As I blogged last December, I am more of a Grinch than a holly jolly kind of person. But I do love Christmas lights! Whether they are on the Christmas tree in the house, on the outside of the house, along the walkway, on the fence - I love them!
My husband is never thrilled about the prospect of putting up the lights this year. Of course, it can be a royal pain - even more so with his back, neck & knee problems. But he usually does it because the kids and I love them so much. When he surprised my daughter and I by putting them up while we were out, my daughter nearly squealed with delight - not the thing you get to hear very often from a surly teenager! She proclaimed our decorations as "legit."
I am in charge of getting the lights on the tree and getting it decorated. And no one else is allowed to set up my village but me. My husband has named the village "Tiny Town." The village started with my mother-in-law. She gave me my first piece the first Christmas after my husband and I were married and would give me a new piece each year. When Mervyn's Department Stores closed, where she had been getting them, I had to find another outlet. Luckily, I have been able to secure pieces from Walmart and even Dollar General.
Our cats, especially Thomas, think that they belong in Tiny Town. Thomas has taken to swatting the skaters off the ice rink. This isn't the first invasion that Tiny Town has endured. A few years ago, my daughter placed small ceramic wolves and Pokemon characters in Tiny Town. The good townspeople have yet to complain. I have been known to give them a few speeches, too - after all, I feel that I am mayor-for-life of Tiny Town!
One of my favorite things to do in the holiday season is to ride around and look at Christmas lights. I draw the line at going places where you have to pay to go in to see the lights - it just feels wrong to me. When we lived in the New Orleans area, we would usually make the yearly pilgrimage to the home of the late Al Copeland, the founder of Popeye's. He had a huge, lavish, outrageous, gorgeous display in front of his house near Lake Ponchartrain. The neighbors hated the traffic and tried to have him shut down every year. But many people - me included - loved the over-the-top display.
This year, on the weekend before Christmas, my husband, our daughter and I went for a drive to look at lights in our area. Of course, my son would rather stay at home online than share this experience with us. I must say that we have become what you could call "light snobs." Some people look like they put less than minimal effort in their lights. We felt they should have saved that two minutes it took to put them up. And I like displays that aren't like everybody else's. The year that everybody had white icicle lights made a rather dull one. The inflatable snow globes have become rather passe'. I have gotten to really love nativity scenes - but I will never be good with Santa kneeling by the baby Jesus - don't get me started.
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t seems like the lights are up for such a short time. I haven't mentioned it, but I feel there should be some sort of punishment for people who put up lights before Thanksgiving! As soon as Christmas day has passed, a lot of people get lax about even turning their lights on. Mine will still be on...probably until Epiphany. Then it's king cake season!
Happy New Year! May 2013 be a fabulous one for us all!
I have addressed this topic once before...but it has reared its ugly head at our house once again, so here I go again.
Young love can be a beautiful thing. So many times, we have said how much nicer things were at home when my son had a girlfriend - because he was nicer! And that is good and fine until that relationship goes down the tubes for whatever reason.
This past summer - after being without a girlfriend for quite a while and professing to not want one, my son decided to make a friend into a girlfriend. It seemed okay at first. She helped him realize his passion for physics. They had a lot in common. Since neither one drove and neither had a job, they mainly stayed at her house or ours and watched movies or played video games. But as soon as he went off to college about an hour away, things starting turning sour. She had nothing else in her life but Tyler. She lived for him coming home on the weekends when they spent every second together. That didn't set well with me - we felt like there should be some family-only time. I tried to tolerate things, biting my tongue except with my husband. But I turned Momma Bear when the girl started calling him late at night, guilt-tripping him for being at school, keeping him on the phone ALL night fighting (which made him oversleep and miss classes!), and generally mess with his head. Happily, he was ready to shut it down. Case closed on that one.
Now my 15-year-old daughter has gotten to see the good, the bad and the in-betweens of love. She has spent the last four months "dating" a boy a year older than her. I say "dating" because they didn't go hardly anywhere without an adult with them. I have to say that he is a very nice young man - smart, talented, polite and funny. And that's what Jess thought, too - and I think she still feels that way. But she came to that point in a relationship where she realized that she didn't feel the same way about him that he does about her. It just about killed her to break up with him. I was honored that she sought my advice and we talked a lot. Her biggest fear was in hurting him and destroying their friendship. As much as it hurt her to break it off with him, things seemed to be okay to some degree when he said he still wanted to be friends. She wasn't sure that he would feel that way. They will still have to see each other at school. That was last night. This morning - maybe after having time to think and mope - he wanted her to feel some of his pain...telling her that she had said she never loved him. As she said, "He was in her head!" I tried to assure her that he was just lashing out, but he would calm down.
We talked more about the situation. I told Jess that I have been on both sides of breakups - and both sides hurt. She has a VERY busy weekend ahead of her - and that is probably a good thing.
I told my husband that this made me sad. He asked, "Why? Did you think they'd get married?" No, of course not. I hate two nice kids who had a sweet first love both in pain. I hate seeing a good friendship on the rocks. I want to wave my magic wand and make them both feel good about themselves again. This is already a tough time in their lives with school, issues at home, extracurricular activities, and more. They aren't comfortable in their own skin yet - how can they possibly understand love and relationships. I have always talked to Jess about girls who will hang onto a boyfriend at any cost and that I never wanted her to be one of those girls. I told her that I only want her to be with a boy because she wants to be with THAT boy at THAT time...not to settle just to have a boyfriend. I guess she listened....
