the one about holiday decorations

I must be getting old. Or turning into my mother. 

I don't mean this in a bad way. I simply mean that the period from college and a few years afterward--often called "my twenties"--is drawing to a close. And at the same time, so is my rebellion against Christmas decorations.

My dear mother is an amazing craftswoman. She quilts, she cross-stitches, and she has absolutely spoiled me with her ability to make curtains, throw pillows, and pillow shams. There was even an interlude during which we make a duvet cover without a pattern. Putting the duvet inside the cover involved me crawling inside it. Obviously.

And she loves the holidays. It starts in the fall when she gets out all her leaf-pattered paraphernalia and her 99 stuffed pumpkins. There are table runners, table toppers (note the different), place mats, wall hangings, and it's all very thematic. Autumn is her favorite.

And then there's Christmas. She's toned it down over the years--she says this and I believe her due to the lack of bows on the curtain rods when I get home--but my adolescent home is still where the holidays begin for me. I have never decorated as thoroughly as my mother, so I don't really feel it until I get there.  And I love it.  

This year, as it is my second and final year in graduate school, the lead-up to the holidays coincides with finals. Also, Husband and I don't live in the same apartment. For these reasons, buying and purchasing a Christmas tree seems idiotic. (We are also those people who have to throw away their tree on, say, December 17th because we leave town for the holidays and don't want the tree to turn into a pile of match sticks and burn.)

This year, my brain is thousands of miles away from grad school, and I have rebelled from writing papers, doing research, or otherwise being productive by decorating the apartment at very spontaneous intervals.

Examples:

• Last weekend, after getting back from Husband's parents' house for Thanksgiving, I came home and almost immediately hung up the needlepoint mitten garland my mom made for me in college. (Yep, I had decorations in college.) This was inspired by the overnight transformation from Thanksgiving to Christmas decorations in my in-laws' house. I was suitably impressed.
• Later last weekend, when Husband and I were dutifully writing papers across from each other at the kitchen table, I got out the Christmas place mats my mother made me (gingerbread-people fabric, of course), the gingerbread man salt-and-pepper shakers that have been sitting on the window sill all year, and put them on the table. I also insisted we plug in the multicolored lights that hang over the window all year long. We worked hard, but we were festive.
• Last Monday, I came home from a harrowing trip to Bed, Bath and Beyond to buy a comforter (another adventure in putting a duvet in a cover--this time with 100% less of my body inside it), which involved people on stilts dressed as nutcrackers singing in Lincoln Center, and a general inability to walk on the sidewalk. Also featured: a distaste for holiday consumerism in New York. And when I got home, Husband had cracked and bought a wreath from a Christmas tree vendor, desperate for the smell of pine. As we have no over-the-door hanger for such an item, it sat on the floor for a week, but it did smell nice. Saturday night after a late dinner, I came home and said, "I am hanging that up." I looped the attached wire over the door and it proceeded to slide down the door. I said, "We need leverage. Give me my umbrella!" Yep, on the outside of our door, we have a pine wreath. On the inside, we have an umbrella. It's like decorating with Rhianna.  (Cue a chorus of "under my umbrella-ella-ella, ay-ay-ay-ay...")
• Sunday afternoon, I cracked. I wanted a tree. Lots of friends had posted pictures of their trees on Facebook, and I was sitting watching What's Eating Gilbert Grape for the second time in as many days (for research purposes). I popped open the hope-chest-of-holiday-decor and unwrapped my ceramic tree. Husband moved the bed to plug it in. We picked a few choice ornaments to lay around it like presents. And we counted down when we lit it.

This led me to realize one important thing: Although, when starting our collection of Christmas ornaments, I had a theme in mind, another theme has cropped up unintentionally. I intended gingerbread men. Food has supplanted this. Both my own mother and my mother-in-law gave me cupcake ornaments. Gingerbread men are food. There the traditional German glass pickle. A pop-up toaster, complete with bread.

So, as our other newlywed friends post pictures of their blended decorations, we realize our greatest compromise in decorating has been the same compromise we have in cooking: sweet versus savory. Husband and I love food, and gosh darn it our holiday decor should reflect this. Someday we'll have a tree covered in cupcakes. And it will be delectable.

Happy holidays, everyone!  Once finals are over, we'll be jetting* up to my parents' house and making edible holiday items. Aka: cookies. Mountains of cookies.

*By jetting, I mean, "train-ing"  A slow, decrepit, train that is only on time 44% of the time.  Or is late 44% of the time.  Either way, I'm glad husband and our headphone jack splitter will be there. 

the one about pie that's not really about pie

Earlier today, I informed Husband I bought him a present at the farmer's market. I can't say what it is, because then Husband will find out before he gets here. He is going to like it.

Husband informed me that he bought a gallon of apple cider. Husband really likes cider; however, he often buys more than he has a capacity to consume. For instance: today, when he bought a gallon of cider and is leaving it for a weekend. As it is not pasturized, it will be apple cider vinegar by the time he gets back.  [EDIT: Husband claims he bought the cider yesterday. This improves the situation by 0.97%, which is really small.]

Husband then started talking kind of crazy and hyper. I said, "Stop drinking cider." He informed me he'd had three glasses already. That's a lot of sugar. Good, natural sugar, but sugar all the same, and Husband complains enough about the state of his pancreas. I think his pancreas needs antidepressants or something.

One thing I bought for me at the farmer's market was two mini-pies. I'm talking two inches round, and for my snack prior to class tonight. One apple crumb, one pumpkin. I began to eat it when Husband came back from a walk, upon which he planned to buy cheese. I asked him if he had bought cheese in the following manner:

Edited for punctuation and capitalization.

Me: CHEESE is the question, and CHEESE is the answer. I think that requires question marks. Here are some: ????????????????

Husband: Um, stop drinking cider?

Me: I have no cider I have pie

Husband: Same thing?

Me: Um, one is liquid the other is solid

Husband: For craziness?

Me: Au contraire. One is pie and the other is ... not pie. Liquid goes to your brain faster. Because you swallow it and it goes directly into your blood. Pie / solid has to be broken down into molecules of co7 and stuff, and that takes longer, and there is some splitting of atoms.

Husband: Oh, co7

Bottom line: The sugar contained in apples--named co7 for our purposes, because my copious knowledge of science, molecules, and chemistry tells me that--makes you communicate via Gchat in run-on sentences, which are not really sentences, because you don't use punctuation.

co7 = punctuation depleter.

Watch out for it on the news. It's going to be all the rage.

the one about hair

Within the last three months, I went from having very long hair to a cute, sweet, easy, "reverse bob." My stylist named it that. I'm not sure if it means that my scalp appears backward.

Why did I have so much hair to cut off, you may ask? Well, I got married three months ago, and I belong to the strange group of women who consider it essential to have approximately seven yards of hair to pile on top of their heads for their weddings. Except whenever I wear a ponytail higher than say, the nape of my neck: insta-headache. And I didn't want my hair overly structured and teased and sprayed with twelve kinds of lacquer to make it stay up.

Obviously I wore it in a French twist. Requiring full-scalp teasing, root-to-tip hairspray, a combination of 30-something hair and/or bobby pins, and the feeling that I had bound my head. Like foot-binding. But a head.

I am nothing if not consistent.

Cut to after the wedding, pins out, but hairspray + teasing still very much present. And the fact that, even though I had a spreadsheet detailing the whowhatwherewhenwhyhow of my wedding, I had not packed a bag for the wedding night. I did not have a contact case, a change of shoes, or most importantly, a hairbrush. I respond to the title Idiot Bride, thank you very much.

I could not sleep without brushing my hair. I needed a shower more than I have ever needed a shower in my life. Seriously, I could need a shower less if I ran a marathon. But hairspray + teasing + water = dreadlocks. So at approximately four in the morning, I got up, used Husband's comb to painstakingly brush out every inch of my hair, watching flakes of hair spray fall like dandruff snow. I showered. I washed it as many times as the hotel sample shampoo would allow. I felt like a human.

Do you blame me for chopping off a foot of hair?

Here's the problem. Short, choppy hair requires more upkeep than long hair. This haircut goes from cute flippy-ness to side-mullet in exactly six weeks. I am deep in side-mullet territory.

Of course the person who created this hair cut, promptly forgot about it six weeks later, and then trimmed it, trimming my bangs to the wrong side, no longer works at the salon I go to. Not the first time this has happened to me. Nor the second. It is in fact the third time I have had to change stylists at the same salon. I know this happens. It's New York, stylists are always moving around, blah, blah, blah.

And now I want the side-mullet/reverse bob turned into a regular bob and I have to explain that to a new person.

Who is ironically the same person I went to the first time I ever went to that salon, although I immediately forgot her name afterward and never used her again. Obviously should have stuck with that one. I'm not even going for good haircuts any more. I'm going for the same person cutting my hair three times in a row.

I'm pretty sure the phone message I got from the salon is them yelling at me about changing stylists. Because I could have avoided that.

I'm about a mile from Flowbie territory.

the one about research

For my film genre class this semester, I have elected to write a paper on developmental disability films.

As excellent as the best examples of these films are, they never fail to make me sob like my pet just died. I plan to compare a list of to-be-determined characteristics and tropes used in the following films:

• Rain Man
• What's Eating Gilbert Grape
• I Am Sam

To do this, I will have to watch the films at least once. Probably twice, considering I ordered the special editions, which all feature commentary by various parties involved in the making of the films. I thought perhaps I could listen to the commentary and not watch the films. But the commentary likely references the specific scenes, and would be rendered useless by removal of such a referent. So two viewings of each film are necessary.

Ergo, I think I should throw a viewing party. Any number of my acquaintances would happily watch tear-jerking (melo)dramas with me, I presume. I could use it as research, to study the effect on such variables as:

• Tear production
• Laughter
• Popcorn consumption
• Level of physically manifested discomfort, including:
• Shifting positions
• Shielding eyes
• The fetal position
• Requests for alcohol
• Fleeing

I could also discuss the tropes and characteristics I plan to investigate with my test group. I mean, my friends. We could have a regaling discussion about disability, stereotyping, and Rain Man's capacity for one-liners repeated for decades.

Paper would write itself, and I would generally humiliate myself in front of people.

Fun fact: The cover of the special edition DVD of Rain Man features a terribly photoshopped picture of Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman walking down a highway. In this photograph, they each appear to be at least 20 feet tall. I just tried to find this picture on the internet. It does not exist outside the anomaly of my DVD. It is quite literally this picture on a highway backdrop, and it only serves to perplex me.

the one about my lunch: updated

I forgot my lunch today.

Really upsetting, because I went out to dinner last night specifically to purchase a meal that would also serve as lunch. I also specifically insisted upon Italian food thanks to large portions and the joy of carbohydrates.

That lunch now sits on the floor. In the hallway. Of my apartment.

Which is, according to Google Maps, 5.6 miles away from my current location: my office. 

Side note:

Reason #1,502 living in the New York metropolitan area depresses me:

I live 5.6 miles away from my office. It takes me 50 minutes to get from one place to the other. Google Maps says it is a 15 minute drive, via the exact route the bus takes. The bus takes at least 30 minutes.

Le sigh. Side note ended.

To make matters worse, my hallway is grossly under-refrigerated. We have complained about the problem, but apparently normal people do not use their entrance hallways as refrigerators. They're missing out.

Did I mention that my lunch is/was a container full of angel hair a la puttanesca? Yep. That's a bunch of anchovies sitting in my delightfully-heated apartment. Signs point to me not emptying this container, and simply throwing it out, lest I die of anchovy poisoning.

And yes, today of all days I did exchange the aluminum leftover container for a nice, shiny, clean GladWare container, so as not to explode my entire office building by microwaving metal.

Obviously I should explode things more frequently. Although I'd still have to buy lunch in that situation. Vicious cycle.

Related: Google informs me of the existence of a restaurant called Puttanesca in New York. In case you don't know such essential bits of Italian, "puttanesca" means prostitute. Your restaurant is called Prostitute, people. Based on their web site, they know that. And knowing is half the battle.

Also: "I have a container of puttanesca" has all kinds of meanings unrelated to left over pasta. And should not be refrigerated. And perhaps should be ventilated. Or humans should not be placed in leftover containers.

Somehow, this is all moot compared to what Husband forgot enroute to his weekday home today: power cord for laptop. My lunch will cost approximately $7. New power cord: a happy, round $79.

Still looking for the restart button for today.

Update: Leftover container leaked. Hallway smells like a fish infestation. And someone gave Husband a power cord. I am indeed the bigger loser. Too bad that's not the equivalent of winning.

the last one about baseball

Hypothesis proved.

I would like monetary compensation from the San Francisco Giants for the assistance I provided. I would also like them to retire my number. 

It's been a tough post season, realizing that I enjoy the sport of my elders. I suppose the apple does not actually fall far from the tree.

Aw, nuts.

the other one about baseball

Hypothesis proved.

Did not watch World Series Game 3 on Saturday night. (Too busy rollicking around a fun city in which I do not live and seeing entirely too many grown people dressed up as bananas.)

Giants lost.

Came home after best bus ride ever and the speediest Sunday night subway ride in history, watched the end of Game 4. Giants already winning, but continued to win due to my viewership.

Giants won.

Because of me.

Obviously.

The superstition of sports fandom plus my own abnormal of superstition does not bode well. I have lucky and unlucky outfits.

In the end, I do this for Husband. Our vows should have included, "I will sublimate my superstitions onto things that you like so your sports teams can win and I can feel responsible even though I will complain publicly about the responsibility."

To be continued...duh.