Category: December 2019

I love Christmas cards, so I send them to everyone I know! Actually, I send them to everyone for whom I have a home address. That limits it a lot, particularly in this day and age, when we hardly use snail mail for anything anymore. I’d be sending three times as many cards if I could just get all my friends, acquaintances, ex-coworkers, and people who stood in line with me in the grocery store, to just take a moment and send me their address. Ok, just joking, maybe not that last category.

Some of them are a stretch. I can imagine some of my recipients thinking, “Who are these people? Why are they sending us a card? Who is this ‘Laura’ and ‘Darren’ they’re talking about? And why do we care if they both want a dog?”

Last year John and I had gone to Tucson in November, and we bought cute little cards by a local artist at the gift shop at the botanical garden. But this year we didn’t find anything boxed at the little shops we went to in Tucson. And we didn’t manage to get out to the cute little shops here in Albuquerque. Which is how we found ourselves in Walgreens on Saturday, digging though boxes of horrible Christmas cards, trying to find enough boxes of any one given pattern.

There’s nothing that says I have to send the same card to everyone on my list. But if I have a mixed set of cards, here’s what my brain does. My brain starts trying to decide who should get which kind of card. This is a problem! It slows me down, it’s frustrating, and I don’t know, I don’t have a perfect answer. Some of my recipients I know fairly well and can imagine which card they might prefer. Others I barely know at all. And yet, I still try to figure out which card they might like. Obviously I should tell myself to just send the cards to people randomly and not worry about it. But my brain won’t let me. Thus, I insist on several boxes of the same card.

Rummaging around in a rush in Walgreens the other day, we managed to find several boxes of the same card, the picture was pretty, so great, we were out of there. Done! It wasn’t until I sat down to get them all signed, assembled, and mailed that I realized we had purchased Christian Christmas cards.

I asked John, “Is this ok?” He’s like, “I don’t care.” Do we care? Should we care? And more to the point: are our recipients going to care?

It’s gotten more complicated over the years. It used to be I’d just buy a pretty card, write “Merry Christmas” and send ’em out. Then I started to try to be more sensitive to people of various faiths and non-faiths, and I started writing “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”.

But I hear that “Happy Holidays” isn’t considered neutral anymore, it’s seen as a reaction against “Merry Christmas”, which is not really my intent.

In fact, it seems like being “neutral” nowadays is considered “bad”, as if neutral means apathy or lack of caring. It seems to me it would be useful if a whole lot more of us were actively, openly neutral – or maybe I need a new word for that. A word for a middle way.

So here I was with Christian Christmas cards, and a recipient list that ranged from Christians to atheists to everything in between, plus a whole lot of people whom I simply have no idea what their opinions might be regarding the meaning of Christmas.

Should I apologize for the Christian cards in my letter and risk disappointing those of my friends and family who are Christian? Should I add some sort of inclusive message to try to counter balance the fact that I sent Christian cards? Should I go out and buy a whole new set of cards?

Then it occurred to me that we have a few relatives on John’s side who are Jehovah’s Witnesses. They don’t celebrate Christmas. And here I’ve been cheerfully sending them Christmas cards all these years. Which I guess they haven’t minded, but it does seem sort of insensitive of me. But I don’t want to just leave them out, because then everyone else gets the Christmas letter except them. So I printed a couple of modified letters to say “Happy New Years” and printed those on non-holiday pretty paper, and left out the card and just sent the Happy New Years letter. But I’m still doubtful. I think New Years is ok?

And what about all those people I don’t know very well who maybe also don’t want religious Christmas cards? And part of me is like, “Kristina, you are over-thinking this!” But part of me is also like, well, I’m getting old. And the younger generations are saying things that are new to me.

So maybe we should all put our thinking caps on.

Holy sh*t. Someone just sent us this:

Like seriously? It’s 5 pounds of chocolate. Wha…?

It’s the size of a loaf of bread, but it’s not just chocolate cake or something, it’s solid fudge.

It won’t even fit in a gallon-sized ziplock bag.

There’s no tag but I’m blaming my sister. Only a sibling would do this to me. Plus, like a week ago, she was like, “Do you eat chocolate? And John likes it, right?”

And I just pledged myself to a new diet. What am I going to do with this?

I know, I’ll have another party. This time it will be a chocolate party. This time everyone will come!

We decided to have a tamale making party as part of the pre-Christmas festivities. Unfortunately, the word, “party” turned out to be a bit aspirational. Typically we have no trouble with turn-out to our little get togethers, but less than 2 weeks before Christmas is just a crazy time for everyone. People are sick, people are way behind on their shopping, people have in-laws overflowing the guest room and camped in the living room, people are exhausted and overwhelmed. In fact, I should be doing my Christmas cards right now instead of blogging. It’s the 17th! What am I thinking? My Christmas cards aren’t out yet!

Anyway, only a few friends trickled in and out for the so-called “party”. And to my surprise (after I got over the chagrin of almost no one showing)…I liked it that way. It was really nice to be able to sit and talk quietly with just a few people. I’m realizing I should have people over one family at a time more often. It worked out really well.

And the tamales turned out fantastic!

We also watched football. This little Grinch says he roots for the Ravens, but John was trying to convert him into a Vikings fan. Good luck with that! LOL, who wants to root for the team that chokes in the final quarter, year after year? Plus both his parents root for Green Bay.

Funny story: I was fact-checking this post, and I emailed John, asking, “Katie is a Packards fan and Kyle is…?”

And John wrote back, “LOL! Katie and Kyle are both Green Bay “Packers” fans (as in meat packers). The Packard is an old car. :P”

Shows you how much I know about football. Meat packers? What’s that got to do with anything? I sure don’t understand football. Although for the sake of accuracy, it wasn’t the old car I was thinking of, it has to do with the fact that Laura’s current business client is the Hewlett Foundation (you know, Hewlett, as in Hewlett-Packard) lol.

Speaking of football, I am now apparently an official Seahawks fan. This happened accidentally recently. The Vikings were playing the Seahawks and we were texting Laura, who is a Seahawks fan. John and Laura were encouraging me to take a side (since I really don’t care). How am I supposed to choose between my husband’s team and my daughter’s team? So I told them I’d root for whichever team won the game.

Later that night, as I was peacefully reading a magazine, the Seahawks won and Laura texted me:

So that’s how I became a Seahawks fan. But I’m still not really into it.

Not really into old cars either.

Totally into tamales though!

Shortly before Christmas is a dumb time to start a weight loss diet. Why can’t I wait until after New Years like everyone else?

At first I didn’t mind too much. It’s only 10 pounds, and it came on slowly. I’m over 50; I deserve my extra 10!

It has been a little annoying that I can’t fit into most of my pants, and those I do fit into are tighter than comfy. But it’s much easier to buy new pants than go on a diet.

So why the sudden decision?

A couple of days ago I was walking along and suddenly I was thinking, “What is that in my pants? Have I got my undies in a bunch? My butt feels weird.”

A little while later I was thinking, “What the heck? Was I sitting on that bike too long and numbed my butt?”

Something was clearly not right. I kept being like, “Wait, what IS that?”

Well, “that” was my own butt. I could feel my butt when I was walking around! And somehow that was just not ok with me. Not.at.all.ok. Like, no. Nope. There clearly needs to be less butt. I already exercise almost daily. So that means…well, you all know what that means. Less butt = less food.

It’s fitting – and sort of sad, that this post is immediately after “Sourdough Experiment #2“.

And it’s Christmastime!!! (wail)

John refused to take my advice to try rising the dough warmer than room temperature. Instead he used more starter and made a dryer dough. He rose it all day at room temperature, refrigerated it overnight, and baked it in the morning. It was a 70 degree rise instead of something closer to 58 degrees (the first time when he rose it at night), but it was still nothing like the 80 degrees I was recommending.

Regardless of the cold rise, I thought it turned out great!

John thinks it’s still too heavy and too sour, and is wondering why anyone bothers with sourdough when plain old yeast bread is so much easier to make. But in my opinion sourdough is has more flavor. And I still think it would be less heavy and less sour if he did a warmer rise. But I’m not saying that because I just want him to stay motivated to keep experimenting…yum, yum!

Laura sent me these pictures, of a Diwali festival, the Hindu festival of lights. They celebrated it at her workplace.

Here they are dancing:

Laura wore her kameez (traditional tunic) that Alex got for her in Pakistan.

She was adorned with a mark on her forehead that was made by a woman dipping her finger in oil, then red powder, then what looked like coconut flakes but was probably actually rice, and pressing it all to her forehead:

Someday I should write more about everything she gets to do at work. It’s pretty amazing.

Darren sent me this light pollution map:

Darren comments, “It’s really interesting to see that line going down the middle of the US with all the dark sky to the west. And how basically all of Canada is on the border.”

Then John and I debated whether that line down the middle was actually real, but I guess so. Wow.

https://darksitefinder.com/maps/world.html#5/38.152/-91.758

I don’t get my hair cut very often. Typically, I’m “growing it out.” Except I’m not deliberately growing it out, I’m just not bothering to get it cut, and…it grows.

Why am I cutting it now? It’s mid-winter, and it’s cold. Every time I wash it (which is every single day, hello, I’m over 50, why do I still seem to need to wash my hair every day?) Anyway, every day I wash it and it’s all wet and cold. So I blow dry it, but I’m not a patient person, so I don’t stand there and blow dry it long enough, so it’s still damp a few hours later. It’s too much hair.

Here’s what it looked like this Monday before I got it cut. It’s been longer in the past, but still, it was a lot of hair.

Here’s the picture from 2006 that I texted to the hairdresser when she asked what I wanted done. It’s a picture of me holding Kai when he was a puppy in October of 2006.

Uh, wow, my hair was a lot redder back then! And Kai was such a cute puppy!

I told the hairdresser to just cut it, don’t bother with styling. So she cut it dry, which is unusual; usually they cut it wet. When I came out of the salon it looked totally chopped. (I can’t believe I’m willing to post this picture, but it makes a good story.)

I wasn’t too worried. I knew it would adjust and curl up as soon as it was washed. It looks particularly bad in that picture not because it was straight (I love straight hair). It looks bad because it is naturally wavy but the wave was mostly pulled out by the weight of the long hair pulling it down and it drying that way. That’s why it looks so awkward and chopped. It wasn’t naturally straight, it had dried while weighted down from the rest of the hair, before it was cut off.

Here it is while wet and I’m waiting to see what it will do. It’s already starting to curl up:

When I went home and washed it, it felt like there was nothing there! How short was it? It felt like I had bald patches in the back! I was washing nothing!

Just checking, ok, looks like there is hair back there…

Here it is that night:

I’m terrible at selfies, but the haircut is getting a good reception. Even John liked it! He said I look 10 years younger 🙂

For fun we tried to reenact the photo from the summer of 2006 that I took into the hairdresser as a guide for the haircut. Kai and I are both 13 years older and it shows! This is like the “before and after” advertisements, except “before” is better than “after”, lol.