What I Did on My Christmas Vacation

How is it that it takes months to add and then cross off gifts from lists, weeks to prepare, and days to pack, and then it's over in the blink of an eye? There and back again in two minutes, it seems.

We had a fabulous trip home, managing to shoehorn in as many family and friends into four days as we possibly could while still remembering everyone's name. We ate ridiculous amounts of food (which is entirely not our fault since all of our various hosts fed us insanely well). And as usual, we were showered with gifts and love and snuggles and warmth - thanks to all who loved us up so thoroughly!

Our gift to the kids before we left - a candy-making factory. Who knew sour gummy candies were made entirely of gelatin and citric acid?

Watermelon-flavoured nastiness in molds of various shapes.

The standard plethora of gifts.

Meeting a new friend for the first time.

Taking credit for a group effort (while the other candy architects take some time off from a punching game gone awry)

Reading (reading!!) his new chapter book to great grandpa.

Relaxing with (what else?) Pokemon colouring pages.

Playing a new dance game with the cousins (warning: not for adults - my elbows are *still* feeling my overzealous Mashed Potato)

And...the unpacking back at home. The Husband wins a gold star for getting all of this and more into the trunk of the Jetta. And I get a gold star for sitting for eight hours wedged into the front seat with the stuff that didn't fit in the trunk.

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No Presents Until You Say Your Verse for Grandma!

Do you remember that? How every Christmas you were hauled up in front of all your aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents and instructed to "say your verse...come on PM, you did *so* good in the program, just say your verse...Grandma will be so happy...."

And you stood there, sweaty and panicked, like some Christmas reindeer caught in the headlights of the anticipatory stares of people whom you loved and who you knew loved you in theory but (let's face it) you only saw twice a year?

And your mind went completely blank, the adrenaline started pumping, and all you could remember were stray, disconnected bits of the two lines you so triumphantly recited the night before in church?

(Not that this has ever happened to me.)

Well, I'm not gonna do that to my kids, no way, no how. Not so much to spare them, but because I am lazy. Making them practice their Christmas program parts any longer than I absolutely have to (read: juuuuust enough the night before to get the words into short-term memory and make it through the next morning's pageant) is not on my to-do list this week.

Fortunately, the miracle of technology comes to the rescue, and I can nonetheless share their theatrical prowess with you.

First, from the Christmas pageant at church yesterday. I was director again this year, and despite my most stricken pleas of "isn't there anyone else who wants to be Joseph?", I had to cast The Boy as Jesus's earthly father. The Girl, disgruntled that she couldn't be Mary, had to content herself with a dual role of Innkeeper/Jewish Leader.

Behold, the glory (you'll probably need to turn the computer volume waaaaay up):

(Yep, that's my arm making a cameo directorial appearance.)

The Girl didn't get a lot of facetime in our recordings of the grand event, mostly because The Husband didn't want to be one of those parents hogging the aisle and blocking the view for every other parent. So I captured The Girl's later program-worthy effort (might want to bring that volume down a bit):

This represents the first attempt she and I have made to teach her how to play piano. Our results were lovely as you can see, but it definitely confirmed that we need to get her a real teacher.

Partly because I have no idea how to go about doing it. Mostly because if I try, there will be tears of frustration and yelling and slamming of keys, and so forth.

And who knows what her reaction will be?

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Credit Problems? Word to the Rescue!

So I was just looking at the templates in MS Word 2007 under the "personal" category.

(Yes. This is what I do for fun on Friday nights.)

A quick word on templates: they rock. Not your namby-pamby "here is a cover letter, fill in the date and relevant experience a la Career Mad Libs" kind - I'm talking about styles and formatting and using the template organizer and undergirding your document with a good set of bones here.

(Also: quick tip - put the Developer tab in your ribbon and you've got -hey presto - easy access to your document's current template.)

Anyhoodle, I was slumming it in the namby-pamby section, and I discovered the most fascinating collection of templates. These templates are different from the styles/formatting ones I use - these ones are sample documents, ones that writer's-blocked users or those a little shaky when it comes to wordcraft can use as guides. They're like connect-the-dots letters - there's a bit of a stretch where you're on your own, but there's always a reassuring solid checkpoint within sight.

What's interesting is the topics. Here, ostensibly, are the most common letters that might be written. According to MS designers, the letters in this list represent the most frequent reasons that might prompt someone to click "New Document."

Here is that list, in the order presented:

-Letter to Santa (awww! Nothing says "I deserve a Nintendo DS" like not bothering to write it by hand)

- Complaint about service (presumably so you can whine about Santa's less than enthusiastic response to your letter)

- Request to cancel service (because you never want Christmas to come again)

- Address change notification (just in case that sneaky Santa tries to come down your last known chimney anyway)

- Dispute of charge to credit card company (Ah, yes - that particular marriage of belligerent denial and overuse of credit - must be the US version of the software)

- Notice that payment will be late (Guess that dispute didn't work out so well)

- Power of attorney letter for child care (Dangit - I've always written my own. Who knew you needed hand-holding on this one?)

- Dispute of charges after credit card lost (More disputing!)

- Confirmation that credit card was lost (Guess the disputees disputed right back)

- Request for geneaology records from church (This one threw me. Really? It's that common?)

- Request for geneaology records from funeral home (Firstly - another one? Secondly - they keep those?)

- Thank you letter for personal gift (Because again, nothing says "personal" like opening up Office 2007 and letting someone else do the writing for you)

- Apology for late mailing of payment (Don't think that just cuz you're sorry they won't charge you a bazillion dollars in late fees)

- Request to cancel credit account (See? All that disputing and apologizing and losing - much easier if you just don't have a credit card at all)

- Authorization to perform work (You need that? I thought you just said you could and they believed you...)

- Payment proposal plan to creditor (Looks like you should've cancelled that card a bit earlier...)

- Request for uncertified copy of birth or death certificate (How exactly does an uncertified copy help you? So that you can cross out "Hawaii" and scrawl "Kenya" in crayon?)

- Request of genealogy records from library (Clearly the birthers leave no stone unturned)

- Request that credit card company contact credit bureaus (Look, don't believe me? You call them then)

- Explanation for not contributing (Perfect for those Sunday mornings when the offering plate comes by and all you have is lint in your pockets!)

- Vehicle insurance complaint (Hey, down here if you *have* insurance, that's already pretty awesome)

- Dispute of duplicate credit card charge (And America wonders why everyone thinks they are so litigious?)

- Request for itemized charges on service work (They're suspicious, too)

- Vehicle repair complaint (Cars and complaining...as American as apple pie)

- Vehicle warranty complaint (see above)

And there you have it folks - a window into the letter-writing needs of the American public as envisioned by Micro.soft Corporation.

Sigh.

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Bearing Gifts We Traverse Afar

Three little figures trudged through the snow, hunched protectively over their precious gifts. Each thought, I wonder how they'll like it? Will it be enough? Will they laugh?

But onward they walked, bent against the snow, peering anxiously at the bejeweled treasures they carried, concerned that no harm befall them.

Wisemen from the East? Gold, frankincense, and myrhh?

Nope.

It was the Peitasch children, sent with admonition for due care by their mother, on their annual trek to deliver the School Teacher Christmas Gift.

Which in our house, meant only one thing:

Strawberries.

For the uninitiated, "strawberries" (you kind of need air quotes. They're about as far from the real thing as you can get) are a quasi-candy. We made them every single year when I was growing up, and they - like pretty much everything else that was fancy and came out of our kitchen - were crafted solely for the purpose of giving away.

We must have been legendary at Southwood School. Probably every teacher received a paper plate with a dozen "strawberries" nestled carefully in individual cups beneath a protective saran wrap cover at some point in his or her career there.

This year, the legend continues. Well, sort of. I decided that *I* was going to make "strawberries." I've made them since becoming a GrownUp, but never with my kids.

Ohhhhh, did I talked them up! I told them we were going to have So! Much! Fun! Making! Strawberries! I assured them they would each have a special job in the process, and how the littlest child always got to do the rolling and how the next biggest child did the stems and eventually worked up to that magical job - the forming.

They were beyond excited. They came in the door after school yelling, "LET'S MAKE STRAWBERRIES!!"

And so we did. First, preparations. There is only one CD that can be played while making strawberries: Boney M Christmas.

Then, with the reggae Mary's Boy Child grooving in the background, you can soak toothpicks in green food colouring (this works best the day before):

Then you amass the ingredients (Note: dessicated coconut works best, but I couldn't find it. None of my coworkers knew what it was - is it a Canadaland thing? Rocky, my favourite American baker - what say you?):

Then you mix up the perfect ratios of each:

Next comes rolling...a delicate job, as you have to take *just* the right amount of "dough" and apply the correct amount of pressure to mold yet not mush:

Next, more jello - used both in the dough and as a shiny, glittery outer crust:

The last thing is to spear a quarter of a candied green cherry with the toothpicks from above and insert this a la leaf. I have no pictures of this part. By the time I'd gotten the kids to pose for these first ones, The Boy was pretty much done. The Girl kept going a bit, while I gave her helpful tips until she looked at me and said kindly, "you know, Mom, I think I'm going to let you do this so that you can do it exactly the way you want it." So I did:

And so the memory lives on. If you're lucky enough to catch me on my trip Home for Christmas next week, you just might get one of these tasty little treats. If not, well, you might not be missing much - The Husband says they are an acquired taste and it took him ten whole years to get used to them.

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How Lovely Are Your Branches

Mine has been a longstanding love affair with the Tannenbaum.

(Zie Tannenbaum? Zer Tannenbaum? Whatever - it's one of the three gendered articles.)

When I was a kid, one of the highlights of the Christmas season was bundling up, piling into our car, and driving for about eight hours to the tree farm.

(It was really 45 minutes. Which is interminable when one is under 10 years old.)

We would go up and down the rows, searching for the perfect tree. I remember my brothers chasing each other through the trees and me pretending I was in some otherworldly Narnia-ish fantasy forest.

That and having to go to the bathroom. I somehow always had to go, but of course we couldn't head back to XmasTreeHQ without a prize, so I danced and shifted my weight through the duration of the search.

Once we'd found The One, Dad cut it down and we returned triumphant to the parking lot, where he tied it to the roof while the rest of us had hot chocolate and processed cheese slices. Which we called "chocolate cheese." Because it has a wrapper, you see.

Home we went, and we vibrated impatiently while waiting for it to thaw and then for Mom to put on the lights. Because after that came one of the bestest parts of the season - decorating.

We had Winnie the Pooh. We had Snow White and the Seven (Worse for the Wear of the Years) Dwarves. We had styrofoam balls with sequins pinned on; wreaths made of lace, beads, and hardened hot glue drips; and increasingly mangy tinsel.

It was awesome.

But the awesomest was what happened after we were finished. The twinkly lights were on, everyone else was occupied, and I would sneak into the corner between the tree and the wall into my own private fairy world where I could be unnoticed and unremarked upon and indulge my greatest passion.

Organizing.

I would carefully study the placement of all the ornaments near me, judge their spatial relationships to one another, and oh so quietly make adjustments until every one was in perfect, organized harmony.

(Yes. I could be persuaded to agree with your widened eyes and muffled snickers that this may indeed have been a manifestation of a mild case of OCD. It wasn't restricted to ornaments - I used to spend hours while my mom did the grocery shopping, standing at the end of the aisles and rearranging the candy displays so that all the chocolate bars were facing the same way and bringing some semblance of order to the chaos caused when someone thoughtlessly threw a Kit Kat bar into the Coffee Crisp box.)

The Tree was such a huge part of getting ready for me that I've always tried to make a big deal of it with my kids. They're not always happy about it - I remember two years ago lugging a tree along the street, kids wailing that they were missing all the good shows, and gritting my teeth and telling them to have fun, dangit!

But usually they get into it, as they did this year:

Yes. A camouflage Santa hat. I know.

Getting to the top branches.

Apparently cozying up beneath the tree runs in the family.

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Travesty!

So I was grocery shopping this morning.

(Which was a nonstandard schedule as I usually go on Thursday nights. Which is why I didn't realize that the average age of Cub shopper is inversely proportional to how early in the day it is, which value is then also inversely proportional to the speed at which one can travel down the aisles.

Which is to say that early Saturday morning = elderly shoppers in motorized aisle-wide shopping vehicles + free coffee and cookies = an excellent exercise in patience.

Which is why I see so many other harried, young working parents on Thursday nights, because we'd rather lose precious sleep than meet the same blue hair and sweater set plodding at a merciless snail's pace, sipping coffee and consulting each and every item in the sale flyer whilst travelling down the centre of Every. Single. Aisle.

But I digress.)

So I was grocery shopping this morning, and this is what I found:


In yet another breathtaking example of culinary imperialism, the United States (here represented by one Pepperidge Farm - if by "Pepperidge" you mean faceless conglomerate and "Farm" you mean stainless steel mass manufacturing) has taken a country's prized epicurean export, removed its soul, retained a nod to its exotic origin (Australia's Favorite Cookie!), and released it to the masses.

(See also: ketchup chips. They carry them here now - or something that looks like them - but the taste is criminally inferior. Also they are *always* crushed for some reason.)

Harumph.

This is where I discovered Tim Tams:


It was glorious. Every convenience store had shelves piled high with them. There were about 18 different varieties - and we tried every single one as we made our way up the west coast of Australia. They bound the country together - trendy, artsy Melbourne; historical, harboured Sydney; and sun-soaked, sea-breezy Cairns - all linked by that almighty melty-messy chocolate coating.

And then imagine our delighted shock to find them in none other than The Real Canadian Superstore. Not some sort of Canadian knock-off version - the *real* deal these were. Made by Arnott's, complete with lengthy unpronouncable ingredient list.

It being Superstore, actually having them on the shelves was always a gamble. More often than not, there was a bare space on the shelf and a "Sorry, We're Out" sign. So when they were there, we had to load up and stock the cupboard.

And each time we raided that stash, we were reminded of our adventure halfway around the world. They tasted of wineries and Great Ocean Road and Ned Kelly.

Not a stupid [airquotes] farm.

Harumph, I say.

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Ack!

Please fill in the blank below:

Peitricia Mae, this is the __________________ thing you have ever done.

a) Most out of character
b) Coolest
c) Craziest
d) All of the above

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Remember When?

Astonishing...

...how deliciously wonderful they were...

...and how much I've forgotten....

(That laugh gets me *every* time - it was such a chortle.)

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