Quick Christmas update

Life is rich and full of Christmas here in Enoughsville.  For us, this is a time of many traditions, including passing along those many traditions to the next generation.

Wearing hand-me-downs from older sisters

Learning to pose for dog photos. (You'll get there, Strider!)

Reading the Night Before Christmas
from Pop-up books

. . . even if it's by Zoom.

And (much earlier in the week),
the annual Car Dinner
celebrating the 53rd year of my guy's driver's license.

A very Merry Christmas to one and all, and best wishes for the transition into the new year.

 

Hot water | Warm houses | Fuzzy Dogs | Exams that eat my Advent calendar

 Life continues to be rich and full here and Enoughsville.  We're particularly rich in house-related updates this week.  For example, Inkling shared this news:

I have a working hot shower!!

Early Christmas present... A shiny new water heater

There were multiple cold-water adventures happening in her home, including water heater conking and thermostats on the fritz; the first round of visits from the plumber had the mysterious effect of fixing the hot water in sinks but not in bathtubs or showers.  Fortunately, Inkling is (a) hardy and (b) close by enough that when she no longer wanted to be hardy, she could come shower here.  

She says she takes away from this (mis)adventure several reasons for gratitude: having the resources to pay for these expenses; having a part-time job so that she could wait at home (multiple times) for the various plumbers to come do their things; and having family nearby.  And now she's grateful for hot water -- and even though my own water heater didn't break -- now *I'm* remembering to be grateful for water that is clean and that runs warm when I ask it to.   I'll get to hear more plumbing updates when she comes by for waffles tomorrow.

Here's news from someone who not only has hot water in the house, but who now has the WHOLE HOUSE that goes with it!  Whoop!  Nelson wrote early in the week to say . . . 

I'm most likely going to be moving into my new house on Friday so happy and excited for the new opportunities that god and life has for me in the future thank you all for being an amazing support system and a family I can go to to talk to I love you all

And sure enough, here's the photo of Sizzling and Nelson outside the place.  Yay! 

Look at those smiles!  Matches mine!

And Gosling has a new source of heat at her place, although it's a fuzzy kind of heat.  She says,

While we are sharing big news, some of you have heard but Colin adopted a 8/9month old pup (lab Airedale mix is best guess) from the rockbridge spca, so the boys have a new friend/ sister who they get to hang out with

Welcome to Strider! He looks cuddly.

This past week was finals week at my college, and with that comes lots of office hours, giving the exam, and grading it.  I'm kind of brain dead right now from all the grading that I barreled through yesterday and today, actually.  I know my students want to know their grades, but even more, I always feel an intense urgency to get the grading behind me instead of in front of me.  Maybe that's because I'm curious about how my students will do, or possibly it's because I don't feel like winter break really starts until the grades are submitted. 

Either way, while I'm in the throes of grading I always feel like a terrible terrible teacher.  How could my students have not learned all this stuff that I keep marking wrong?  And when a bunch of students get a problem wrong and then another student gets it right, I'm certain that they're cheating.  This year, just to help ensure I didn't give my students temptations that have snared them in the past, I had four different versions of the exam, and I mapped out where every student was sitting (spread well apart in the large auditorium), and even noted the timing of their bathroom trips.  

At any rate, 48 hours after I collected the exams from my students, I finished the grading . . . and once I tallied the results, I discovered (as usually happens once the grading frenzy is done) that they actually did okay.  In fact, I think I won't fail any of the students who took the final (the exception being the student who missed both midterms, most of the homework, and the final exam).

Part of the reason that the grading took so long was that, in the middle of it, I also organized a farewell party for our department coordinator, who's retiring before classes start up again in the spring.  She, like me, loves very colorful things, and also chocolate.  So here's the cake I made for her.

Guess what her name is? 
(M&Ms hide lots of mistakes in frosting, by the way.)
(Also, sorting the M&Ms by color is a lot of fun).

And I gave blood this week.

What I did NOT do was the vast majority of my advent stuff.  Christmas Boggle Night with Inkling, yes; and I also dashed off a quick note to our sponsored children through World Vision.  But Christmas caroling? No.  Flap Jack fest? bringing in pine boughs? Nope and nope. Christmas photos? not that either.  Wrapping presents?  Nopety nope nope.  My relatives in far-off places (Nelson: I'm looking at you), I apologize that your gifts might arrive late this year, because I'm not mailing them until Monday.  

But I *did* write the weekly family update at least; here it is, with the last remaining shreds of my brain attached.  May you and yours have clean water and warm houses, too.

Patching a coat of many colors (that my mama bought for me)

For a couple of years now, I've been thinking that it'll soon be time for a new winter coat.  My current coat has been getting raggedy in places: over the shoulder (where the strap of my planner bag rubs against it), and in places where the fabric folds over (along the tops of the pockets, along the front flap of the jacket).  Also, the openings for the pockets are not quite as comfy as I'd like: instead of having the openings toward the sides, the pockets are shaped like square letter U's, with the openings directly on top, which means I can't walk around with my hands in the pockets. 

It's no surprise that the jacket is getting raggedy -- it's about three decades old.  Rather, it's amazing that it's held on this long.

I think it was when I was in grad school that I got it (but it might have been college).  I'd gone back home over break, and my sisters suggested we go shopping together.  My mom said, "you should go to Sassafras!  It's a great store!".   My youngest sister, who has always had more chutzpah than the rest of us, chimed in, "Mom, why don't you come with us . . . and bring your credit card?"   And we all thought this was so funny and happy, and she did.  While we were at the store, my mom found this coat and asked, "Snough, if I buy this coat for you, will you wear it?"  I said yes.  The coat was $200, back in late-80's/early 90's prices.  

This story is so much unlike much of the rest of my family history.  We were a frugal bunch, my family; recreational shopping wasn't really our thing.  We were much bigger on throwing ourselves into household chores and then getting outdoors for hikes or finding ways to be in the community.  We were also a geeky group: that car of four women had four people who'd have Masters and/or PhDs in math, physics, or operations research.  It was probably on this outing, if I remember correctly, that we had an intense and enjoyable discussion about integrals involving the arctangent.  

My coat, from the back.

So, this coat: It's a coat of many colors; it's a lot of fun that way.  I wore it (not exclusively) for thirty-ish years, and I get a lot of people complimenting me on it.   I added reflective strips around the sleeves, so I feel even safer walking at night, and I patched a few rough spots.  Of late, though, my husband has tut-tut-tutted because of the frayed seams, and I fantasize about better pockets.  I started saving up for a new coat -- not saving up money, but rather saving scraps of upholstery fabric, so I can make a new one.   For all that the coat has been wearing out, I love how it's multicolored, so I've gatheres swaths of many colors.  (Did I swoon over Amanda Gorman's yellow coat at the inauguration?  Why, yes, I did!).  I just needed the time to design and pull together all those pieces.

Late November this year, I pulled out Ye Olde Coat again, and my guy shook his head a bit, but having no alternatives I bundled up it in and Went Places.  And wherever I went, I got more of that old familiar gushing: "I love that coat!".  One relatively new faculty member followed that up with this story:

One day I was driving with some other people, and they said, "oh, there's 'Snough!", and I asked, "How can you tell?  It's dark, and she's walking the other direction, so you can't even see her face!", and they said, "The Coat!".

I get so much love on this coat, that last week I decided I'd try fixing just the few small things that bothered my guy and me.  I used some of that upholstery fabric to create a new shoulder patch, and also for new trim along the front (now, no-longer frayed) edge of the coat.  The blessing of having a Coat of Many Colors is that one new color blends in, so to speak, even if it doesn't blend in.

I also carefully used my seam ripper to detach a bit of the outer edge of each pocket.  I snipped off the top outer corner (recall, the top edges of the pocket were frayed anyway), added trim to the edges, and reattached the pockets so that they are a tad smaller but much more hand-friendly.

The corners of the pockets I snipped off. 
The edges along the bottoms in this picture were the tops of
the pockets, and you can see how frayed they are.  

The wrap-up?  About 15 minutes of cutting, pinning, and stitching led to a coat-of-many-colors with just a few more colors.  The frayed portions are covered with new trim; the pockets are hand-friendly.  All of this work was done with materials I scavenged (upholstery fabric leftover from chairs that my office building no longer owns, denim from the pants leg of jeans that had developed embarrassing holes elsewhere).  

The new front strip doesn't look at all out of place,
and now I can put my hands in the pockets.  Yes!

This coat has so many layers of memories for me.  There's the story of how my sisters and mom and I went on an expedition, with my mom's spontaneous offer, for one thing.  My memories of my mom -- like the colors of this coat -- are highly varied.  If you ask me the first few words that come into my head to describe her, I might have said "organized; tyrannical".  There were many other words to describe her, and this coat helps me remember those other sides of her, too, and I'm constantly grateful for that.  

Also, I love delighting my guy.  I showed the patches and repairs to him, running them by him for his perceptions of good taste (after all, he's the only, only person who'd made tsk-tsk comments about the condition of the coat), and he was delighted, cracking jokes about how this would extend the life of the coat for another few decades.   

And finally, although I don't think of myself as a slave to public opinion (hardly), I also try hard to live my frugal life in a way that doesn't offend or drive other people crazy.  The fact that this crazy old coat makes so many people happy, well, that makes me super happy, too.  

Advent updates

Life is rich and full of advent here in Enoughsville. We've made our usual advent calendar, in which we can peel off the flaps over each day to discover a pre-Christmas fun activity (sometimes a fun chore).

This year's Advent calendar goes to December 26, 
because of family travels.

Early in the week -- I guess technically it was last week -- we made Springerle.  We use the molds I got from my uncle, who got them from his mom (my Nana), who got them from a mother-in-law, we think.  And so I love that my own children and grandchildren are learning to use these.  To make the cookies, first you spread flour on the clean table . . . 

Well done, bakers!

. . . and then you roll the dough with a wooden rolling pin my sister made me . . . 

Just like that!

And then you press the dough with molds to make beautiful shapes.

After we cut the dough into cookie-sized pieces and let it dry over night, we bake it the next day.  This year's batch of Springerle is done!

In the middle of the week, we got to see White Christmas at our local theater.  Our local theater, I have to say, is amazing.  From the fabulous winter display outside, . . . 

The animal statues move their heads slowly;
Achild and Kinderling are entranced!

. . . to the beautiful lobby, fantastic sets, and amazing singers and dancers, it was a magical night.  This was Achild's second real theater production (her first was Cinderella a while back), and she's doing a great job of learning to sit still.   Admittedly, this was a great show for a seven-year old (tap dancing on top of pianos!).  Afterward, I asked her if she had a favorite part.  "Yes!"   What was it?  "Everything!"

And then, toward the end of the week, we got more family/theater time, when Achild had a ballet recital.  

This was as adorable as you might imagine it would be: very small children in very fancy costumes up on a stage.  Inkling and I were very much impressed by the child-wranglers who ushered the dancers int to the right spots on stage, who performed the dance themselves so that the children who happened to be paying attention could follow along.  Every once in a while there would be part of a dance that all the children remembered and they would jump up and down (or swing their foot, or wave their hands) in unison, and then would immediately revert to a bunch of kids on stage doing random movements (or lack thereof) while very cheery music played.   Definitely a worthwhile experience,  if for no other reason than to make me appreciate the dancing I see at our local theater all the more.  

In news from other family members, my guy has been having a lovely time south of the equator, listening to the song "White Christmas" while walking around in 78°F weather, and observing the enthusiasm followed by quiet stoicism of Brazilians as they played themselves out of the World Cup.  

Although the newspaper is full of scary updates about Haiti (the latest I read: "Gangs control 60% of the capital city"), Xavier seems to be finding his way, thank goodness.  In a recent chat with me, he wrote, "it's getting cold here too and things are getting a little calm."

Nelson is very, very close to moving into his long-awaited new group home. It's quite possible that next week, we'll have an update on that! I'm so excited.  In further evidence that this young man is my son, when I asked what he might need for the new space, he suggested a white board with a calendar.  (The white board is not like his mom, but the scheduling aspect of it definitely is.)

And Inkling has not only been my faithful theater companion, but she's also keeping me on my toes at Boggle.  Two weeks ago, she routed me in the final round with "ponder" and "ponders".  This past week, we tied at 16 and then 27, except then she looked up "ropy' which is -- apparently -- a real word (darn it) and sped past me, 29-27.  Dang it.

And that's the news from our family, which continues to be wealthy in our Advent(ures).  May you and yours be similarly prosperous.

Instead of an update, a routine

Life continues to be rich and full here in Enoughsville. 

Sometimes there's so much happening in the swirl of our lives that we forget to pay attention to the ordinary things, the common comforts, the regular routine.  So this week -- instead of talking about making Springerle with kids and grandkids, about teaching classes, about dance concerts, about multiple musical performances (Tuba Christmas! Voice recitals!), and such -- I thought I'd describe a bit of what happens underneath all that excitement.

There are ways that my husband and I seem to be incredibly different people on incredibly different schedules. This week alone, for example, he started the week at a military communications conference in Maryland, attended protests in a nearby city another day, visited friends all over the city in the middle of the week, and ended the week by boarding a train that led to a plane they will take him to summer in Brazil, where he'll be hanging out with Chemical engineers.  And me?  I went . . . to my office and back, a bunch of times.  My husband loves going, buying, and being with many people.  I love sitting, repairing, and treasure my "quiet time".  My husband is a night owl; I'm a morning lark.  

For all those reasons, it's kind of surprising that we have a daily joint routine that's so deeply entrenched that it almost seems like we're worn into a rut.  (If it's a rut, at least it's a really nice rut, though!)  When he's in town, here's the routine: 

• I wake before dawn, and go running with my friend(s); come back and hit "start" on the coffee maker that he'd set up the night before.  
• An hour or two later, he wakes up in time to get dressed and have coffee, too, and then he walks me the several blocks to work.  We hold hands the whole way.  (I told my students who saw us arrive one day, "the older we get, the more adorable it's going to be that we hold hands like that", and they responded, "Professor 'Snough, you're already adorable that way.")

  

  This is what it looks like at my office on Tuesdays
  when my dog joins me.  She's a magnet!
  My students think that Prewash is even more adorable than I am.

• During the day, we both do our own things.  
• In the evening, I come home and he makes dinner.  We eat together and then go for a walk around the block (repeating the holding hands thing).  It's always the same route, always with him on the left, me on the right, and we wave at the same neighbors who sit on the porch playing cards and rockin' the radio stations.   Sometimes, if we have a lot to talk about, we'll vary the routine by walking around the block twice.  That's spontaneity, for you!
• We get home and he does the dishes while I finish up email stuff.
• We watch TV together while he has tea (with too much sugar I warn him!) and I have ice cream (in which the sugar is almost certainly of the healthy variety) and tea with no sugar.  The shows we watch are mostly dystopian dramas, or shows with exceedingly unhappy families (think, HandMaid's Tale, The Crown), which is very much unlike our own incredibly pleasant, love-filled life.  
• We head upstairs for bed.  We read to each other.  Then he lies next to me while I fall off to sleep, at which point he gets up to go downstairs to do whatever it is he does after the late, late hour of 9 p.m.

The other evening, when we were reading to each other, he asked, "are you awake enough that I can go and get one more thing?"  I said yes, and he ran to his backpack and brought back a sonnet he'd written.  I didn't know what to expect, but after I heard it, I thought it was so sweet I wanted to share it.  Here it is (with one or two lines changed -- with his consent --for reasons of modesty).

Sonnet One, by my guy

Up at six, in command before first light.
Run, read, pray shadowed by she each moment.
Holding hands we walk to campus, in sight
Of Home. Saying how the day will be spent.

Equation, persuasion, celebration
Of life, learning, and the beauty of math.
The envy of the administration
Admired. One who follows her own path

In the evening dinner and drama:
Only on TV. We watch distresses
In bliss and serenity. To six Mama
She is, maybe more, anyone’s guesses.

After reading, we cuddle up before sleep
buried in blankets, with affection miles deep.

Awww.  I am really touched.

And thats the . . . well, not "news", so maybe "olds"(?) from our family, which continues to be wealthy in our adventures.  May you and yours be similarly prosperous.