In Bruges...

"And I realized, f**, maybe that's what hell is, the entire rest of eternity spent in f*** Bruges. And I really really hoped I wouldn't die"
Ray ~ In Bruges

Although "In Bruges" is Belgium's answer to Quentin Tarantino and the Cohen Brothers combined, and definitely worth watching, assuming you're OK with 126 f-bombs dropped in a little over an hour and a half, a plot centered around three hitmen, a neo nazi, a dwarf, and a prostitute, and lots of useless violence, although the movie is awesome in spite of, or because of, all of that, I can firmly claim that Bruges is not hell. It is, in fact, the closest to the most perfectly historical, preserved, pretty, quaint, and quintessential European city there is. And I know this because when traveling to Holland for Christmas this year, husband-dear and I selected Bruges from a large selection of European cities (Paris, Brussels, Aachen. Venice, Trier, among others) as the destination of our four-day pre-Christmas getaway.

When planning this year's Christmas vacation, we knew from the start that we wanted to incorporate some DixieChick-Husband-dear alone time. We try to do this every year, and since the last time we had some husband-wife time that did not involve a marathon, a triathlon, or a mountainbike race, was in the spring of 2011, when we went on the cruise of a lifetime, we figured we were long overdue. We had several, fairly random criteria: It had to be cute and quaint (obviously. I mean, we live in a town made up of stripmalls, we need to be reminded that not the entire world is this ugly every once in a while); it had to not be in Germany (since husband-dear vowed he could not handle yet another German Christmas market after years of seeing nothing else in the month of December), and we had to be able to get there by train (husband-dear, who does not have the Dutch-student-life-public-transportation trauma I do, loves traveling by train).

After some fairly random internet searches ("I think Lara once told me Aachen is really cute. Let's look at Aachen..oh no, that looks way too German. No, we can't do that.") and equally random decision processes ("I'd like Paris, but you know we have been there before, and then if we were to go, I'd feel all this pressure to see all the right things and eat at all the right places. I mean, what if there's this awesome bistro everyone knows about, and we miss it? That would be horrible"), we decided on Bruges. Neither one of us had ever been there before, and our knowledge about the town was restricted to what I was able to recall from reading a single children's book about the middle ages, whose first chapter takes place in Bruges (yes, Dutch readers, that would be this book). After glancing at a few pictures of a beautiful town square decorated for Christmas with hundreds of lights and a real ice skating rink in the middle, our decision was made. We were going to Bruges.

For the next few weeks, TripAdvisor became my best friend, and after weighing the pros and cons of various hotels ("this one looks pretty from the outside, but the rooms look horrible", and "I am not staying in anything that's a chain. I don't care of it's a Belgian chain. I refuse to do anything chain-ish outside of here"), as well as the sanity of some of the reviewers ("Well, they claim the rooms are not up to par, but they also claim that the front desk clerk was 'merely formal' and 'seemed automated', so I'm not too sure about them"), we decided to spend all the kids' college money (OK I lie, all of Jimmie's college money) on a fairly nice hotel a few minutes away from the main square. Once that was done, we booked traintickets on the much-disparaged Fyra, and started to count down the days.

And Bruges delivered. Our four days there were absolutely magical. We had absolutely wonderful meals, sampled lots and lots of wine, spent days meandering through the gorgeous "egg" (the medieval town center), randomly stopping at the various churches liberally sprinkled throughout the town, climbed the belfry, went to a brewery, climbed one of the old city gates, got lost and used the many church spires to find our way back, saw Michaelangelo's sculpture of Mary and baby Jesus, walked all the way around the old city walls, ate far too much chocolate, drank more really good cappuccinos than I can count, and took lots of baths in the hot tub in our room. If you are ever in the position that you can only go to one city in Europe, I say forget Paris and go to Bruges. It has it all, but more, and all within walking distance.

For your benefit, I have enclosed some of my hundred or so pictures below. 

Forty-seven points

My annual Christmas break is possibly my most favorite time of the year. It's the three (or four, depending on how Christmas falls, and how much time off the Board of Regents needs that year) when I feel truly free. Whenever I'm faced with three months of nothing, which happens every year in the first week of May, my OCD/overachiever neurosis will kick in, and I start saying things like, "Why don't I renovate the bonus room? I have so much time off!", or "Geez, three months is way too long to just sit around, I think I'll volunteer for a six-week study abroad to China." The bottom line is that free time just scares me to death.

So Christmas break, with its three (or four) weeks off, is much easier for ants-in-their-pants people like me to handle. It's too short to tackle any major projects, a feat aided by the fact that several days are "lost" to things like Christmas and New Year's (and so the painting of the quarter rounds will have to wait until summer), and too long to stay stuck in the work flow, which often happens during Spring Break. During that one week in March, I need to literally leave the country if I want to relax, because if I don't, I will end up writing conference papers and prepping classes, because "When I get back to work, do you know how much stuff I have to do?". In short, like Goldilocks' porridge, Christmas break is perfect.

Now the purpose of this lengthy introduction about the awesomeness that is Christmas break was to lead into a brief kvetch-fest about the 47-or-so-points to-do list that somehow popped into existence when my mind woke up from its finals-grading-induced haze, and realized, hey! We're going on a trip! And so we should really take care of all those things that have been left unfinished for the past months! Things like hemming that skirt, taking out the dry cleaning, dusting the light fixtures, getting pictures developed, upgrading various iDevices, and on and on and on. This means that after spending an hour each morning reveling in the fact that it's Christmas break, and I get to sit on the couch, sip my tea and watch CBS This Morning while around me the Christmas lights are twinkling, I turn to my multi-day, multi-page to-do list, and get to work. There are trips to CVS, to Kroger, to the BX, the base pool and/or gym, the bank, the tire rotation place, the dollar store, and back to CVS because the commissary doesn't carry Excedrin anymore.

This to-do list thing isn't a first either. Lately, whenever we travel anywhere, there are to-do lists days in advance. I remember when we used to just pack up the night before, double check if the stove was off and the door was locked, and leave. Now, leaving the house has turned into a near-military operation. There are checklists, pack lists, assigned responsibilities (you call the kennel to verify the dogs' shot records are in order, and I will get the oil in the car changed), reminder, and occasional pow-wows about who-what-where. In all fairness to us, though, we will be traveling on different days, almost a week apart, so some communication is necessary unless we want to get the tires rotated twice. But still. Sometimes I wonder how all those people who book last minute flights to exotic, faraway places do it and manage to enjoy their trip. I mean, with my luck, and lack of lists, I'd forget my bathing suit, or my ski suit, or something equally relevant to said last-minute adventure. And I'd spend the entire vacation worrying about whether the dogs' shots were up to date, and we'd remembered to turn the alarm on.

So yeah, last minute trips don't work for us. And we're probably slight over-organized. But heck, if you need help invading a small country or dealing with the aftermath of a natural disaster, we're your men! And woman, of course. 

Pumpkin bread revisited

You may remember that last year, when Jill invited me over to her house to bake pumpkin bread together, I accidentally purchased the wrong ingredients. Because I went to school for close to 22 years, reading short little labels, such as the ones used normal food products such as "pumpkin mix" has become quite the challenge for me, and so I showed up at her house with two cans of pumpkin pie mix. Fortunately, Jill does possess common sense, and she was able to rescue the pumpkin bread by reducing some of the other ingredients.

So this year, when I decided to make pumpkin bread to give to our co-workers and neighbors, I made doubly sure my husband knew he had to purchase "pumpkin mix", and not "pumpkin pie mix". I underlined it on the grocery list, I told him in person, and when he called while in the store, I reminded him again. Delegation, people, is a lot of work. But, he succeeded (naturally), and came home with two cans of pumpkin mix. Excellent.

That Saturday (this would be last week), when I decided that if I graded one more paper my brain was going to explode, and that baking would be the one thing to restore my sanity, husband-dear requested if I would mind baking an extra loaf for him to take to work. Absolutely not. I had, after all, two cans of pumpkin mix, and I would simply double the recipe.

So off I went. I pulled out my recipe book full of slightly stained index cards, and found the recipe that Jill had written out for me the previous year. Three-and-a-half cups of flour became seven cups, four cups of sugar became six-and-a-half cups sugar, and one-and-half teaspoons of cinnamon became five. Math is relative, when baking, obviously. As the ingredients filled up our mammoth 16-cup mixing bowl, a sliver of doubt started to creep into my blissfully Christmas-filled mind. Did we really use that many ingredients last year? Did it really take this much to make two loaves of pumpkin bread? Really? But, dedicated as I was, I kept going, pulled out a smaller bowl, and added a moat of water, four eggs, a ridiculous amount of oil, and two full cans of pumkin. And just as I was staring at the two completely full bowls, wondering how I was ever going to mix them, I decided to flip over the index card. And there were the final instructions, including the underlined statement: "Makes TWO loaves (and in case of smaller pans: THREE)".

Holy pumpkin mix, Batman. I had just made enough batter for six loaves of pumpkin bread. SIX. More importantly, however, I had also just made enough batter to where none of our bowls where big enough to hold the combined concoction.

Being the independent, well-educated woman that I am, I of course had a solution on hand. I called on husband-dear.
"Can you find a bucket and clean it for me?"
"Why?"
I showed him the two bowls of batter, "The recipe was enough for two loaves already. Or three, in our case, since our bread pans are smaller than Jill's."
"And?"
"And I doubled the recipe. This is six loaves of pumpkin bread. And that" I pointed at the huge red bowl, "is our biggest mixing bowl."

I would love to tell you that husband-dear didn't laugh, but he did. Once he was done laughing, we began the hunt for a "really, really big container". Since husband-dear's American standards for food hygiene precluded using a bucket that had ever come in contact with cleaning products, even if said bucket were to be washed out with water, he eventually decided on the pot we usually use for low country boil, Dutch mashed potatoes, and other dishes that require a ridiculously large pot. I then used a  four-cup measuring beaker to combine and the two bowls, while husband-dear hunted for baking pans that would work for pumpkin bread. We only have two bread pans, and so we had some interesting decisions to make for the other four loaves. A bundt-shaped pan? Or a casserole dish? Glass or china? We ended up settling on some old casserole dishes, at which point the two hour bakefest it took to get all six loaves done began. As did the extensive washing of bowls, pots, and other utensils.

So yes, I did finally make "normal" pumpkin bread this year. And I was able to make lots and lots and lots of people happy with a couple of slices. But if there is one lesson to be learned, it's that I really, really should start to do a better job reading instructions.

Grading, grading, grading, gra-done!

In previous semesters, I always made sure to not turn in my final grades until the day they were due. I'm not sure why I did this, because in all cases, I was done grading the day of the last final, and could have turned in my final grades the very next day. Instead, I would draw out the grading process, take long lunch breaks, long coffee breaks, go home on time, and do whatever it took to turn in my grades with all of my other, far-more-harried colleagues on Friday.

Why? You may ask. Well, I'm not entirely certain myself, but two reasons come to mind. First, I felt bad for turning in grades early and, not having a reason to be at work anymore, skipping out of work the days before commencement. Missing work are two words that just don't go together in the Dixiechick lexicon. Second, I didn't want people to think that the reason I was able to turn my work in early was because I'm one of those slacker professor who doesn't "do" final papers and whose finals are nothing more than twenty true/false questions. In case you were wondering, yes, I am aware that I am possibly crazy for thinking these things. Especially considering the fact that unlike my harried colleagues, I spent the weeks and weekends prior to finals furiously grading papers, senior theses, and final projects. While I don't know what my fellow professors do in the weekends leading up to finals, I do know that my family has dubbed the last two weekends before commencement my "hell weekends" (which, yes, always include either Thanksgiving or my birthday, thankyouverymuch), since I spend at least several hours each day up to my elbows in grading, creating finals, and calculating final grades.

So this semester I decided to change things up. And I started by turning in my grades when I was done grading, that is, on Wednesday right after lunch. When I triumphantly exited the department office, and ran into two fellow professors who sighed that they had yet to start grading, I realized that my fear of looking like a slacker all those years was completely unfounded. I'll refrain from passing judgment, but let's just say, I wasn't the one slacking. So instead of driving into work yesterday to work on my grading a little and look busy, I sat on the couch and watched the entire Today show. And today, there's no need to drive to work, make a great show of printing out my final grades and roll book, and turn them in, nope. My plans for today include printing out the pictures I took at Disney and going for a swim. And possibly doing some laundry. Maybe. And the lesson learned? Caring about what other people think is never worth as much as having two days to yourself. Ever.

While we're talking about change, I'd also like to talk about next semester. Next semester, people, is going to be different. Not just because I -finally- implemented the changes in deadlines I should have made five years ago, so that not all papers are due in the last week of class, but also because I got a grant and have received 50% release time. Fifty percent release time, for those of you wondering, equals two classes, which means that next spring I will only be teaching two classes. Two. Not four, or five, or even six, nope. Two. And the even better news is that I got to pick the two I wanted to teach. That, my dear readers, is the bees' knees of academics, the cat's pajamas of scholarly life. It's right up there with paid sabbaticals and book royalties. 
Now this doesn't mean I get to spend the other twenty hours of the week sitting around drinking coffee. No, instead of teaching and dealing with important questions such as "why do we have to write two papers?", and "why is this class so hard?", I get to develop a cross-disciplinary research initiative in the field of health communication. None of us on the grant are exactly sure what we'll be doing, but our first task (after I get to furnish my...wait for it...new office) is to developed measurable outcomes, so I'm sure we'll be fine.

So I am excited this semester is over? Yes, three times yes. I weather a tenure portfolio deadline, conducted a large scale quantitative survey, taught five classes, dealt with a child in marching band, two major meltdowns,  and one student going into early labor, so I am ready for a break. But I can also assure you that I am more than ready to come back in 2013.

Happy something

If you're one of my Dutch or Belgian readers, you might have woken up this morning and thought about the cold you'll have to bike through, or the meal you're going to be cooking tonight before you even realized that today is Halloween. You might have decided to decorate your home with pumpkins galore, or thought of it as yet another ridiculous American holiday trying to make it on the other side of the ocean. If you're an American living overseas, you might have woken up this morning and realized that although you bought bags and bags of candy, you won't be having any trick or treaters coming to your door,and so you'll be left fighting the urge to eat all those fun-size Snickers and Milikyways yourself all night long.

In case you were expecting the next sentence to start with "If you're an American living stateside" and then state something generalized about the American Halloween experience, I'm sorry to let you down. Because last Monday I realized more than ever that there is no such thing as "The" American, just as there is no such thing as the typical American Halloween experience. In fact, if you live in the south, it is very well possible that you grew up believing Halloween is as evil as, oh, telling someone to shut up.

I always knew that there were Southern Baptists who objected to the celebration of Halloween. The fact that the celebration centers on kids in costumes who spend most of the night and the following days on a sugar high as a result of all the candy consumed on October 31st is irrelevant to them. In their opinion, Halloween has clear pagan roots, celebrates a spirit world unrelated to Jesus and God, and therefore reeks of idol-or in some more fundamentalist cases- devil-worshipping. Yes ma'am. Not to be persuaded by the argument that Halloween could be based on the Catholic "All Hallows' Eve" as much as it could be related to the Pagan feast of Samhain, they forbid their children from dressing up and going trick or treating. In their never-ending quest to save as many souls as possible, they usually refuse to hand out candy to other children as well. Instead, parents of little children dressed as princesses, Spidermen, or a milk carton are left to explain the signs posted on the doors of these unbelievers in Halloween, which usually sport supportive texts like "No candy here! God Bless You!", or "Halloween is not a Godly celebration!".

Instead of celebrating Halloween, then, many of these Southern Baptists attend "Harvest festivals" at their local churches, where bouncy castles, pony rides,  best costume contests, and the oddly named "trunk or treat" are available to entertain their children. It looks like Halloween, it talks like Halloween, it walks like Halloween, but since we're not calling it Halloween, the God of the southern baptists approves.

But this past Monday, when attending another life group session at a local church, I realized that there is yet an entirely different group of believers out there. People who reject Halloween as much as these southern baptists do, but for a completely different reason. These Christians, you see, use October 31 to celebrate Reformation Day.

Reformation Day, for those of you unfortunate enough to be Roman Catholic, Jewish, or heavens forbid, atheist, marks the day that Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the church in Heidelberg. It thus marks the birth of today's protestant movement, and apparently there is an entire subculture of Christians who choose to celebrate this in lieu of Halloween or the Harvest Festival.

When responding to my question about what they would be doing on Wednesday, one of the husbands responded that he always used that day to hand out copies of the 95 theses to his Catholic friends and colleagues. Not understanding why he would do that, I asked why.
"Why, it's Reformation Day, of course!" The pastor's wife explained, and after a few moments, it clicked for me. Reformation Day. Of course.
The pastor's wife went on to wax lyrical about the little Martin Luther costumes they had made for their children. Since a day without sarcasm is a day not lived, and really, who needs friends?, I joined in with the very cynical and not-to-be-taken serious comment, "Oh, you should totally re-enact the nailing of the 95 theses on Wednesday night, that would be so cool".
Husband-dear, who senses the sarcasm, shot me a slightly warning look, but fortunately, the mom whom the comment was addressed to, didn't notice, "Oh wow, that's such a great idea! I think we'll totally do that!"
I smiled a Cheshire cat smile, and added I was always happy to come up with interesting ideas.

So, happy Reformation Day everyone, and make sure you check out the 95 theses today.

To all my Catholic, Jewish, Mormon, Atheist, Agnostic, or people with a sense of humor, rest assured, we will be lighting our pumpkins and handing out candy tonight. We'll just keep some copies of those theses on hand in case the pastor stops by.

Pajama day

If there is one thing American Christmas movies lie about, it's about Christmas Day itself. Most movies get the lead-up into Christmas right; lots of shopping, decorations and Christmas music abound, there are lots of Christmas parties to attend, and neighbors and friends exchange presents and baked goods. Most movies even manage to capture Christmas Eve quite accurately: when visiting family, this is usually when most people arrive, a lot of Americans do go to a candlelight service, and most families set out a plate of cookies and a glass of milk for Santa before going to bed. But then there's Christmas Day. For those of you not intimately familiar with a typical American Christmas Day, allow me to enlighten you.

First, Christmas in America tends to start a few hours before the crack of dawn.Honestly, I'm not sure which American came up with the idea of opening presents in the morning, as opposed to a more relaxed start time of sometime after dinner, but whoever this unfortunate soul is, they should obviously have their head checked. Even when you have children whom you would think are way too old to get up early for Christmas, they will surprise you. This year, I jokingly told Jimmie he could not wake us up before six am, but could not believe my eyes when the now positively bear-sized teenager came bounding into our room at 6:08am, hollering it was Christmas morning, time to open the presents, and we'd better not complain as he had waited until after six.
So all those movies you've seen where entire families are gathered the Christmas tree with light coming int through the windows, looking refreshed and awake? Yep, it's a lie. Most American Christmases start off with various older family members stumbling from their beds, pulling on robes or hoodies, trying to shield their eyes from the bright lights on the Christmas tree, and telling their children that, no, we definitely may not start opening anything until the grown-ups have had coffee, and yes, really.

Second, most Christmas movies I'm familiar with tend to skip straight from the opening of presents to the preparation of Christmas dinner. I'm guessing this is because the filmmakers don't want all y'all Europeans to know about the best part of the day. Or perhaps because they're slightly embarrassed by what Americans do during most of that holiest of holy days, namely, lounge around. In their pajams. Unlike European Christmasses, where people will, after a fancy candlelight-filled breakfast, run upstairs to take a shower and put on their Christmas best, and then sit around in that same Christmas best all day, most Americans (myself included) love nothing better than to play with their new toys, watch a host of Christmas movies, possibly take a nap or two, all whilst still in their pajamas. And you know what's even worse? A lot of Americans (again, myself included) buy or receive special Christmas pajamas. I kid you not.
Now, don't worry, as someone who used to be an outsider, I know this is quite a tough pill to swallow. No shiny patent leather shoes, no pretty skirts or ties, no cute dresses, just fleece pants and a sweatshirt. At first it seems nothing like Christmas, but let me tell you, it. Is. Awesome.

And finally, although most movies love to show you how all Americans get dressed up for their big Christmas dinner, which is usually attended by lots of well-dressed extended family members, this, once again, isn't entirely true either. You see, most Americans live way too far away from their family to just show up for dinner. If you visit family for Christmas, you've probably been there for Christmas morning as well, so the chances of you dressing up are, I would guess, 50/50. Take our family, for instance. Last year, when we visited my in-laws, we dressed up for dinner. This year, on the other hand, I believe only husband-dear and mother-in-law bothered to change out of their jammies. Once again: Awesome.
Oh, and on a side-note, do you remember how all those dinners are always held while it's dark outside? Yeah, not true either. For a reason that must only be revealed to Americans born in this country (as I'm still clueless), most Americans eat their Christmas dinner in the afternoon. Yes, the afternoon. No, I don't know why. Yes, it's very strange to call it dinner if it's held at around 2pm. Yes, it really messes up your eating pattern for the rest of the day. No, you don't ever get used to it. But yes, you can still use candles and render the whole occasion "gezellig".

So, there you have it, the three lies about Christmas Day Hollywood loves to share over and over again.
You're welcome!

Bah humbug

"DC is my wife.
and I love her...
and will for all my life"
Husband-dear's spontaneous warbling in the kitchen

So I know I've been a total slacker when it comes to blogging this week.
I have.
And every time I get in my car to gallivant around town, I realize how badly I need to write a blog about people's inability to use turn signals and turn lanes. But then I come home, turn on our Christmas lights, whip a batch of cookies, clean something, make myself some tea, and realize I really don't want to whine about what horrible drivers Georgians are. I would much rather sit on my couch, look at the lights on the mantle and on the tree, pet the dogs, and listen to husband-dear making up songs in the kitchen. Or decide we have way too much peanut butter, and venture into the previously unexplored world of online recipes and whip up a batch of peanut brittle (brittle = cookies left in the oven too long). Or reconfigure our picture wall. Or write Christmas cards. Or call friends.

So, from the bottom of my heart, I'm sorry. I know you all love to read about my bah-humbug attitude towards life, but right now, there's just very little humbug and lots of jolly old cheer.

Now please excuse me while I have my first glass of eggnog of the season. I promise that there will be more of the usual after the weekend. I think. Although if I hear that Beach Boys song with the lyrics "Christmas comes this time each year" one more time, you may get your usual vinegar-filled blogging a bit sooner.

Lifetime Lessons

Over the Thanksgiving break, as I watched (or to put it more accurately: caught glimpses of) about five Lifetime movies, I realized I had been missing out. For although I love watching trashy television programs, my choices (so far) have been between a wide variety of increasingly odd reality shows about wedding gowns, lots and lots of children, or polygamy. Watching Lifetime opened my eyes to a whole new world. A world filled with beautiful, happy, married, decidedly heterosexual people who all love pets, America, and God. A world where you can sit outside in the Indiana winter without gloves, where Christmas lasts from October until February, and where someone is always right. Next to watching a bride pick between one $10k dress and the other, I couldn't think of a better form of media content to help you take your nap.

Watching bits and pieces of various Lifetime movies quickly made me realize, however, that Lifetime is not so much a movie channel, as it is an instruction manual on how Life Should Be Lived. All of the Christmas movies we (partially) watched over Thanksgiving break shared similar narratives, problems, and resolutions. The characters were eerily alike (and all seemed to come from the 90s hit show Bevery Hills 90210), both in looks, issues, and problem solving skills (or lack thereof).

So what did I learn from the Lifetime channel in the past few days?

Well, first of all, small towns are awesome. There's nothing better than a little bitty town, loved by its inhabitants, ignored by everyone else, and filled with quirky people and traditions. Even though one might not appreciate the small town at first, it won't take long (give it about 40 minutes, a little bit into the second act) for minds to change and the small town to take a firm spot on one's heart. Big cities are only good for going to college, starting a career (and then leaving it, but more on that later), and possibly finding a wife (never a husband), who will, after some adjustment problems (because the big city does that to people), love the small town as much as her Andy-Griffith-like husband.

Second, Christianity is still the way to go. I'm sorry, but according to Lifetime, this is the truth. Or perhaps The Truth. No one ever mentions Hannukah, Kwanzaa, or heaven forbid, another non-Judeo-Christian religion. Well, let me take that back, one particularly interesting movie did feature a Jewish couple and their daughter. Their daughter came from the big city discussed above, and had taken her parents to her fiance's small town (see above) to meet his very much small-town parents. It quickly became clear that although the Jewish parents were not "really" Jewish (Daughter to mom, "Why do we call ourselves Jewish anyway? We never go to church." - for the record, Jewish people don't go to church, they go to temple. Or shul. Not church. Sorry Lifetime writers, you need to do your homework), their inability to share the small town's mom insane enthusiasm for Christmas was quickly pointed to as the foundation to the problems between the two sets of parents (and not the fact that, say, the small-town parents had a back-up generator in case their five thousand Christmas lights went out, just to keep their fridge and said Christmas lights up and running). The conflict wasn't resolved until the Jewish parents were finally able to embrace the spirit of Christmas and helped the small-town parents win the annual Christmas lights decoration contest.

Also - women have issues. Lots of them. First of all, if they're not busy being total career-driven hyenas, they're overboard Christmas fanatics, or uppity Westcoast non-Christians.
Second, women tend to be the Grinch when it comes to Christmas. They're the ones who need convincing that Christmas really is awesome, not the guys. The guys love eating the tons of good food their wives baked for them, hunting, while their wives keep the mansion clean, and enjoying their children after they've been bathed and fed (by, I'm guessing, said wife).
Third, women suck at situational awareness. They never, ever recognize their knight in shining armor when they first see him (in fact, they'll be more likely to yell at him for parking in their driveway or splashing mud all over their dress with his $100k car). They also always tend to put their careers first, and believe they will do fine without a man. They don't recognize when their children are in need, their pets are sick, or the small town they just moved to is really the bomb.

Now, I have to admit, Lifetime did present one redeeming feature: Christmas sweaters are really only worn by dorks. Thank God for that.

In short, I decided that the tagline "The source for women's entertainment" just really didn't cover the essence of the Lifetime channel. In fact, I would propose changing it to either, "Lifetime: The way life should be if you're a WASP male", or "Lifetime: keeping our non-male-WASPS in place for over a decade".

So, will I be watching anymore Lifetime movies in the future?
...uhm...probably, yes.

I know, I'm a walking contradiction.

Thanksgiving...and then some

This entire week I kept telling myself I really, really needed to blog about this. Or that. But then someone would offer me pie, I would discover another paper that needed grading, or it was Lifetime-movie-naptime, and so I would (squirrel! anyone?) forget about the this or that that seemed so completely fascinating moments earlier.

But now that my mini-Thanksgiving-break is about to come to an end (only four more papers to grade and a class to prep), I can assure you that the past few days have been a gigantic success. Being the lucky bug that I am, I got Wednesday off, while husband-dear slogged away at work. So while I was at home grading paper after paper after paper, and in between writing things like "What do you mean?" and "This is not an appropriate theory to use here", making beds, cleaning bathrooms, and making sure our house was guest-ready, husband-dear was busy protecting the country doing goodness knows what and taking PT time. OK, I exaggerate. He did actually work. I think. But let the record at least state that he did come home with a gigantic keylime cake. Made by a female coworker. And I didn't wonder about that at all. Does that make me weird?

Anyway, this Thanksgiving we had a full house. And when I say full house, I mean it. Every bed we had (plus one) was filled. My in-laws came in from Ohio, and brought my friend Anna (also known as The Amish Girl) as well as their dog Trixie with them. Add that to the four of us and our two dogs, and you can imagine we went through gallons of milk, boxes of cheweez, did about two loads of dishes per day, mopped the kitchen floor at least once every three hours, and had an absolutely marvelous time.

You see, no matter what people tell you, spending holidays with the family really is the best. Husband-dear and I have spent Thanksgiving by ourselves, or with friends, and it's just not the same. Don't get me wrong, it is fun, but it's not the same as eating a huge dinner together, and then sitting down to watch an incredibly dumb Lifetime movie, acknowledge that it's a really dumb movie, and then all take a collective post-turkey nap. You just can't do that with people you'll see at the office the next day.

So, Thanksgiving was a smashing success. There was turkey, corn and sweet potato casseroles, carrots, rolls, gravy, dressing, cranberry sauce, three kinds of pies as well as the afore-mentioned cake.

But the joy didn't end there. Because we also went on a cultural/historical field trip to Andersonville, where the children (who had been there on a field trip), took great pleasure as serving as our tour guide, caught up on each others' lives, had Anna explain why Amish dresses have the number of pleats that they do (it has to do with the number of apostles), and put up our Christmas decorations.

Now that last activity was not part of the plan. We usually don't put up our decorations this early, and especially not with three "other people" in the house. If you've been following my blog long enough, you'll probably know that the Christmas decorations at our house are somewhat of a Dayton Agreement, and are the perfect embodiment of the compromise it takes to make a multicultural blended family work. So the way in which we decorate our tree, the inside and the outside of our house might seem odd to non-family members (both European and American), but it works for us, and so we leave it alone, and commence each year's decorating activities with a brief overview of who gets to what, when, where and why, just to ensure everyone is still on the same page. Outsiders, as potential deviants from our carefully plotted compromise, are usually not permitted.

But this year was different. I think we missed the memo that was sent around, but apparently the entire subdivision agreed to start putting up Christmas decorations the day after Thanksgiving. House after house was covered in lights, trees were put up, ladders were pulled out, inflatable Santa Clauses made their way on to front lawns, and Christmas had pretty much arrived come Friday night. Well, all that yuletide happiness made the kids yearn for their tree and lights, and made mother-in-law reminisce about the hundreds of Christmas cookies she usually bakes.

So husband-dear (after a quick consultation with the other major player in the Agreement, i.e., me), said, "Why don't we all decorate the house tomorrow, and bake Grandma's cookies!". I don't know if we'd just been watching too many Lifetime movies, but that announcement was met with general joy and excitement, and so come Saturday morning, Jimmie and I took to dragging box after box down from the attic. And lo and behold, the Christmas cookies were baked and the Christmas decorations went up, all without a hitch and with lots of smiles and laughter.

So here we are, three days after Thanksgiving, and we are ready for Christmas. Bring on the holidays, because we've got the spirit!