etc.

I took down our tree last night. Last year, amid the general positivity I emanated over Christmas, I put out a couple of salient Christmas dislikes. Well, this year, I am here to tell you that one of the things I hate most about the holidays is taking down the tree. It took a whole evening to accomplish and whoever manages to get their lights back into the box they came in is a golden god of repackaging as far as I’m concerned. I couldn’t even get the tree back into the box it came in and the branches are, you know, bendy and stuff.

I’ve added a few books to my bookcrossing shelf so have a peek at them and let me know if you’d like any. There are still some on the list remaindered from my last offer, I can’t understand it, free books folks, and I know I have impeccable taste in literature, so why the reluctance?

It’s not rare for me to have nine days off and be ready to go back to work after four. Christmas/boxing day/the 27th and 28th all turned out to be very relaxing days and on at least one of them I did little more than read books, nap, and leisurely munch on holiday baking and good leftovers.

Days like that rejuvenate me so when Monday rolled in, I felt like I should be getting back to work, what more could I want? I didn’t, of course, instead I read some more and took the occasional break to cheer on the mister who has been busily and back-breakingly sanding every single picket and rail on our over-painted staircase. There is 93 years worth of wear and countless heavy paint jobs on those rails and instead of just painting over it all we thought it might be a good idea to sand it all down first, you know, do it right. It’s turned into as big a deal as we thought it would be (although less messy since the sander has a hose that attaches straight into the vacuum cleaner, tiny little mercies) but he’s probably being smart by doing it on the front-end of the vacation rather than the back-end, which is when I’ll be painting every single one of those pickets and rails.

Unrelatedly, cable outages have kept me from posting more regularly this week; our cable service has been down and we now learn that the cable infrastructure in the neighbourhood and in our house is unfixable, intermittent service is an inevitability. So consider that my disclaimer for ongoing irregularity. Happy new year, however you plan to spend it. We will be eating heartily and playing Scrabble with my parents all evening. It’s certainly not the only way to celebrate, but by my thinking it’s the best way.

I’ve spent that past few days baking cookies, whipping up olive oil and teriyaki marinade for gifts, enjoying vanilla-scented candles, watching our nephew get Christmas, and generally just hanging out with all of my favourite people.

Giving crafty means that all of the raw materials for our gift-giving came from the grocery store and a neighbourhood craft store, which in turn means zero time spent at shopping malls, no harried shoppers, no circling busy parking lots, two full days in the kitchen instead, and a 100% chance of a more enjoyable holiday season. I haven’t been too cut up over it being a green Christmas either, today we had the windows open all day (and the door in the basement too where the cats met a neighbour) and sunlight beaming into our crazy-little-house.

It’s been a perfect Christmas, I hope yours was too.

As soon as I raised the flag, things started happening. Cards were posted on Friday, the baking is almost done (today), gifts are almost all completed (more on this after the 25th, for obvious reasons), the litterbox is clean, and the cats’ blankets are practically knitting themselves. I am a good little elf, yes I am.

I’ve had seven regulars pipe in in favour of no comments and three against. As you can see, I haven’t brought comments back and this has nothing really to do with the for-and-against numbers I’m keeping track of, I never did claim to make decisions democratically around here. I just sort of decided that as etc. becomes more of a journal and less of a blog, which is the way it seems to be mutating, comments have become redundant. The upshot of all this is that I’m getting more email, the personal kind, the kind I like, it seems that some have cottoned on to the fact that they’ll actually get a response to an email, something that is not guaranteed when you leave a comment. It’s all working out quite well so far, keep ‘em coming.

I am so behind the 8-ball on everything. Work is insanely busy, why oh why, it’s the holidays, the students have departed for homes or beaches or ski slopes, this is supposed to be good time, my time, time to wrap up loose ends, complete projects, spend leftover collections budgets, eat colleagues’ home-baking all day, and enjoy 2 hour department lunches. No holiday cards have been dispatched, no gifts have been completed, no baking has been done, and yesterday I noticed that I was three days behind on cleaning out the cats’ litterbox. I have a day off next week and aside from having a general fixit guy over to inspect our crazy-little-house for broken stuff, I shall complete all the rest of it, yes, all of it, all at once, all in one day, so if you’re expecting a gift or card from me in the mail, or perhaps some gingersnaps or shortbread from my oven, this is my very elaborate and roundabout way of telling you that it’s all going to be a little late and that I am very sorry.

Our tree is up, all sparkly, red, gold, bows, ribbons, 600 fairy-lights strong. It’s tall, not as tall as I thought 7ft was, but tall and wide. You forget that tall also means wide with Christmas trees.

I’ve decided to knit the cats a couple of blankets for Christmas. Since this decision comes a mere 10 days before the day of merriment, they will not be done on time but no matter, the cats shouldn’t mind. I’ve never knitted anything before, I almost finished a simple plain-purl (pearl?) purple scarf once but that’s the extent of it. With my current audiobook preoccupation I’ve decided that it would be nice to be able to do something with my hands while I listen to a book (this is not when I am driving, don’t worry Mum) and I came to the conclusion that cat blankies are a good, low-threat way to jump into the knitting game.

Site-relatedly, I’ve turned off comments. Why not send me a message instead if you have something to say? I still like hearing from you, I’m just trying out a little something different. That’s all. Tell me what you think, and go ahead and be honest.

A couple of visual delights today: first, the 2003 etc. bauble you will already have noticed. Yes, friends, this is how unapologetic I am about my enthusiasm for the holidays. It’s like this most years, although this year is seeing a particularly early onset. I’m quite certain it has something to do with us being around for the holidays. Last year we went to London for 9 days right after Christmas and as delightful as that was, it didn’t really feel like Christmas because I didn’t bake any chocolate chip meringues for my sister and no ginger snaps for my dad and no gobs of relax time spent with my family. I’ll be making up for that this year, in all sorts of spades.

Also, just when you thought I don’t make good on any of my promises, here are a few pictures from South Korea, in all its mystical, Autumnal splendour. The pictures have been up for weeks but I’ve been waiting on the mister to fill in the captions and even though he still hasn’t done it, I’m unveiling them uncaptioned to shame him into action. For now, suffice it to say that it’s a palace, there’s a library and a women’s residence on the grounds and it was foggy that day. The rest is up to your imagination, go ahead and use it with reckless abandon.

This weekend we were supposed to pick up our Christmas decorations, all carefully tissued and boxed, resting on their warm, dry shelf in the mister’s parents’ basement. We also have a three-year old, unused, 7ft tree; unused because we bought it on a whim three years ago before we lived in an unusually low-ceilinged basement apartment which necessitated a three foot, sparsely-baubled tree (the cats love baubles and are not, interestingly enough, intimidated by a 3 ft tree). We didn’t pick up these Christmas accoutrements this weekend and I am, as a result, a bit discountenanced.

You see, I love Christmas. Prosaic, isn’t it? It’s become de rigeur to poo-poo the holidays, hasn’t it? All that commercialism, consumerism, wastefulness. Well, guess what, I try to live low on the food chain, consume as little as possible, and not fuel the corporate machine, and I still love Christmas. It isn’t about buying bigger and better things, and mowing down mums in toys stores for the last this-year’s-Elmo. It’s giving thoughtfully, wrapping lovingly, and spending time with the people who are important to you. It’s making mulled wine and apple cider, and forcing the cats to wear reindeer antlers. It’s fresh snow, pine cones, bright baubles and fir boughs. It’s long days, warm houses, and lots and lots of good books.

This week I am making pine and fir wreaths for the house. Next week, something else. Maybe baked goods. Maybe gifts. I’ll let you know, unapologetically.

25. Sitting on the couch in that turkey-induced drowsiness, napping, chatting, and generally basking in the glow of being surrounded by my favourite people in the whole world, feeling pretty lucky to be where I am.

24. One of my favourite Christmas memories: when we were kids, we sometimes used to go to church at midnight on the 24th. When we left the house, there would be a few presents under the tree, but when we got back, there would be many, many more. I still don’t know how my parents did it.
23. A Charlie Brown Christmas.
22. Miracle on 34th Street.
21. A Wonderful Life.
20. In the library: all the kids have gone home and the bookstacks are mine, all mine, to stroll through and select my holiday reading. It feels like summer up there.
19. Two hour department Christmas lunches.
18. Happy Christmas (War is Over), by John Lennon.
17. Terry’s Chocolate Orange.
16. Some days, you finish all your Christmas shopping in under an hour and have enough left-over paper from last year to wrap all your presents this year!
15. Christmas cards.
14. Pine cones.
13. Holly.
12. White rooftops.
11. Silver Tinsel.
10. Shortbread.
9. Spending many hours decorating my parents’ tree in between multiple glasses of hot apple cider (or mulled wine), while listening to (and singing) carols.
8. Mulled wine.
7. Marzipan.
6. Little white lights.
5. Pine needles.
4. Red mittens.
3. Snow banks.
2. Clear blue skies.
1. Bright sunshine.

Merry Christmas everyone. Be good to each other.

One of my favourite Christmas memories: when we were kids, we sometimes used to go to church at midnight on the 24th. When we left the house, there would be a few presents under the tree, but when we got back, there would be many, many more. I still don’t know how my parents did it.