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Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Christmas meme
1. Wrapping paper or gift bags?
Wrapping paper. This year, my son is wrapping almost everything! YES! Stuff's a little lumpy but he's getting better and better and I don't have to do it so yay!
2. Real tree or artificial?
Artificial. Sometimes I get a hankering for the smell of a real tree, but my practical side wins out and we go with the cheap -- we've had our tree since Christmas 1995, so it's down to, what, $2.50 a year now. I can't bring myself to go buy a tree with money that could be spent on more stuff for my kids to play with and eventually forget about and leave lying around in their rooms so as to help Mommy have that genuine nervous breakdown just thaaaat much sooner. (Also, the fire hazard. And the needles. And the sap. And the need to water it which face it I would always forget to do and we would die in a fiery inferno as a result. Rachel = Scrooge.)
3. When do you put up the tree?
The day after Thanksgiving without fail, except this year when we are not putting up our own tree, so we convinced my parents to let us put up their tree on the day after Thanksgiving, even though that was more than a month before Christmas.
4. When do you take the tree down?
I try for New Years' Day but sometimes I lapse.
5. Do you like eggnog?
NO. Beck, best description of eggnog EVER: chilled phlegm. I am going to use that for the rest of my life. (Also, the paint we were putting on our living room walls was exactly eggnog-color and eggnog-consistency, although it dried a tiny bit darker, so now there's the whole negative *twitch* painting *twitch* association too.)
6. Favorite gift received as a child?
Favorite in retrospect: A giant rag doll that I played with for years and wish I had to give to my daughter. Favorite at the time: The Dr. Drill & Fill play-dough toy that I begged incessantly for and then played with for maybe four nanoseconds before I lost all the pieces and ground the play-dough into the rug.
7. Do you have a nativity scene?
My parents have a full set. We have a small one, given to us by a friend this fall, made of wood and very nice. C has adopted it as her Very Own and it will have pride of place on her bookshelf year-round, I'm thinking.
8. Hardest person to buy for?
My husband. I want to be all original and genius-y with the gift-giving like he is, but it's hard. He has a very specific list of things that he wants/needs for his various projects, and while, yes, I could go online and order the grommet for his fuel tank thingamabob for his Charger, it just feels kind of unwifely. So I try to find something that he'll absolutely LOVE that's not so ... practical ... and yet can be opened around the tree in front of the kids, and it's difficult. He doesn't need clothes -- he already has a ready supply of the black turtlenecks, checked flannel shirts, and black polos that make my heart beat faster. I got him cologne last year and he still has almost all of that. He has a few collections of "toys" -- die-cast Mopars and the like -- but he has all the ones I've ever seen already. Last year I gave him a hundred dollars and a trip to the Telescope Store at the coast to spend it -- which went over well, but now that's been Done, and besides I don't have a hundred dollars unless I forego paying my college tuition with my transcribing money which I swore I would do, and to give him a hundred dollars that he earned seems a little... eh. Yet he is a GENIUS at gift-giving. He always gets me things I love whether they were on my list or not.
9. Easiest person to buy for?
The kids. Even in years when we hold to our No New Toys rule -- there are just so many things they like.
10. Worst Christmas gift you ever received?
I can't think of anything.
11. Mail or email Christmas cards?
This year I thought with all the moving and stuff that we wouldn't bother, but now I'm feeling guilty about that, so I am seeing a family photo session and a trip to the valley to buy cards in my future.
12. Favorite Christmas Movie?
It's a Wonderful Life and While You Were Sleeping.
13. When do you start shopping for Christmas?
Usually in the early autumn. This year, not so much.
14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present?
I plead the fifth.
15. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas?
Anything that is not nailed down.
16. Clear lights or colored on the tree?
Colored colored colored. They photograph much better. :)
17. What is your favorite Christmas song?
This year for some reason I am all about Chanticleer's version of "Silent Night" from Sing We Christmas, where they sing the first verse in German, the second verse in French, and the third verse in English, at which point I start bawling like a baby and feel like my chest is going to explode.
I also like "Carol of the Bells" as performed by the Bel Canto Women's Choir from Azusa Pacific University. And "Christmas At Ground Zero" by Weird Al.
18. Travel at Christmas or stay home?
Home. Or within fifteen miles of home.
19. Can you name all of Santa's reindeer?
Yes. When I was a girl I was the type who was excited to get a Social Security number because it was something new to memorize. (OK, so maybe that's not exactly a type, it's just nerdy little old awkward strange me.) In my secret heart, denied to the meanies at school who somehow thought it was inappropriate to like anything but The Right Music and The Right Clothes and The Right People, I loved memorizing. So yes. Thanks to my nerdy childhood, I can recite all the names of the reindeer, as well as all the levels of biological classification and all the dwarfs and all the books of the Bible and probably some other stuff too.
20. Angel on the tree top or a star?
Star.
21. Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning?
Christmas morning.
22. What I love most about Christmas?
Well, I'm feeling Christmasy enough now not to say at this point, "the moment when it's over and quiet and all the mess is cleaned up." So. What I love most about it is the anticipation, and reliving my own childhood through the kids' excitement, and making people happy by giving them STUFF that they will like.
Comments
Christmas at Ground Zero. YES!
"What a crazy fluke, we're gonna get nuked on this jolly holiday."
Also, I totally hear you on buying a gift for the husband. Gah. I am always out of ideas myself.
Oh yeah, and on watering the tree -- my dad bought a "Tree IV" that you just drill a hole in the trunk and plug in this IV tube and you hardly have to remember to refill. The tree just drinks it out of a milk jug. HEre it is:
http://www.safechristmas.com/index-old.htm
Posted by: mary at December 18, 2007 11:03 AM
Oh, the memorization thing is totally a type. Isn't it? Or I guess we've established that we're our own unique little type?
Posted by: Kat with a K at December 18, 2007 11:23 AM
I like this meme! I will have to put it on my blog later today.
Posted by: debi at December 18, 2007 11:37 AM
Of course you knew I couldn't resist this meme. My replies are up here.
Thanks :) I feel all Christmassy now :)
Posted by: Maria at December 19, 2007 12:00 AM
I can't say I was excited to get a SocSec# (I was excited to get the Dutch version and will be to get the Taiwan version, but that's 'cause it gets me useful things like a bank account and thus a paycheck). But I can still name all the reindeer and all the dwarves. I'm not a bio type but could still recite star classifications, the code for resistor colors, the strings on a standard E guitar tuning and quite possibly most of The Night Before Christmas (which I first learned at age 2, which baffles me because I couldn't read yet and we didn't celebrate Christmas). From the Bible, I confess to only being able to name the five books of the Torah, not even the Apocrypha, much less all that stuff y'all added later :-)
Posted by: dichroic at December 19, 2007 05:44 PM
I love the name for eggnog! (chilled phlegm). I despise it also! Merry Christmas to you and yours!
Posted by: Maureen at December 20, 2007 06:34 AM
And yet sometimes I totally LOVE eggnog, especially when it has delicious rum in it....
I find my husband horrible to shop for, too - there ARE things that he wants but they're expensive and I AM SHOPPING WITH MONEY HE MADE!
Posted by: Beck at December 20, 2007 04:27 PM
