There are lots of things I love about the month of December. I love lighting the menorah and doing our "Crazy Hanukah Dance" ritual. I love watching as each night more and more houses are lit up beautifully. (Spokane, I have noticed, really goes all out on any holiday for which you can place anything large and/or inflatable and/or set up to play to a tune you can program your radio to pick up. Let your flag fly Spokane, let it fly...) I love fires. I love going to cut down our Christmas Tree. I love the new tradition we started this week of having friends over for wine and then heading out to accost our neighbors with Carols. I love that my parents and Jeremy's mom have visited and left and Christmas Day is just for the four of us with our tradition of homemade cinnamon rolls, presents, a hike in the snowy woods and dinner at the worst chinese restaurant (judged by amount of blinking neon, buffets don't count).
I feel like as parents Jeremy and I have a pretty good grasp on keeping Christmas "reasonable" and making sure we go online with the kids to give flocks of chicks in their cousins' names and micro loans for the grandparents. We don't have a ton of presents, we enjoy the day together as a family, we go outside and see how beautiful the world is, we've got that part down. What more could the predictably liberal side of me want?
The part I don't have down makes up the title of this post. Hayden is out of school for 2 weeks. It is cold, it is dark, and we are inside the house *a lot*. I love my kids but, I'll admit it, I don't particularly enjoy playing with them and to make myself do it I have to set a timer which I glance at every 5 seconds and wonder how 30 minutes can last sooooo long. In fact, i hate it so much that i just revealed how guilty and nasty my feelings are by lying right her in my own damn blog! I set the timer for 15 minutes, not 30, and i rarely make it past 10.
And so we spiral. Jeremy worked for 15 days straight, including Christmas weekend, and it has gotten kinda ugly around here. I can see their little brains wilting with so little to think about, can see them getting lazier, asking to go outside less and less, watching tv more and more.. I tell myself downtime is good, it is 2 weeks out of a busy year and they should be able to entertain themselves, and there is nothing I can do about the fact that it gets dark so early and can get so cold the local news seems to truly believe it can endanger the lives of your children and who am I to argue with local news?
So in this post I am officially letting myself off the hook. 2 weeks with no school in the dead of winter on the border of idaho is rough. Everyone survived, I haven't don't anything I couldn't confess to a mandated reporter.
Sigh.
Jeremy is finally off and last night we took the kids on a surprise trip to.... Wait for it.... Hayden, Idaho! No, we were not trying to get lynched or visit the birth place of the modern white power movement. We were visiting a hotel attached to a water park attached to a video arcade attached to a go kart track. The kids had a blast and it was so nice to be all together and Jeremy and I spared no opportunity to provide each other with commentary on both accommodation and client tell as our former world-traveling-no-kid-having selves.
So here we are, back in the now seemingly liberal enclave of Eastern Washington, children nestled snug in their beds exhausted from the chlorine smell and improvised humidity of the indoor water park. Jeremy is reading Z magazine and muttering under his breath about how we should move to a socialist country, I am typing on the decidedly and pointlessly consumptive iPad I got for Christmas (hence the spelling and word problems) and all is calm and bright as we welcome in the new year.
Happy New Year everyone!
And if you're looking for something to read check this out, by my fantastically gifted beautiful friend, a little entertainment for your new year: http://summerconnollyromance.com/
And so we spiral. Jeremy worked for 15 days straight, including Christmas weekend, and it has gotten kinda ugly around here. I can see their little brains wilting with so little to think about, can see them getting lazier, asking to go outside less and less, watching tv more and more.. I tell myself downtime is good, it is 2 weeks out of a busy year and they should be able to entertain themselves, and there is nothing I can do about the fact that it gets dark so early and can get so cold the local news seems to truly believe it can endanger the lives of your children and who am I to argue with local news?
So in this post I am officially letting myself off the hook. 2 weeks with no school in the dead of winter on the border of idaho is rough. Everyone survived, I haven't don't anything I couldn't confess to a mandated reporter.
Sigh.
Jeremy is finally off and last night we took the kids on a surprise trip to.... Wait for it.... Hayden, Idaho! No, we were not trying to get lynched or visit the birth place of the modern white power movement. We were visiting a hotel attached to a water park attached to a video arcade attached to a go kart track. The kids had a blast and it was so nice to be all together and Jeremy and I spared no opportunity to provide each other with commentary on both accommodation and client tell as our former world-traveling-no-kid-having selves.
So here we are, back in the now seemingly liberal enclave of Eastern Washington, children nestled snug in their beds exhausted from the chlorine smell and improvised humidity of the indoor water park. Jeremy is reading Z magazine and muttering under his breath about how we should move to a socialist country, I am typing on the decidedly and pointlessly consumptive iPad I got for Christmas (hence the spelling and word problems) and all is calm and bright as we welcome in the new year.
Happy New Year everyone!
And if you're looking for something to read check this out, by my fantastically gifted beautiful friend, a little entertainment for your new year: http://summerconnollyromance.com/
4 comments:
Oh man, you are a great writer, too! I really enjoy reading your blogs. And, the TV in our house has been on every day for quite a few hours, melting and mushing the brains of my offspring. Something I SWORE I would never do. But, alas, I too have fallen into the Spiral of Hell. (:
We're almost there, we're almost back to early mornings and board meetings (and Zumba)! And I'm so happy to journey back into the light with you! No matter that it dims by 4 pm. That's what busy brains and early bedtimes are for....
Tomorrow. The spiral of death ends tomorrow!
Wonderful blog you've got there..
Cheers, Debbie.
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