On Being A Tourist

I'm way behind schedule, I admit it. Oh, it isn't the loan files - they're in good shape. The books are up to date (through November anyhow; I'll finish them once I've got the December bank statements) and from there it isn't far to TurboTax and the dreaded Infernal Revenue Service and Oklahoma Tax Commission filings. All of the invoices are paid, the household items are handled, and the sink's clear of dishes. The small stuff's all caught up.

Nope, I'm behind on vacation.

Usually by this point in the year's festivities, we've got the e-tickets firmly in hand (or at least in the in-box) for our annual pilgrimage-in-reverse to England. I love it there - it's beautiful, and it's different, and when the phone rings, it isn't for me (or if it is, it's somebody wanting to do something fun). So, tonight I spent three hours snooting through booking websites (Expedia, Cheap Tickets, Orbitz, eBookers, American, Continental, Delta, United, and British Airways) looking for the path from Oklahoma City to Manchester that would have the least impact on the bank accounts.

Why do tourists get gouged? I mean, apart from one trip at Christmas, we've always gone in the spring (because there's nothing I like better than leaving Oklahoma for tornado season). The most we've ever paid for tickets up to now is something like $3000 ... but I'm staring at a minimum of $3950 here, and that's if we load up the big blue truck and drive to Dallas to catch a plane (involving a three-hour drive each way, gas for said big blue truck, and a month's worth of parking at DFW, which would cost $650 all by itself). Flying out of OKC, the minimum price is $4250, involving a six-hour layover in Chicago on the way home. I can only imagine how icky the whole thing would get (and how quickly I'd see my beloved annual sabbatical head straight down the drain) if we had to pay for a hotel in England for the whole stay.

Seriously, who came up with this stupid idea? I have to be missing something major somewhere. There can't be anybody who honestly thinks that it makes sense to crank up the prices during vacation season to the point of making it financially impossible for people to go on vacation. Some airlines now require that you bring your own pillows and blankets if you want them, and some offer you the indignity of the $8 snack box, while nearly everybody wants to charge extra if you want a paper ticket rather than the flimsy e-ticket (which is a cool thing at Disneyland, but not so easy to get to when the ol' surfboard modem is having hot flashes). You don't dare pack everything you think you'll need, because there are weight limits and excess charges if you exceed those limits with your luggage.

Argh. It's a good thing for the airlines that the blonde values her sanity enough to pony up these ridiculous prices just to get away from a ringing phone.

Anniversary of an Arrival

People celebrate the immediate aftermath of Christmas in different ways. Some folks get up at the butt-crack of dawn to revisit the shopping frenzy of the day after Thanksgiving. Some enjoy extended holidays by meeting up with extra-familial others for fellowship. Still others turn thoughts to the New Year that's soon to arrive, plotting parties and lists of resolutions. There are any number of combinations of these and other activities that can occupy the day after Christmas (known as Boxing Day in certain "civilized countries" where football really is played with the feet).

None of these things are in the offing at our house. No, we have a different way of doing things on 26 December. You see, it's elder daughter's birthday, and therefore warrants its own special considerations. There's another whole story that goes along with our precious Kymber Cathleen's entrance to the world, and I won't bore you with that (at least not now), but this seems an appropriate time and place to celebrate her.

She was born at 9:45 PM CST on Tuesday 26 December 1995, and was named for two women who were among my closest friends at the time. It was felt that a name both special and unique was crucial for this little creature, something that could be cutesy for a small child yet that could be modified to reflect growing maturity and independence as time marched on. Therefore, Kimberly Ann and Kathryn Anne were tailored to become Kymber Cathleen, and we decided to call her Kaci (her initials, adapted, so as not to offend either of my two friends by calling her the other one's name).

I don't have any of her baby pictures scanned to put in here, but trust me when I say that she was a most beautiful wee lass, always smiling and giggling and laughing. She exhibited an amazing grasp of language and communications skills even from being quite small, and has always been a warm and loving being with a seemingly endless supply of hugs for giving away. She accepts others for what they are ... she's tolerant (and even embracing) of the wide and various differences between people ... she loves unconditionally. Besides that, she's a voracious reader, a straight-A student, and a true beauty. Heck, the only real gripe I have with the kid is that she's only shorter than I am by about an inch, and I expect to be looking up at her when I start laying down the law about what time she'll come in once she starts driving or (gasp, shudder) dating!

Her idea of the perfect birthday has changed over time. It used to be that we needed a party with her friends and gifts and cake and such. Today, however, it's a smaller event: we will fetch one of her friends and go out for a fru-fru girlie lunch, then hit the day spa for pampering (massages, facials, manicures, pedicures, makeup, and hair up-do for the little darlings ... with a massage also for me ... who says there aren't perks?). This evening, we'll meet up with said friend's family at Shogun, a Japanese hibachi restaurant, for dinner and cake.

So, then, here are some proud-mommy photos of our darling Kymber Cathleen on the occasion of her eleventh birthday.

K.C. as a cheerleader on Halloween

(with Kieran as a Power Ranger and Kendall as *the* Princess)

K.C. at her first game as a cheerleader

K.C. up to bat

K.C. holding Isabella, a friend's daughter

K.C. this morning, still in her jammies

What lucky people we truly are to know this delightful individual. Thank you, my sweet monkey-angel, for being all of the things that you are. I love you!

'Twas the night before Christmas ... reprise

Wow. That's all I can say. Wow.

I started just after high noon, with fear and doubt in my heart (neither of which are traditional holiday heart-feelings). But let's call it Miracle on Memorial Road, because the final sallying forth for Christmas 2006 was not fraught with tension and strain and fighting over parking spots and the last {insert hot toy name here} or anything like that. No, really, it was great! (This brings new fear, though ... I might put it all off till Christmas Eve EVERY year if it's going to be this easy!)

I started at Barnes & Noble. Found everything I wanted, up to and including recommendations from a member of their staff who (a) had actually read everything he was telling me was so great, and (b) wasn't 50 pounds of bad attitude in a 25-pound bag, and (c) conducted our chat with a smile on his face that was (or at least seemed to be) totally genuine. WTF? Have I somehow failed to notice a rip in the space-time continuum and sauntered unknowingly into Bizarro World? I felt sure that my next stop would be light-years worse.

Retailer #2 on today's hit parade was Target. Now really, if ever there was a mass-market place that you are certain will be a sh*tstorm in the few hours before the Christmas shopping season officially ends, it's gotta be there, right? Wrong. The shelves were stocked (with notable exceptions of the two new game consoles, but so what, I have one of those ... WOOHOO!), the staff were smiling and helpful without that look in their eyes that reveals that management has force-fed everyone 100 mg of Valium, and hey looka here, I got a great parking space. That's two in a row. What gives? It all had to end soon, of course. It couldn't be any other way.

At the mall, I had to park out in western Iowa (or what passes for it in northwest Oklahoma City). Aha, I thought, this is the telltale sign. It's far enough past noon that everyone's gone home from church, changed clothes, and bolted to the mall (it's okay, Granny, we'll hit the food court when we get there). Gotta quote Steve Martin here: "But NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" I zipped from shop to shop, quickly finding that which I sought and getting through the payment stage with the greatest of ease (with one notable exception ... Gap had exactly two people at the cash-wrap, leaving four registered unmanned and resulting in a 20-minute wait). Gift boxes were offered! Duplicate receipts were had just for the asking! Customers were warmly wished a happy holiday! Surely this isn't the real world? I nearly decided not to bother with the last place on my to-do list (the grocery store), being overcome with a totally unnatural terror that I'd get caught in the police sweep that would surely follow a fistfight erupting over the last smoked Butterball. How would I explain THAT to my mother?

With fear and loathing in my very core, I ventured off to Albertson's ... when what to my wondering eyes should appear but a FRONT ROW parking space. As I maneuvered the three-ton sport utility vehicle into it, I was absolutely confounded. Entering the store, I found plenty of shopping carts that didn't seem to be mating, followed by a smiling and happy employee dressed like an elf handing out a flyer of today's "last-minute" specials. Alas, they were out of refrigerated sugar-cookie dough and shredded Velveeta! OMG, what's a girl to do? Why, a girl's to ask the nice person cheerfully filling the empty sugar-cookie dough bins with toffee dough, and thence be directed to the baking aisle, where a girl would find plenty of blonde-proof sugar-cookie dough mix, and thence to the pasta aisle, where there were blocks of Velveeta to be had that simply begged to be shredded lovingly at home.

Honestly, I don't know what to think. My husband hasn't pestered me mercilessly until I reveal what's in the packages with his name on, my children have been even better behaved than usual (and really, for the most part they are more angelic than monstrous), and elder daughter's dad (the starter husband) has been quite civil (if not exactly cordial) in chats about how to most effectively transport her from Home A to Home B.

It's been looking a lot like Christmas for weeks (months, in the stores) ... but today, at last, it FEELS like Christmas.

Wishing you and yours the happiest of holidays!

'Twas the night before Christmas

Nearly done. Nearly done. I've been saying that for days now, and yet every time I think I've gone for the last round of procuring, I discover that while I may be closer to achieving the elusive "done" than I was the day before, I'm not really anywhere close. :::sigh:::

The spousal unit's gift was easy, as was shopping for elder daughter. Mom's is done, grandmother's is done, friends' are done. It's the twins that present the issues. They have at least a kajillion toys scattered all over the house in various states of completeness, and bringing more into the house just because it's Christmas seems something of a travesty, a bad joke. I came of age in the 80s, that blissful era of conspicuous consumption, but there seems something very wrong with allowing my children to get and get and get ... and then get more. If I could just get them to take care of what they've got, it might be different, but until that happens ...

So I think this year, instead of mountains of boxes wrapped under the tree, they'll get maybe one or two more gifts from Dad and Mum (your friendly blonde stood in line for a Wii, and that counts as one big'un), and then we'll start a special new tradition. I think we'll do one of those child-sponsor things, and maybe they'll expand on the social responsibility that we nudged them into at Halloween (rather than having monstrous bucketfuls of candy - which typically results in wrappers and chocolate smears in places where they shouldn't be - we trick-or-treated for UNICEF ... and bless whoever put UNICEF commercials on Cartoon Network or the Disney Channel where the little monsters could see them).

With that in mind, though, I've still got tons to do. My in-laws live something like 5000 miles away, so I am tasked each year with purchasing birthday and Christmas gifts and tagging them as being from the grandparents. That remains to be done, along with the baking of cookies (chocolate chip for Santa, decorated sugar for the extended-family do) and the preparing of the Christmas Dinner menu. (I'm not scared of roasting a turkey any longer, but I took the easy way out for this little festival and bought a smoked tom that only wants thawing and heating ... it's the side dishes that are going to take time that I really haven't got.)

So then it boils down to logistics. The mall and the big-box kids are all going to slam shut at six o'clock this evening (presumably with a great sigh of relief tempered with trepidation over the masses that will jam the parking lots on Tuesday), so I've got to map out this final round of fetching very carefully in order to maximize my acquisition prospects. The spousal unit has also chosen today to propose that "we" go shopping for my gift. (I swear I'm going to design a new family crest bearing the motto "Never do today what you can put off for six weeks"!)

Here goes ...

Wii Wii Wii All The Way Home

Now I know how Charlie Bucket felt ...

I GOT A GOLDEN TICKET!!!

Yes, that was me, out of bed at 5:45 CST ... into the shower to wake up ... then on with umpteen layers of long-johns and four pairs of socks (not that they helped) and out into the 23F (12F wind-chill) morning to start Thumper, the trusty Expedition ... then after Thumper had time to warm up, off into the breach in hot pursuit. You see, I'd been out on 19 November at an ungodly hour (although not ungodly enough, as it turned out) to get a Nintendo Wii on the launch date at the urging of the spousal unit. ("For the children!" Uh-huh.) I'd first gone to Circuit City, where there was a thoughtful sign in the window saying ...

WE HAVE 13 NINTENDO WII UNITS FOR SALE ON SUNDAY 11/19

... I was number 14 ... so I went to Toys R Us, where the line was far less long (and the wait was on the south side of the store, out of the chilly north wind). I seemed to be fairly well in the hunt, but as the opening hour approached, several individuals materialized out of the parking lot to join the line ahead of me (and just exactly how that works out, I couldn't say ... but somehow it didn't seem either nice or fair). At five minutes ahead of the magical moment, someone from the store came out to hand out tickets for the units they had available, starting at the front of the line and working back toward where I stood (and the 50 or so others after me). At three people ahead of me, the poor guy handed over one last ticket and said, "I'm sorry, everybody else, that's it, that's all we have for today, and we don't know when we'll get more." There was some massive grumbling and gnashing of teeth, but those of us who hadn't been there since midnight the night before (or fortunate enough to have jumped the line) eventually wandered off. As it turns out, the fellow who'd ventured out with the tickets was someone I've known since fifth grade (yes, that's a long time ago, but boys don't typically change much ... most of them don't wear makeup, although some do shave their heads or grow ZZ Top beards or whatever ... but this one hadn't). I said hello, and he offered condolences for my not having got a ticket. Being me (and not the shy retiring type), I asked when some more were coming. He looked around to be sure he wouldn't be overheard, and then told me that he'd know a shipment was coming the day before it got here. I gave him my business cards and asked if he might give me a ring when he knew some were arriving, and bless him, he said he couldn't hold one for me, but he would do his best to phone when notice came that arrival was imminent.

Yesterday morning I got the call, and today I was up before the sun in order to have a chance (better than that of a snowball that's crossed the Styx) at getting a Wii. Thumper got me to the store at about 7:00 ... I was number 16 in line ... and the wait began. By 7:30, my toes were a bit numb; by 8:15, I didn't seem to have any feet at all. At 8:55, someone came out and began handing out tickets (wow, have I been here before?), but we'd been far more alert to folks appearing in line that hadn't been there all this time (and in fairness, there wasn't any of that this go-round), and so one of the tickets found its way into my hand! WOOHOO!!! (I really did feel badly for the people behind me in line ... but not badly enough - or mercenary enough - to sell my ticket.)

We trooped into the store in an amazingly orderly fashion (to be honest, I was expecting a scene out of "Death Race 2000") and into the area of the store where the games and such live before they're off to good homes. I got an extra remote (but not an extra nunchuk -- those were gone in a blink) and sleeves for the controllers, then got in line to make my purchase. Soon, I was the proud owner of a Nintendo Wii, two remotes, one nunchuk, two sleeves, Ultimate Alliance, and Zelda. Did I already say WOOHOO!!! (Sorry ... couldn't help myself.)

Six hours after emerging from the shower, I'm off back to bed. I'm just about able to feel my feet again (and yes, I know that the awful prickly/tingly thing going on in my feet means I don't need to see about having them amputated due to frostbite, but that doesn't make it a NICE feeling) and the layers are making me a little snarly.

But hey, I got a Wii ... WOOHOO!!!

Tree's A Crowd

Firstly, many thanks to my loving spousal unit (the most fantastic man in the universe, bar none) for the title of this post. He's just so darned clever!

Today's fun family we're-still-snowed-in task was decorating the living room for Christmas (other bits of the house will get done as and when we can be bothered over the next couple of weeks). Since we'd bought some cute little trinkets to put on it for this year (gotta have a new look, right? I mean, just because it's a tree doesn't mean it should be stuck wearing the same old thing year after year), I asked my darling husband to fetch the stockings and Santa hat down from the upstairs "just stick it in there, we won't need it for a while" closet/disaster area. He brought them down ... along with a few big shopping bags full of unused tree-dressings from prior years! Too bad, too late, I'd already opened the snowflakes and Nutcracker ornaments, so everything else will get shoved back into the upstairs closet for another day, unless there's some other tree somewhere that just shrieks out for doing up.

Here's the view with the camera flash on ...

Then here's one that's MUCH more shiver-up-your-back, taken by said spousal unit (who knows how to turn the flash off -- something that's remained a mystery to me until tonight) ...

And finally, a photo of my precious Mark, together with twins Kendall (on the left, wearing her Cinderella costume from Halloween ... hey, a holiday's a holiday) and Kieran.

Owing to the Blizzard of November 2006 (and no, it probably wasn't that drastic in terms of what people in Maine and Montana and other bits of the Great White North get, but for us it was major), some bits that Mark had ordered for the outdoor display haven't arrived yet, so I'll leave the posting of the exterior extravaganza for another day (like one when it's actually out).

Tomorrow I must venture out into the wild ... there's shopping to be done, and it's of a sort that requires anyone wishing to actually acquire a ___________ (I'll fill that blank in for you later) to be at a certain venue at or before a certain time in order to have any hope of actually procuring one. Argh, the things we do at Christmas!

The Gargoyle's Relent

Freeze at last, freeze at last ... we got Mum to let us freeze at last! (Kieran couldn't find his gloves, so it turned into a life lesson ... if you don't put stuff away properly, it won't be accessible when you truly need it!)