and proceeded to tightly wind them through the stair banisters. This is in a much more visible location but the difference is... he did this on a Monday so I promptly put off fixing it for lack of time and continued to forget about it. And I have forgotten about it for the past 2 weeks. I haven't fixed it and it's kind of growing on me.
I wonder what decorations Liam will suggest next year. Possibly he will want to put the pine garland around our window or on the back of a couch. Whatever... as long as he doesn't try to put the colored lights upstairs.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)