I wasn’t able to worm out of watching the home movies again after all, but I enjoyed it. We are about half-way through and I confess : I was the one who made the comments on the hot-pants the sons used to wear as children. And the sandals. With socks. We are up to about ’75, when The Father was 17-18 and he is beginning to look like the person that I would meet 5 years later. Going through his Father’s files, we found that there are a lot of movies that we haven’t seen, including one of our wedding ! So, we will be watching more.

Another ‘Holiday Tradition’ that we have is that sometime during the Christmas vacation we all watch the film ‘Titanic’ together. Including The Father. The kids and I are crazy about the movie and The Father likes it well enough, but he keeps that fact hidden as he gets so much teasing ammunition out of it : ‘Oh, Jack !’ And tonight is the big night. Popcorn, the works. I wanted to have one film that would be related to a Holiday, sortof like when I was a kid and you knew that when Thanksgiving rolled around, so would ‘The Wizard of Oz’. That is a rather difficult thing to do, when you can just buy a copy of any film and watch it any time. But for us, ‘Titanic’ is our Christmas movie.

And tonight is the night.

We are all recovering from Christmas- you know, hanging around the house in our pajamas, shuffling about. The Father spent the morning coloring in The Baby’s color book and has now taken off to L. with The Girl to pick up his parent’s old home movies. He is going to show them to the kids this afternoon. This should be interesting.

I have seen the old home movies from his family once- possibly twice- before. It seems to be one of those ubiquitous rites of passage that one must go through as a relationship develops. I liked the first few hours fine, but as the showing stretched out into a couple of evenings, I must admit, at moments my attention wandered.

So The Father wants to take this Holiday season to show the kids the films, you know, there’s Papa at 8, there is Papa with his leather hat and mo-ped at 16 and so on. I have warned The Father that the kids might not be as reverent as he might wish, in fact, they may use this opportunity to mock and shun him. I am sure that Oma thought that he looked adorable in that little suit with shorts, ankle socks and what assuredly must have been brown oxfords, but, well, times and fashions have changed.

I myself think that I will take a nap. This sounds like one of those Father-Offspring things and I certainly don’t want to butt in, interfere.

Plus I have sat through those films twice before.

I have never had morning sickness. This always left me feeling rather smugly fortunate. How very macho the simple fact that I didn’t begin my days by barfing all over my carpet slippers made me feel.

Now I’m rather thinking that there is a bright side to morning sickness : as long as one is booting away on a regular basis it does rather hint that things are going well.

Yep, I’m one of those people who has trouble sleeping, which is odd- given a choice, I would simply sleep all day long. I love a good sleep. But tonight we had Oma and Opa over and it went past my magic bedtime ( we were playing canasta, of all things. And won. But who is counting.) of 1 am, so here I sit. It is 3.30 am and I am wide awake.

It is indeed a creepy hour to be awake . I start going back into the past. Sgt. Rock sent me a letter a while ago. He wants me to write him a real letter, you know, pen and ink, like we did for so many years. He asked that of me a few years ago as well, and I complied. It was a very nice letter- I thought. As far as I know, he never received it. He lives in Saudi, you know. I should very much like to write to him now, but really, the knowledge that he will probably never receive it rather dampens the whole atmosphere, doesn’t it ?

Share in the season of well, sharing. Right click and take this wreath. Link back to the site you took it from. Leave a message in the comments if you do it – We’d all like to see where it goes! Let’s celebrate the holidays around the web!

Pass it on! And don’t forget to let us know where it goes from here.

from joel

What a happy little hog I am : Santa really surprised me and brought me an aquarium. And I’m going to fill it with the most boring fish to be found because those are the fish that I like best : neons, some fancy tailed guppies and those fish that suck along the surface of the glass.

I love it.

Thanks, Santa ( : K.K. ), hope you are having a fine old time as well.

The sun is shining
The grass is green
The orange and palm trees sway.
I’ve never seen such a day
In Beverly Hills LA.
But it’s December the 24th
And I am longing to be up North.

I’m dreaming of a white Christmas
Just like the ones I used to know.
Where the treetops glisten,
And children listen
To hear sleigh bells in the snow.
I’m dreaming of a white Christmas
With every Christmas card I write.
May your days be merry and bright.
And may all your Christmases be white

Jack Kapp, Bing’s record producer, thought the opening verse would be meaningless outside the film and persuaded Bing not to record it. He never did.

Oh, it’s raining here. Do I care ?

The energy level here is amazing. I’m sure that if it could be harnessed it could transport our house to Oz and back. I rather suspect that our go at cleaning the house this afternoon will closely resemble that Mary Poppins scene, you know, that one where she is trying to convince the kids that cleaning up is fun. I wonder if she was Dutch ?

I’m finding that this Holiday season provides me with great retorts for my never ending procrastination. Within the last few days The Father has asked me a number of things :

” Have you arranged to do the banking over the Internet yet ?”
- response: The papers just came in last Friday. Let’s get through Christmas first.

” Have you moved that FrontPage site yet ? ”
- response: First I have to figure out how to move a data base. Let’s get through Christmas first.

Handy, no ?

The Boy is very excited about Christmas Eve. In fact, I suspect that he is a bit too excited. He has been bouncing around the house making high pitched, annoying sounds all day. I fear that if his excitement level cranks up another notch, his head will separate from his body and take off for Mars. Or that I will suggest to him that we re-enact his favorite film : ‘The Mummy’ and guess who The Boy will be playing ?

I can’t believe it : we actually seem to be ready for Christmas to arrive. The Girl helped wrap the last of the gifts today, I mailed out the Christmas cards ( damned Dutch postal service !), cleaned up 300 grams of Dutch shrimp ( I cleaned this in the living room, while The Baby was watching ‘Pinocchio’ . Anyone else ever notice how, well, simple minded Geppetto was ?) and have 3 pounds of cocktail shrimp thawing in the sink. Tomorrow the kids and I will tidy up a wee bit ( and only a wee bit) as we listen to ‘Blue Christmas’ playing in the background, then prepare the dishes of seafood for dinner. As well as the two kinds of shrimp, we will be having eels , smoked salmon, a salmon salad and a sort of potato salad ( Huzaren). I even have extra french bread in the freezer just-in-case the bakery is out tomorrow. We have two bottles of Santa Christina in the cupboard and I’m in for this.

I just love Christmas.