Xmas, yet again I have defied you!

i love christmas. i hate christmas. i love beautiful snow laden trees and moon reflected glowy nights. i hate dark days and freezing solitude. i love the rebirth of a fresh year. i hate the emotional upheaval of lost days, endings, and missed moments.

yes, i am a soldier of the winter doldrums. i'm not sure when it started. on the one hand, it seems like it has always been this way, yet on the other, i remember a time when xmas was only about santa clause and presents and school vacation. i think it must have been high school. there was one winter that is pristine in my memory, the penultimate for a young teenager with hope in her heart and stars in her eyes. that makes it sound much more dramatic than it should. but i suppose the important thing was that in the moment, nothing could be better.

and of course, what solidifies such a moment? the moment's end. and once life was once again tarnished by so many things, you are drawn back over and over to that seemingly perfect moment. you polish it reverently, till the edges are smoothed away, till it becomes something it never was, gleaming, perfect, infinite.

remembrances are all well and good. but a pearl is a dangerous memory. nothing in the moment can ever compare to something enhanced by such attention. if you are lucky, you have other good experiences, good days. and with time, these events will also be lifted above themselves. perhaps only your own memories can save you from your memories. the brightness of the new cherished memory dims the glow of the old.

as a child you have endless hope and future opportunity. then you have successes and failures. you lose things and you gain things. as you get farther down your own time line, you begin to see -or imagine you see- the endgame. with the end come the limits, not of your abilities or even your chances but of your time to reach those abilities, fulfill those chances.

how easy it is to get lost in the past, polishing, instead of living and creating new moments to remember a decade from now.

my sister recently talked about getting rid of her "box" -that collection of items that link you physically to memories, people, time. my "box" still lives on the walls of my childhood bedroom--mementos, pictures, posters of productions from high school to college to grad school and beyond. my mother told me she takes my little cousins on trips into "the museum" as they call it. that is frightening.

but i'm not ready to throw my box on the funeral pyre. i'm taking another tactic all together. i'll let them grow dusty, forget about them from time to time. then i'll add new moments to the old. i want to fill the museum of my heart all up till it's full to bursting.

we do this in acting. prepare, prepare, prepare. image, elucidate, fill out the corners of the imagined life, till you walk out on stage and it pours through you unconsciously.

course, the danger is living in the old and not making the new. this is my challenge for the new year. to prepare my real life as i do for the stage, to keep making the memories to out shine the old.

eh, resolutions!

 

Christmas is Coming the Goose is Getting Fat! or rather... the hippo!

I love buying xmas gifts. it is a contest for me with myself- can i get the best gift gag/serious or otherwise for my loved ones.

yes, the Kitty Walk Stroller.

The Singing Turkey Tom

The Daddy Doll

winners

sadly, i have not yet found the perfect winning gift yet.

TMBG, better cousins then we are

They Might Be Giants are so super cool.


They have a new album out "Here Comes Science," which they promoted this week on npr's science friday- yes i'm a geek and i love this show. the interview is great and ira glass (host) lets them play several of their songs, so it's a great way to check out the new album. their website is also full of awesome videos, great oldies, brand new ones, and just crazy stuff they've whipped up.

course, i remember TMBG from many years ago with their rock albums and "I Should Be Allowed To Think," "Why Must I Be Sad?," "No One Knows My Plan," and "Constantinople," etc. however their "family" songs are still fun and much hipper than schoolhouse rock. i'm very tempted to hit up the family show in ny next month. sadly they have yet to schedule one of their limited edition FLood shows in the city--where they'll play the entire album, one of their first released.

katrina and i needed a little TMBG magic yesterday as we attempted to be the "cool cousins living in NY" and babysit for several hours. we tried, we really did. we made a whole list of things we could do that would show off the city and entertain 6 year olds.

sadly, said plans were all for naught. we spent nearly an hour trying to get one of our cousins just to leave with us, while he ran around in circles and leaped over fences-thankfully in a relatively closed off section around the "children's statue" at St John the Divines.

first off, how is this a children's statue?? this thing should give anyone nightmares. a centaur-pegasus being attacked/mounted by multiple giraffes, standing on a sun/moon with more leaping giraffes, atop a giant crab dangling a man's decapitated head??? yes that is what it is. look. luckily the statue is set off the street and surrounded by a fence.


eventually we conceded defeat. katrina bodily carried him back to his mother. but we spent the rest of the afternoon with our other cousin, who was much easier to please, even if our grand plans turned into a trip to times square toys r us and a showing of 3d Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. sigh!

beach barbies from the barbie house. our 6 year old cousin informs me the 2 of these look like katrina and me, obviously one is brunette and one blond. i readily agree with her.

wishful drinking - live!

i'm pretty sure i wrote about this book back when i first heard about it 6 months or so ago. carrie fisher's, aka princess leia's, memoirs about growing up with crazy family, fame, and eventually ocd/manic-depressive disorder.

well for about the last year carrie has also been developing and touring a one woman show based off of the stories in her book. it is fabulous. i was very lucky to be able to attend a special invited dress, to which i brought along katrina- whom i knew would appreciate the full crazy. the theatre was packed, for a dress. what made it all the more fun, was that many of carrie's good friends (not just the famous one's) were there.

this is now my favorite show playing on broadway.

Carrie Fisher is hilarious. she is also amazing. she has dealt with a lot of crap and had a whole lot of issues and some how come out on the other side with a fabulous broadway show in which she can laugh at herself and make fun of the ridiculousness that has been her life. but you know, she also says some pretty freakin wise things.

she talks a lot about her family in the show- the broadway version uses some really wonderful projections of her mother debbie reynolds (the actress) and her father eddie fisher (very famous singer) and the convoluted interconnectedness of hollywood "inbreeding". i love the stories of her grandmother locking her mother (as a child) in the closet -ala "Carrie" ironically enough, her mother retaliating by spitting on all her mother's clothes. carrie's parents infamously were divorced when her father left her mother for Liz Taylor, of all people. i cackled loudly when carrie admitted the neurotic fear of both parents (still alive!) showing up for her broadway hit on the same night and what might ensue.

the show, of course also deals with her addictions and manic/depressive disorder. again, how she handles it with such humor and grace-even if it took her her whole life to be able to do that, is amazing. i mean come on-- in the medical book for diagnosis - whatever its actually called- the definition of manic-depressive disorder has a picture of carrie fisher! that's like some one saying, yes christina, you are indeed a pathetic individual, let me show you here in Webster's.

i highly, highly recommend everyone in distance catch this show at Studio 54. and if you can't make it to new york. read the book!

5 stars

boone

how sad that the weekend is already over! i love the mountains. but even more than that i love going to Brooks' Mountain in boone, nc. i've been going for as long as i can remember, literally. first to the Register's cabin and then to our own cabin. slowly, all the cabins on Brooks' Mountain have been taken over by mother's friends.

it's a good plan. see in order to spend as much time as possible up there, first mother and john built a cabin, then stocked the liquor cabinet to smooth the edges, then they got a satellite to watch the basketball games, then wifi to do work, then put friends next door to drink with.


my younger siblings all got to have their 16th birthday parties at our cabin, with gasp a co-ed sleep over! my 16th birthday was spent in Saudi Arabia, so i suppose i can't complain. besides, i have many wonderful memories with friends at the cabin, including a couple of new years with all those people i would've invited to a sweet 16, but instead we were older and legal, though obviously not wiser.

that porch has seen many a debauchery, i'm sure. though, this was my first time to smoke a cigar on the porch!


this was also my first time at the cabin as an old auntie. but that's alright too. though it might not make me the best aunt when i bite off lyriella's little fingers and toes. (they were very delicious-- who could possibly resist?)

michelle and i with our babies.

happy baby

sweat tea and lemonade

...as my sister would sing.

i am counting down the hours before i hit the road with my baby (yes, the cat) and embark on a 10.5 hour drive to boone, cakilacky! woo hoo!

i need to revamp and recharge for a summer in the city. it has been a difficult couple of weeks, but i'm determined to enjoy every aspect of this trip, especially meeting my new niece!!! woo!!

more exclamation points!! woo!!

alright, maybe i have not had enough sleep the last couple of days. there might be a slight possibility that i am unprepared for the ridiculousness i have completely thrust upon myself. 10 hours?? ten and a half hours?? yes. i'm an idiot.


but i did want to drive instead of fly. i admit to having a momentary tinge of jealousy upon learning katrina is already in town after a very early morning flight. however, i am reaffirmed after reading of the latest "bird strike" on a flight at la guardia--the plane landed safely this morning and no one was hurt, though paramedics were called. this was what befell flight 1549 that landed in the hudson - it was attacked by the hordes of geese that live in manhattan.

now am i afraid of a hitchcokian geese attack? perhaps when i have to run through a stubborn flock of them, refusing to move from the path in the park, but i'm not particularly concerned that one might take my plane down. unfortunately for the geese, the city does not share my faith. new york will be culling 2,000!! of our geese in the next couple months. it's pretty sad, especially as the humane society is crying foul -hardy har- and saying the geese that took down the hudson river flight weren't New York residents at all, but migratory geese.

i'm not sure how i would expect them to get the job done, but i am sure i wouldn't have imagined that they would be trapped and gassed!! we might as well write the disney movie right now-- or maybe it would be more appropriate as Hayao Miyazaki film... dark and subtitled.

this started so happy and now it is saddies.

no! happy times! with a little bluegrass, featuring my uncle Jim and one of his bands to lead the way

most adorable niece

i can't stop buying things for Lyriella. but this is by far the best gift: the Daddy doll. well, actually it is shakespeare, but the bard does have an amazing likeness with daddy Lexton!

http://baby-raleigh.blogspot.com/