The One Where I Say "Tschüss" to 2008

2008 had some serious highs and some incredible lows. If it wasn't for the fact I had a perfect wedding and honeymoon I'd say the whole year was for the birds. And not the pretty ones people like to take pictures of, but the dirty seagulls or annoying crows. The nasty birds.

In true sucky fashion, my dad called this morning and said my 91 year old grandmother was admitted to the hospital today. Apparently she has Atrial Fibrillation and her sweet 91 year old heart goes from beating 80 times a minute to 141 times a minute (holy nasty crow). There is a risk of blood clots, heart attack and stroke. I guess I can be thankful she is not in ICU and the doctors are saying she is responding to treatment well. It's just never great for a 91 year old to be in the hospital. Especially when that person is my grandmother who lives 10 hours away. *le sigh*

(picture from Christmas Day 2007)

I spent a large part of the day in bed sulking and feeling bad for myself. There was a snowstorm outside, and I had no desire to get out of bed. Luckily I got lots of great cuddles from my pup and my SH and could eventually drag myself up to face the day (at like 2 pm, for reals).

We ordered some Chinese, watched a movie, played Guitar Hero on the Wii (I rock), played SceneIt Squibble and had a really decent afternoon. Then I remembered I had a goal to take at least one picture a month together with SH. Seriously I thought I'd have a ton of shots from Christmas but he's a picture-cranky-pants a lot of the time. Today, however, he indulged me. He suggested we bundle up and get a picture out in the snow. We were going to do snow angels, but once we actually got outside it was way too cold. How cute is he in his dad's old Air Force Jacket?

Now we're just watching TV (seriously why does Dick Clark continue to do these New Years specials? I mean I know he's done them forever, but it's so sad to watch him try and talk). I feel slightly less old because this year I have actually heard of the Jonas Brothers (although I still don't know their music, and don't see how girls find them attractive. They are no NKOTB!) and I'm going to make it to 12:00 without falling asleep (thanks to me staying in bed most of the day!)

Happy New Years everyone - may 2009 be everything you wish it to be and more.

The One About My Favorite Christmas Memory

My favorite Tasha over at Sohobutterfly is having another one of those great bloggy contests.


The rules are simple - blog about your favorite Christmas memory and leave a link to your blog post in her comments section. It should be easy - and fun. But it's not. Well it's not for me. At least not right now. I've been dragging my feet on trying to write this post.

For some reason, I'm just not in the Christmas spirit this year. I know I have a lot to be thankful for, and I love my family. I insanely enjoy buying presents for people (and yup, I love receiving them as well!) and having a few days off from work this year is greatly appreciated. It's my first Christmas as a wife and I have a great new family to celebrate with. But for some reason I have zero interest in putting up any Christmas decorations (never mind a tree, which I usually LOVE. I LOVE Christmas tree ornaments), don't want to hear Christmas music and having to think about my favorite Christmas memory is painful.

The first thing that comes to mind when someone says "Christmas memory" is how much I hate Christmas. Don't take that the wrong way, I guess I don't hate the holiday. I do hate the commercialism (as much as I enjoy the buying and receiving of said commercial gifts) - but what is really hard for me, thinking back on Christmas memories is having to divide the time between my mom and dad.

I know more often than not "kids" from my generation have parents who are not together. It's not uncommon to have to split time between family houses, but what I think is uncommon is how it has been done in my family. And before you say "but you're so lucky to have 2 Christmases!" keep reading and then decide if you still think I'm "lucky."

My parents got divorced when I was in 5th grade (how old are 5th graders?) - my mom moved out just a few days shy of my birthday (which is in April) so my first "divided" Christmas was when I was in the 6th grade (although let's not rehash the memory of my mom leaving our house on Christmas day when I was in 5th grade to go "visit friends" - meaning the man she had been seeing behind my father's back - but please don't judge my mom, she's great. It's just these are my memories of Christmas...).

Here is how a "typical" Christmas was for me and my brother growing up:

• Christmas eve day with dad
• Christmas eve dinner/night with mom
• Back to dad's to sleep
• Christmas morning with dad
• Christmas afternoon with mom
• Christmas dinner/night with dad

Rinse and repeat the following year - only alternate "mom" and "dad" so neither parent got to "monopolize" Christmas morning with their kids. Ugh. Is now the appropriate time to mention I am now 31 years old and my parents STILL have this expectation of this is how Christmas will function in my family?

Instead of hearing "We're so happy you'll be home for Christmas" or "We really appreciate you making the effort to drive and see us every year for the holidays" I'm more likely to hear "But you had Christmas dinner with your mom last year, it's my turn! I already planned the meal!" or "But you spent 5 hours with dad yesterday and only 3 with me and it's not fair that I don't get to spend as much time with you!"

Just thinking about the stress tenses up my already tense muscles and makes me want to curl into a ball and cry. Both parents INSIST they don't want to add extra stress to our lives, but both parents play the "holiday blame game" and don't seem to understand that it's the only time off my brother and I have as well. And instead of being nice and relaxing for us, we're traveling and then spending time between the dueling parents. Not. relaxing. at. all.

So this year my mom springs on us that she's going to be in Mexico for Christmas. What the? And man - I could go on and on for hours and pages about the complexity this brings into the family - but maybe I'll save some of it for another post. Here are some bullets (which may not make sense to you, but I'll want to refer to them if I decide to write a follow-up post)

• I decided not to go home for Thanksgiving. SH and I decided we were going to spend it with his family (since we usually do holidays with mine and we wanted to try and be "fair")
• We ended up going home the weekend after Christmas to celebrate "Thanksmas" with my mom (our combination of Thanksgiving and Christmas since my brother was home and it would be an opportunity to all get together)
• Yes! One Christmas down, things will be less complex.....
• The last few years SH and I have driven 10 hours out, and 10 hours back to pick up my elderly grandmother to bring her home for Christmas. After the holidays my dad would bring her home. But, due to my dad's surgery over the summer he can't make the long trip - and Eric and I cannot do both ways, we just can't
• Ohhhh! Why doesn't the whole family drive out to my Grandmom's apartment and spend Christmas out there?
  
• Nope, brother doesn't want to
• Elderly grandmother (91 years old to be exact) will spend her first Christmas alone, ever. Not only is it Christmas for her, but it would also be her wedding anniversary with my Grandad, if he were still alive (they were married on Christmas day as it was the only day he could get off from work.) Not only that, but Grandad's birthday is right after Christmas. She'll be having to spend all of these milestone days alone. For the first time. Ever.

So in one way, it seems like things will be kind of nice because we won't be running back and forth between mom and dad since mom won't be home. But in another way I'm completely and utterly devastated my grandmother will be alone. I have even considered going out there on my own to spend the day with her. It's just not going to work.

Anyway yeah, so there's that. Then we're doing Christmas with SH's family this coming weekend. His parents told us they wanted a "really scaled back" Christmas because of the economy...which is fine...until we find out that they paid $1,000 to have his sister and her family fly out here from Colorado. Whatever. And until I got a somewhat nasty email from his cousin yesterday saying everyone had already decided what they were bringing to the family Christmas party this weekend and I hadn't contributed yet so what was I going to bring. WTF? Nobody told me what was going on. I'm more than happy to bring something, but kindly let me know before sending an email like that. K, thanks?

So yeah, I'm not in the Christmas spirit. But I do have some nice memories. I really do. Christmas is not all evil family issues. Take for example the following:

• My brother and I sitting at the top of the stairs at 5am swearing to each other we heard Santa on the roof, yelling downstairs to our parents every 10 minutes asking "if it's time yet" to go down and open our gifts
• Getting my pink huffy bike
• Getting my first Cabbage Patch Kid, Monty Larry. Sure he had red hair (I wanted a girl with brown hair) but I loved him like no other

Plus, we had a really nice tradition with my dad. He has a nativity set that my grandmother made years and years ago. Each one of us (me, my dad and my brother) would take one of the wisemen and bring him somewhere far far away in the house. Every night we would each move our own wiseman a little bit closer to the nativity set, so that they all "arrived" together on Christmas Eve.

The other favorite Christmas memories I have involve volunteering. When I was in high school I was in my church's youth group and every year we had a Christmas party for homeless kids. I actually wrote my college essay on one such party (man, I wish I had a copy of that now). We would raise money, ask for donations from stores and go shopping for toys and clothes for these under-privileged children. They would come to our church for a nice warm meal and we'd have a rent-a-santa there to hand out gifts to the kids. It was my favorite day of the year.

After I graduated college and was in the work force on my own, I contacted a local shelter and asked them to have their families write Christmas "wish lists." When I got the lists I posted items on stars on a big window outside of my office. Each star would say something like "Warm Sweatshirt, Size M, Woman Age 32" or "Little girl baby doll, Girl Age 7" and people in the office would pick stars, get the gifts and return the gifts wrapped to me. When all of the gifts were bought I dropped them off at the shelter and imagined the joy the families had on Christmas morning when they were able to unwrap their presents.

Every year I participate in "toys for tots" or similar gift drives and donate a little bit of money to a local organization. I hope to be able to adopt another family again in the future and continue to spread Christmas joy.

The One About Blog Contests

Woah - I have very recently discovered a whole new world in the blogesphere. It's the one where Über generous people just give stuff away through their blogs (I mean one blogger is giving away stuff for her birthday! Cool, huh?) How I never knew about these contests is kind of beyond me. I guess it may be because they don't happen as much on the sports blogs (although come to think of it, I DID win a copy of Dirty Water!) - which is where I have spent much of my time.

Anyway, I'm way excited about these contests and I've even been plotting ways to have my own contest in the near future (I need to get some more readers first. How lame would it be if I had three entries - one of them being my husband disguised as a woman because I made him enter so I'd look like I had more friends? I thought so.)

So without further ado - click on the links below and don't join the contests because if you enter I have less chance to win.

6 chances to win! Deadline to enter is December 11th and is open to US and Canadian residents


14 chances to win! Deadline to enter is December 17th and is open internationally



Enter the Oh How Lovely Shops Big Holiday Giveaway!
15 chances to win! Deadline to enter is December 20th

The One About My Celebrity Look-Alike

Earlier in the week Ashley blogged about her husband having one of those classic "famous" faces - and posted a few pictures of celebrities she's been compared to. She asked others to post their celebrity look-alikes and Shannon posted some great ones. It got me thinking, and honestly I don't think I've consistently heard I look like anybody famous.

My mom has been compared to Sally Field or Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and although I look a lot like my mom nobody has ever told me I look like either one of them.

My cousin always tell me I look like the chick in the Terminator TV show, Summer Glau, which I fully appreciate but am not sure I agree. I've never seen her other than in images, so maybe there is something in the mannerisms? I can see from the side we both have higher foreheads and also a "smooshed" in face. That's not the right description, but I don't know how else to say it, I don't think I look like a pug, they have smooshed faces! The picture of me is a candid from the wedding - not one I'd normally show people, but hey I'm trying to make a point.


Then I was talking to an old friend from High School who kept telling me he has always thought I looked like Christina Ricci. I wasn't too happy about that at first, but then I looked and when I have my hair pulled off my face I can kind of see it. Again with the big forehead! (Don't mind my no makeup, fresh off the beach look b/c, well...I was wearing no makeup and still on the beach!)

So kids, that's the best I could do. The thing is, I'm ok with not really looking like anybody else. I want to look like "me." I take great pride in trying to be real and not imitate other people in my actions, so I guess it's only fitting that I am unique (or strange, haha) in all ways. Although, I would get a kick out of being mistaken for someone else, and being asked for an autograph. Oh what fun that would be.

Want to see some celebrity look-alikes? Check out totallylookslike.com.

The One Where I Am Officially New And Improved

YAY!!!

Look at my new blogger template. What do you think? Love it? Hate it? I want to know.

Personally, I think it rocks. It totally captures my personality (love of Boston Terriers, Baseball and Photography to name a few), all in subtle, yet obvious ways. I couldn't be happier.

I want to thank Ryan for all of his hard work. I was a pain in the arse client (you know, the smaller ones always are!) and he didn't complain once (to me!)

Finally I'm starting to feel like this blog is a "real" place for me to come and write. Hopefully I'll start to feel more comfortable in my new cyber-home., as I haven't totally been able to open up yet. This template is definitely going to help.