Dec 20, 2012 | moments & memories
So, as you saw here, we got a big tree. We love big trees.
Back East, we’d typically hunt for the tallest, fullest one we could find. In our old home, we had two “living areas” one where we never sat (this is where the tree went – haha.) and one where we hung out most of the time because the kids’ toys were in there.
This year, our living space is a bit different – and we generally all spend most of our time in our living room – and there’s not a ton of room for a typical Clark-style tree. So we went with a Douglas Fir which seemed taller and narrower and boasts the quintessential Christmas tree shape. Uh…it seemed taller and narrower, but, really, it is still big. Very big. Height-wise, it fits perfectly. Width-wise, we probably could have opted for something a little less…round (i.e. intrusive).
While tree hunting, we realized they don’t have the “stand-straight” tree system out here. If you don’t know what this is – it’s on the Clark family’s 10 ten favorite inventions ever list. Basically, you buy your tree, they drill a hole in the bottom, you take it home and literally pop it right onto the stand. No screwing the sides in while trying to make sure it’s straight. No wiring it to the railing or picture nails in the wall. (Oh, you don’t do that? That just happens to be a need we had when using regular stands? Figured.) No standing back and judging from all angles to make sure it’s not gonna tip. Nope. You literally pop it onto the stand and it’s perfect every time. Because the tree is up and ready to decorate within 15 seconds of getting it home, it pretty much turns regular dads into Christmas hero dads in a matter of minutes.
“No problem!” we thought, “We’ll just drill our own hole.”
And we did.
Only, see, there’s a funny thing about the stand straight system – there’s like a $500 piece of equipment that drills the hole for you in like three seconds. I’m *sure* it’s calibrated to go exactly the right depth, etc. etc.Kenny’s Ryobi power drill? Burned out the battery before he was done. He didn’t say it, but I think drilling a straight hole into the bottom of the tree was the second hardest thing Kenny’s ever done. (The first being cutting the tree down.)
No big deal – he made a hole and we could use our treasured stand straight stand! Only we made a ‘stand crooked’ and not a ‘stand straight’. And because we are sometimes dumb, we rigged it to stand straight. This entailed Kenny holding the tree straight – no matter that the stand was like 5 inches off the ground on one side! – while I shove folded up cardboard under it. Classy. (Actually, I think that’s so classy, I should spell it classee.) “Is it straight?” “No.” “Ok. Be right back.” I left to go to the recycling can to get more cardboard, folded it, shoved it under. “How about now?” “Nope.” Repeat x5.
Ta da! It’s straight. It’s actually faux straight / recipe for future disaster. Whatevs – we could move on to the next activity! It looked good for now and it seemed stable! And that’s all that matters, right? (One day we’ll learn, folks, one day we’ll learn.)
So, Kenny and the kids decorated it on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. (I was doing other Christmas-y activities, and I guess he got bored waiting for me to be done and just went for it.) Queue Sunday morning. A few snowflakes fell off overnight and I was putting them back on the tree while my coffee was brewing. Kenny and the kids were still in bed.
Hmmmm.
I feel like the tree is leaning towards me.
Oh no. It’s moving. It’s actually falling on me. Right now. “KENNNNNNYYYY!” was punctuated by the crash of glass, and the pain of losing an ornament was fleeting as I drove my face and entire left arm into the tree in an attempt to catch it. I caught it. I saved it. Holy cow, I saved it! I only lost one ornament. I was fine. Crooked glasses and a some tree needles in my hair were trumped by the joy of getting to rock some pine fresh scent on my shirt (and eyebrows). (Oh, and good morning, sweetie! I know, I am the best – this is just how you wanted to wake up on this fine Sunday morning.)
We couldn’t get it to stand back up. We called ourselves a few curse words under our breath – think unintelligent donkeys and donkeys named Jack – and I held the tree while Kenny undecorated and vice versa. Poor Kenny. He spent a lot of time decorating that tree on Saturday. The only good thing is that he really likes Christmas and the kids had fun helping, so we got to do it all over again. Haha. (Always find the positive, right?)
Kenny carried the tree back into the garage, waived his little white surrender flag and went out to get a regular tree stand. It worked beautifully! We redecorated and moved on. Lesson learned. Pictures to follow…I am writing this on a plane and haven’t uploaded them yet!
Dec 18, 2012 | yup, i really did that
I headed out to Walgreen’s this morning to grab a few things, including a box of Christmas cards.
I walked into the store and was greeted by a gal with, “Good morning, can I help you find anything?”
I said, “Hi, yes – can you point me to boxed Christmas cards?” I usually never ask for help navigating stores, but I’m under the weather and needed to get back home to rest before hopping on a call for work.
Without a flinch, she replied, “Christmas, what?”
I said, “Boxed Christmas cards.”
She raised her eyebrow, “What? Christmas what?”
She was a little sassy, and I wasn’t feeling great and that’s not a great combination for me to share niceties. I deliberately spat out, “Boxed. Christmas. Cards. Like cards you send to people to wish them a Merry Christmas?” At this point, I am thinking between my stuffy nose and Philadelphia twang, I must be incomprehensible to this Portlandian. Why does she not know what I am saying? Doesn’t Walgreen’s bill itself as a veritable holiday wonderland that would spare me from running to 12 different stores to get what I need to have the jolliest of holidays?
She said, “We don’t carry those. But you can probably find them at Walgreen’s.”
Crap. I’m not IN WALGREEN’S?
I said, “Wait – this isn’t Walgreen’s?” and laughed.
“Nope, this is Ace Hardware – out the door and take a hard right for Walgreen’s.”
Ah. I now see why she had no idea what the heck I was asking for. I am probably the only person that ever asked for boxed Christmas cards in Ace Hardware. Ever. In the history of Ace Hardware.
Son of a biscuit.
I apologized and left.
I fully expect she tweeted or status’d that this dumb lady came into Ace Hardware looking for Christmas cards today. So if that pops up into your feeds, you can think – hey! I know the lady that did that. Hahaha.
As for me, I went back to the couch and checked Ace Hardware off the list of places in Portland where I will ever show my face again.
Dec 15, 2012 | moments & memories, trying to raise humans
When Gavin started Kindergarten earlier this year, I likened it to putting my heart on a bus. This was especially true after I watched his little crying face drive away from me off to the new, unknown world of elementary school for the first two weeks.
He was a little scared. I was a little scared. Mostly because it was new and different and neither of us really knew what to expect. The one thing I did know was that I was sending him to Kindergarten / Elementary school. Into a community that – just by the nature of its existence – was a community of people who care about one another and each individual that passes through its doors. Who care about kids and their well-being. Who I knew would try their best to keep him happy and help him learn. Who I knew would keep him safe. After all, he’s a child. And I was sending him to school. Those are some of the fundamental foundation blocks of a school community, right?
The feeling of putting my heart on a bus came roaring back to the forefront of my consciousness yesterday. Did I hug him before he left? Kiss him? Tell him how proud I am of him? Tell him how very much I love him? Sigh.
Today, like so many Americans, I am heartbroken. Questioning a senseless tragedy for which the answers will never be enough to fill the hole I now have in my soul.
My stomach flips every time I think about Newtown. Tears well up in my eyes when I imagine families trying to come to grips with the horror they are living. The tears fall when I imagine their babies in that school. They continue as I think about that community that now has to carve a path forward. It will be so hard. But I know they will do it. They’ll do it for their children.
Irrationally, I applied the fear I felt for Newtown to my own town. I am sure many of us did. I wanted to immediately pick Gavin up from school yesterday when I heard the news. I realized I had no idea what I’d tell him if I did. He’d be able to tell that I was crying. And I had no good, Kinder-friendly answers as to why. I just wanted to hug him. Hold him close. Ease my irrational fears that he, too, was in harm’s way. Sigh. A big part of my job is to protect his innocence and let him be a kid. He has no concept that something like this could even happen. I have no idea how I would even explain it. He feels safe and happy at school. It’s my job to make sure it stays that way. I left him in school.
But I cannot stop asking myself ‘what if?’ and stepping through the processes required to enter our elementary school. I feel like the foundation of what I understood school to be is shaken. One of the folks being featured heavily on news coverage said something like there’s little defense against a person with malicious intent and a loaded weapon. And at that point, the school staff’s job is to then protect as many lives as possible.
Shudder.
So true. Fundamentally, I knew that. However, I had never thought about that in the context of sending my children to kindergarten. That right there is the difference this time.
Thursday, the mass killing of young children in an elementary school was unthinkable to me, as I am sure it was to so many of us. I never would have thought something like this COULD happen…let alone WOULD happen. It happened. And I feel like everything’s changed. I’m not sure how yet, but similar to past national events, I imagine it will be a collective loss of even more innocence. Hopefully one that unites us all. And enables us to tune out rhetoric and get to real solutions that restore every local community’s faith in humanity. And goodness. And right.
Today, I am sad. Scared. Uncertain. I don’t know what the answer is. But I do know that neighborhoods and communities – locally, regionally, nationally – need to come together. Right now. We need to fix this. This HAS to be the final straw. Something has to change.
As Maya Angelou so poignantly posted yesterday: “Our country is grieving. Each child who has been slaughtered belongs to each of us and each slain adult is a member of our family. It is impossible to explain the horror to ourselves and to our survivors. We need to hold each other’s hands and look into each other’s eyes and say, “I am sorry.”
I hugged Gavin extra hard when he came inside after school. I hugged him extra long so he wouldn’t see my eyes filled with tears. He squirmed to get away. Giggling. And that giggle was just what I needed to hear.
Dec 12, 2012 | moving across the country...in stories
Since it’s the season of thoughtfulness and giving and all things nice, I thought it’d be a good time to share a little ‘giving’ story…something that a long-time family friend did for me recently.
A few weeks back, I received a package from Uncommon Goods. They do this nifty little ‘surprise’ thing when they ship gifts to people…it’s just a random present in a box with a little card sharing an anonymous message from the sender…so you are literally sitting there with a gift and no clue who it’s from. This is especially true in my case – it wasn’t my birthday, anniversary, best friends day, love your aunt day, etc…just a random day of the week. In this case, it was, I believe, November 4, and someone sent me a lovely art piece: a two-toned wood tile with the Philadelphia skyline routed in.
I was stumped. No clue. But it was such a cool surprise that I couldn’t wait to find out who it was. It took me a bit! Hahaha. I felt terrible because I was unable to thank the gift giver right away.
It wasn’t until I went to recycle the box that I found a sealed envelope that ‘revealed’ the gift giver. It turned out to be a long-time family friend that I spent a ton of time with growing up. She now lives in Pittsburgh – quite a distance from her home / family / friends back near Philadelphia – so she identifies with the sentiments I often share on this blog about liking where you are / your new adventure but terribly missing ‘home’. She wanted to send a little encouragement booster as we celebrated our one-year anniversary in Oregon….such a thoughtful and sweet thing to do! There are many days where I question whether I (personally) can make it out here – and having someone who’s gone through a similar move, and is successfully living quite a distance from everything familiar while raising a young family, really meant a lot to me that day…and really, every day since.
I have since found a spot to display the piece – I pass by the tile every day and it reminds me – fondly – of home. It also makes me smile that she thought of me, and knew I might just need a little encouragement as we marked a milestone on this journey. Thank you, Katie!
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Nov 17, 2012 | life around portland
Our visitors left on Tuesday. Sad, of course, but slightly less sad because we’ll see them in a few weeks for the holidays. Woo hoo! I think we did a decent job of showing them around. We may have finally gotten it right after four rounds of visitors this year. Fifth time’s the charm?
Anyway, one of our favorite day trips turned out to be a visit to Astoria, Oregon. I’ve wanted to go there since we moved here – for a few reasons:
1) It’s America’s first permanent settlement on the Pacific Coast.
2) It has real live sea lions lounging about on the piers.
3) Uh, it’s where the Goonies was filmed.
For me, and I am guessing many of you that spent some formative years in the ’80s, Goonies was a childhood favorite. My friend Megan and I obsessed over Sean Astin. My brother and I watched it any chance we got – and could pretty much recite it line by line.
Astoria is really cool. Sure, sure – we had a great lunch and visited with the sea lions. BUT – we also went to the Goondocks. THE GOONDOCKS!!!
Dennis, Gavin and Grace truffle shuffled. Since I am a 36-year-old that carried two babies that rivaled Butterball turkeys … I decided not to terrify the sweet Goonie Hill neighborhood. We snapped a ton of pictures and left a little donation to keep this ’80s cinematic memory in tact.
The strangest thing? Real people live there. In fact, I read the house was recently on the market. Interesting. There was only one other looky-loo family there when we visited, but they didn’t get out of the car. We totally did. Hahaha. I felt a little strange hanging out in someone’s actual driveway taking pictures of their house, but I guess that comes with territory when you buy the Goondocks?
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