Christmas, Deep Thoughts

Boxing Day?

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I don’t really understand Boxing Day. 

But I feel pretty good post-Christmas.  The trick is to get the melancholy out of the way pre-Christmas, then post-Christmas feels great.  Another good trick is to plan a couple of vacations in January.  (This is at least the third year in a row I’m doing this, and it seems to work really well.  After that, February is short, March can be another vacation over spring break, April is always the busiest month, May you are almost there…and then June is my birthday month and the end of school! Don’t lecture me about living in the moment.  Life isn’t short, it’s the longest thing you do.)

Oh, and now a wedding anniversary.  And I’d better not forget my husband’s birthday like I did our anniversary the other week  (I couldn’t figure out why Chris was so insistent on us having a fancy dinner the night of the second in Chicago—he kept insisting and I kept saying it didn’t need to be that night as it was our travel day and there were other days we’d be there and finally said in a loud, cross tone “What is your obsession with the second?”  He was silent for a bit and then said “It’s our anniversary.” Needless to say, I made a reservation somewhere nice.  To be fair, I hadn’t technically forgotten our anniversary as it hadn’t happened yet…no, I can’t rationalize this.  I totally sucked and forgot.) 

All of these things can help with post-Christmas blues.  (Except forgetting your anniversary.  Don’t do that.)

After eating enough to gain 7.8 pounds yesterday (a fact my trainer thought was both ridiculously disgusting and impossible to believe, even though HE told me he lost 11 pounds over the last two weeks in order to be able to overindulge a bit this week…that doesn’t sound crazy or anything—I hope he’s reading today) I figured a good workout was in order.  That and it was already scheduled.  Lunges on the Smith machine, front squats, dead lifts, kettlebell swings.  I feel like I’m forgetting something but I really think that’s it.  Maybe I was slow today or we did extra sets? 

I probably smelled strongly of Ham the entire time.

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I wore a festive headband.  It was in honor of Boxing Day AND the snowstorm that was predicted that totally missed us.

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Post workout, in the car.  I was cold. 

I actually had to get dressed in regular clothes, including pants that buttoned for a rehearsal for this jazz concert I’m playing on—I feel so COOL when I play with jazz musicians, even though we all know that’s not true.  (Also, children, being cool is NOT important in life.  Being smart and nice is.)

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Christmas present.  I don’t have a Toms problem or anything.  PLUM CORDUROY THANK YOU LESLIE!

Last thought for tonight: We finally watched Moneyball.  Why did we wait so long?  Second favorite baseball movie!!  (First favorite is of course Field of Dreams.)

What’s your favorite baseball movie?  Or, top three?  I think my third favorite is A League of Their Own.

Christmas

You are not a cow

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It’s important to note that I often refer to my cat as “the ham” or “the fat ham”.

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Christmas was great!  I got home late Christmas Eve because of work the night before so we wanted to sleep in a bit.

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Churches like poinsettias, don’t they?

Anyway, we woke up and made coffee.  The plan was to make a cooked breakfast (rare for us—hash browns, sausage, coffee cake, and mimosas), open presents, make a couple side dishes and then in the mid afternoon head over to our friend’s for Christmas dinner and hanging out.

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Props to Leslie for continuing my cow tradition. I opened this and exclaimed, “I don’t even know what this is and I love it!”  Leslie gave me some other random things, and my favorite thing was a pair of purple corduroy Toms that I’d asked for.  I’m pretty excited about those.

My parents sent some gift cards, Vanessa gave us a new soap dispenser (there was an incident on Thanksgiving) and a lovely poster of the St Louis Skyline.  Chris got me a gorgeous pair of diamond earrings, so he wins Christmas this year 😉  What, I’m generally not shallow, but I’m a girl!

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Leslie sent the cat a catnip toy.  This is the most clear picture I could get of her playing with it.  It quickly became her new best friend and then she fell asleep.  Chris made the mistake of touching the toy and it was naturally completely covered with saliva.  Gross.

We went over to our friend’s Jon and Laura’s for Christmas dinner.  It was awesome!  First of all, (I’ve probably said this before but I’ll say it again), Laura is one of the best cooks I know and best hostesses.  Secondly, they have an adorable 8 month old baby who is just starting to elbow crawl and is absolutely the cutest thing (with the possible exception of the fatness) and we got to play with him as much as we wanted.  (Key word there, wanted 🙂  For as many times per week I get asked when we are having children—and yes, I get asked this a lot– I feel uncomfortable admitting in a public OR private forum that, yes, I do generally love babies.  And kids.  That are not my own because I do not have to take them with me.)

Okay, tangent over.  Baby: cute and fun.  That’s all I’m saying.

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Carving the ham is a serious job.

Here are some poorly lit food photos:

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(clockwise): potatoes, truffle mac & cheese, green beans, ham, corn pudding.

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My plate of food.  If only that were all I ate.  Unfortunately there was a starter of cheese and salami and I was already pretty full by dinner.  This did not stop me from having seconds.

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Out of about 5 photos somebody took of us, this was the best one.  I’m blaming the lighting?  Or the wine…all around.

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And then it was dessert time.  Yes, that is three desserts for six people.  And homemade ice cream.

It was a wonderful day.  We felt lucky to have such good friends who would invite us for Christmas when we weren’t even related (and not even a pity invite, they genuinely wanted us to come—or are really good actors!)  And then we went home and passed out.  And I weighed myself and realized I’d gained 7.8 pounds over the course of the day, which truly made me realize how much I ate (gross!) and explained why I had felt so awful for the past few hours.

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Ladies and Gentlemen…I present my husband!

At one point we were sitting around the table and I could barely sit up.  The baby was on the floor and I realized my best bet of being able to lie down without being super rude or admitting complete food failure was to get down on the floor with the excuse of playing with the baby.  This was a brilliant move, by the way! It culminated in me sitting in a comfy chair with him trying to get him to sleep reading “Are you a cow?”  Spoiler alert:  he was not a cow.

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I feel better this morning.  That is, I’m still completely full, and I am so not eating breakfast, possibly never eating again, and I’m about to head to the gym to work out but that will be hard because I’m pretty sure my entire body has turned to flab.

At least all the overeating holidays are behind us, right?  Hopefully I can still fit into a shiny dress for New Year’s!

Note:  my book giveaway is still running: enter now!

Tell me about your Christmas in the comments (or if you don’t celebrate Christmas, you can talk about that as well.)

Grand Ideas

Les Miserables Video

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Here’s the video I helped with last week.  Since the movie comes out today, I thought it was fitting that I share it. 

Photography and video by Sarah Crowder.  Sarah asked if I was available to help her out—basically I was her gopher and held reflectors and stuff like that.  It was easy and fun, and I hope I can help her out again, because I love working with her in pretty much all capacities.  The school I teach at is owned by the same people who own St Louis Ocarina—my boss, Dennis, totally freaked out when he saw me there.  I think he thought I was crashing the shoot.  He was totally confused!

Here’s some “behind the scenes” shots I took…

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Are you going to see Les Miserables?  I’m not a huge “musical” fan, other than the Sound of Music.  I always think of this quote from “Sabrina”:

Mack: Buff? The most difficult tickets to get will be for a Broadway musical.
Linus Larrabee: [distractedly] Okay.
Mack: That means that the performers will periodically dance about and burst into song.

childhood, Christmas

Christmas is about the memories

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Driving home from my second (of three) church services today I started thinking about memories from Christmas.  I heard somebody say once, you aren’t planning a wedding, you’re planning the memory of a wedding.  I think many holidays and special events are like that.  Sure, live in the moment, all that jazz, but honestly, that’s for the day to day.  Holidays are for the memory making, right?  I turned down a Christmas Day gig because I wanted my Christmas Day memory to be of waking up next to my husband and hanging out with him all day long.  I can work any day.

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(I wanted this to be on our Christmas card, since it’s a Christmas themed photo, but somebody vetoes it.)

Memories from childhood: 

Singing around the piano

Loading up the car and driving to PA and OH. 

Grandma Miller trying to give us bags of sandwiches and Mom trying to get her to not bother.  Us eating those sandwiches in the car AND stopping for lunch.

Playing endless games—Acquire, Rook, Pit, Dutch Blitz, Monopoly

Playing violin duets with Leslie—for the family, for the church, for ourselves (Christmas Trio and the medley, need I say more?)

Eating so many cookies and candy in Ohio one year that I had to throw up…in the kitchen sink.  Gosh, I remember I felt better after that!

Ice skating, playing in the snow, having fun with siblings and cousins

Date pudding and 7 layer salad

Leslie crying over her presents when she didn’t like them (I probably did this too, but that’s not MY memory) 😉

Memories from a little bit older:

Coming home to see how much Carrie had grown

Dad joking (I think) that we should just keep all the presents wrapped and save them for next year

Cheese grits and cinnamon rolls

Being up late playing violin at various church services

Spending my first Christmas NOT with my immediate family.  That was really the point I realized I was an adult, and my siblings too—when we started spending Christmas elsewhere—like we are again this Christmas

Getting snowed in on Long Island and driving overnight from New York to St Louis in an overpacked Honda Fit with two of our best friends.

Losing my grandfather to pancreatic cancer (not all the memories here are happy ones, but I can be grateful for the happy memories of him from all the years before—I can’t think about past Christmases without thinking of him though.)

Interesting fact:  I never believed in Santa.  No one in our family ever did.  I was probably that kid who ruined it for the other kids…I didn’t realize until I was older that there were actually kids who believed in Santa—I assumed it was all a facade.

Anyway, thanks for reading my blog today, yesterday, in the past, and in the future!  Merry Christmas to you!

Tantillo263

Food

Gingerbread Cake

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I’m not an amazing cook or an amazing baker.  I have my skills—I’m really good at cookies, because you get so many chances to get it right, and I’m a patient person.  I have amazing pie recipes and genetic tendencies towards making pie (not crusts, mind you, I’m talking about the filling.)  Cake on the other hand…not really my strong point.  Granted I haven’t had a whole lot of practice, which arguably is the biggest problem, but still.

A few weeks ago I found this recipe for Gingerbread Cake which looked really good and “Christmas-y”, and I emailed it to my friend Laura.  She responded that I should absolutely make it for Christmas.  Okay, except I’ve never had a huge amount of success with the Smitten Kitchen’s recipes.  That doesn’t mean I can’t try again, right?  To be fair, my only non-success was the Raspberry Buttermilk Cake I tried and the whole thing fell apart as I flipped the pan, and the second time I made it it was great.  But that was a scarring experience.  (I’m aware that all cooks and bakers have disasters.  I just prefer not to.  Remember what I said the other day, failed perfectionist.)

(Raspberry Buttermilk Cake, back in the day.  I love that I can reference my life via a search box on my blog.)

The next issue was that I needed a bundt pan and didn’t have one.  This is an easily remedied solution in the US, but even easier than buying one is borrowing one from Laura.  Later she asked to borrow my apple peeler/corer (we have this awesome contraption) and a springform pan for a recipe she was making so it was perfect (or frankly, the opposite of perfect, because we were making absolutely the wrong recipes.)

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(This is how the cake starts.  Beer and Molasses. )

Did I mention grocery shopping yesterday?  I have three church services to play today so I wanted to get my grocery shopping done yesterday.  I’ve been tasked with bringing corn pudding and a green vegetable to Christmas as well as the cake.  We are also planning a cooked breakfast in the morning with pancakes, sausage, hash browns, and coffee cake (basically all the stuff we don’t allow ourselves to eat ordinarily, isn’t that what the holidays are for? Don’t ask me about what has happened to the cookie party cookies or how my weight loss plans are doing, this too shall pass and at least we are keeping up our running and working out—also please ignore my switching between we and I, because half the time I’m referring to Chris and the other half it’s the royal We.)

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(I was worried because it was so liquidy compared to other, non-cake recipes, but it turned out good.  Took at least 15 minutes longer than the recipe said, which always freaks me out.)

Anyway, the grocery store was pretty busy, and then I couldn’t find the cardamom I needed.  They were all out.  I did a google search and determined it could be substituted with something else, and twitter told me the same (well, some on twitter said otherwise but I figured I’d go with the people who agreed with me)—then Laura said she had cardamom seeds and could grind some for me…well, it turned out the recipe said “a pinch of cardamom” so I figured, this is not even worth it.  And I believe I was correct, because the cake tastes great.  I know this because when I went to flip the bundt pan plenty of it stuck in the pan.  So the cake will taste wonderful though it is perhaps NOT the most attractive baked good.

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But I’ll put some powdered sugar on top, and like I said, it’ll taste great.  I’m not trying again.  I have other stuff to make.

Here’s the link to the recipe.

Random thoughts

Two good books about family and loss (perfect for the Holiday season)

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Happy Christmas Eve Eve!

Here’s a double book review and giveaway!  These two books had the common theme of family and loss so I think they fit well together.  And I find the holidays to be a time that I always think about my family, and those who are no longer with us…is that just me?  I always get so introspective and a little depressed…

Celia’s Journey
by Heather Muzik

Celia’s Journey is the story of a family who loses a child in a tragic accident and how their lives continue from that point on.  I’m not going to lie, I cried more reading this book than I had from a book in a really long time (I’m thinking the last Harry Potter book…).

The Strane family (Lindsay, Jerry, Adam, and Max) have a wonderful and easy life until a tragic accident takes one of the boys.  Everything changes as the family members struggle with their grief and pain, and try to continue with life and put the pieces back together.  The book is a difficult read because of the subject matter, but it’s a really good read.  I highly recommend it.

 

Out and Back
by Diane Strong

Out and Back is the story of another family, but this from the point of the view of a daughter who loses her mom to cancer and how she copes with her life afterwards.  Amber is a mom and a runner (a synopsis I found online referred to her as a “obsessive running/fitness junkie”—I prefer “runner”) who has, as most of us do, a challenging relationship with her mother and struggles to create a “perfect” life for herself and her family.  (I definitely related to Amber in this book.)  The book jumps back and forth from earlier in her life to the present day to tell the story of her life and how she copes with her loss and other family problems.

Like I said, I enjoyed both these books.  Celia’s Journey is a harder read, but REALLY good.  Out and Back was more relatable for me since I’m a runner (and perfectionist too…or at least a failed perfectionist.)  I recommend them both.

More stuff: Heather Muzik wanted me to tell you about a promotion for some of her other books that starts tomorrow (Christmas Eve!)—these books will be free on kindle on December 24, 25, and 26 as part of a promotion. She said the “2 Till” books are light and fun, and the other book is dark and twisted.  I know I’ll be taking advantage of the promotion!

You can find some other books by Diane Strong here.

All her books have a running theme.  Diane is a runner, triathlete, and also participates in adventure races.  Crazy, right?

Another of her books:

Giveaway time!  GIVEAWAY CLOSED:  WINNERS WILL BE NOTIFIED BY EMAIL! Okay, for the first book, “Celia’s Journey,” I am giving away a kindle or e-reader copy of the book OR a real paperback copy (mailed to US residents only).  For the second book, “Out and Back” I am giving away three kindle copies of the book.

Leave a comment below to win and let me know if you have a kindle or e-reader (you can read on your computer too and a variety of other ways).

I’ll choose the first winner randomly, and then choose three more winners who are up for the kindle copies (somewhat randomly, but funny, touching, or properly spelled comments would have a higher chance of winning!)  Winners will be notified by email.  This giveaway runs until 10 pm CST Sunday, December 30.

thoughts about violin, teaching, running, life.