Mumbling Madly

At the dawn of the new year, I’m suppose to be looking forward…but, for the sake of humor, self-indulgence, and sanity I’m airing out a little of the past. Specifically: one week ago(ish):

I’m suppose to be packing, getting ready for Christmas travel to Vancouver, but I just can’t seem to get moving. In between folding socks and tucking away toothbrushes, I keep having to lie down. The night before, had been really great, truly Christmas-y in the sense that we were with friends, there was a tree in the room, and homemade eggnog (spiked liberally) was being passed around. OK, so I have always loved Christmas. (I also never call it Xmas, even in writing, because I can’t shake the whole, “Where would Christmas be without the Christ?” question posed to me in Bible Class). It was December 23rd, and we were getting ready to round off the holiday by heading home to my folks’ house via a three hour road trip down I-5. So much to look forward to! There would be Burgerville in Centralia, several hours of bad talk radio in the car, culminating in a happy reunion with my family. Instead, I tunneled down the inevitable path of the stomach flu.

OK, so I have to just write this out: December was a really hard month. I was going to write ‘bad’ but settled on ‘hard’ because the optimist in me still believes anything worth doing is usually really difficult. But, I have to tell you, the new year has never looked so good.

My son had already won the prize for Most Illnesses in the Month of December. The dreaded MMR vaccine kicked off an already tough month of erupting molars, (complete with blackened gums a la gum hematoma). Contrary to what Jenny McCarthy believes, my kid doesn’t seem to be sliding towards autism. But, when he wasn’t drooling, he was crying and sucking on his hand. Clearly, the kid was miserable but I hoped that all the sickness would happen before Christmas: coughing, hacking, snot running liberally down his nose for 10 days straight. Suddenly, I was carrying him around like he was 3 months old…only he just had his first birthday and is a healthy 23 pounds. For weeks he would rise at 3am and treat us to a bout of crying for TWO consecutive hours. Yes, that’s a 3am-5am shift…and I’m not getting paid. Look, I’m not saying his misery was unwarranted. I would LOVE for someone to carry me around every time I have gas, but I would at least have the decency to request this during daylight hours.

Because I like to compete, I started throwing down my own illnesses. I threw in colds, an occasional fever, and then I knocked my back out putting the kid in his crib. On the rare night my son didn’t wake up at 3am, my body got up anyway. One night, I laid awake until 5am, waiting for him…eventually, he called out, I dragged myself up for the night nursing he just won’t give up, and returned to bed for two hours of sleep. It was awesome.

Because I stared feeling insane, I started zoning out on the simplest, smallest things, like browsing through the William Sonoma catalog, watching steam rise off a wet fir tree, or drinking bourbon in store bought egg nog. Sleep deprivation makes it really hard to plan for the holidays, shop, write, wrap, cook, maybe handmake a beach ball or two. I’ve always scowled at the totally played out article “This Year I’m Canceling Christmas!” (Featured just recently in Better Homes and Garden.). It seems every year some bad writer tackles the unoriginal idea of being a Christmas Grinch because the holidays are sooooo hard. And yet, there I was, my head circling the drain, trying to bang out a creative Christmas card and realizing: I’m in over my head.

“We just need to make it until Christmas,” I told my son, as he hacked up a lung in the middle of the night next to the Vicks Humidifier. “Just be well in time for Christmas.” As fate would have it, my kid was fine by Christmas; I’m the one who didn’t make it. After stuffing the car with presents, making the long drive south, eating burgers with special sauce, and showing up in Vancouver at a reasonable hour: I’m down for the count. There goes the Burgerville, (literally).

Fact: I’ve thrown up 3 times as an adult. Never from drinking (even when I probably should have), never from alleged food poisoning, only from a very certain, very devastating, stomach flu. I’ve thrown up in 1995, 2002, and now, 2010. Fact: My mother has been by my side for each of those three times. My husband has watched me give birth, but for some reason I could not bring myself to throw up in front of him. Even though he was coaching me along, it took my mother to enter the bathroom, say, “Well, what’s going on here?” for me to finally go “BLLLLLAAAH” into the world’s smallest wastebasket. There’s nothing like Mom.

Christmas with the stomach flu means feeling like the world’s biggest martyr (but that’s what this post is about, right?) While my family stuffed themselves with extra sharp white cheese from Vermont, I rustled up some Top Ramen from my parent’s food storage (expired in 2006). While everyone drank champaign, I sipped sparkling cider (expired in 2008). Because I was having a hard time not being horizontal, we skipped the much anticipated Children’s Mass at St. Joseph’s. Five years ago I got lingerie from my husband for Christmas, this year I got a vacuum cleaner (which I requested! Lest you think my hubbie is THAT kind of dude).

While I was trying to wrestle my son down for a nap, my neighbor called my parent’s house: Turns out in my hurry to get on the road I left the baby gate to the mud room closed…which meant my cat was totally denied access to her food, water, and litter box. Luckily, my neighbor checked up on her less than 24 hours later and freed her from depravity. So, in addition to having the stomach flu I was the Worst Pet Owner in the World.

The day after Christmas, my husband went snowboarding for a full day. I went to Old Navy looking for pants in a size 12mo-18mo and felt depressed. It was so bad that I actually cheered myself up by visiting the graveside of a friend who passed away when we were in high school. Well, ‘cheered up’ isn’t the right term…rather, ‘put things in perspective,’ or ’signed up for a reality check.’ At any rate, I snapped out of it enough to realize that I was actually pretty lucky, all things considered.

The night we came back into town, back in our own beds, back in our own home…my son slept through the night. It was like Christmas.

I almost didn’t go…I almost didn’t go to the after-wedding party because I was exhausted and cranky. Our hotel room was next to a bunch of children (related, but still…), the sweater I wore all day was stinky in the pits and I’d spent all this time during the wedding trying not to raise my arms, and quite frankly I was burnt out on family time. I can’t believe I almost didn’t go…I wouldn’t have gotten to know my allusive and often controversial brother-in-law, his crazy awesome new wife who talked my husband into walking around in her heels, and I wouldn’t have had a 2nd hand smoke hangover the next day in my lungs.

Josh called the front desk and asked for a locals hang-out, a place that might have a pool table and beer. We ended up in a classic dive, filled with smoking locals and a smattering of visitors. My new sister-in-law immediately began working the bar in a way only a gal raised in Vegas possibly could. She waved her hands, announced to everyone she just got married, drank shots without using her hands, and generally became the life of the party. At one point I caught a glimpse of a playboy bunny tattoo under her arm and all was revealed. I found her terribly exciting and somehow got equally sucked in:

Half of the holidays was seeing my family and the other half was dominated by the wedding of Josh’s brother. This was sort of a last minute wedding, planned after Josh’s father offered to take us all to the Oregon coast for the weekend after Christmas. Josh’s bro and long term gf (and mother of his 2 kids) suggested they get married, everyone was thrilled, and then the wedding sort of spiraled into a Huge Thing.

A Huge Thing meaning we ended up with the wedding cake in the trunk. We barely got the wedding cake, since the owners of the small mom and pop bakery barely made it to the slushy, snow covered, Hawthorne street their store is located on. Cake was suppose to be picked up by 8am…we didn’t get it until 10:30am. Then the three of us (Josh, his sister, and I) all turned into morons and could not manage to get out of Portland and onto the appropriate coast bound highway. Wedding was at 2, we needed to be there by 1:30. After going round and round in circles we finally left the city by 11am. We had grand notions of stopping at Burgerville in Tigard but that never happened. Going to the bathroom was also not an option. On Highway 6 we hit snow and semis chaining up outside of the pass. The car jostled all over the place with Josh’s sister freaking out about the state of the cake. At 1:30 on the nose we rolled into Pacific City. Then the bride made us wait for 2 and a half hours…with 7 children all dressed up and no where to go in a small room off of a restaurant. I almost cried. Here’s a pic of me trying to hold it together with my (much calmer) sister-in-law:

The important thing is that the wedding finally happened, only one serving tray of pizza was knocked over by a small child, and we finally got to eat. The cake made it barely unscathed–only a slight crack in the frosting on one side. I helped stick a whole bunch of roses around the cake, sprinkled petals around the base, and then carefully faced the uncracked part toward the front of the cake table. Here’s a much happier pic of me with my hubby:

Stay tuned for details and pics from the scandalous after-party at a local Lincoln City dive bar.

When we arrived at my parent’s house the day before Christmas Eve they didn’t have a tree. The weather had prevented them from their usual trek out to the Christmas tree farm so everything was delayed. I found this so distressing that my dad called up the tree farm out in rural Vancouver to confirm that they were indeed open. The kindly old couple confirmed they were open but…good luck trying to get to them in the weather. Snow had been falling all morning but my dad had put chains on his suburu station wagon and was feeling confident. Gina, Josh, Dad, and I all bundled up and prepared to trek out to the country to chop down a tree (sort of like a touchy-feely after school Christmas special).

We didn’t make it very far before I started noticing abandoned cars, their snouts buried in the blackberry bushes along the side of Fruit Valley road. Some of the cars were at frightening angles, almost upside down, and many of them were blanketed in snow. Then the row of cars we had been following stopped. Someone ahead of us had been sucked into the wall of snow at the side of the road. Folks started turning around, tires spinning in the snow, we followed suit and hauled the suburu around. The car in front of us slid and soon we were slipping parallel to the road next to them. AAAAAAH! Several slips and twists later my dad maneuvered around several cars and we were on our way. After some discussion (my Dad insisted he could find an alternate route to the tree farm–my sister and I loudly protested), Josh suggested those who felt nervous could be dropped off at home and then find a pre-cut tree. This idea was met with hesitation (my dad REALLY wanted to cut down a tree) but Gina and I had thrown in the towel. When we got home my Mom backed us up and my Dad settled for a tree found at Home Depot. (This was after visiting multiple places that were sold out of trees).

Incidentally, on the off chance we couldn’t find a tree, my Mom cut a large branch from the fir tree out back and stuck it in a bucket of a water.

As per usual, I have to break down the holiday in parts. The horrendous weather put us a little on edge; luckily the trip down south was fine. We arrived just in time to ‘check in’ and attend the infamous cookie decorating party at Ben’s house, (if you look real close you can spot the naughty cookies):

Thanksgiving was at my house. It was great. The turkey sort of destroyed my oven, but otherwise it went over well. Pics can be found here.

I’m preparing more performance memoir for this Friday’s cabaret at Annex. It’s elaborate, prop-laden, and personal. Props include the fake Barbie laptop my Dad gave me when I had my wisdom teeth removed ten years ago, a really hideous sparkly slip dress I used to wear around down with harley boots in the mid 90’s, and a plastic orange. This performance piece will be performed in addition to an exhausting FD dance number that feels more stressful then fun. Update: Memoir performance is postponed to the next show, Jan 2nd!

My tiny students are out of sorts; the holidays have shaken up their routine. There is consistently more crying in class then usual. I understand: sometimes I feel like crying too.

My husband was sick during the entire Thanksgiving break. Monday came and both of us went our separate ways. Work, rehearsal, work, sleep. I miss him.

Went to Utah to attend the opera with family. Madame Butterfly was dedicated to my grandpa, a founding Utah Opera board member since it began in the 70’s. It was a whirlwind trip on the heels of a hectic week of rehearsals, scheduling, dodging and ducking. I flew into SLC on Friday night and left Sunday morning. My grandpa’s house remains largely the same since my aunt continues to reside there. It’s comforting to see the old pictures and nick knacks still standing, yet, strangely disconcerting to have my grandpa know longer around…no longer living there. While searching in the cupboards my uncle found an ancient can of apricots:

We also found a historic box of starch. This was back when folks used to starch their clothes. My uncle and I spent a while trying to research the date of the box. It might stretch as far back as the turn of the century but our internet research turned up inconclusive:

The opera was beautiful; I felt horribly under-dressed as we dined at a fancy benefit dinner prior to the show. Men were wearing tuxes and women sported long gowns. I can’t believe I wore my red Dansko clogs to the opera. However, the atmosphere was elegant and festive. Relatives I used to never know but have recently become well acquainted with in the last six month were there (i.e. my great uncle, avid collector of phonographs). We sat at a special table in honor of my grandpa and sat through speeches and pleasantries.

Madame Butterfly is a feminist nightmare. Written at the beginning of the century by the legendary Puccini, the whole opera is one big heartbreak waiting to happen. Chauvinist pig, Captain Pinkerton shows up in the orient, marries a former concubine and then splits. She waits for him dutifully for three years, gives birth to his son, and sing aria after aria about how lucky she is to have him. Pinkerton finally shows up with a new, white, American, replacement bride and let’s everyone know he’s just swinging by to pick up his kid. Madame Butterfly discovers the new wife, realizes her kid is as good as gone, and kills herself. Dang.

This is my brother and I outside the theater:

Every election season my sister-in-law becomes part of the grey…undecided, mostly, with the propensity to go with what feels comfortable: voting Republican. This preference is largely prompted due to family upbringing, religious values, and a healthy distrust of the government. However, she is pro-choice, pro-socialized healthcare, understands the need to have social services, and is well educated. She is a valuable part of shaping my political sanity–for every asinine Republican extremist there is the reminder that many of them represent the practical, rational, thoughts and feelings of my sister-in-law. I can count on her to be reflective, concise, and reasonable with my political questions. I can’t, however, beg her to vote for Obama–I’ve thought about it–because she has a point: he’s inexperienced, young, lacks the foreign policy experience of McCain, and while, I wholeheartedly disagree, she finds him difficult to listen to vocally. Can’t negate that as much as I want to…she’s family after all. It’s very easy to lump all Republicans in a shameless manner, it’s quite a different experience having one sit down at the dinner table. Besides, she has some really great quotes, today one of them being, “Welfare should be limited…instead of giving people free food we should be handing everyone free condoms instead.”