My husband and I were half-watching football tonight.  Then the gray-bearded face of Bret Farve appeared on the screen and I said, “Look at that gray in his beard!”

And my husband shrugged and said, “He’s old.  He’s your age.”

Well.

Okay then.

(Forty-four, almost forty-five and I promise you I do not look a day over sixty-two.)

Merry Christmas!  I started writing a post earlier and abandoned it completely to finish making Christmas dinner.  I didn’t remember that I’d even started it until I was sitting in the movie theater, waiting for my movie to begin.  (I saw “Up in the Air.”  I liked it.)

Tomorrow, I’m heading to Seattle with my daughter for our annual Christmas outing to see a performance of the Nutcracker Ballet.  I’m looking forward to it.

I’ll tell you all about it later!

My kids are giddy with excitement. How will they ever wait until Christmas Day?  Oh, the anticipation!

I’m less giddy.  In fact, I’d have to say I’m mostly weary.  I don’t feel any Christmas magic, no holiday glow.  That’s how it is when you’re the mom, the Man Behind the Curtain who makes all the magic happen.

Plus, my house is an absolute wreck because all the kids have been home wreaking havoc while I’m sitting at my desk working.  (But I have two whole days off, following by the weekend, so I must admit to feeling giddy about that).  Tomorrow, everyone will be helping clean up.  Merry Christmas Eve, kids!

Last year at this time snow covered everything and we were essentially housebound.  This year we’re going to the Christmas Eve service at Mars Hill where Grace will be performing Christmas carols with a children’s choir.  I am looking forward to that.  She can’t wait to wear her beautiful dress and her shiny black shoes with heels.  To finally have a child who loves shoes is a delight.

I have managed to get all the gifts wrapped and the stocking stuffers organized.  I baked a batch of cookies but took them all to a Christmas party, so I might bake tomorrow.  I’m not sure.  I don’t want to be totally stressed out in the kitchen all day.  I think tidying up is more important.

But not as important as sleeping in.  After so many years of being woken early by children I have fully embraced the luxury of sleeping in again.  Also?  I’m reading Jeannette Walls’ The Glass Castle and all I really want to do is finish reading it.  It would probably be irresponsible of me to sleep in and then read instead of springing out of bed like an industrious homemaker and baking a few batches of cookies.  I’ll let you know who wins:  The Industrious Homemaker or the Slothful Sleepy Reader.

Last night I wrote my Christmas letter.  I finished it at almost 3 a.m., but it needs revision and sprucing up.  It’ll be sent out by Valentine’s Day at the very latest.  Well, perhaps St. Patrick’s Day.  Let’s not rush into these things.  If you send your letter out really late, you discover who is only sending you a card because you sent one first.  So there’s that.

I’ve been writing annual Christmas letters since 1991–I have a file of them (I’m missing one year, the year Grace was born).  I read through them all last night (seeking inspiration).  It’s such an odd thing to read a year-by-year summary of life, all the way from being a childless couple to being the parents of four kids, including two that are almost 17.  It’s almost as strange as reading Christmas letters from friends who include photographs of their children GETTING MARRIED, especially when you knew the friends before they even gave birth to those particular kids.

It’s all proof of one thing.  We are getting old.  As if the mirror hadn’t mentioned that fact to me already.

Merry Christmas Eve!  May you experience Christmas peace and perhaps the joy of doing what you want at some point over the next four days.  Even the Man Behind the Curtain deserves a break from time to time.

I have yet to write my much-acclaimed Christmas letter.  (Do not snicker.  It is much-acclaimed and causes me a mild panic every year when I contemplate writing another one.)

I haven’t baked a single Christmas cookie, nor wrapped a gift.

I can’t even remember where I put the kids’ Christmas lists.

Bah-humbug.

Send eggnog.  Wait.  Send a million dollars and a maid.  And a therapist.

Thank you and good-night.

Eleven-year old Zach has been doing a snow ritual to summon snow.  I don’t know exactly what this ritual involves–other than an ice cube–but apparently it worked for this afternoon, while driving home from church, I spotted the first tiny snowflakes whizzing across the freeway.  Soon the children noticed, too.

When we pulled into the driveway, the snowflakes had grown bigger.  They stuck to our clothes.  Showing admirable restraint, they stayed indoors for awhile to give the snow time to “pile up.”  When a half inch had fallen, they donned snowsuits, boots, mittens and frolicked in the back yard.

Awhile later, Zach went to the neighbor’s house to “sled” down the slope in their back yard.  (The back yard is smallish, just like ours.  They must have very slippery grass.)

But now, the snow has stopped.  The deck is covered by a white blanket, but such a pitiful and thin white blanket.

I don’t have the heart to tell Zach that his snow ritual isn’t working because of me.  After all, I’m the one who finally purchased snow shovels after living here for eleven years.

And two full-sized snow shovels squash even the most fervent child’s snow ritual.

Promise you won’t mention this to him.

I feel like I ought to be doing more.  I have this idea that I should never lounge around, doing nothing, especially when there are things that need to be done.  How can I rest when my kitchen floor is filthy and the dishes aren’t washed?  Not that I don’t rest.  I do.  I just feel horrible guilt for doing nothing when I could be doing something.

I want to accomplish more but the days get away from me like an inflated balloon released before it’s tied.  I bet you were picturing a balloon gently floating into the sunlit sky, but no.  It seems that’s how a day ought to disappear, a gentle lift toward the horizon, but my days careen in a crazy orbit leaving a mess behind.

Is it just me?  Why can’t I seem to keep up?   At time like these, I tell myself that the Key to Success is decluttering.  If only I threw away all the old magazines I will never read, my life would sit quietly and stop barking at me.

A girl can dream–but only if she sleeps.  Good-night.

Saturday are Sleep-In Days.  Seven-year old Grace is kind of getting the hang of that idea . . . after seven years of life.  She usually comes into our room and asks if she can use the master bathroom (I have no idea why she doesn’t just use the bathroom adjacent to her bedroom).  I always mutter, “Yes,” and go back to sleep.

And so it came to pass that on Saturday morning at 8:34 a.m. I was sound asleep when the telephone rang.

I reached for the phone, noted the unfamiliar name on caller-i.d. and said, “Hello?” in my most wide-awake voice.

“Hi, Mom.  This is Grace.  I’m at the neighbor’s house across the street, you know the one the boys helped?  I got locked out of the house.”

“Okay, I’ll be right there.”  What?  Huh?  WHAT?!  You WHAT?

I sprang out of bed faster than I ever have before, getting dressed while trying to explain to my husband what had happened.  I couldn’t quite understand how she got locked out and how she ended up across the street.  And furthermore, what kind of Mother am I to be sleeping while my baby girl is at the neighbor’s house?  What?!

By the time I opened the front door to go retrieve her, the neighbor-man was walking her back to our porch.  I thanked him for bringing her back and for helping, hugged her and closed the front door.

I peeked into the family room, saw our 11-year old son and said, “Were you here the whole time this was happening?”  And then he explained that her screaming woke him, but by the time he got on his coat and shoes, the phone rang, so he listened in and didn’t go looking for her.

She seemed remarkably calm despite her early morning adventure, so I hugged her again, asked a few questions and went back to bed.  Later, I put the whole story together.

It seems that Roy, one of the cats, wanted to go into the boys’ room.  (They were gone at a sleepover.)  She came downstairs to let the cat into the room.  While standing in the doorway, she heard the boys’ alarm clock ringing.  She decided to cross the room and turn off the alarm.

After she did that, she saw that Smokey, the crankiest cat in the world, was blocking her way back through the doorway.  Smokey has been known to swipe at people who walk too closely to her, so Grace decided that she would avoid Smokey by going out of the boys’ room through the other door, the door that leads outside.  She figured once she was outside she would go to the front door and reenter the house.

She realized her error when she reached the front door and discovered it locked.  She returned to the boys’ door and found it was also locked.  Although she was barefooted, she scampered across the driveway, into the backyard along the sidewalk and checked the patio door.  Locked.

At least she was wearing heavy fleece pajamas since the temperatures have been freezing overnight.

Now crying, she ran back to the front door.  However, our doorbell is broken.  She banged on the door, crying and now screaming.  The screaming woke Zach, but as I mentioned, he reacted a little slowly.  My husband and I continued to sleep through this whole ordeal since we keep a fan running in our room to block out noise and sleep with the door closed.  (See:  Fourth child; no need to monitor nighttime noises.  Please, we’re old.  Let us sleep.)

Seven-year old, barefooted Grace realized she was in some trouble.  So, within a few minutes she decided she should go next door to the neighbor’s house because she knows them.  When she reached the street–all the while crying and screaming–the neighbor across the street opened the door to investigate the shrieking.  He told me later he thought it was a cat.

She recognized the neighbor–the boys have done some yard work for him–so she headed across the street.  He told her to come in and she informed him she knew her phone number.  So she called us.  At that point, she sounded so completely rational and calm.  I am still impressed by her problem-solving skills–she analyzed her problem and came up with a solution all by herself.

Pretty amazing for a girl who had the “worst day” of her life–all in about ten minutes.

The moral of the story:  Better to get scratched by the cat than to lock yourself out of the house on a Saturday morning while your whole family is asleep and you are wearing only pink fleece pajamas and no shoes on a frozen December day.

[Note to self:  Get the doorbell fixed.]

The spider webs looked like they’d been spun with kite string.  I jogged by them, wishing I could stop and take photographs of the frosty spidery magic . . . well, mostly I just wanted to stop jogging, but I did not.  I dragged myself out of my warm house into the frozen fog this morning to continue my Couch to 5K running program.  I have no real intention of actually running a 5K race . . . who has time on a Saturday for that?  But maybe I will.

But those spider webs, frosted by the frozen fog were beautiful.  The morning–opaque with fog–was much less glorious.  It was cold with very little visibility.

I work for nine hours on Friday, so most of my day was spent at my computer.  My teenagers went to a birthday party/sleepover.  They left at 2:30 p.m. and will be gone until tomorrow at 5 p.m.  It’s always very quiet when they’re gone.

Tonight, between my work shifts, I started unpacking the Christmas decorations boxes I’d moved to the living room yesterday.  Grace wandered downstairs, noticed what I was doing and began to decorate the tree.  I hollered to Zach and asked if he wanted to help and what followed was the most polite cheerful conversation I’ve ever heard between those two.

It was like they were on a first date, all sweetness and small talk.  It was a Christmas miracle!

And now, the emptied boxes have been stacked in the storage room and the living room looks like Christmas.

I wonder if my heart will feel like Christmas at some point.  It’s hard to capture the peace of Christmas when you are racing through the month, trying to get everything done before the finish line.

Christmas is three weeks from Friday.

I’d like to order an extra week, please.  And also, an elf who likes to decorate and bake cookies and wrap gifts.

How is it possible that Christmas takes so long to arrive when you are seven years old, yet it circles around in a flash when you are forty-four?  Time is a sneaky thing, never staying steady, forever hypnotizing and making me dizzy.

I still have a lingering pumpkin on my front porch.

At the moment, I know a bunch of pregnant women, some who also have little ones.  When I see them, I remember.

I remember those long days with toys scattered on the living room floor, when the days were segmented by naptime and playtime and lunchtime and cleaning up one mess after the next.  I remember watching children’s television with a toddler on my lap, trying in vain to read a magazine at the same time. I remember holding my pregnant belly with both hands so I could better feel the rolling and squirming baby inside.  I remember longing for something else, for a day or a week or a month to pass without wiping a nose or changing a diaper or mollifying a crazed toddler.

And now I don’t wipe noses or change diapers or mollify toddlers.  My life is arranged around carpool and school and a work schedule and fixing dinner.  I can leave all the children at home alone and it’s not illegal.  I can read a whole magazine cover-to-cover without a little one trying to eat the pages.   I don’t have to cut anyone’s food into tiny bits.

Life is different now.

And I want to plead with those women I see with their pregnant bellies and their backseats full of carseats . . . I want to beg them to enjoy these days, to embrace every moment and to take more pictures.  Memorize the strange sensation of a human being somersaulting in your interior.  Sit down with the little guys and ignore the dust because the dust won’t go anywhere and before you know it the little guy will have his own Facebook account and will have to shave.  No one will want to watch “Sesame Street” anymore and you’ll miss Grover and knowing that naptime would follow lunchtime as surely as summer follows spring.

Life will no longer be contained between the four walls of your house–or the walls of your uterus.  Everything gets impossible to contain and time speeds up and before you know it, you’re nostalgic about the Terrible Twos.  (In other words, you lose your memory.)

I supposed my 102-year old Grandma would have told me something similar . . . to embrace these years while the children are still home, drinking a whole quart of apple juice in one night and leaving their dishes in the family room and teasing each other until someone cries . . . because one day, they’ll be gone and I’ll be sentimental about the times that drive me a little nuts right now.

I know it’s true.

On Thanksgiving Day, my 7-year old raved about how much she loves Thanksgiving.  Who doesn’t love a day in which your mother spends all her waking hours cooking something delicious while you wander into the kitchen and ask, “How long until we eat?”

She ate 20 black olives and upwards of ten crescent rolls from a can.  She is in love with those crescent rolls.  She also ate some turkey but declared a hatred for green olives and cranberry gel.

After dinner, my mother picked the turkey carcass clean while I washed all the dishes and put the leftovers away.  I have cooked enough Thanksgiving dinners to have the whole preparation down to a fine science and I am the World’s Fastest Dishwasher, but still.  I was utterly exhausted afterward and spent the evening flat in my bed watching television and reading and feeling about a hundred years old.

On Friday, I did my third Couch to 5K training run.  I only run three days a week and so far, I kind of hate it.  But I kind of love the iPhone app and I like listening to music.  It’s only the actual running that pains me.  And soon, it won’t.  I hope.

I worked nine hours on Friday, my usual shift.

Saturday, I went to the library to work on my novel.  I am halfway through.  Enough said about that.

Then I went to see “A Serious Man,” which had pretty good reviews (on Flixster, on my iPhone).  I found it seriously weird.  And I doubt that teenagers used that language in the sixties.  I’m just saying.  I don’t think the F-Word was as popular then as it is now.  Anyway, it was not my favorite movie, but it is what it is and sometimes I like to see movies even though I don’t “get” them.  It’s an experience and HEY, the popcorn was excellent!  Real butter and everything when you go to the independent cinema, you know.  It’s cheaper than the big multi-plex, too.

What I really want to see is “The Road.”  I just finished reading it for the third time.  I love that book.  So much.  I can’t wait to see the movie. (It hasn’t opened in wide release here yet.)

Before The Road, I read Elizabeth Berg’s Never Change.   That was an excellent book.  I love a book that moves me to tears.

What are you reading these days?  What’s the last book that made you cry?