Don't Do This To Your Pets

No good pet lover ought to do this to their pet friends. Poor cat.

Christmas Cinema

Seeing as we are running down the final week of the Christmas gauntlet, I wanted to talk for a bit about the cinema of Christmas. Now I am not Siskel or Ebert, and I know I have a skewed sense of humor when it comes to film--just ask my mom who still, two decades later, doesn't see the humor I do in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, but I digress.

I think the holiday movies fall into a couple of categories: Family Fare and For Kids Only. You know the difference. One you can all sit down with grandparents and the kiddies and chuckle a bit and feel all warm and fuzzy, and the other you have to leave the room to the munchkins alone and find a big pile of treats from the neighbors to try to drown out the insipid music that won't leave your mind until Easter.

Now I realize that for a time I was a kiddie and some of the For Kids Only batch still holds a little piece of my heart, but once a year is all it takes for those songs to become lodged in my head until spring breaks.

Which Christmas movies are you talking about? you may be asking. Well, I'll tell you.

One that I loved as a child and still have a little love for is The Year with a Santa Claus. The story itself if pretty lame but I LOVE LOVE LOVE the Heat Miser. I think I am his long lost cousin, in fact. Come on, you can sing it with me..."I'm Mister Heat Miser, I'm Mister Sun....I'm Mister Green Christmas, I'm Mister 101. Friends call me heat miser, whatever I touch, starts to melt in my clutch...I'm too much!"



The other song that sticks in my head is from a show I can't put my finger on this moment, but the song says, "Put one foot in front of the other...and soon you'll be walking out the doo--oo--oor!" I believe it is a Rudolph story. But it is another Rakin Bass stop motion animation production from about the early 70s.

See? You can't stop singing the songs either, can you?

As far as the Family Fare films at Christmas time, I don't think you can get any better than A Christmas Story. You know, Ralphie's quest for the red-rider BB gun and his mom's ultimate denial telling him he'll "shoot his eye out". Too many classic moments to share, but you know when you've met another aficionado when lines can be quoted across the Christmas dinner table. I love that one.



In the past month, however, I was reminded of the fabulous portrayal of Scrooge from George C. Scott. What a masterpiece of Dickens that version of A Christmas Carol is. Fro several weeks now I have watched that with Dear Friend Tammy. Mr. Scott is fantastic and the story is so profound. Though, on a side note, the Muppet's version with musical stylings is pretty cute too.

Genius Golfer's favorite is, certainly, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. How would it not be, as I have to stop myself from calling him Clark or Sparky this time of year?! 'Griswolding' is code for putting up his Christmas light show.



For the purist in your family, have you seen The Nativity? Pretty well done, all things considered. We saw this a few years back in the theater with my extended family. It was sweet and a good reminder to keep the season in perspective.

What about you? Does your family have some "must watch" shows this time of year? Naughty or nice, there is something out there for everyone. So put your fuzzy slippers on, throw back some 'nog and snuggle down for a nice long movie weekend.

One Week Left

I made the mistake to go running this morning. Thinking, "Well, it is above freezing today, I should run this morning." Boy was I wrong. However, the exercise did feel good, except the breathing part. And I do a lot of breathing when I am running, so that felt more like the fires of hell expanding in my chest. Odd how really cold air could be so burning when it gets pulled in through your nose, isn't it?!

But, the point of me telling you I was running this morning, while I was running/jogging/burning my lungs with the fires of hell, was that I started thinking that there was really only one more week until Christmas. Not that I am counting down for Santa this year. I am not sure he is stopping by our place--we are surely going smaller this go around. But I thought I think this is the first year I will miss Christmas time.

Usually Christmas makes me feel like a big Bah, Humbug! But this year, I planned way ahead. I shopped deals and made many more gifts. I baked a lot and listened to a lot of Christmas music. I have avoided most shopping situations and centers. I visited the post office to mail Christmas packages before Thanksgiving this year. And this is the first year, in a long time, I really feel glad about the whole seasonal feeling.

I think I will miss it. But let's give it one more week to be good and sure.

Note for the Grandparents Who Lurk Here

Just a little note for the grandparents who lurk about on the blog. The Girl swam the 100 yard butterfly tonight in the high school swim meet and WON the event! It is not her normal stroke, though she does it well. She also swam the breaststroke, which is her favorite (in a tie with the distance freestyle) and she dropped a second in her time in that one too. Then she swam the medley relay and the 400 yard freestyle relay. The 400 relay won by 25 yards! That is crazy...remember she is a freshman!

Can't wait to see what a few more years of coaching, practice and experience do for her swim times. Yes, I am pretty proud of her tonight.

Memory of Christmas Past

Did your pets go a little crazy at Christmas time? This picture made me smile and remember one of our cats we had as I grew up. He was a tabby that we adopted from the animal shelter and who came with the name of Jennifer, even though he was male. We called him Big C because he was the chunkiest cat we had. He had a great personality and even let my sister and I dress him up in baby clothes and drive him around as he slept in the basket of our bike.

When the Christmas tree got set up and decorated, he's always end up nosing around on the lower branches of the tree. One year we had tinsel on the tree and I vividly recall watching that cat slurp up a piece of tinsel or two as if it were spaghetti. That can't feel, sound or taste good. Little sliver of aluminum foil tinsel on those big cat teeth? Gross.

The only thing worse was walking outside a day or two later and coming across a little pile of silvery cat poo. Even grosser. There is a holiday memory for you!

Poem #8

The Boy recently had a poetry unit in his English class. They had to write their own poetry after learning about the forms and purposes of poetry. I am sure they read famous poems as well, but there is no evidence that there was any modeling from the following creation in his poetry notebook he brought home:


Poem # 8 by The Boy

Sitting at home doing nothing. playing with friend latter that day. walking walking hearing cars go scrich coming to a stop. walking inside tap tap the sound of my footsteps. Going to my room walking in and seeing a dead littel crab lying lifeless as cold as snow out of its shell as I loved him as I loved him. one dead littel crab. lifeless his heart stopped as if the world froze time stopped not one tick tick motionless.


original spelling and punctuation preserved....oh, my.

A Baby Changes Everything

I might be last person on earth who has heard this song this Christmas season, but I just did and I just love it. Faith Hill has some pipes and is gorgeous to boot, but the message of this song completely resonated with me today. I hope it does for you too. Merry Christmas, my friends.