Time

(photo by me)

Time

Sometimes it's so fast

Kids growing up,

You think you're watching,

savoring, but

we blink,

and they're so

GROWN

Time

Sometimes so slow

Claustrophobicallystuckinthewindowseatwithnoroom

foryourkneesoryournotebookordrink

Unending time,

Unmeasurable, no clocks

Time

You stare at that clock

The hands don't move, or

They're moving backwards, as

You contemplate fate

What brought you here,

How long you'll stay

If you'll ever leave, or

If you and that clock

Will be having that same, stale

Staring contest

Through eternity

But sometimes

TIME

Just is, and you

Endure the next minute

the next minute, and even

the next minute

Until the minutes stack themselves

Tall enough that you have

A foothold, and can

Finally, escape

Return

Home

Home is where time

Loses it's meaning, and

You just ARE,

regardless

Of what's happening

It doesn't matter

Fast, slow, uncomfortable

Brief

Home, IS

Timeless comfort.

****

It's been a...trying month. Thought I'd share some of the aspects.

~Tina

©2014 All Rights Reserved

Annandag Jul: The Other Day of Christmas

Happy Friday to you all! We enjoyed THREE days of Christmas!  Not a french hen in sight, though. This was the first year we celebrated the Swedish tradition of Annandag Jul, “The Other Day of Christmas.” Except we celebrated it American style..yeah, try to keep up.  I'm trying to be brief...(I see those eyes rolling!)

Long time readers know that Swedes celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve. We do this with all the Colorado contingent of our family and it's a big group. My Swissie has a great house, perfectly designed to host a party this size, and she and Windex (her husband, please see nickname tab above for explanation and intro to him) do a marvelous job. It was a truly special time. Thanks again to both of you.

Being Swedish and having that big celebration with my family on the 24th works out perfectly, because then we can always spend Christmas Day with The Engineer's family, American style. We really do try to incorporate both cultures in our family of four's traditions that we are creating as we raise them.

However, this year, his sister didn't have her kids until yesterday, so we postponed. That meant that American Christmas would be on the 26th, Annandag Jul.  Swedes really take three days to celebrate the birth of the Christ Child, each day having different traditions.

What this also meant was that for the first time since OYT was three and I had the stomach flu, our family of four (which I kept referring to as our nuclear family – but people didn't like that term, something about weapons of mass destruction was the objection, and wanted to just call it “our family” so we did a bit of both, depending on to whom we were trying to explain ourselves.)

OYT, appreciator of all things Christmas especially the traditions, went all out helping me plan our day. The Engineer and The Transporter stuck around long enough to make sure we had snow crab for dinner, then left with, “Whatever. I want some time to do my own thing, too, though.”

Here's a list of what we tried for our first family Christmas:

Hot chocolate while opening presents

Peppermint tea with candy canes available at all times

French toast with bacon for breakfast

Lighting all the candles I decorated with

Free time

The Charlie Brown Christmas Special

Chess

Apples to Apples

Left-over Swedish Christmas food for lunch

The new Veggie Tales movie “Merry Larry and The True Light of Christmas” (narrated by Uncle Si of Duck Dynasty – he's HILARIOUS)

Snow Crab for dinner

Movie together all four of us in the evening

We had a great day, and the only things that didn't happen were Apples to Apples and the movie. By the time we finished crab legs and Uncle Si, it was 10:30 and all of us were droopy.

As to Annandag Jul, that was of course a great day as well. On both sides of the family, we just enjoy each others' company so much. This lot of cousins are a bit older, 23, 22, and 17. They've taught my boys a lot of useful skills over the years, like how to turn a golf club into a LARP (live action role play) weapon, how to play card games like the ones the Big Bang gang plays, and of course, video game strategy. They have similar interests, which makes it all just flow.

While some of us watched Man of Steel (I may have to write my first movie review so strong is my opinion) others did a puzzle, which is another tradition. Day turned into night quickly, and as we drove home, I counted my blessings. Too many to count.

How was your holiday? Want to share a favorite part?

~Tina

P.S If you want to know more about the Veggie Movie. 52 second official trailer.

Go Away Black Friday and Leave Thanksgiving ALONE!

Can we talk about Thanksgiving and Black Friday and the fact that THE ONE NON-COMMERCIAL, NON-RUINED BY SOCIETY holiday we had left has now been high-jacked by the retail community and is no longer about friends, family, pausing to be grateful, and just enjoying each others company (and of course FOOTBALL) but just a day to quickly shovel in some sustenance before heading out to the stores to be trampled and perhaps killed for the latest and greatest in electronics?

Phew. I need to calm down. That first paragraph was one sentence, but I feel extremely strongly about this. Extremely is probably not strong enough of a word to describe how this pisses me off. I'm incensed. Furious. Disappointed in society. ANGRY. Sad. Melancholy for the “good old days”.

I'm in the mood to boycott any and all stores until spring. (Well, except my boys are growing like weeds and both need new wardrobes. If they stand still long enough, which they don't, they certainly SIT still long enough, but you can't really see someone growing when their quickly expanding feet are tucked under their legs or under a desk, and they're playing video games...but as I was saying before I interrupted myself – you can see them growing before your very eyes, much like aquaponic lettuce, but wow, I need to calm down because:

1. This is starting to be a jumbled mess, and
2. I was talking about Thanksgiving, not my boys...

Thanksgiving is my favorite day of the year. We have a wonderful tradition of celebrating with a cousin on my mother-in-law's side and his entire family. I've know The Engineer's family for 29 Thanksgivings, and it's always been with those cousins. This makes for a table for around 20-25 depending on who has a date, or who is bringing a parent(s) from the other side of the family. Both hostesses love to set an ELABORATE table. I mean, Martha Stewart would take notes. Everyone brings a dish so the labor is divided, and you can always see the TV from the kitchen so you can football it all up and do dishes.

But now, it's all changing. Thanksgiving isn't about family and tradition and gratitude anymore. The ads for Black Friday (did you even know what that meant 7-8 years ago?) started weeks ago. There are pre-Black Friday specials. My mailbox, my inbox, my newspaper are STUFFED with ads.

Many of my friends work in retail and have to be at work as early as 2 pm to get ready for the pre-Black Friday early openings of so many major stores. 2 pm is about when we sit down for our meal. It's not right.

What are we doing people? We're slowly being convinced that being thankful, grateful, and focused on family isn't really that big of a deal. No, the big deal is to be had at the store. Get shopping! Buy something! No one has enough!

Thanks for listening this far. I'm thankful for you wonderful friends and the community we've built where we can discuss whatever we want. What do you think about this whole mess?

~Tina

P.S Briane Pagel (you must read and follow him, truly) also wrote a piece about how Thanksgiving is disappearing, but for a different reason. (And his debunking of the Pilgrim story in quite a deliciously funny read). Go. Please.

Stolen Chances

How many chances should he get?

I think he's already used them up

Whether it's knives and shelves

or heating systems and pills

Call the cops, take him away

Repeat

Bail out, help out

Give him another chance

Give him money to start

Over

and over and over again

Forgive and forget

Open your heart

Have it stomped on

An endless cycle

meth and madness

self-medicate the

voices,

Calling

Can't stand jail

No privacy

Easy answer -

don't steal

Don't steal from us,

our patience is gone,

our money is gone,

your chances are gone

But you don't see,

That you're the one

Who took it all.

***

We have a close family member who has spent most of his life homeless, by his choice, and in and out of jail, always “someone else's fault”. I'm done enabling, but the rest of the family is not, and my voice isn't loud enough on Mother's Day to be heard among all the love and “second” chances. This is an example of the venting part of my tagline...

Introducing New Tab: Nickname Translator

I added a tab up there. It's my nickname translator. Do me a favor and make sure the tab works, and then please leave me a comment about whether my descriptions should be shorter, longer, etc. In other words, EVALUATE. You can leave the comment here, or on that page. I plan to keep adding to it like I do my “about me” tab, but if I'm already doing it wrong, I want to know. Seriously. Hit me. Thanks.

To Save, or Not to Save

Have you seen the show “Clean Sweep” or “Hoarders”? I'm not quite that bad, but I'm a clutter-bug, a girl with many piles in many places. There's never enough time to finish whatever project I'm working on, but then I need the table for something (say, serving dinner) so I sweep the paper storm into a pile and put it somewhere. This event then repeats itself over and over. Pretty soon all the chairs in the “pretty room” (that's what my boys called it when they were young and it stuck, it's just a living room, but no toys allowed, those go to the family room, or their own room) are stacked with precariously perched piles of paper. Deciding what to save, to what to file, what to shred and what to just recycle seems like a daunting task when you survey the scenery.

The problem isn't so much lack of motivation (because clutter drives me nuts and makes me feel even more claustrophobic) or time (I'm no longer homeschooling {yippee yippee joy joy dance}) it's the deciding. Am I ever going to look at this program again (like the one I got from attending The Nutcracker where my friends daughter was dancing)? No, I'm not. But suppose her mother is making a scrapbook for her when she becomes a prima ballerina one day. She might need it if she lost hers. So give it to her, you say. No! She has one! She doesn't need mine now, but boy would I be the hero if she needed one later and I still had mine!

I'm thinking you're catching on to my dilemma here. Why save that letter from Grandma? It's just taking up space. You know she loves you, and you love her. Now fast forward to her funeral, and you're making those posters of the deceased's life, and there is a letter she wrote to her granddaughter. In fact, it's the last letter she ever wrote because very shortly after that, Alzheimers stole her brain. It's now a precious keepsake, and you're so happy to have it.

What should I save of mine? I have ticket stubs: first time I saw Bruce Springsteen in concert, front row at the downtown historic movie theater where my uncle took us to the premiere of “The Empire Strikes Back.” I know I don't need them. I have the memories. Well, for know. With my medical issues, I don't know how long until someone steals MY brain.

Then I fast -forward to some future relative of mine, sorting through all my piles, and finding those ticket stubs and thinking, “Wow, she was around for THAT!” I know it's not a moon landing or anything of that scope, but it was an occasion that was important to me.

For my last point, I do have a counter-example. I write poetry. Have since I was in about 5^th grade. I have journal after journal with poems and rants and raves and excited to just be alive entries when love was in full bloom. Those I'd rather others not see. As a human person, I'm not perfect, and some of the events described in detail aren’t for consumption by family members. Skeletons in the closet, described in the journal.

Ok, just one more example. When my mother was in college, a friend dragged her to hear some poet read his poems in one of the lecture halls on campus. I really wish she'd saved the program. It was in the early 60s, and the poet was Robert Frost.

How do you handle this issue? What do you save? What never makes it home? How do you store the treasures? I'd love to hear what you do.