Christmas Traditions

I felt old at Christmas this year.  I feel old a lot of times lately, but I felt like Christmas was a little bit of a slap in the face.  I'm kind of a grown-up.  That doesn't stop being weird.

What made this evident this year was the gradual loss of many of our family traditions.  As we all grow up and create our own lives and our own families so far removed from the families of our home, we lose a lot of what we once did and had.  I think I see this especially because I'm the youngest.  There's no holding on to these things for anyone younger than me.  They're just gone.

In most instances, I don't mind.  One example is our Christmas tree.  My brother, mom and I have had a tradition of putting up our tree with all of our childhood ornaments on it every year.  It is truly a hideous tree.  There are homemade ornaments and ornaments that came in cereal boxes that somehow took on sentimental meanings.  There are ornaments marking random events in our lives such as a musical I was in at the age of 8 and my brother's first Christmas.  (He was born in November so he has a million baby's first Christmas ornaments while I have none, having been born in February.  This is a fact that bred pretty extreme jealousy in me in my younger years.)

We always made an evening of decorating the tree.  We would play Christmas music and put an excessive amount of lights on the tree and it was fun.  We even did it last year when I was only home for a little over a week. 

This year it just didn't happen.  My mom had put up a pretty tree instead and was willing to take it down to let us put up ours, but I didn't even really want to.  It made me a little sad, like I was leaving a little piece of me behind.

It's a weird place to be in life.  I feel like I'm in between lives.  My childhood life: the constancy of it, family and friends and the place I grew up in.  And eventually my adult life: career and family, friends and a home.  I don't really have either of those right now.  At least not in any constant way.  My old traditions are fading and, unlike my older siblings, I don't have new traditions to replace them yet.  It doesn't actually bother me, it's just a weird place to be.  

I spent years and years hating the feeling of inexperience and childhood.  I wanted to be grown up, I wanted to be respected.  I wanted to know it all.  I'm happy to grow up.  I'm happy to have the sense of self that age brings, to feel my life take on direction, to leave behind the mood swings and insecurity of adolescence, to trust in my place in this world and in the lives of the people around me.  I realize I still have a lot to learn and a lot of growing to do, but I'm enjoying figuring it all out.

Despite all of this, there is the littlest piece of me that is scared to leave behind the irresponsibility of youth.  I have complete responsibility over my life, a fact that I mostly love.  My parents could probably tell you how much I have fought to control every piece of my life for a long time now.  There was never really telling me to do anything I didn't want to or stopping me from doing something that I wanted to do, not that they sought to do that too much.  Even so, it's a little scary.  More exciting, but a little scary.  

I think it's just the transition that has me scared.  Something about this one feels a little more serious.  It feels a little more like settling.  It's that fact that's so scary.  Nothing scares me more than the fear that I'll wake up in 20 years and be dissatisfied with my life, feel like I haven't done all the things I wanted to do.  I want to travel the world, see and do everything that I possibly can, but I also want roots, deep friendships, a real and settled life.  It's a balance I haven't remotely figured out how to strike yet.  But it's what I desire.

So I guess I'm not as grown up as I think, not quite as settled as I envision myself.  But, man, I want it all.  Is that too much to ask?  I hope not.  

On to KC, ready to see what life brings...

I Forgot How Lazy I am

There is something about being home that makes me want to do nothing but be incredibly lazy.  I mean, it is seriously impressive how little I can do.  After the few days of holiday festivities, I have done absolutely nothing but eat impressive amounts of food, watch ridiculous quantities of TV and sleep (and sleep and sleep).  Oh, I've also read a couple of books, but really not as many as you would expect.  Because even reading is a little too taxing for me these days.

My brother and sister are enablers.  They have been in on it every step of the way with me.  Yesterday was the worst day.  Not only was there a Project Runway marathon on (which I watched literally all of, from 11:00 AM to 11:00 PM), but there was also a Jon & Kate Plus 8 marathon AND a Deadliest Catch marathon.  All of this on top of the Mizzou game.  I contemplated using the picture in picture, even though I think that's the dumbest TV feature ever.  

I ended up mainly watching Project Runway because it was the season I had missed while at Wildhorse.  But I had to flip during the football game.  And when both of those were over, I switched to Jon & Kate Plus 8, which was on until 2:00 AM.  Aaaahhh.  That is not good.  

I have left the house to go to a couple of Mizzou basketball games.  My dad has a suite for his business which is fun but makes me feel old and miss college.  But at least I had to wander out of doors to get there.  

Life in MO....  Love it and hate it, all at the same time.

Victory is Mine

Well, I did it.  I have everything I own in transit from New York to Missouri and I only had to pay the regular $15 charge to get it there.  (I won't even start on the new $15 for one bag charge.  I'm getting closer and closer to moving off the grid and only posting about ways that I'm scheming to screw the man.  And about my solar and wind-powered energy sources because how else am I going to post off the grid?)

Back to my victory.

First, there was basically a cab waiting outside my door for me, even though it was raining.  This was a good sign.  I made it to LaGuardia and went to the ticket counter with my awesomely over-stuffed bags.  I was initially 5 pounds over.  No problem, I had a plan.

I began stuffing things into my carry-ons and the nice lady ended up giving me 1/2 pound worth of leeway.  I made my way to my plane, hopped on and am now in the Pittsburgh airport with all of my stuff, basking in the glory that is free airport wi-fi.

You're probably wondering how I did.  And I have an answer.  I put everything that was remotely heavy (i.e. all of my books) in my carry-ons, which now look like this:

And consequently weight more than my checked bag.  (Take that USAirways!)

Also, this apparently counts as one carry-on (or "personal item" if you will):

This bodes well for my Christmas holiday.  I will be watching too much TV and annoying my brother very soon.  MO, here I come!

I Have TOO MUCH STUFF!

I started packing and I am again blown away at my ability to accumulate crap.  I was here for 2 and a half months and I gained a significant amount of stuff.  Stuff that I now have to cram into a suitcase and get back to Missouri.  But luckily, I have a blog to allow me to procrastinate from trying to figure it out!

Remember when it was finals that I procrastinated from?  This is so much better!  The biggest advantage of being out of college: no ever-present test/project/presentation/vast amount of reading looming over your head.  It is blissful.

Speaking of vast amount of reading, this is the pile of books I have after 2 months in NYC:

And this is the single (already full) suitcase that I'm trying to stuff them all into along with that pile of clothes next to it, and some Christmas presents, and some (=a whole lot of) other random crap I don't have room for:

Who wants to take bets on whether or not I can talk my way out of paying the $115 it costs to have an overweight suitcase?  Remember, I'm not that smooth.  But people do pity me occasionally, so I have that going in my favor.  

  

Back to the grind.  But home tomorrow!  So pumped!

P.S.  I hope this is not the only time in my life that I have to make everything I have to live off of fit in a single suitcase.  It's actually ridiculously fun.  I kind of love my life!

Big Apple Santas

New York would be the most soul-crushing place to be a child around Christmas. You might think I'm crazy for saying this because of the EXTREME amount of Christmas cheer the city of New York displays. You would be right about that. But I'm going to relate a story that proves my point.

Last night, I headed out to Brooklyn to hang out with my friend Lacey. To get there, I have to walk 2 blocks south from my apartment, get on the A train and then walk another 2 blocks to her apartment in Brooklyn.

During this short time out in the world, I saw 4, yes 4, Santa Clauses. The first one was walking down the street with his beard hanging around his chin, cursing at someone on his cell phone. The next 2 were on the subway platform. One was showing a whole lot of butt crack and the other was attempting to hit on 2 women standing near him. The 4th was wrapped in twinkling lights and passed out on another subway platform I passed while inside the A train.

This was equal parts hilarious and sad. There was a little girl sitting near me and I wanted to cover her eyes. But in all honesty, she didn't really seem to care. New York kids are more cool than me.

Oh, well. Back to Missouri in a few days where you never see drunken, homeless Santas. Bittersweet.

The Books of Kate, Chapter 1

First of all- Paige, your guess was absolutely right. I love the down time!

On to the blog...

This is the inaugural (and possibly only, depending on how fun this is) book review that I will post on my blog. As previously stated, I've been reading a ridiculous amount because I nanny for a 4-month old and am living in a strange city. I have a lot of time to obsessively read books.

I'm going to start with the book I finished most recently. It is The Reader by Bernard Schlink. I am a product of modern culture and my iGoogle news feed normally shows me more hollywood news then anything in the literature category, so I heard of the movie version of this story before I had heard of the book.

I began hearing the hype for this movie and have read several good reviews. So I knew I had to read the novel. I always want to read the books and see the movies both. However, the order in which I do these things is very important to the story. If I see the movie first, I get a lot less enjoyment out of the book. It's hard for me to read books when I have a clear picture of the story already in my mind.

If I read the books first, I can still enjoy the movies. I love to see if the moviemakers had the same vision of the story I did or how it differs.

All this to say, when I started seeing previews for the movie and saw that Kate Winslet (love her!) was starring in it, I knew I should pick up the book. So I headed to my neighborhood B&N and picked it up.

Unfortunately, the paperback version with Kate Winslet on the front of it was way cheaper than the non-movie pimping version of the book, so I had to buy it. I always try to buy the one that makes me look like I was cool and read the book before Hollywood realized it was good enough to make into a movie. Impossible in this case.

This was an interesting book for me. It's set in post-Holocaust Germany. It's divided into 2 parts. The entire first part wasn't really doing it for me. His writing was fairly compelling, but I didn't understand the characters at all. I wasn't really loving it.

Then I got to the second part of the book and I was in love. There are two main characters. We see the story through the eyes of Michael Berg, who is a pubescent boy in the first part of the book. He falls in love (and lust) with an older woman named Hanna. Their affair settles into a routine which includes after-school shower, sex and Michael reading aloud to Hanna. He did this to appease her, but didn't understand why she enjoyed hearing the stories he was reading in school and his other favorites.

I didn't understand Hanna in the first part of the book. She was cold and often mean, although she also seemed to actually care about Michael. She seemed typical, slightly weathered and lacking depth.

In the second part of the book, Michael is a law student covering the trial of several female SS guards that let hundreds of women under their supervision die in a fire. One of the defendants is Hanna. He never speaks to her, but he comes to the trial every day. Hanna seems resigned, she takes responsibility for the things she did and disputes accusations that are false. She doesn't seem to have a thought of strategy.

Michael doesn't understand Hanna. Her answers begin to not make sense. The others make her the scapegoat, marking her as the ringleader. She won't dispute it and Michael finally puts all the pieces together to realize why. He discovers that Hanna is illiterate and the pieces of her life begin to fall into place in his head.

This is where the book struck me. Hanna is an unsympathetic character, someone you don't really care about because you don't really understand her. The unveiling of this one secret changes all of that. Her whole life is dictated by trying to hide her one secret. Bernie (that's what I call him) puts it so powerfully when he describes Hanna at her trial:

"She was not pursuing her own interests, but fighting for her own truth, her own justice... It was a pitiful truth and pitiful justice, but it was hers, and the struggle for it was her struggle.

She must have been completely exhausted. Her struggle was not limited to the trial. She was struggling, as she always had struggled, not to show what she could do but to hide what she couldn't do. A life made up of advances that were actually frantic retreats and victories that were concealed defeats."

Hanna was convicted based on her own admissions and sent to prison where she died.

I understand Hanna.

How often are our frantic retreats disguised as advances? How often do we struggle to create our own truth, our own justice, no matter how pitiful? The lies that we tell the world truly cripple us.

There were some other interesting passages exploring the collective responsibility of the people of Germany for the Holocaust, how the sins of the parents effect the children. Michael was too young and too rich to be directly effected by the Holocaust, but it was part of his consciousness none the less.

In summary, stick with it. It's worth it. Beautiful characters, quick read. I'm excited to see the movie.

Sometimes Facebook is Mean

I wish facebook would be a little more judicious with what it puts on my newsfeed. Sometimes it just seems vindictive. There are some things I just don't need to be alerted to. What did I ever do to you, Facebook?

Please excuse me. I have some thumbs-down icons to click on.

Guess!

I hate it when people make me guess things.  When I'm in a conversation with someone and they say anything along the lines of, "...and you'll never guess what he got me for my birthday.  No, seriously, guess!  It was the most heinous present ever!  You'll never get it!  Guess!", I get very annoyed.  Why would I want to engage in a game I have no chance of winning?  Also, I hate to break it to you, but if I'm going to take the time to think of what would've truly been the most heinous gift ever, it's going to ruin your story.  Because when you reveal it was actually a pair of crocs after I guessed artful nude picture of his parents, it's going to steal your thunder.  

That being said, I think we should play a guessing game!  All about me!

I'm going to write about what goes on during my days and I'm going to let you guess what result this has on my life.   After reading, attempt to finish this sentence:  Because of the circumstances of Kate's life, she...  

I wake up in the mornings and the apartment is quiet.  I shower, eat my yogurt with granola (and blueberries on special days) and generally try to be quiet so as not to disturb everyone else sleeping.  

When the baby wakes up, Kelley feeds her and I go to get us coffee.  I come back and play with Isabelle for a while and then she goes to sleep.  I do the dishes and on some days, a load of laundry.  Other days there are as many as 4 shirts for me to iron.

I check my email, see that there's one from my mom and 4 junk mails.  I check google reader.  I see that up to 2 of the blogs I subscribe to have been updated.  I check facebook.  People I don't really know have been tagged in some pictures.  I peruse msn articles, reread last Sunday's PostSecrets and guiltily browse pink is the new blog.  I realize that not that much has happened in the 8 hours I was asleep.

Isabelle wakes up.  She eats, plays and is ready to nap again.  There is normally a walk in there somewhere.  I do another round of internetting.  Still nothing happening.

Main point:  Isabelle's asleep over half of the day.  And I have to find ways to quietly keep busy.

After I get done working at 5:00, we eat dinner.  Sometimes the TV is on, often it isn't.  I spend a good couple of hours in my room alone every night.  The internet is spotty everywhere in the apartment, but rarely works in my room.  Sometimes I go to Starbucks or wander through stores and stuff in my neighborhood.  Sometimes I meet my few friends here for dinner, movie, general hanging out.  (That last point doesn't really help with the guessing game, but I added it so I didn't look pathetic... I do have friends.  And I go to a lot of museums and stuff by myself on the weekends.  It's fun, I swear.)

In summary, my life consists of a lot of quiet and a lot of down time.

What do you think that means for my life?  Can you finish the sentence?  If you know me at all, you should get this...

Alright, the answer is...

Because of the circumstances of my life, I...

read.  A ridiculous amount.  (If you guessed overindulge in celebrity gossip or briefly considered and subsequently rejected the idea of internet chat rooms, you would also be right.)

(Did you win the game?)

I've read 10 books in the last 8 weeks.  And that's not counting the fact that I've read more than one of them twice in that time period.  (I won't say which ones I've read twice because that's embarrassing.)  I also have read every newsweek I've gotten cover to cover, even the boring articles.  

I would say I read more than the average person anyway, but this is excessive even for me.  As a way to stave off the boredom, I'm going to review the books I've read for you so that you can pretend like you've read them if you're too busy to read yourself.  (Don't get too excited though, I don't exactly have high-brow taste in literature.)

I briefly considered starting a new blog devoted completely to this task, but then I realized that no one would take the effort to click on the link, and even if they did, it would be a one-time thing.  So, I'll put them here.  Enjoy.

 

P.S.  I've recently discovered my love for linking.  I appreciate when people take the extra time to show me exactly where I can find more on whatever they're talking about.  It's just considerate.  Also, it makes your blog look cooler.  What other reason do you need? 

I Actually Have a Subscription to Newsweek

OK, so I'm not a political blogger.  Nobody wants to read that.  The only thing I want to read on blogs is funny/embarrassing personal stories, inane griping about non-important annoyances, or stories about travels or other cool things in the blogger's life that make me jealous.  Most of the time, I don't really care about people's overly arrogant, I-know-what's-up musings on the state of world.  I believe that any opinion given without some degree of humility is faulty, no matter how much I agree with what's being said.

That's pretty much why I don't blog about my personal political convictions.  I haven't really found the way to do that with the appropriate amount of humility.  That being said, I want people to be engaged, if only the maybe 6 people that read my blog.  So, I'm just going to post this newsweek article, strongly encourage you to read it and tell you that I think it makes a lot of sense.

I think we're facing something in our nation right now that could be a huge turning point.  I think we're going to look back on this in 50 years and either be ashamed at the stance we took or proudly tell our children how we fought for personal freedoms.  Maybe I'm wrong, but I hope I'm not.  I implore you to be engaged, be thoughtful, tap into compassion and understanding, and then take a stance that represents all of that, whatever it may be.

Love you all!

 

Life Plans

I just spent 2 days at my step-grandparents' house in Illinois and it was the most relaxing couple of days I've had in a long time.  I spent the entire 2 days reading, chatting, watching the squirrels, eating, sleeping, and often simply sitting in silence.

I'm spending a lot of time in the last couple of months trying to decide what kind of goals I want to meet in the next couple of years/rest of my life.  You know, developing a life plan and such.  I don't really know much yet, but I do know that one of my goals is to create a home that is relaxing and hospitable.  

I want complete strangers to come to my home and instinctually feel like they are at home and can relax.  I know this is possible not only from my grandparents but also from a woman named Marianne Walker.  Marianne lives in Sisters, OR which is a couple of hours from Wildhorse.  She has opened her house to the staff.  I went there several times and had pretty much the same experience as I did at my grandparents' every time.

After closely observing, I have discovered some keys to creating this kind of environment:

1) Fully stocked fridge/pantry that is offered sincerely and often.

2) Comfy beds

3) A willingness to chat/play games, but the ability to go about your daily life and let your guest sit around and do nothing

4) Quiet...  Soft music or background news channels/sitcom reruns are fine, but not too loud and not all day.

5)  A porch, yard, patio, neighborhood sidewalks, etc.

6)  Many books/movies or easy access to a Blockbuster and a B&N

7)  Baked goods and candy bowls.

That's all it takes people.  And really, you don't even need all of them.  You can have any combo of the above and still have the same effect.

See me when I own a home and we'll see if I've met this goal.

One week until I'm back in Missouri!  Come see me!

In the Cookies of Life, Friends are the Chocolate Chips

I have realized that the only thing that really makes life entertaining is friends.  I live in the most exciting city in the world and I really don't do that much because I don't know anybody.

I actually really love being on my own.  I could sit in my house by myself for days and be happy.  I love going to museums and shopping by myself.  But all of that is so... peaceful.  Everything truly fun or exciting or entertaining that ever happens to me happens in the presence of other people.  

All this to say, I'm excited to come home and to spend some serious time just hanging out.  There's really nothing better.

Oh, and the title of this post comes from a mug that was in our cupboard at Wildhorse.  I used it often because it cracked me up... We had the most random dishes/utensils in our kitchen (including an ice tea maker and a giant griddle but no whisk... only the essentials).

Miss you all.  See you soon!

I Heart New York

I had the ultimate in New York experiences today.  That's right, the event to beat all events that firmly says, "You are in New York.  And it is fabulous."

You've heard me right... I passed Sarah Jessica Parker on 5th Ave. and she smiled at me.

Coupled with the fact that I literally ran into Chris Noth (Mr. Big) on Broadway just a couple of weeks ago, I feel that my New York experience is now complete.

I have to say though, it has made me realize how much I'm going to miss the city.  I was never particularly drawn to New York.  I always wondered why people who lived there loved it so much.  But now I understand.  It gets into your skin.  The crowd, but the ability to be alone within it.  The hundreds of different languages, cultures, colors that I walk past every day.  The crowded subway, the noise.  I seriously love it all.

And it's capped off by a walk down 5th Ave. on a beautiful day and SJP.  Perfect.