How to Have the Best Winter Break

1. Survive Nutcracker season!

Considering that there's probably only one kid in the entire production who gets exactly the part she'd always dreamed of, and it's never my kid, Nutcracker has a lot of hard lessons to teach about grace, professionalism, work ethic, grit, perseverance, poise, and how even if you hate the ginger wig the MOST, the ginger wig is always assigned to you because it suits your complexion the best.

Fortunately, Nutcracker also teaches that even if you don't get your heart's greatest desire, you can still have a truly great experience. Because your friends are with you, and you still get to dance!

Next adventure post-Nutcracker: pointe shoes!!!

2. Play in the snow.

Thank goodness for this sole December snowfall, because it was something like 50 degrees on Christmas Day!

3. Choose an absolutely glorious Christmas tree. 

Will dreamed of getting the tallest Christmas tree we'd ever gotten, so we measured the height of the highest point of our vaulted ceiling (10 feet!), took her to the tree farm, and let her take her pick.

I wasn't enthusiastic about the idea, but I LOVE this tree more than any we've ever gotten. I love it so much that I delayed putting away our Christmas decorations (they're still up!), just because I don't think that I'm going to be able to stand taking it down.

4. Watch a lot of movies, and take a lot of naps. 

For probably the first time ever, we did not travel anywhere for Christmas break, not even for one day. We did a couple of errands and a few chores, sure, but we also watched a lot of bad disaster movies, and a lot of bad Christmas specials, and while we watched them, some/most/all of us dozed. It. Was. GLORIOUS.

5. Play a lot of games. 

We always deal Luna in on Cards against Humanity, and the above photo commemorates that on this memorable night--SHE WON!!! It turns out that in our family, apparently you can win more often by having the most random answer than you can by having the most apropos one...

6. Make epic gingerbread houses. 

 

The kids designed their own gingerbread houses this year (don't tell them that this was sneakily educational!), and I found my new favorite gingerbread house and royal icing recipes. 

For the second year in a row, Will's house fell completely apart and had to have a dinosaur added to the scene to make sense of its shambles. Next year, I think I'm just going to give her the hot glue gun...

7. Drink cocktails. 

Matt always makes me something really fun and really chocolatey!

8. Do a puzzle. 

We LOVE puzzles, but we hadn't worked one since June, because we were afraid that the murderbrat would bat all the pieces off the table. He didn't, but he DID insist on sitting on top of fully half the puzzle, including every piece we needed right then, and supervising us.

9. Decorate cookies. 

I always get stressed out on Christmas Eve with the cookies. We make too many, and then I convince myself that we haven't made enough, and then I discover that I'm out of powdered sugar, and then we go to get some but all the stores are out of powdered sugar, too, because it's Christmas Eve, and then I get panicky that Christmas isn't magical without powdered sugar and the children aren't going to make happy memories, and then Matt makes me sit down and hands me a cocktail with extra chocolate, and we all eat a lot of (unpowdered) sugar, and it's magical and happy memories are made.

Also, Will made jam-filled sandwich cookies, and they were EVERYTHING.

10. Speaking of sugar... have a little more!

Santa spoils those kids...

I have had my fair share of Turkey 'n' Torture holidays, and I know it's okay if Christmas isn't magical and you're just excited to get past it, but this was one holiday that that I am legitimately sad to have finished. It WAS magical, you guys. It was fun and stress-free and restful. Out of 43 years of Christmas holidays, this one was my favorite:

Now... back to work!

PSA: You Can Start the New Decade Whenever You Want

I don't even know why I have to tell people this, except it turns out that a real, live Calendar Police Officer lives in my hometown. Can you imagine how excited I was to read this Letter to the Editor in my local newspaper?

Spoiler Alert: I was not at all excited.

You're going to be so sad, Eddie, because that actually IS an opinion, and not a very sound one, either.

Because, you know, math exists.

So here's a run-down of the "controversy" (and OMG, did we seriously not JUST do this ten years ago, and then ten years before that, as well, only more hysterically?):

It's the fault of early Medieval Europeans, who, unlike a lot of the rest of the world, had no concept of zero. They didn't have a word for it, and they didn't have a number for it. So when a sixth-century monk, Dionysius Exiguus, sort-of invented an entire calendar while he was actually trying to figure out what date Easter, a moveable feast, would be in the future, he just went from 1 BC to 1 AD, with no 0 in between.

Except, you know, OBVIOUSLY ZERO EXISTS. And OBVIOUSLY WE MEASURE TIME USING ZERO. Your newborn baby isn't instantly one year old the second it's born; there's a whole year zero for it to get through before it gets to have its smash cake. Friends, that's just how time works, and also common sense, and you don't have to live your life celebrating every decade a year too late just because everyone in Europe 1,500 years ago gave babies their smash cakes before they were old enough to eat solid food.

If you must have everything in even tens, and can't possibly fathom celebrating our 202 decade of the Common Era if 201 decades have not completely passed, then you can also just say hey, Father Exiguus didn't know what zero was, so his first decade (or first century--take your pick!) only had nine years, the silly dude. Because ZERO IS ACTUALLY REAL.

Or you could use the mathematically correct non-religious calendar system called Astronomical Year Numbering. It includes the year zero and then starts negative numbers. It's a real calendar--endorsed by astronomers, even!--and fully stands up to Calendar Police scrutiny.

OR you could utilize yet another piece of practical common sense and remember that the word decade literally means "ten years." It does not mean any specific ten years. You can start counting the next ten years whenever you flipping want!  You can start counting a new decade this year, in fact, when common usage dictates that it makes sense!

Or you can start counting it next year, if you super want to do that. I actually don't care, as long as you don't write a letter to the editor of my local newspaper acting like you're the Chief of the Calendar Police and I don't know things. Dude, as soon as I finish reading the articles, I do the New York Times crossword AND the Sudoku. I know things!

Anyway, Happy New Year! We didn't have as splashy of a celebration as we did a decade ago--

--(how on earth did I have enough energy a decade ago to turn New Year's Eve into a weekend getaway?!? My New Year's Resolution this year is to spend more time channeling the Julie of 2010!), but we had a lovely evening together, Matt woke me up just in time to ring in the new year as a family, and I'm looking forward to a happy 2020.

December Favorites: The British Navy, Suicidal Misanthropes, and Drawing with Waffles

Why yes, I DID spend an evening flipping through every single sewing book in the library, looking for the perfect zip-top tote bag pattern.

And that's just one small example of all the roaring good times that books and I spent together this December!

First of all, Friends, I have discovered a new book series! AND it's actually an old book series, so there are a bunch of books and I can read them all as fast as the library can check them out to me!

If you remember how much I love the Temeraire series, an alternate history of the Napoleonic Wars told through the perspective of a British Navy captain and his dragon companion, then I think you'll understand already how much I love this book:



It's a historical fiction novel of the Napoleonic Wars told through the perspective of a British Navy captain and his surgeon companion. It's immersive, in that if you don't already live in the early 1800s, you absolutely do while you're reading. Both Aubrey and Maturin have flaws--Aubrey, in particular, has a LOT of flaws, the poor, bumbling, unsocialized oaf--but somehow you find them both ineffably charming, and their relationship to each other is a treasure. I will vote for anybody who refers to another adult as "my particular friend!"

And yes, of COURSE there is a fan-made map for reference. How could you trace the Sophie's travels without it?

If we see each other on Facebook, you'll know that I already went on and on (and on...) about my other favorite book of December:



It's the incredible, unbelievable, heartbreaking history of the AIDS pandemic, and the story of the grassroots activists, themselves victims, often literally dying as they worked, who educated, memorialized, searched for a cure, and advocated for each other.

You guys, everyone needs to read this book. If you're shocked at the way that the current administration is willing to dehumanize immigrants and seems actively working for their genocide, then it's because you haven't read this book, in which the government was willing to dehumanize gay people and seemed actively working for their genocide. There are so many stories in here that sound so crazy that you want to believe they're not true--why would the FDA insist on drug studies that involved placebos even after it became clear that 100% of the people who received the placebo instead of the drug were dying? Victims were deliberately martyring themselves by continuing to participate in such studies, just because that was the only way the FDA would eventually approve the drugs.

It was so bad that one day a New York City activist read in People magazine an article about Ryan White that made it clear that his doctor had never heard of a life-saving prophylactic drug that he could have been taking. The doctor had never heard of it because the FDA wouldn't approve it for that use, even though it had been known for years that it was saving lives. They wouldn't approve it because people weren't willing to submit to a drug study that involved placebos for it, because if they got the placebo they'd die. People were literally having to resort to word-of-mouth to pass along these kinds of tips, and that's what this activist did: he called Ryan's grandma, who put him in touch with his doctor, who then started Ryan on the prophylactic drug.

It's a stunning book. Read it as soon as you can.

And here's what else I read in December!



Will had quite the December with books, as well. Somehow she managed to read 44 books in 31 days, bringing the total number of books that she read in 2019 to 350!!!

I'll just say that one more time and then just kind of leave it there: my child read 350 books in 365 days.

And one of her favorites was this one!



Will read it happily, but claimed afterwards that she didn't understand it. I pushed back, though, and told her that the book report that she was supposed to be reading it for was non-negotiable, so she spent a VERY sulky afternoon out in her shirtsleeves in the cold, sitting out on the back deck with her book, pencil, and notebook, in full sight of the picture window so I couldn't miss her (self-imposed) suffering, and finally came back in, triumphant, with an absolutely terrific book report in hand. She understood the book quite as well as any fifteen-year-old could possibly understand philosophical fiction, and I think that spending the afternoon forced to delve into it and think about it and make herself figure it out made her like the book quite a bit more than she would have if I'd originally replied, "Oh, you didn't understand Steppenwolf? Oh, well. Choose something else for your book report, I guess!"

Although its morals might be a little suspect... Will had a LOT of fun with the plot of a suicidal misanthrope who is taught to appreciate the existential indulgences of the bourgeoisie, murders his girlfriend, and learns to accept himself while visiting a trippy magical theatre.

In other incredible news, I recommended two of my favorite books from November to Will, and not only did she read them, but she decided that they were two of HER favorite books, too! GASP!!!



My specialty is magical boarding schools and their graduates, apparently.

Here are Will's other favorite books from December:



And here's the rest of what she read in December!



Yeah... that was a lot of books.

I can't give you links to my favorite December podcasts because Spotify and I are fighting--EVEN THOUGH I pay them ten bucks every single month, they've got some glitch or hack going in which every time I try to play my music, some crappy instrumental song cuts in. The people on reddit (whenever I have a problem,  I always go to reddit first) who've had this happen to them, too, say that disconnecting their account from Facebook and changing their passwords solved the problem, but I can't disconnect my account from Facebook without temporarily deactivating Facebook, and I can't do that anyway because Spotify also won't let me update my email address so if I tried to reset my password it would just send the link to an email address that's deactivated, too.

UGH!

I am THISCLOSE to deactivating my Spotify account and losing a decade's worth of carefully curated playlist memories, but you guys, is there even any other comparable music streaming service?

Okay, my first-world problems are not your problems, so instead, check out Syd's current favorite YouTube channel, Drawing with Waffles!



She's this super sweet and upbeat artist who videotapes herself completing little drawing challenges, encountering setbacks and troubleshooting problems she runs into, etc. She's a TERRIFIC influence on my own little artistic perfectionist. Isn't it nice to find positive influences on YouTube, of all places?

Speaking of my little artistic perfectionist... she makes her own YouTube videos! They're primarily animated music videos, and as her mother, I find them adorable:



Syd dominated our TV time in December, it seems, but when I got a turn to choose a video, I generally just made everyone watch one of these English Heritage cooking shows.



I want to make trifle!

Girl Scout cookie season is about to start, which means I won't have much reading time until mid-March, but when I do get to eke out some time for myself, at least I'll have my British Navy captain and his pet surgeon to enjoy!