St. Joseph of Persia

I don’t know how to write about this weekend.  I just don’t.  I mean, do I write about the weird head place I’ve been in for the last week, mostly on account of things I also don’t know how to write about?  Or perhaps I should write about my very strange day at work on Friday.  Then there’s the odd story of how Saturday night I found myself sitting in a hotel room with seven strangers and one friend giggling (because, really, what else can you do at that point?) my way through a sales pitch for, um, intimate objects (believe me, I had no idea that was going to be part of the evening’s entertainment), and then less than twelve hours later, helping to set up for my brand new baby niece’s Baptismal celebration at a small, conservative, small town Catholic church with large posters announcing some sort of presentation on Holy Modesty posted on every door.

Then, just to top everything off, I sprained my ankle kinda badly in the church parking lot as we were leaving, requiring me to spend the rest of the day on the couch with my foot propped up on a block of ice.  Seriously, the only thing that would make the weekend stranger would be if someone I haven’t seen in five years (and, yes, I’m thinking of a particular person) suddenly burst through the front door wearing a pink elephant costume and leading a brass band through the living room.  Which the way things are going, just might happen.  Let me just check to make sure that the door is really, really locked.

Ok, we’re good.  The door is locked, and while I was up I limped down to the basement to cycle the laundry.  Because sprained ankle or not, I’m going to need clean uniforms to wear tomorrow.  Though how I’m going to wear the required pantyhose with an Ace bandage on my ankle I don’t know.  But we’ll deal with that later.

Perhaps we should look at a picture of the cutest niece on earth for a moment, just to settle our nerves.

There, that’s better.  That’s Sweet Pea sleeping the sleep of the newly Baptized in her godmother’s arms.  The blanket was lovingly crocheted by Mariah.  My own christening present, the sweater I started knitting, um, a while ago, is still missing part of a sleeve, so she doesn’t have it yet.  However, she’s so tiny that she’d be swimming in it anyway, so I’m ok with this.

So this is what happened on Saturday.  A good friend asked me to come to a bachelorette party with her.  The bride-to-be was a work friend of hers, and while she wanted to go to the party, she also wanted someone with her.  I happened to owe her pretty big for how she helped me avoid the relationship equivalent of starting a land war in Asia just a few days earlier, so I said yes even though I did not see how this could be anything but awkward.  So I put on my Standard Girl Party Clothes (jeans, nice shirt, slightly fancy earrings), and was ready to go at the appointed time.

And, you know, I had heard about bachelorette parties like this, the ones with the embarassing reproductive organ adornments for the bride, and the way too much alcohol, and embarrassing public displays, but I think I didn’t really believe that real people really did this.  I mean, what woman in her right mind would willingly parade around in public carrying a many times life size balloon version of a male reproductive organ?  What loving relative would force their sister/daughter/cousin to wear a tiara ornamented with midget penises that light up and blink?  People didn’t really do that, did they?  All the bachelorette parties I’d ever been to were much more like nice dinners out with the girls, with sometimes slightly risque gifts.  (My favorite was always to give the bride a couple of cans of Redi-Whip and label it “tasteful lingerie.”)  And it wasn’t just because most of my friends are fairly religious.   If anything, the parties for my more secular friends were tamer than the ones for the Good Catholic Girls.  This party, however, was the one that was going to prove me wrong.

This party had it all: the balloon reproductive organs, the embarrassing head ornaments for the bride, the dysfunctional family dynamics.  And, well, it wasn’t my family, and the poor bride (who looked like she just wanted to get through to the other end of this night in one piece) wasn’t my friend.  I would never see any of these people again in my life, so I decided that I would be the perfect party guest, helps things go off smoothly, and do my best to help both my friend and that poor bride have a good time.  And I think I did pretty well.  All the alcohol helped.  Even discovering that the two nice ladies who had been waiting in the hotel room when we got there weren’t also party guests, but consultants representing a discreet line of, well, sex toys which they were about to present to us didn’t phase me too much.

But after the presentation came the ordering, and then came the family dynamics of getting people out the door to the next thing, and then there was the comedy club, and the maid of honor who wanted all the attention for herself, and by that time I’d been hanging out with these people for close to six hours and I didn’t even know them.  I was done.  Thankfully my friend was willing to run me home (she ended up going back to support the bride for a few more hours), which meant I got home at a fairly reasonable hour.  But still.  One of the more surreal nights I’ve ever had.

And then the next morning I got up, got dressed, and headed off to help Sweet Pea get Baptized.

My dears, life is strange.

Also, if I ever happen to get married (and let’s not hold our breaths for that one), and happen to have a bachelorette party, anyone who comes near me with plastic reproductions of sex organs will get their hands cut off.  Just saying.

Sts. Mark & Timothy

Yesterday, I got off work as soon as I could (very nearly snarled at the last person who stopped into my office half an hour past my official closing time with “just a quick question”), jumped into my car and drove down to Cincinnati through the pouring rain storm to meet a certain little person.  On Thursday, at 8:32pm, Sae had given birth to her and Mr. T’s firstborn daughter, and I needed to meet her for myself.

When I got there, AnniPotts and one of Sae’s friends were also visiting, but I quickly took my chance to hold my new niece for the first time.  We just kinda looked at each other for a while.  I don’t know what she saw (except the grin that would not leave my face), but I saw a tiny baby (only 5lbs, 14oz) with a long, skinny body, and huge eyes that look very hard at everything.

All bundled up she looks for all the world like a tiny, skinny pea pod, just filling out with baby peas.  Which is why I’m going to call her Sweet Pea.

She also has tiny, perfect little feet that she kept poking out of the bottom of her swaddling blanket.  This is AnniPotts’ hand holding them.  I’m betting she’s going to be one of those people who has to be completely covered up, except for one foot poking out from under the blankets at all times.

After a while she fell asleep in my arms.  Which was pretty much the best thing ever.

You have to concentrate really hard on sleeping when you’re only a day old.  It’s true.  After a while Sweet Pea started to wake up, and it was time for her to eat.  So I said good-bye, and headed out.

When I got outside, the storm was over, and there was a double rainbow in the sky. And it was good.

The Holy Name of Jesus

On New Year’s Day, I was thinking how different this year has been from pretty much every other New Year’s Day going back just about as far as I can remember.  Usually, New Year’s Day means the Huge Family Party, in which we pull out all the stops to entertain about forty of our nearest and dearest.  This means that we would have pulled ourselves out of bed early after days of cooking and cleaning (plus one night of revelry), ready to face a tight schedule of more cooking, cleaning, arranging, and then entertaining.  It would be a great party, a great way to start the new year, and definitely worth it.  However, it would also be a lot of stress and everyone would fall into bed at the end of the night totally exhausted.

This New Year’s, I got up in plenty of time to make it to Mass at my home parish, ate breakfast at home, and then headed over to the Family Homestead in time to see Indy and Rosie off to the Bengal’s game.  After a little while of hanging out, the rest of us headed off together to watch Tin Tin, which was awesome.  When we came out, we decided to see how many of us we could squeeze into the instant photo booth.  The answer was five (see evidence above).  The Duchess, Sae, and I were on the bottom, and AnniPotts and Fleur were on top.  I’m particularly proud of the picture on the bottom, where I managed to get at least half of my face into the frame.

After the movie, we headed home and cooked a quick dinner of pork chops, sweet potato fries, green beans and salad, and ate together around the big table.  Then there was dishes, and then I headed home again.  It was a little surreal to be heading away from my parents’ house on New Years Day, so early and so rested, but it was nice.

The night before was very nice too.  Mariah had her annual New Year’s Eve Party, complete with breaking a pinata in the front yard.  The pinata this year was the most adorable dinosaur, with big brown eyes, and a long neck that made him look disconcertingly like a llama.  And how can you hit a llama?  It’s just not possible.  It was a good thing it was dark, and we were blindfolded, otherwise we might have been totally defeated by The Cute.  Still, somehow we were able to overcome.  :D

After the pinata was properly subdued, we all headed back inside for more fun until we crowded up stairs (that’s where the tv is) to watch the ball drop in Times Square and toast the New Year.  Then, of course, there were noisemakers and poppers on the front porch.  But there was more.  I had gone into the house, and was tidying up the upstairs room when PM came to get me.  While he was gone in the wilds of Indiana the past year, he was apparently so lonely that he resorted to ballroom lessons.  I had told him that I wanted to learn Hustle (which is his favorite), and he had decided that I was going to have a lesson right then.  I’m always up for dancing, so I followed him downstairs to Mariah’s dining room, where I got my first Hustle lesson.  And then, since turn-about is fair play, I taught him some East Coast swing.  And then all the girls who had been watching wanted to learn swing too.  So I ended up starting off my New Year by beginning to learn a new dance, and then giving swing dancing lessons in my sister’s dining room.  Not a bad start, that.

Now I am in the midst of my last week at Job1 and Job2.  Tomorrow is my last day at Job2, and I’ve gathered that there is going to be some sort of good-bye luncheon.  No one has actually told me this, but they keep accidentally copying me on the e-mails.  Then I’ll take down the things on my bulletin board, return the cup I borrowed from one of them when mine disappeared, make a few last contract files, and say good-bye.

I really hate good-byes.

Sigh.

Bl. John Alcober – the 5th day of Christmas

The past few days have been full of Festivity.  First there was my parents’ Anniversary (they’ve been married now for 41 years).  It was a laid back sort of affair – hanging out at the Family Homestead and watching movies all together.  Mariah brought over most of her truly impressive alcohol collection, and we mixed Gin & Tonics with St. Germaine, and concoctions of ginger liquer mixed with Creme de Cacao or orange juice, plus many, many Shirley Temples for Fleur.  We watched A Muppet’s Christmas Carol together (I cried at the “Life is made up of meetings and partings. That is the way of it. I am sure that we shall never forget Tiny Tim, or this first parting that there was among us. “ part, and so did Mariah), and then we watched Raising Arizona, which was much more cheerful.

On Wednesday we had our Family Gift Day, which was mostly lovely, the first part, anyway.  This year AnniPotts and Boy-O collaborated on their presents, which included cleaning out the used book store.  Apparently they found a whole series of really ridiculous romance novels with nerdy heroes (The Nerd Who Loved Me, Nerds Like It Hot, Talk Nerdy To Me, My Nerdy Valentine, etc.), and gave one to each of the girls in the family.  Except Fleur.  She’s not old enough for even the most ridiculous romance novel.  Mariah had already given me my Christmas present (two very nice cardigan sweaters when I was freaking out about not having an office-y enough wardrobe), but she threw in a license plate cover from Fiber Works that says “I’d Rather Be Knitting.” I thought that was pretty cool.  I gave up on trying to finish Mr. T’s cabled socks, and instead gave him a gift card to Olive Garden.  I figure the socks will have to be a birthday present after all.

The hard part was that after we’d done all the fun present giving, Mariah brought out the last of the boxes of Jacob’s stuff, the ones that have been sitting in her living room for months, ever since we moved them out of Sae’s basement.  It seems like no matter how much of Jacob’s stuff we go through and distribute, there’s always more.  Or there was.  I have it on reliable authority that this was the last.  And it better be.  It took us five and a half hours.  It felt like infinitely longer.  At one point I thought we were never going to get out of there.  But we did.  I now have custody of what was Jacob’s stuffed R2D2, his George R.R. Martin books, the letters I wrote him while I was on NET, his The Tick figurine that used to balance on a bit of plastic wall until somehow we lost the wall, and his Baptismal candle, among other things.  And now we’re done.  I think.  I hope.  Please, God, let us be done!

Thursday was better, though I felt like I had a hangover most of the day from the emotional overload the day before.  I kinda just wanted to go home, crawl into bed, and not come out again until the next day, but CO2 was in town for Christmas, and had volunteered to lead our Catholic young adult group in a Posada.  This is a Mexican (and other Spanish speaking countries) tradition in which you act out the journey of Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem.  Afterwards you have a party, complete with a pinata.  I love pinatas!  So I packed up the vat of Buffalo Chicken Dip I made in my slow cooker, crackers, napkins, rope, and a whiffle ball bat to hit the pinata with.  And I was glad I did.  There’s nothing like whaling on a pinata to chase the holiday blues away.  And our pinata, a very jaunty blue pony, put up a fight!  Everyone got a turn blindfolded, and then we started whacking on it without the blindfold.  It was pretty sweet.  Once it was finally eviscerated we cheerfully adjourned to our meeting room for food & hanging out.  And it was good.

Tonight, in a few minutes I’m heading out to the Welcome Back Dinner for PM (my long lost Minion).  After dinner people are heading over to Tank’s, but I don’t think I’m going to.  I’m just tired.  I want to stay in and, I dunno, paint my nails.  Or something.  Tomorrow is Mariah’s Big New Year’s Eve Party, and then New Years Day is another family day.  We’re not having our Huge Family Party this year.  (We’ve thrown three weddings this year.  That’s enough parties for a while.)  But we’re still going to get together and hang out, and probably go watch Tin Tin.  And somewhere in there I swear I’m going to get some sleep.  Really.

St. John of Kanty

Right now my hands smell like pine.  It’s fresh, and clean, and it smells like Christmas.  My hands smell like my house, which right now is rendolent of the fresh pine garlands swagged across the arch between the dining room and living room, and festooned on the lighting fixture in the dining room.  There are even sprigs of greenery poked in among the figures of the manger scene on the mantel (Baby Jesus is hiding behind the big candle off to one side until it’s time for his appearance at midnight on Christmas Eve), not to mention the massive swag currently on the front door.

All of this Christmas green is from the trip AnniPotts, Indy, Mariah and I took out to the Christmas Tree Farm this afternoon.  You see, in my family we don’t decorate until Christmas Eve, and then we decorate up a storm.  This year we’re  having a more low key Christmas than usual, which means taking it easy on the decorations.  For example, we haven’t even opened the box of my grandmother’s antique glass ornaments.  We’re doing just a few things, the really important things.  However, this means that whatever we are decorating, we’re really decorating.  And that means fresh pine.  And while we were picking out things for Mom & Dad’s house, I somehow managed to pick up just a few things for my house too…  And now my hands smell most deliciously of pine.

If you’d like to see more pictures of our Christmas Tree Farm excursion, Indy has posted them over on her blog, including this great one she took of me.  It’s such a perfect Christmas card picture that I had to share it with you guys too.

And now I will go knit some more on Mr. T’s socks.