A Useful Pre-Christmas List

Today is the 22nd of December.  Three days until Christmas.

Perhaps you're scrambling right now, trying to get everything everything everything done before Christmas.

Or maybe you're a born procrastinator (here!), and you're looking for something to do that will enable you to put off all those seemingly important things you have to do.  If that is you, well, friends, the internet and I are here to help.

A Few Things to Look at Instead of Doing Whatever You Should Be Doing Right Now

(Stop sighing, Derek, Mr. Responsible.  I am providing a service.)

• In the spirit of Christmas, first up is an article about old suitcases that were found in a now-defunct mental asylum.  They belonged to patients who presumably died within its walls, and each is now a unique time capsule, brought to life by photographer Jon Crispin.  Here's the article my sister originally shared, and here's the original Willard Suitcases website if you want to see more.

• If insane asylums don't give you the holiday feel-goods, maybe this article by Anne Lamott will, which begins thusly:

"I used to hear in early sobriety that if you had an idea after 10:00 pm, it was probably a bad idea.

I think the same is true about any ideas you may have in the next few days.

Everyone is very crazy. Some of us are better at covering this up than others. Some people will say how cheerful they feel and how much they love the holidays; but these are very angry people. Try not to be alone with them for any length of time."

• And finally, here's a video Caedmon watched three times in a row this morning.  Derek and I often joke that Cade is a future politician (*shudder*), with his ability to charm the public at large and his penchant for baby-kissing.  He's excellent at saying exactly what I want to hear, such as the following, excerpted from our conversation this morning:  

"Mommy, do you know what my favorite Christmas song is?"

"I don't.  What is it?"

"'Mary Did You Know?' because I like the words."

At that point I was torn between gushing and skepticism- I mean, he really was laying it on a bit thick.  

Anyway, as half the western hemisphere is currently obsessed with Pentatonix, I had seen this video, and decided that just in case it really was his favorite, I'd reinforce it with some lovely a capella harmonies.  

List!

(Not to be confused with Liszt!  Because I don't even play the piano!)


I haven't made a list in a while.  Let's rectify that mistake, shall we?

• I went garage sale-ing (what is the correct usage of that verb?  Is it saleing, saling, sale-ing?  Someone help me) this morning.  Four t-shirts, one long-sleeved shirt, two pairs of shorts, one jacket, one fancy winter dress that I'm hoping will last two Christmas seasons (all name brands and in excellent condition) and $10 later, Adelaide declared, "I LOVE garage sale-ing!"  I'm pretty sure this is what God was talking about when he said that you should train your children up early.  Yes, definitely.  Definitely talking about garage sales.

• Caedmon has learned how to climb out of his crib.  When I learned this I may or may not have wailed something like, "MY LIFE IS OVER."  He refuses to show me how he does it, possibly because that might put an end to finding him sitting on the kitchen counter early in the morning, shoving fistfuls of cereal into his mouth straight of the box.  I cannot handle the thought of him moving up to a regular bed, one without high sides and confining bars.  Terrible things will happen.

• Sometimes I hate Facebook; yesterday it was fun.  At least a dozen people posted this series of maps, specifically, "22 Maps that Show How Americans Speak English Totally Different From Each Other."  While the awkward phrasing of that title drove me a little crazy, the maps were so fun to peruse.  When we moved to Connecticut, I was amazed at how many times people would stare at me, bewildered, because of my word choices.  Even here in Iowa, I find plenty of linguistic dissimilarities from my southern Kansas home.  These maps seemed pretty accurate, not to mention fascinating.  And so funny.  Why yes, those are crawdads living in the creek, Derek just commented last week on my pronunciation of "lawyer" (it's not loyer; it's law-yer.  Hence the spelling.  Note:  this rule does not hold true for the word "caramel."  Because I said so.), and of course they're tennis shoes.  You really need to look at those maps if you want to have any idea of anything I just said.

Read the Super-Fun Language Maps Here!

• Another fun thing from Facebook:  Remember how I once told you guys about how much I loved working at the bookstore pre-children, and how one of my co-workers and I bonded over a mutual distaste for Dan Brown?  (This was at the height of "The Da Vinci Code" craze, and yes, that previous statement was an out of control run-on sentence.  I am aware.)  Anyway.  A friend of mine posted the funniest thing I've read in a long time onto my wall, or timeline, or whatever the kids are calling it these days:  A satirical article on Dan Brown and his newest book.  Here's one gem I mined for you, in case you're too lazy to click the link:  "New book Inferno, the latest in his celebrated series about fictional Harvard professor Robert Langdon, was inspired by top Italian poet Dante. It wouldn’t be the last in the lucrative sequence, either. He had all the sequels mapped out. The Mozart Acrostic. The Michelangelo Wordsearch. The Newton Sudoku."  If you've read any of his books, you'll find the article hilarious.  If not, it's funny anyway and you should definitely read it.  Because I said so.

Read the Super-Fun Article Making Fun of Dan Brown's so-called Writing Style Here!

• The kiddos and I are headed south early next week.  I'll stick around for about a day, just long enough so that they don't think I drove all that way just to abandon them (even though the very opposite is true, muahahahaha!).  Then I will leave them with their grandparents (my mom and Mark and Derek's folks are splitting up the time), and I will leave.  I will visit a few people for a few days, all by myself, and then I will drive home, all by myself.  I won't see the kids again until the grandparents drive them back up here about a week and a half later.  A week and a half later.  I was telling a friend of mine that it kind of feels like Derek and I have a mild case of Senioritis, but rather than counting down the days 'til graduation, we've been counting down to the moment I drop the kids off.  It's going to be glorious.

• Adelaide has been immersed in a series of books called "Warriors."  It's about these wild cats (not wildcats, but what appear to be clans of Felis catus, who look down on kittypets- cats with owners- and engage in fierce battles of territory and food and the like), and there are enough books in the series- upwards of  37- to have kept her engaged for a couple months now.  This new fascination has infected many other parts of her life, which is fun, but yesterday she introduced me to a new one: the possible inability to separate life from fantasy.  While we were discussing the trip south, she announced that she's going to be sure to spend plenty of time alone with my mom's cat, Ed, an old man of a cat.  She says she's going to try and find out if there are any Thunder Clans or River Clans living nearby, and where Ed sits in the feline hierarchy.  (These books are great for elementary age vocab, by the way.)  I tried to tell her that Ed's been a kittypet for years, but she would not be persuaded.  So Ed's about to get a whole lot of attention, wanted or not.

• I was sure I had more bullet-point-worthy news, but darned if I can think of it right now.  Maybe I'll just add to this list over the next few days.  [Update:  Hey, I actually did it!  I've added two bullet points already!  Go me!]