Eli is of the age that he makes requests repeatedly, and if the answer is “no” or “not right now,” he alters his request slightly. “Do you want to come play in my room?” “Do you want to play marble tower?” “Do you want to play Candyland?” “Do you want to do shoulders?”
Last night he made a new request. “Do you want to rock out with me?”
So we did.
I have really learned to love Christmas. Part of it is that in the past several years we have begun to earnestly celebrate Advent. Part of it is having a kid to watch getting excited about the prospect of seemingly limitless presents. This next story is about neither of those great things.
We bought a 7.5-foot tree last year after Christmas for an amazing bargain. We got this total steal because it’s a lit tree but one of the strands wasn’t working. Stephen, being handy in that way, declared he would be able to fix it once we put it up.
Yesterday was set aside for hall decking at the Granade house so after a trip to our new, local community center to walk on the indoor track, we got started. We pulled boxes out of the attic and stowed the Thanksgiving paraphernalia. All was going well until we got to the tree part. I wanted to put it in our office since that window faces the street and I wanted our neighbors to be able to admire our great tree. We flopped open the bottom umbrella-like portion of the tree in the office and it took up every inch of available floor space between my side of the desk, the closet, the window, and the bookcase.
I’ll admit to the panic attack I had next because I hadn’t even considered the diameter of the tree being a problem. My first thought was that it had to go. If you ask Stephen, he’ll tell you that I proclaimed it was too big about 300 times. I thought we might return it. No luck. I thought we might sell it after Christmas. Doesn’t fix the current problem. I even tried to trade with Andrew and Joy for their skinnier tree. Still don’t have an answer there and also, doesn’t fix the current problem.
We talked about putting it in our bedroom but finally settled for in front of our back door. Yes, that’s right, it’s sitting in front of our back door, taking up all available floor space between it and the piano. While this paragraph only took about two minutes to write, the actual events it describes took somewhere between two and three hours. And we hadn’t even tackled the truly hairy part of fixing the broken strand of lights.
That was a whole different ball of wax. We plugged and replugged each of the lights that weren’t working. We checked the fuses in three different plugs. I had another panic attack when I read the troubleshooting guide and it said the wires contained lead and that pregnant women shouldn’t handle them. Stephen took over and began removing that string of lights from the tree while I started unpacking other boxes. He had about two branches unstrung when he found the problem. One of the wires had pulled out from the base of a bulb. It was a completely easy fix except we didn’t have any wire nuts around. Stephen phoned our nearest friends to see if they might have some (they too are a handy lot) but no one was home. He got ready to go to Lowe Depot when I decided to ferret around in the tool chest. I came up with exactly one wire nut. Stephen had it fixed in under a minute. Elapsed time this phase of the project: about an hour.
In the background of all this tree angst is Eli. We stayed up late Friday night to go to our Sunday School Christmas party. He woke up early yesterday morning and had a lousy nap yesterday afternoon. Insufficient sleep makes for a grumpy Eli. The house being topsy-turvy makes for a grumpy Eli. We had that in spades yesterday with all the boxes and the intense discussions about the tree. Eli not getting enough one-on-one attention makes for a grumpy Eli. Grumpy Eli makes for a grumpy Mommy and Daddy. We grouched at Eli the whole day yesterday. He couldn’t keep his hands off things. He couldn’t listen. He wanted to watch tv all day long. Eli was a whole drama unto himself.
Finally, ornament hanging time arrived. We actually had fun during that part except for not having enough hooks to get stuff on the tree. There were a few moments of discussion, “Go out for more hooks?” But I unearthed a box of ball ornaments we didn’t plan to use and scavenged off of them for hooks.
Stephen and I both had to have a nap before dinner. But the upside is the pre-lit tree is really beautiful. Here’s the proof.
Here’s hoping the rest of the Advent season is less eventful than yesterday.
Muse: Starlight (2006)
Hey, look, Muse is playing on the deck of a bulk carrier! It’s not the best Muse video ever (wait a couple of weeks for that one), but I do dig the song. Plus halfway through the video they start firing flare guns in an attempt to summon the spirit of Queen.
(Thanks to Storme for the suggestion)
Cher: If I Could Turn Back Time (1989)
The US Missouri certainly has a lot of very big guns.
I feel a little bad about that last video, so let me make it up to you with a video of a hamster running through a live-action videogame. If you played games on the original Nintendo, this will be startlingly familiar to you.
So I went to the doctor on Tuesday and all is well with Baby TBA. Heatbeat is normal and my next appointment is January 2, when we will potentially find out the baby’s gender. I’ve been thinking of it as a boy in my head (and mostly out loud) but I don’t really care what it is as long as he/she gets here in a timely fashion and whole. My due date is still the second week in May. I lost two pounds last month due to vomiting and only gained one this month. The nurse was somewhat impressed with that number as I was just coming off the week of Thanksgiving. I would have posted that sooner but our internet was down at the beginning of the week.
And also, I have jobs! Real paying jobs! More than one, at once! Pardon me while I pass out from the hyperventilation.
My Kindermusik-ing sister-in-law commissioned me to do some stuff for her business, which I suppose I should ask her if I can post here to show us both off. I also have a logo commission I’m working on as well as very large Word document that I’m spiffing up for a friend of a friend from church. And I’m happy to say that after this week, I have caught up on all three projects and am waiting to hear back from two of them so I can continue work. How do I always manage to get busy right at Christmas?
I decided to do a medium-sized crafty project for someone’s Christmas gift. So after working out some details last night, Eli and I hauled it to Hobby Lobby this morning to collect some supplies. I, of course, over spent but I’m thinking that I’ll be able to return multiple items. Or I might just keep them and have Christmas supplies for the next project that hits me.
I’ve also managed to get some housework done this week, attend a birthday party for one of Eli’s friends, and get a good chunk of my Christmas shopping done. On Mother’s Morning Out mornings this week I went to the doctor, chiropractor, and dentist, got my haircut, and still had time to help do some Christmas decorating at the church. It’s amazing what a person can accomplish when they don’t feel like dog food 90% of the time.
Hallelujah! Second Trimester!
Since you haven’t had enough of Cute Eli, let’s talk about him playing his guitar. On Sunday he saw several of us playing Guitar Hero for the first time. Before then he carried his guitar around by the neck, putting it on the floor to play it. But after he saw us rocking out with the strap around our neck? He has the rock star moves down. Watch him spin around, then smash the guitar when his song is done.
When I was preparing this video tonight for posting, Eli saw it and demanded, “You go get your guitar and we play Guitar Hero!” I dutifully pulled out my Guitar Hero controller. “No, we play Guitar Hero,” he informed me. “You plug in your guitar and we play.”
So I did and we did. Pay special attention to what Eli does when we reach the bridge.
Eli has music class at school. This is good since he has taken over my sister- in-law’s nickname of “Jukebox Joy” and we call him “Jukebox Eli” because sometimes when he starts singing, he doesn’t stop.
Tonight at the dinner table he decided to entertain us with a new song he’s learned in music class. “10 Little Ducks.” I’m sure that I’ve heard this song before but didn’t remember how it ended. It’s easy enough to follow:
10 little ducks went out to play,
Over the hills and far away.
When Momma duck said, “Quack, quack, quack!”
9 little ducks came waddling back.
Repeat until you get to zero. It comes complete with cute hand gestures and appropriate faces. However, the best part is the punchline and Eli delivered it fabulously this evening.
No little ducks went out to play,
Over the hills and far away.
When Daddy duck said, “Quack, quack, quack!”
10 little ducks came waddling back.
Daddy Duck had a very deep, gruff voice and he paused nicely for the last line to make maximum impact. Stephen and I fell out of our chairs laughing.
Next time you see him, ask him to sing it for you. It’s worth the first 11 verses to hear the punchline.
This came up in one of my art/crafting blogs and since I know that tons of you are book collectors I thought you might also like to see a collection of bookplates. There are lots of really beautiful things on this site. When I showed it to Stephen he said, “Hmmm, we need one with a chinchilla on in.”
Just what I was thinking!
Misty and I have been grooving on Veronica Mars since right after the first season. The combination of a noir outlook and a spunky-yet-troubled teenage heroine has proven irresistible. Each of the first two seasons started with a mystery that was solved by the end of the season. This year, since they weren’t picked up for a full season to begin with, they did a shorter mystery arc that ended last night.
And what an ending! I am about to spoil like milk left out overnight, so avert your eyes if you have yet to see the most recent episode.
Right, here we go. I wanted to point out a few things that you might have overlooked. Did you catch why Moe the R.A. was involved, and how it tied to the seemingly-random B plot from an earlier episode? Students taking psychology at Hearst take part in a repeat of the Zimbardo experiment, also known as the Stanford prison experiment — and let’s just glide past how that would never, ever, ever be allowed at a college. Moe overhears Wallace talking about the experiments and says that it changed his life. And indeed, as shown in the picture on Moe’s wall, Moe was the prisoner to Mercer’s janitor. And during the episode, Mercer several times calls Moe “prisoner” to underscore the point.
Got that? Now think back to the episode prior to this one. In a bit of stunt-casting, Patty Hearst played the flaky rich trustee of Hearst College. I thought the Hearst/Hearst bit was the joke, but it wasn’t — it’s that Patty Hearst is the most famous example of Stockholm Syndrome. Trust this show to use extra-textual information about a guest star to reinforce the theme of the mystery’s solution.
One thing I missed until this morning: Tim the T.A. had a “current member” headshot sheet for the Pi Sigs up on his bulletin board of mystery and had circled several of the pictures. I belatedly realized that they were the Pi Sigs his girlfriend had slept with.
Finally, how awesome will it be when it turns out Dean O’Dell’s killer followed the directions given in Veronica’s paper on how to commit a perfect murder?
I now turn the discussion over to you. Talk amongst yourselves.
We’ve been without the Internet at home for nearly two days now. If you’ve tried to reach us via email, now you know why we haven’t answered. Good thing we didn’t sign up for VoiP!
Sorry we’ve been absent, Internet. It’s not that we don’t love you. It’s that you don’t love us.
I’ve started taking photos of people playing Guitar Hero. There’s something about seeing all the regular people I know rocking out!
