The Spirit of the Season

Some people are always willing to inject that little bit of fun into things. My mom worked to do it. She cooked, made stockings, decorated, invited people (lots of people) to come to the festivities. But my dad? He just made the fun. He told stories, true or not. Here my dad on the left (RIP) is amusing his brother-in-law, my Uncle E.C. (also RIP) with some story. The gift he has unwrapped is a pack of long matches for lighting the fireplace. Fire-building was his job. My Uncle E.C. loved to tell a story, too. They both enjoyed a bit of the spirits, too. I miss them both.

Christmas Desire

Christmas sights and sounds always thrilled me: the carols, the decorations, the lights, iced cookies, a big family dinner with homemade rolls and pies and turkey giblet gravy. I was raised in the Christian tradition of baby Jesus: Christ is Born! and maybe the church or even the family will try a live nativity scene. But let's be honest. I wanted stuff, too. There wasn't a lot of stuff in our lives. That's me with a doll dressed in jeans and T-Shirt (an attempt to get me to like a baby doll). Obviously, I got a hat and gun. The homemade jeans and shirt might have been handed down.

These days I'm a skeptic about the Savior's birth, but I try to recapture the thrill of decorations and lights, mostly by co-opting the decorations in stores and hotels and people's outdoor light displays. I'm too lazy to do much decorating although this year I've trotted out my bendie Christmas figures, my tiny tree and a few things to scatter around the apartment. I try to recreate the excitement of getting and giving things with FFP by asking for a few things I could easily buy myself. He gets to shop for clothes, have a massage, etc. Business as usual but we say "that's for Christmas."

It all falls a little flat, though. The thrill is not there. We have what we want all the time, really. We give money to good causes, but nothing really captures the (admittedly selfish) thrills of old times. Plus, I'm retired so there isn't even the thrill of time off like when we were in school or worked.

When I was going through my aunt's old slides, I found this one. She is a twenty-something I'm guessing and she looks like she got a bowling ball. I don't think the thrill was gone for her.

Don't get me wrong. I'm perfectly OK with not really wanting or needing anything and realizing how lucky it is to have reached this place. I'm OK, too, with having lost any special meaning surrounding the holidays. But I won't say that there isn't a little depression that creeps in around the edges. The holidays should provide some kind of thrills whether it's religious, family gatherings or festive feeling. All the ads are promising it. But I know it won't come and that's something.

Infinite Legos

FFP poses with the Lego Atlas in the Lego Store at Rockefeller Center (a recreation of this) 

The Visible Woman...owns.

I have a long-standing love affair with Lego. The bricks didn't arrive in the U.S. in my childhood unfortunately. I managed to accumulate a sizable number of them anyway as an adult once I had some money. Then I gave 99% of them away to my grand nephews. 

I could afford to buy any toy I want now. But when would I have time to play with them? I confess to wanting to construct elaborate Lego kits and to put together giant jigsaw puzzles and to play with various electronic devices. But I know now that I'll never have the time to do these things justice. Or maybe I'll never make the time.

Long ago I reached the point where I could afford more toys than I could play with. (And buy more books than I could read, etc.)

When we visited the NYC Lego store (see above) I bought a tiny Statue of Liberty kit. I put it together right away and put its picture on facebook. 

This is the story of too much of my life these days: plenty of money to buy things, too little bandwidth to enjoy them. It's a good problem to have, of course. It's not a problem at all really. But occasionally I long to want something and think about it for a long time and finally get it and then use it and use it and enjoy it. It makes making a Christmas list a chore for sure. I am playing tennis with a racket that is fifteen or twenty years old. I'm perfectly happy with it. A new one would be a nuisance. I am driving a 12-year-old Honda Civic. I'm perfectly happy with it. A new one would be a nuisance. I probably need some new clothes, but I keep thinking I'll lose ten pounds first.

Naturally I give away money to charities and relatives and friends. And we buy travel and meals and tickets. And not having scores of pounds of Legos or even the approximately 3000 books we had at the old house is a bit of a relief. I still have too much stuff, however, to give my possessions the proper attention.

Recycling Christmas

Today's title is the Holidailies Writing Prompt. OK, what does this writing prompt actually mean?

As anyone who reads this probably knows this is my 28th day of Holidailies. The portal, so expertly run by Jette and Chip, provides access to lots of journals (blogs, online diaries, whatever) whose owners are trying to write every day from December 1 to January 1. They recruited a panel to read and nominate 'best of' entries. You can check out the sites as they are updated or from a listing that provides access to all the registered entries in a variety of ways. It's been a great bunch of reading for me. I even drifted away from my trusty old reads (Bunt Sign, MyBeloved Monster, Not Calm dot Com and Journal of a Writing Man) for a while although I did come back and catch up. (I found the Writing Man posting video, too.)

Anyway, back to the writing prompt. The aforementioned portal has another feature this year. Writing prompts. In case you really want to write but just can't get started. Contributors were encouraged to submit them. I did submit some. And now, here is one I submitted and I have no idea what to do with it.

Should I write about regifting? About reusing wrapping materials? About trotting out antique decorations that have a sentimental value? About making Christmas decorations out of old AOL CDs? About sending the live tree off to be mulched for Armadillo Dirt? (I don't have a live tree but the city picks up my yard waste for this.)

What I decided was to talk about a Christmas long ago. I'm going to say three decades ago. I can place it in time because my nieces were young, around six and eight. And yes they are 36 and 38 today. The whole immediate family (including my sister's family and my parents) came to Austin for Christmas which was a rare thing indeed. A bunch of us decided that it was going to be a 'secondhand' Christmas for exchanging gifts. Even some of the extended family got in on this. We were allowed to make a gift or give something we already owned or bought pre-owned (at a garage sale or secondhand place). It was a memorable Christmas. My old maid aunts sent me the Aluminum glasses they'd used for iced tea for decades and which I loved. I gave my nieces each a suede purse. The purses were given to my sister and I when we were small by one of our aunts. For some reason I'd kept both of them all those years. I bought secondhand books for my brother-in-law and Dad and wrapped them in maps I bought at the secondhand book store for a quarter. My in-laws got in on the spirit of the thing and gave my nieces some sparklers they bought at a garage sale for a nickel. The kids had the best time playing with those in the driveway with their father, safety Bill we called him, supervising.

The family has threatened for years to reinstate the secondhand Christmas where you make regifting an art. But we've never pulled it off. I still have the aluminum glasses, though. They remind me of that Christmas and of sitting in the back yard at my aunts' house (which was my favorite place as a kid) with a cool drink that was making beads of sweat on the metal glass. I never use them. But I haven't been able to get rid of them. The color is mostly worn away. But they are fraught with memory.

When Left Alone

When left alone I don't dress up like Mother Ginger and join the ballet doing "The Nutcracker." Nope...you won't find me 'riding the skirt' with little bon-bon dancers emerging from it. No...that's Barbara Carson,Founder of Ballet Austin. FFP took the picture backstage last night. He recruits and organizes VIPS for the eleven regular performances of Ballet Austin's annual "The Nutcracker" performances. [More next year when the ballet is between Bass and the new Long Center and will perform in the smaller Paramount.]

FFP also had a reading to attend today for another charity (Badgerdog Publishing) he donates time to as a board member and newsletter writer. So I was left to my own devices most of the day. Not only to go about my errands and such alone (not all that unusual) but also to go to a party without FFP.

When I shop and do errands without FFP, I tend to take a little longer. Today I went to the ATM machine at our bank and I was going to put some more holiday cards in the mailbox next to it but they had already had the one pickup of the weekend. I decided to go across the street to The Menagerie (which is a locally-owned gift shop...owned by a friend of mine I might add). I had a couple of people on my list who didn't really need anything but people I might see and who might drop by with a gift for me. I wandered the shop for thirty minutes while husbands bought expensive jewelry for wives and people picked out wedding china that cost hundreds of dollars a place setting. I got a couple of ideas and when a sales person was suddenly free I asked a couple of questions, picked out some stuff and wandered off to Anderson Coffee Company for ten minutes while they wrapped the stuff. I got four things. I'm pretty sure I know who is getting what, but in any case, these are neat little presents and were not all that expensive. I thought I might shop some more. Maybe see what shops were at Twenty-Six Doors which is nearby. But that was about my shopping limit for one day.

I drove to the Lamar Post Office. At the drive-up boxes the 'stamped mail' box, due to be picked up soon, was so full I couldn't get my twenty-five or so cards in it. In fact, other people's mail threatened to fall out when I tried. I went inside and poked my cards through the slot.

Now, the question was...should I shop some more? No. I'd reached my limit. I went home and talked to FFP between his events. He wanted to buy a new sports coat for his Christmas present. (He is easy...he will buy himself something. I just have to nod and smile and listen to him call his favorite clothing store, Capra and Cavelli, and negotiate on something he wants.)

Now the big deal. Should I go alone to a friend's party? Stuart has a thing about decoration and his little house is a showplace of cool decorating ideas. At Christmas, he manages to cram in two trees and lots of decoration into the space and then invite friends in to partake of goodies. Should I go all alone however? FFP is so good at parties, remembering who everyone is and all. I finally went alone. I talked to a friend who is fighting cancer and ate from the buffet and admired the decorations. Someone told me that the way we had added our room on in the back had inspired them to do something similar. Sadly, I didn't remember them being in our house! I am lame. Finally, I left around eight.

When I got home, I had a couple of hours before FFP would be home. I looked at my 'to do' list. One item 'clean up fireplace' had been looming for over a week. We had some marble placed on the hearth to cover some chipped limestone. Since then we'd needed to clean up inside the unused fireplace. There was no significant fire residue. We hadn't had a fire in years and I'd cleaned that up. There was just dust and dirt and stuff. With my week long allergy attack I hadn't wanted to attack it. I changed my clothes, took out the fire grate, cleaned it off, wiped off the old andirons. Then I studied the situation and wondered if some gas logs might be the answer. I got a long match and gingerly lit the gas element. Works. Hmmm. Add to 'to do' list: shop for gas logs. That's the trouble with 'to do' lists. They grow at the bottom while you check things off at the top.

Then I decided to wrap some presents. I'd gotten a few toys for my dad to pass out to kids, a book for my dad, a small gift for my mother-in-law, some silly things for a friend. FFP had gotten audio tapes for his dad (who is nearly blind and listens to tapes several hours a day). I copped out with recycled gift bags where possible, but I actually put paper around a few things. Dad hasn't mentioned gifts for these kids he knows yet, but I'm prepared if he does. Wrapping presents is a ritual that makes you feel like it's a holiday, too, right? Also on my 'to do' list: 'christmas decor.' I need to go out to the storage room and dig around and find something to make the house look like Christmas for when my parental units come over.

But FFP came home. So much for being left to my own devices. I sat down to read and watch TV.

The Economics of Stuff

A couple of years ago I read this great article. I wish I could cite it properly or even, were it possible, hyperlink you to it. I looked in one folder where the original article might have been but it wasn't.

Anyway. I'm stealing this from something I read a while back somewhere. Could be The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal. Or not.

I found an article that I think references the article in question

The gist of this stolen material was that when we buy something there is an immediate loss of value. That proverb about the new car that is worth thousands of dollars less when you drive it off the lot. Yeah, that idea. But these guys had extended the idea to gifts and, the theory was, that a gift you buy is worth even less to the person who receives it than it would have been had he bought it for himself.

I can't help thinking of this every time the gift-giving season rolls around. I plunk down money for something and I feel this decline in value. It's sad. There must be a way to put a positive spin on it but I haven't found it.

I've been thinking about presents and buying some things. Bummer. Economic disaster.

The picture was taken Sunday at a flea market on Burnet Road. And, yeah, I know, sometimes stuff gets more valuable over time. That's just not the point, though.

Well, a little more digging has turned up an article in The Economist from December 2001 and I think it is the very one that triggers my thinking. And yet...if you click the link, this article ends up being upbeat. How could I have missed that? The thought may actually count. Even economically speaking.