Merry Christmas

This has been a very up and down Christmas season, what with Newtown and all. Yesterday, Christmas Eve, I was really feeling down -- probably mainly because I was coming down with a cold. But it wasn't just that. I was feeling overwhelmed. Christmas sure is different when you're the parent! It's wonderful... but it's also kind of not so fun. So much work, so few rewards. All day I kept wanting my mother to walk into the house and take over.

Or... you know, I think maybe I just wanted her to walk into the house. I wouldn't have minded doing all the work if she could have been sitting in a chair nearby, chatting with me. Maybe that's all it was. I just missed my mom. Hmm.

This is the first year the kids have been TOTALLY cognizant of the holiday, and it's also the first year (since they were babies) that we've spent Christmas Eve at home. Every other year we've been visiting family, and we've hung stockings in a hotel room. It was important to me that we do it at our house this year, but it meant that I had to make up all the family traditions, since none were in place. It also meant that because I was dumb enough to put some presents under the tree yesterday, all day long, Baby A said, "Mom! Can we open the presents now!" and all day long, I said, "No, not until Christmas," and Baby A said, "But I want to open them NOW!" and I said, "You can open one present tonight before you go to bed, but we open the rest tomorrow," and Baby A said, "No! I want to open them NOW!!!!!" and so on and so on, all day long.

I started wondering why I was making him wait. Why not just have Christmas now? I had no idea that Christmas involved being so dictatorial, so, well, mean. But I hung in there. We had homemade macaroni and cheese for dinner, which was a big hit, and everyone ate a lot of it. Then we let the twins open one small present each, little toy motorcycles, and then we packed everyone in the car and drove off to the Wizard of Oz house, which was all lit up and receiving guests. We tried to take a picture with Glinda, but Baby B did not want to participate.

Then we drove around and looked at lights for a while, while Baby A took a much needed nap (he hadn't slept at all that day, too frantic about the presents), and then we went home and opened one more present: new warm fuzzy throws (from Kmart, don't knock it), for them to use as blankets on their beds. These were a huge hit.

It took them a long time to settle down for the night, but finally their room was quiet. And then Santa Claus came.

(That's a scorpion sticking out of Baby B's stocking and a rattlesnake sticking out of Baby A's. Very desert-y.) Santa also left presents under the tree,

including a new small train set and the big one, a ROUNDHOUSE, which they have been asking for all year.

Still feeling gloomy, I went to bed without reading any Christmas stories. I woke up around 7:30 and the house was quiet, so I got dressed and then crawled back into bed with Dickens' "Christmas Carol." Right around 8 am, I heard stirrings in the other bedroom, and pretty soon two little boys came out and it was time to see what Santa had brought. It was a merry time.

Almost all the presents were appreciated (the exception being new warm jackets -- I suppose it's a bit like getting underwear for Christmas). I gave Rocket Boy some tea and a new shirt, and he gave me a really nice stone tortoise that I like a lot. The twins have been playing happily all morning -- QUITE a change from yesterday. And my mood is entirely different too, thank goodness.

I still miss my mother so much, but it feels like she's with me today.

Lighting candles

Well, the glow from the party didn't last long.

I read that some people in Newtown are taking down their Christmas decorations. I noticed a house on our street tonight that had toned down its decorations -- where before they had all sorts of things going on, now they have only some blue lights. Another group of houses that are just incredibly gaudily decorated, and also hooked up to a radio station so that the lights go on and off to the music, had turned the music off, and the lights were just steadily on. Of course I can't explain this to the twins (we're not talking to them about the tragedy).

In contrast, we finally put up our outside lights today. But it's just one simple string across the garage door and another small string wrapped around a bush. We also put up our tree today and burned the eight candles of the last night of Hanukkah. I don't feel like we're celebrating. It's more that we're surrounding ourselves with the comforting warmth of family and home and memories.

In my family of origin, we have some pretty brutal memories surrounding the holiday season, enough so that the holidays are changed -- for us all, I think. Well, I shouldn't speak for others. Changed for me, I can say that. At this time of year I have to spend some time thinking about the sad parts. I don't feel as though I can talk about these things with most people, because they recoil in horror. And that in itself is a kind of loss. But Christmas for me is still a time of comfort, because I have a lot of happy memories too. I like to relax into the memories of Christmases spent with my mother, who is gone now.

I can't imagine what the holidays are going to be like -- forever more -- for the families of the 26 people who were murdered. Especially the mothers and fathers of the 20 little children. The families of the 6 adults can know their murdered loved ones were heroes. The families of the little children -- what can they do? Maybe they'll form a group and have memorials together each year. That might help.

I hope something can be done about the guns. I feel ready to help out with that one. Don't you just want to storm the NRA headquarters and rip their people limb from limb? I guess that's the wrong attitude. Bury them in daisies, or something. I'm just done with Republicans and people who want everyone to carry a gun (a Sig Sauer?), so we'll all be safer.

Mainly I want this not to be forgotten. Shooting after shooting, we just sigh and say "Another one." I want to stop doing that. I am so done with all these guns.

Lighting a candle in my mind for everyone who lost a little child on Friday. I can't stop hugging my babies.

Parties

I like a lot of things about the holidays... the lights... the music... the food (peppermint anything)... the family get-togethers... even the shopping, though it's less special in Ridgecrest. Trudging through a garish Kmart or Walmart is just not the same as wandering through a tastefully decorated boutique.

But for many years now one of my most favorite things about the holidays is the parties. I'm not even talking about friends' parties. Do my friends give parties? Do I have any friends? I'm talking about organizational parties. Club parties, school parties, work parties. I adore them all. So far this month I've been to three club parties, and next week we've got a school party at daycare and a party at Rocket Boy's work. I wish we belonged to more clubs so we could go to more parties.

RB doesn't share my love of these parties. And really, I'm not sure why I like them so much. They're a bother. You have to make food, buy something for a gift exchange, wear a holiday sweater. But I love all that. I love making a special little dish for a party (it's entirely different from, e.g., making dinner). I love looking for a nice little gift, "under ten dollars, please." I love putting on a green shirt and my jingle bell earrings.

Tonight we went to a simply splendiferous party for a club Rocket Boy belongs to in Trona. It went beyond all expectations.

I had to do a lot of work to get ready for it. We had to bring a side dish, so I cut up two big bowls worth of fruit -- watermelon in one, and pineapple, oranges, strawberries, bananas, and grapes in the other. That took a while. We also had to bring gifts for the kids to open, because the club provides gifts for the adults. So I had to shop (at Walmart) for the kids' gifts, and wrap them. Then they encouraged people to bring donations to Spark of Love (like Toys for Tots), so I had to shop (at Kmart) for those gifts too. Then we had to drive to Trona, which is half an hour east of us, with noisy, complaining four-year-old twins in the back seat.

But when we reached the building where the club has its headquarters, we were ushered into the back room and there was a long table with maybe 40 people sitting at it -- holiday placemats and napkins and centerpieces and favors -- just lovely! When everyone was ready, we said the Pledge of Allegiance and someone said a long prayer, and then we filed into the other room to load our paper plates with 30 different dishes (the other 10 people brought dessert).

After we ate, there was some club business, and then someone read "The Night Before Christmas." At each person's plate was an envelope. Whenever the words "the" or "and" were read aloud, you had to pass your envelope to the left. After the chaos died down, we opened our envelopes to find a number, and in that order people went up to the Christmas tree to pick out a gift. Mine was some soap and hand sanitizer, and Rocket Boy received a beverage "sleeve." The twins' gifts were small toy monster trucks. And then we had to drive back to Ridgecrest, with the twins fighting all the way, la la la.

It was fabulous. I'll be glowing like a front-yard Christmas display for days. Next up: Jesus's Birthday Party at daycare. Can this holiday season get any better?

Cold Weather -- NOT

I've gotten behind on posting, too much holiday stuff going on. Last week Rocket Boy was out of town doing some training, so the twins and I kept each other company. The homeschool preschool theme was "Cold Weather" -- NOT that we had any. It was pretty silly. I saw people in stores wearing shorts and tank tops. But we did some nice little activities, including making snowflake cookies (out of tortillas)

and paper snowflakes (actually Mom made these -- boos just wanted to make paper airplanes).

Another day we "skated" around the house wearing pieces of wax paper taped to our feet (a big hit -- seriously). By Friday, Dad was home and could help us with this exciting project: putting rock salt and food coloring on big blocks of ice (made by filling old milk cartons with water and putting them in the freezer overnight) and seeing what happens.

Not much happened for quite a while, but eventually some serious melting and color mixing got going.

But so many other things are going on right now, parties and events, and there's so much to do.

Last Friday was Pearl Harbor Day, and Rocket Boy was going to a party, so he took a cake:

We were concerned that it was in horrendously bad taste. But some of the people at the party were old enough to remember Pearl Harbor, and Rocket Boy said they seemed to enjoy it.

Saturday was the annual Ridgecrest Christmas Parade, in all its hometown goofy splendor.

It seemed smaller this year than previous years, but there was still lots to see

and lots of candy was handed out. Boos just stood there and stuffed their faces. I always forget about that part -- we need to bring trash bags! Instead, I stuffed my pockets with the wrappers. I also stuffed my mouth with bubblegum, because I don't like the twins to have it. This meant that the twins kept staring at my mouth, shouting "Blow a bubble! Blow a bubble!" so sometimes I blew a bubble and then they would try to pop it. Tacky, tacky, tacky.

The horses in the parade are always favorites, as is the pooper scooper boy who follows along behind them.

I don't know why this rider is carrying a gigantic American flag. It's Ridgecrest, I guess that's the only answer.

And then on Sunday we drove up to Kennedy Meadows and over Sherman Pass to Kernville, so we could see some snow. There wasn't as much as we expected, but we did find one nice side road covered with white stuff, so we played there for awhile.

Boos had a blast, and since then they've been asking me why we don't have snow in Ridgecrest. Next year, they should get their fill of the white stuff.

And now onwards into more and more parties, cooking, shopping, and all the rest of the madness that makes up the holiday season. I do love it.

Home sick

We were so lucky with illness last winter, hardly caught anything, and I don't think the kids missed a single day of preschool/daycare. So I figured we wouldn't be so lucky this year. I mean, after all, they're kids, and they need to catch things. That's one thing I dread about our first winter back in Boulder -- we'll probably be sick all the time, since more of the bugs will be new to the kids.

Anyway, this week we had our first major illness. Baby B actually had a mild case of it the week before Thanksgiving, and missed one day of preschool. Everyone seemed fine over the holiday, but Baby A woke up Monday morning feeling awful -- and ended up staying home all week. ALL WEEK. And Baby B had an intestinal upset that kept him home on Tuesday. Oh, I could never be a truly stay-at-home kind of mom, with my kids there all the time. I need my time. When I used to work in an office, somehow the office time was my time. Now that I'm home, my solitary afternoons are my time. I don't like giving up that time! But give it up I did.

Our theme this week in homeschool preschool was "Animals in Winter" and I'd thought of some nice activities, but it mostly all fell apart because of illness. Baby A was not up to doing anything for the first few days, and since I never had any time to myself, I couldn't buy little extra props or plan the lessons out more thoroughly. Monday and Tuesday were mostly a bust, although we did read some of the books shown above. My favorite was Moon Glowing, which is about hibernation.

Wednesday I wanted to do some activities from the book Going Home, but I couldn't get them interested. The only thing they were willing to do was watch me draw migration patterns on a map. I'd wanted to get a world map, but no time, so we drew with washable markers on our laminated National Parks map. That turned out OK.

Thursday's activity was supposed to be building a bird feeder, but on Wednesday it occurred to me that that was crazy. So Wednesday night I rushed out to Home Depot and bought some cheap bird feeders, and Thursday's activity consisted of filling and hanging up bird feeders, which was really quite enough. Oh, and we also made the "suet" for the suet feeder from scratch, using a recipe from an Audubon site. Here are our feeders:

I never had any luck with suet feeders in Boulder, and since I've never seen a woodpecker anywhere near our house in Ridgecrest, and we don't have squirrels here, I'm not optimistic about this one. Still, it was fun to make the suet.

I'm embarrassed about the red-colored liquid in the hummingbird feeder. Even though the package said it was perfectly safe for hummingbirds, I think it's still frowned upon by true birders. When it's time for a new batch of nectar, I'll make it from scratch with no red stuff. Of course, I'm not at all sure we have hummingbirds anymore, though we had them this summer. Haven't seen anything at the feeder yet.

And here's the regular feeder. The trouble with our yard is that we have so little "cover" that I'm just not sure we're going to get any birds. Baby A was looking out my bedroom window today and got all excited because there were birds on the wires "looking at the bird feeder," or so he claimed. I don't think mourning doves (which is what they were) could use this sort of feeder, though. We need some sparrows or finches. I told the boos it might be a while before they show up. Maybe next week?

The most successful activity of the week turned out to be a couple of songs I found on a preschool website. I tend not to like it when people make up new words to old songs, but somehow in this case it worked. The first one is to the tune of "Frere Jacques" and it goes something like this:

Are you sleeping, are you sleeping, big black bear, big black bear?
Time for hibernation, what is your location?
In my den, in my lair.

We sang verses for mouse, bat, rattlesnake, toad and frog, etc.

The second song was Baby A's favorite and it's set to the tune of "Skip to My Lou."

Bear is getting ready, what does he do?
Does he wear coats and hats like you?
That's not something a bear would do.
He goes to sleep in his den.

and there are verses for goose, snake, rabbit, and tortoise. (Goose flies someplace warm, snake hides in a hole, rabbit grows thick white fur, and tortoise sleeps in its burrow.) We also made up a verse for Pie Bear. Baby A loved this song, and whenever things got bad, all week, he would ask me to sing it. It cheered me up too.

So, I thought everyone was healthy now, and next week would be better, but tonight Baby B complained of a stomach ache and wouldn't eat his dinner. I'm hoping that isn't significant, but it probably is. Here comes winter.

Death Valley and the Amargosa Hotel

We took a short trip to Death Valley over Thanksgiving weekend, and for the first time spent the night. We had been planning to camp, but we were afraid it would be too cold, or all the campsites would be full. I thought the hotels would be full too, but when I did some checking, it turned out that there were vacancies. And then Rocket Boy said, "Would you want to stay at the Amargosa Hotel?"

The Amargosa Hotel is in Death Valley Junction, a tiny town -- well, a wide spot in the road, actually -- just outside of Death Valley National Park and very close to the Nevada state line. I won't go into all the details about its history, but it's a very interesting place, and supposedly haunted. Here's a shot looking down the hallway.

And here is our room, Room 22, where Red Skelton stayed a few times...

...according to the sign on the wall:

The room was pretty basic (aside from the wonderful wall paintings) and had no TV, so the twins entertained themselves by jumping on the two double beds (whose mattresses were already shot and REALLY did not need to be jumped on) and hiding in the closet and screaming. Finally, to let the other hotel guests enjoy their experience a little more, we went down to the lobby, where there was a TV. No TV service, of course (and no cell phone service), but there was a VCR and a few videotapes to choose from. We watched The 101 Dalmatians.

But we had a terrible night's sleep on a terrible mattress. Our room was heated by a little space heater -- worked very well, but so noisy. I woke up over and over and over again, and in between I dreamed and dreamed and dreamed. We all got up for good around 6 am, as the room started to get light. The cafe didn't open until 8 am, so we went back out to the front lobby and watched The 101 Dalmatians again.

Another hallway photo. Just before coming here we had rented a David Lynch movie called Lost Highway, which has some scenes filmed inside and outside the Amargosa Hotel. The hotel room shown in the movie is Room 26. But as you can see in this picture, Room 26 doesn't actually have a number.

And here's the view out the back, from the window in our hotel room. You can see a closed-off wing of the hotel, complete with broken windows. I couldn't look at this the night before, too creepy. No, those are not ghostly eyes staring out of that window, that's condensation on our window. But still.

After breakfast in the cafe, we drove back into the park and saw some sights, including Dante's View, where we had never been before. It gives you a view of the whole valley.

We also saw Badwater again, and the Devil's Golf Course, where we hadn't been since the twins were two or so.

But the best place was the Mesquite Sand Dunes, where we had never stopped before. Now it's clear we'll have to go there every time we go back to the park. The twins adored them. We visited them both on our way into the park on Saturday...

and on our way out of the park on Sunday...

Greatest place in the world for four-year-olds to play. They had a ball.

Ayers Rock

We had to do something to recover from the horrors of yesterday's turkey and our general crabbiness, so this afternoon we decided to go see some more of the rock art described in my library book. Ayers Rock is so near us, so easy to get to, I don't understand why we'd not only never seen it before, we'd never even heard of it.

But now that I've seen it, I'm glad it's not better known, because it's both lovely and unprotected.

To get there, you take 395 north to the Coso Junction rest area and then drive about 8 miles on various roads, none of them bad (yes, I'm being vague on purpose). Fortunately, this time the book's directions were good, because there are no signs telling you what you're driving towards until you finally see this one:

although the "parking" it refers to is really sketchy -- there's no "lot" per se. We parked in a sort of open area near a trail sign and got out to look around. At first the boos said they didn't want to go (still nervous) but we convinced them that it was no big deal and we were mainly going to take a hike.

There was a sign about Ayers Rock lying on the ground nearby. I don't know why it's called Ayers Rock, by the way, but I assume it's a nod to the famous rock in Australia.

We read the sign carefully and then started down the trail, or so we thought.

The trail was REALLY sketchy, mostly just footprints in the sand. It wasn't until we got to Ayers Rock that we realized there is another, better trail. And when we got back to the parking lot and looked at the trail sign again, we realized that someone had tried to alter it to point to the real trail (see the crude arrow pointing left):

Anyway, it didn't really matter (except for the fact that the BLM sign specifically says to stay on the trail). Ayers Rock is so big that you can see it regardless of whether you're on the trail or not.

Ayers Rock has pictographs, not petroglyphs -- meaning that the rock art is painted, not etched into the rock. Pictographs are more fragile than petroglyphs, but the pictographs on Ayers Rock are supposedly not that old, painted maybe 100-150 years ago. They're still really cool.

 It's hard to know how to treat a "sacred site." We did our best to leave no trace of our visit, and we did not bring anything back with us. The sign near the trailhead warned us not to take "stone flakes," so we didn't. But honestly, it would take a LOT of visitors to remove all the bits of obsidian from the site.

They're everywhere.

The moon was up when we were there, though it was broad daylight. Its presence made the whole experience just slightly surreal. Nice place, Ayers Rock. I hope it can stay that way.

The turkey to end all turkeys

Nah, not this one. This is a nice turkey. It's on our front door. We made it this week in homeschool preschool -- OK, I made it, but the twins supervised and helped cut out the feathers.

THIS is the turkey to end all turkeys. The turkey that may cause me to give up eating -- or at least cooking -- turkeys altogether. The turkey that Would Not Cook.

It sounded like a good idea when I read it online. Supposedly it's actually not necessary to defrost a turkey -- you can just cook it from frozen. It takes longer, but that's OK, you just allow 50 percent more time. I bought a ten-pound turkey, which normally should have taken about three hours at 325 degrees. So I figured that if we cooked it straight out of the freezer it would take four and a half hours. We put the turkey in the preheated oven at 9:15 this morning. Here I am taking its temperature at 1:15, i.e., four hours after it went in. And what does the thermometer say? Probably about 130 degrees (we're aiming for 165).

OK, fine, it's not done yet. Back in the oven. At 2:00 we tested it again. No change. At this point we remembered about the giblets. The instructions online say to remove the giblets after the turkey has been in the oven about an hour. We tried that, but the turkey was still too frozen to pull anything out of its abdominal cavity. We were supposed to try again half an hour later, but we didn't. So now the turkey's been in for nearly five hours, and we remember to pull out the giblets. Except that we can't find them. Instead, what we pull out of the turkey is the NECK -- eeuww, don't like necks -- and it still has visible ice on it. NOT a good sign. We couldn't find the giblets bag, but we put the turkey back in for another hour.

Around 3:00 we tested it again. It got up to 140 degrees. I turned the temperature up to 350 degrees. At 3:30 (six hours and 15 minutes after it went in) I gave up and took the turkey out of the oven. "We're supposed to cover it with foil and let it sit for half an hour," I told Rocket Boy. "It will get hotter as it sits there."

"That doesn't make sense," he said.

"I know, but that's what all the websites say."

"I'm going to put it back in the oven," Rocket Boy said.

"Fine!" I said, storming off.

Meanwhile, the twins are starving, and we're trying to tide them along with little bits of things like cookies and juice. Here's Baby B sadly waiting for his Thanksgiving dinner:

At 4:00 (six hours and 45 minutes after we first put it in) we took the turkey out of the oven again and let it sit under a tent of foil for half an hour. Oh, I forgot to say that when we took the turkey out the first time, I noticed that the abdominal cavity had red blood in it (and of course it isn't done until "the juices run clear"). Rocket Boy went ahead and made gravy out of the drippings, but boiled them for about 15 minutes before adding flour, which hopefully was good enough. But when he started carving the supposedly "done" turkey, the meat was not completely white -- there were pinkish areas. Ick, ick, ick. Oh, and he finally found the giblets bag.

We put the food on the table.

What a spread for a family of four, two of whom ARE four. Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, sweet potato casserole, spicy spinach dish, rolls, and cranberry relish. It was delicious -- even the turkey was pretty good. But as I ate, I started to feel uneasy. It did not help that the twins would not eat much of anything. Baby A had two rolls and Baby B had one. They refused the turkey and mashed potatoes (and of course everything else).

I wasn't expecting them to eat much, but I thought they'd eat more than that.

After I finished eating, I went back to the turkey carcase and started pulling off the rest of the meat. And then I started to get really grossed out. The turkey just didn't look right. Parts of it still looked bloody.

"I'm not going to eat any more of this," I said to Rocket Boy. "Not tomorrow. Not ever."

The Mayo Clinic website says it takes several hours for the signs of Salmonella to show up, but it can be as much as two days. So I won't know for a while whether I ate anything bad. At least the twins didn't have any.

On Wednesday, in homeschool preschool, the twins and I talked about being thankful. I brought out a bunch of their stuffed animals and had their stuffed animal turkey "ask" the animals what they were thankful for (he makes a "gobble gobble" sound when you press his tummy). The animals' answers were predictable: they were thankful for the twins, for having a nice place to live, and that sort of thing.

What am I thankful for this Thanksgiving? Many things, of course, including my family. I'm a very lucky person, even though I live in Ridgecrest. But not turkey. Not thankful for turkey. Maybe never again?

Vegetable Week

I thought Vegetable Week would be a good segue into Thanksgiving, so that's what we focused on last week. Each day we talked about a different form of vegetable. Monday was roots, Tuesday was tubers, Wednesday was stems, flowers, and leaves, Thursday was seeds, and Friday was vegetable fruits. Each day I brought out some real live examples of the vegetable type of the day, and each night we ate whatever we'd looked at that morning.  Also each day I added some vegetables to the "garden" in the photo above (this was my art project this week).

Above you can see Tuesday's exhibit (two potatoes and a sweet potato), plus a game I think I invented called "Am I a Potato?" (I can't remember whether I got the idea from another site or not.) The green cards have pictures of various things: other vegetables, dinosaurs, and potatoes in all their forms. I held the cards up one at a time and asked "Am I a Potato?" and whoever gave the right answer first got the card. Boos found this mildly amusing.

Wednesday's activity was by far the weirdest. I decided that we would pretend to be vegetables. So I put some Stravinsky on the record player, put some green tulle over my head, and began dancing around. Boos of course wanted to do it too. They kept asking me what we were doing and I wouldn't answer. Finally I told them we were being vegetables, and they thought that was weird and stopped dancing. Still, it was fun.

On Thursday, seed day, we sorted a bag of mixed bean soup that I'd bought at the grocery store. Supposedly it contained 17 different kinds of beans, but I think we only came up with 12. After sorting them, we dumped most of them all together into a pot and made bean soup (which we had for dinner and boos would not eat).

The next day I was going to do something with veggie fruits but I was tired of the theme by then and did not feel creative. So we munched on some cherry tomatoes, but we made art with the leftover dried beans and some glue and construction paper. Boos enjoyed it so much that they kept doing it for the next day or so.

On Sunday we drove to Murray Family Farms, outside Bakersfield. The idea was to do their U-Pick thing, but it was expensive, and it had been raining so the fields were probably muddy, and everyone was in a bad mood, and we got there kind of late... so we decided to skip it, and just bought some produce from the store. Boos were happy to play in the corn pit.