And now, for the Thursday Thirteen you’ve been waiting for: A CHRISTMAS CELEBRATION, IN THIRTEEN PARTS:

1. Mom and I decide to take the kids to the Grotto, the National Sanctuary of Our Sorrowful Mother, for the 18th annual Festival of Lights. Petting zoo! Puppet show! Strolling carolers and people dressed like olden times, who ask you, “Do you know the way to Bethlehem?” (No, I don’t. But if you figure it out will you take me?)

2. I tell Mom I’ll buy her dinner first, c’mon, it’ll be fun. She is game. She tells me she’s never been to the upper level of the Grotto. I am floored by this. “IT IS SO COOL UP THERE!” I tell her. The kids: “CAN WE SEE IT? NOW, CAN WE? CAN WE TAKE THE ELEVATOR?” Me: “No, it’s dark. And there are cliffs. But next summer!” Also, I forget to bring donations for the food drive. Mom brought some stuff from her cupboard. And she insisted on buying us dinner. Wouldn’t let me pay for tickets to the festival, either. Moms are like this.

3. Both kids, shouting: “LOOK AT ALL THOSE LIGHTS! AND THE ANGELS, LIT UP! THERE ARE PEOPLE SINGING!” Followed by, “What are all those candles for?”

4. We go to the petting zoo, at Wacky Boy’s request. The volunteer gives us warnings: Don’t let the goats grab the whole ice cream cone full of feed out of our hands. Spin around if they try to. And around and around and around. Don’t give any to the alpaca. Or the horse. Or the rabbits. I lose track of all the instructions. We spin and spin. We are mauled by goats, anyway.

5. Wacky Girl: “HEY! I do remember this place!” (Good, since it’s the seventh time she’s been.) She and mom head off for the puppet show. She is the only one to call out the answer when the puppeteer asks the audience: “What does Feliz Navidad mean?” She is proud of this. She and Mom like the puppet show. Mom is wearing a cute hat, and her warm jacket. It’s not raining. Or snowing.

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“Maybe next time I see you I’ll have a little one strapped to my chest. I’m looking forward to it — I really need a vacation from work. I’m taking three weeks paternity leave.”

– dad to dad, overheard by WM at Sohbet Coffeehouse

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“I know nobody likes me. Why do we have to have a holiday season to emphasize it?”

– Charlie Brown

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“Too many people spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people they don’t like.”

– Will Rogers, humorist (1879-1935)

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From the Cajun Family Recipes website:

Roasted Squirrels

1/2 pound of smoked bacon, cubed
4 squirrels, cut in pieces
2 medium onions, chopped
1 stalk of celery, chopped
4 cups of chicken broth
Salt to taste
Pinch of thyme
Dash or two of hot pepper sauce

Brown bacon, remove and set aside. Brown squirrel in drippings left from browning bacon; remove and set aside. Add onions and celery to drippings and saute two minutes. Add squirrel and bacon and enough chicken broth to cover bottom of pot; add seasonings. Cover and cook on a low heat, adding broth a little at a time as it needs replacing until squirrels are tender - about 1 hour.

Rabbit may be cooked in this manner.

Serves 4.

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Hot damn, it’s snowing again! And we still have the flu. And we have two rehearsals coming up for the Christmas pageant at church and I have no idea when they are. Whoops. That’s all for today.

OK, that’s not much of a post, sorry. Wacky Girl is going to be a junior angel this year in the pageant. She’s a senior angel, IMHO. I love that girl. Wacky Boy has to wait until next year, when he’s in kindergarten. Then he can be a goat or a cow. Maaaaaaaaaaa! Moooooooo! I love that boy.

Would you like an update on everything I can think of? Okay, here goes:

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Hello, Internet,

You’re looking very pretty today, I must say. How’s the weather there? It’s supposed to snow here in Portland, Ore. (Ed. twenty minutes later to say: It’s snowing!!!) I’m doing as well as you’d expect, considering I have a throwing-up kid home from school and an eight-foot Christmas tree in the kitchen. And the kid wants to know when we’re decorating the tree, so I guess we’re on the mend.

Let’s all say a big huzza-huzza for that, and for grocery delivery services. If there’s anything worse than a puking kid at home, it’s a puking kid at the grocery store while you’re frantically grabbing crackers, popsicles and 7-up. The price of the groceries, plus ten bucks and a tip and they bring a box of food to you. Damn, I’d spend more than that on Ugly Dolls if I did the shopping myself. (Did I tell you that when we got to Iowa last week, there were two ginormous Ugly Dolls parked in the sunroom? Wacky Grandpa likes Ugly Dolls, too. He has Tray and Ox. Heh heh heh.) (Did I even tell you that we spent Thanksgiving in Iowa City? Where it is 60 degrees and sunny, and the grandparents played ball with the kids out in the yard. No coats, no hats, just Iowa sunshine.)

Hockey God hates the holidays, have I already mentioned that? He doesn’t hate the holidays, per se. He hates the holiday spirit. The pushing, the mass carnage, the hungry shoppers shoving Cinnabites into their pie-holes. I don’t know who un-Grinched him, but he’s ready for the holidays this year. He had fun on Thanksgiving. He is discussing the purchasing of presents, although he is unwilling to commit. It’s a start.

And he came home from running errands yesterday with this monster Douglas fir in the back of his pick-up. The trees had been out in the rain for a week at Fred Meyer, and ours got even more drenched on the short drive home. We put it in the stand (a new, bigger one, after another trip to Fred G. Meyer…) and there it stands, growing bigger and bigger as it dries, in the kitchen. I’m able to get to the dishwasher, just barely, and we can open the basement door so we’re good.

This is the first “real” tree that we’ve had, in the almost ten years we’ve been together. We had a live tree, that we let die, later, on the front porch, and a Norfolk pine that later died on its own; a couple of “Charlie Brown” trees. One year I think we counted the Christmas cactus as a tree, cuz it bloomed in time. About half the time we travel over the holidays so we don’t decorate much at all, those years.

Tonight the tree goes into the living room where the dog will not lift his leg on it.

Also, HG bought four boxes of lights. Red and green.

I have the biggest smile on my face right now.

Love,

WM

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FRIDAY ADVICE COLUMN, ON SUNDAY, FOR WACKY MOTHERS AND OTHERS

Dear Wacky Mommy,

Frantic

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Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Remember to tell your kids on this great American holiday, “It’s not playing fairsies to go to someone else’s home, grab all their stuff, claim you ‘discovered it,’ then force them out of the house and move in. Pilgrims were not playing nice, dig?”

And now, for the Thursday Thirteen!

THIRTEEN THINGS MY DAUGHTER AND NIECE WOULD LIKE ME AND MY SIS-IN-LAW TO AGREE TO:

1. Let us get our ears pierced when we’re nine.

2. Let us stay up late — ten o’clock — every night.

3. Let us go shopping every day after school.

4. Let us watch “Star Wars.”

5. Let us eat as much candy as we want.

6. Let us do no homework.

7. Buy us whatever we want.

8. Let us eat all of our Halloween candy in one day.

9. Buy us a limo and a driver to take us all around.

10. When we grow up you guys have to let us get a mansion, with a big swimming pool in the backyard and a little yellow kitten.

11. Let us live in Minnesota and go to Mall of America every day.

12. No school.

13. Let us have as many American Girl dolls as we want.

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I like the way the ads are mixin’ it up over there — the Stones, with nursing advice, with Christmas cooky recipes. Go click on ‘em and help me pay for this site, would you, pretty please?

Looking for holiday gifts? May I suggest a Wacky Mommy messenger bag? Or tote? Maybe a T-shirt or magnet?

Signed,

Your Favorite Non-Corporate Whore

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