And Of Course...

What would Christmas be without some Office quotes?  Getting Season Six on DVD really put me in the mood.

"'But what are we going to do with this hacked off part?'
'Well, that is a perfectly good mini-tree, Kevin. And we are going to sell that to charity. That's what Christmas is all about.'"

"Unbelievable. I do the nicest thing that anyone's ever done for these people and they freak-out. Well happy birthday Jesus, sorry your party's so lame."

"Presents are the best way to show someone how much you care. It is like this tangible thing that you can point to and say 'Hey man, I love you this many dollars worth.'"

And, saving the best for last...
"Christmas is awesome. First of all, you get to spend time with people you love. Secondly, you can get drunk and no one can say anything. Third, you give presents. What's better than giving presents? And fourth, getting presents. So, four things. Not bad for one day. It's really the greatest day of all time."

Cookie Cutter Christmas

Just got done watching Christmas Vacation for the first time, away from my family for the first time.  It made me think about what we expect out of the holidays and how well (or poorly) things live up to those expectations.  In the movie, Chevy Chase sets his hopes high for a big family Christmas, only to find everything going wrong.  In the end, though, he finds...

Well, I wouldn't know because the DVD was scratched.  See what I mean?

My parents love Christmas, if you don't remember from past holiday blogs.  It's actually a family-wide epidemic.  But I think we're all guilty of trying too hard to make things perfect.  One year, my dad got us a gingerbread house kit.  Most of my time was spent shoving gumdrops in my cheeks while no one was looking.  Kristin was just as fascinated by the random blinking of the Christmas tree lights.  After a few minutes of my father capturing us hastily attaching Necco wafers to our roofs with frosting, the video cuts out and then back in, with a time stamp of 2:08 am.  The finished homes looked pristine, sparkling in the light of the garlands that adorn the inside of my house from November to March.  A background narrator describes them in flowing, poetic language, sounding like a strange mix of James Earl Jones and Santa Clause.  Clearly, it was not the work of the ADD and childhood obesity Fiorillo elves, but rather that of their father, the beer-drinking elf with a knack for home improvement (even of the edible type).

When I first thought about this idea, it made me sort of sad.  It seems people are more likely to be disappointed with all this idealism.  But the more I thought about it, the more it made me think that it was why the holidays are so special to most people.  No matter who you are, Chevy Chase or Lou Fiorillo, you want the holidays to be perfect.  Sure, things are going to go wrong.  The favorite Christmas DVD is scratched.  Winter alerts screw up your travel plans.  The cookies get burnt.  The turkey is dry (or raw).  You end up compromising and fixing the things that go wrong, all in the name of a Christmas you can look back on with "perfect" memories.  In the end, it's all the effort behind the perfection that everyone remembers.  My family will never forget the Extreme Gingerbread Home Makeover my dad performed on our gingerbread houses, just like we'll never forget the drive of death in a white-out blizzard where all my brother did was point out the new minivan's feature of telling you when the tires were slipping ("Pa, you're slipping... SLIP!  You're still slipping!").  We remember not because the experience was perfect, but because it ended just fine.  And usually with a couple of festive cocktails.

So, in the spirit of Christmas, let go of those expectations.  Accept the bad roads and the awkwardly shaped cookies and the tipsy inappropriate grace at family dinners because those things are what make these times memorable and special.  Enjoy your time with the people you care about, people who are pretty awesome even without all the garland and carols and holiday cheer.  Merry Christmas everyone.

Holiday Spirit

Last Thursday, we had our school holiday program.  Nothing quite puts me in the Christmas mood like slightly tone-deaf renditions of non-denominational holiday songs such as "We Wish You a Merry Winter."  The intent was there, but I'm pretty sure if you're going to play "Oh Come All Ye Faithful" over the intercom during the art show and put a Christmas tree up in the main office, you might as well just sing "We Wish You a Merry Christmas."

Anyway, it got me thinking about all the wonderful things that make me feel like that little tangled hair girl in footie pajamas on Christmas morning when I was a kid.  A lot of them are missing now that I live in the South, where the average temperature in December is 47 degrees, but it doesn't stop me from being excited.

The Sounds
Harry Connick, Jr. and Hanson.  People are really quick to bash the Hanson CD and many will refuse to believe that their version of "What Christmas Means to Me" is better than U2's, but I will stand by that album until the day I die.

The Smells
Really cold air.  The kind of air that smells like snow.  I've only gotten a whiff of it once or twice down here, but I love that smell.

The Tastes
Everything tastes better around Christmas.  Maybe it's because people use the holidays as an excuse to eat whatever they want, but I'm not complaining.  For some reason, people seem to be carrying around high-fat goodies with them at all times, ready to pass them out to anyone that crosses their path.  My roommates and I have brought home more treats this month than any other time of year.  It's awesome.  Even the drinks are better- Starbucks Christmas blend coffee, hot chocolate with peppermint schnapps, egg nog... I even made chocolate pudding shots with Bailey's and Kahlua for a Christmas party the other night.  The only down side is that a lot of these drinks are made with milk, which means your hangover is about 7000 times worse the next day.

The Sights
One word- glitter.  Everything is sparkly.  I love it.

The only thing I need now is to get up to New England and see some snow.  Real, Christmas-y snow.  Then I'll be a happy girl.  Maybe I'll even put on the footy pajamas again.

thank-ful (adj.): feeling or expressing gratitude; appreciative.

I know it's not Thanksgiving yet, but I feel overcome by the holiday spirit.  This is my hands-down, no contest FAVORITE time of the year.  There is one thing in particular, though, that I can't wait for.  It's the best holiday of the holiday season, and last year I didn't get to spend it in my typical fashion.  This year... I'll be back.

Yes, I'm talking about Thanksgiving Eve, the single greatest night to be at home of the whole year.  Why?  If you don't know, you've clearly never been to the Fiorillo house for Thanksgiving Eve and the festivities that follow it.  Let me give you an idea of how it all goes down:

1. Freshly poured draft beers in the kitchen.  My friends and I are reunited, and we begin with basic conversation about what is happening in our life.
2. The pitchers come out.  We begin to play one of the many card games that we have made up over the course of our friendship, games that no one else understands or knows the rules for.  This gives us an advantage because we can change the rules at will.  My favorite is the Gauntlet.
3. The computer comes out.  We watch YouTube videos that we have been saving to show each other the entire year.  As the YouTube videos run out, we begin to play the party music.  And then...
4. We get the woofer.  I don't know what a woofer does besides make our music way louder.
5. Downtown.  We hop from one end of Market Street to the other, bar to bar, socializing with people we went to elementary, middle, and high school with.  After every person we talk to, we immediately reassure ourselves that we are much, MUCH cooler than them.
6. The drive home... after my dad picks us up, we inevitably try to convince him to stop by McDonald's to see if it's open (even though we know it's not).  Instead, we end up at the corner gas station with $35 worth of Doritos and salt and vinegar chips.
7. The after-party.  Upon getting home, my dad begins brewing the hot chocolate for the 5K race he organizes in the morning.   By brewing, I mean he heats up gallons of it in our lobster pot on the stove, then carries it to the Gatorade dispenser on the front porch.  On the way out he spills it all over our carpet and porch, which, in the morning, looks as if someone was murdered in our house and then carried out to a stolen car in the driveway.
   
   In the meantime, my friends and I have invited everyone we know back to our house.  The party gets broken up when mom comes downstairs and discovers the hot chocolate stains and the thirty-plus people in our living room... whoops.
8. The morning hangover.  Some of the brave ones actually make it to the 5K and run in it without vomiting on the finish line.  Some are not so lucky.
9. The free bagels!!  And the high school kids.  My father invites all the high school runners over to our house for a free breakfast after the race.  This is great and not great at the same time.  It's great if you can clean yourself up enough to take advantage of the free Wegman's bagels.  It's not great if you're my brother's best friend and over forty high school runners see you passed out on our couch in your boxers.
10. Oiling the bag and ruining the carpet.  Another way my dad ruins the holiday for my mom is his method for making Thanksgiving turkey.  The trick is to cook it inside a paper bag soaked in olive oil.  The tricky part of the trick is dousing the bag.  My dad likes to measure tasks in the number of beers you need to drink while getting it done, and cooking a turkey is a 12 beer job.  The result?  Lovely olive oil stains to match the hot chocolate on the carpet.  He gets so sucked into the great conversation that he walks right out into the living room to join it... complete with the oiled up turkey bag.
11. The dinner! Enough said.  We also get to say what we're thankful for, and it's usually something that saved us the night before.

I CAN'T WAIT.

Halloween's A-Comin'

Halloween is a pretty controversial holiday around here.  Hence the blog title.  One of my kid's legitimately told me that October 31st is the devil's birthday.

At school, it means having a book character parade in order to fend off zealous parents who don't want their children participating in pagan rituals as offensive as wearing costumes.  Talking about the big event today in planning made me reminisce back to my Halloween days.  I cried pretty much every year because October 31st in upstate NY might as well be the dead of winter.  As a result, we had to wear winter coats.  Thick winter coats.  Under our costumes.  This meant instead of being a beautiful angel, I was a fat angel.  Instead of a graceful butterfly, a fat butterfly.  And instead of a freakish clown with blue hair... actually, the fat part probably didn't really affect the coolness of the costume.  Still, that kind of stuff sticks with you.

Happy Birthday America

I wish every birthday party could be this fun.  The Fourth of July is one of my favorite holidays, beaten by the only two birthdays more important than America's- mine and Jesus'.  In some ways it's better because you're allowed to be cheesy as if it were a theme party, with mass-produced flag t-shirts and oversized colored sunglasses.  It has no full family or friends obligations either- it's whoever you want to spend it with.

This Fourth of July was spent at my mother's family estate in Western New York.  I'm using the word "estate" very loosely here.  I managed to get my boyfriend back with all five of my mom's brothers and their families at the campground my Nana has been taking them for over thirty years.  It's a pretty unique little place, a circle of trailers left year round down a dusty dirt road on an Indian reservation.  The younger relatives are left to tents set up wherever there's room, sometimes having to resort to shelter under unused picnic tables or the beds of pick-up trucks (maybe that only happens when you forget some vital part of your tent).

The best part of Fourth of July on an Indian reservation is the fireworks.  Sure, we've all seen pretty spectacular fireworks displays, but you haven't seen fireworks until you've seen them set off of washed up tree stumps with a Bic lighter twenty feet away from you.  Add in a Happy Hour that officially starts at 5 pm (or whenever you wake up, if Nana forgets to take down the flag) and bonfire conversations until late into the night, and you have one fun party.

The topic at the bonfire this year centered on the five items you'd need to survive on a deserted island, led by my father who essentially bashed any of the other choices the other campers made.  A favorite interchange was when a family friend shared that he's bring a family photo for emotional strength.  My dad looked at him for a hard five seconds and just said,

"You're dead."

Great Fourth of July spirit Dad.

Dad's Day

I know, I know, I'm a little late, but I figure that late is better than never.  Yesterday, we all celebrated our fathers, the men in our lives that have such a strong influence over us (whether we care to admit it or not).

Father's Day has always seemed like a funny day to me, especially in comparison to Mother's Day.  On that day, mothers generally want their children and husbands to finally show their appreciation for the thousands (maybe even millions) of little things they do for us throughout the year.  Fathers, on the other hand, seem to just want to be left alone.  Unless it involves someone bringing them an ice cold beverage or a delicious snack, they're more than content to just get some time to themselves, time when they are free from the nagging and whining of their family members.  Or maybe that's just my dad.  I'm pretty sure his ideal Father's Day would be getting in 18 holes (with some breaks for a few frosty brews) and being able to buy whatever he wanted, whether it was a membership to a gourmet coffee club, a $150 pool chair, or state-of-the-art spatula that can do more things to meat on a grill than you could ever even wrap your head around.

That's a little off-topic, but it's just a funny little thing I noticed.

Anyway, now it's the REAL part of the blog, where I get to pay tribute to my dad.  Not that I really need to- all you'd have to do is search around our house.  You'd find the countless gifts from graduating track stars, pillows with iron-on pictures, scrapbooks individualized by runners and jumpers, newspaper articles about his success as a coach.  Until pretty recently, I never really thought about the impact my dad has had on other people.  Once I figured that out, I realized how much his strong community influence had an effect on me, no matter how indirectly.

In some ways, my dad and I have had trouble really "getting" each other.  I was always the daughter that wanted to read and write, the one that hated running and loved eating.  I was the one that did anything I could to try to get away from our family stereotype that I found stifling- that you were an athlete no matter how hard you tried not to be.

When I think back to when I was younger, especially in middle school, I imagine that my father struggled to understand me, just as I struggled to understand him.  It worsened when I got to high school and went through a phase which can be referred to in two ways.  The nice way is the "growing up" phase.  The accurate way is the bitch phase.  All I wanted was to prove him wrong- that athletics didn't matter, that they brought nothing deeper or important into your life.  He just sat back and said nothing, e-mailing college volleyball coaches when I wasn't looking and talking to admissions offices about the college's sports.

He did his convincing subtly.  At the time, I would have never been able to tell you when he was asserting his arguments for the merits of sport.  To me, it was just a conversation with my dad.  But over the years, through all the phone calls and e-mails and text messages, he somehow got through.  Somehow, I became an advocate of what I used to condemn.  I became a believer in the power of teamwork and commitment required by athletics.  It inspired me to join Teach For America and his story, his experience took up roughly 95% of my letter of intent.  That's a pretty impressive influence to have over someone.  He had finally converted me and I'll never go back.

As my sister has put it before, my parents are "the coolest 50-year-olds she's ever met."  In high school, I would have vehemently disagreed with that statement.   My parents could not be farther from cool.  But after the years of arguments and getting in trouble, I've finally seen the role models that so many other kids saw before me.  In my mother, it was obvious.  She wears her feelings and opinions on her sleeve and lets you know what she thinks immediately.

My dad, and I think dads in general, are trickier.  They exercise their influence over the years with carefully crafted mottos and mantras, painstakingly inserted during the moments their children are questioning themselves and the world that they know.  They continue to do so until one day, we wake up with clear eyes, a clear head, and one clear thought-

"My dad is awesome."

Happy Father's Day!

Leave the Mothers Out of This

No, I won't!  The mothers have a special place in this highly read and highly demanded blog and as such, it would be a crime to NOT write a Mother's Day blog.  On this momentous occasion (which caused me to spend over $20 at Hallmark), I would just like to say thank you for the MANY thankless acts that mothers do as their children grow up.  Maybe these are just things my mother has done... but bear with me.

1. Not being able to sleep until we are safe at home.  For all those nights we stumbled home past 2 am, clutching bags of McDonald's items and thinking we were along, only to have you shoot up from your resting position on the couch.  "You're home," you'd say, then sleepily clump up the stairs leaving us to eat our drunk food in peace.  Whether it was coming downstairs to me and half the town of Corning in our living room or to our father drunkenly curled up in the fetal position on his 53rd birthday, you refuse to go to sleep until our booze-scented butts are through that front door.
2. Not being able to sleep even if we are safe at home.  For the one night when I went to bed at 10 and you thought I was still out.  Or when you had to check on Kristin every ten minutes to make sure she wasn't sneaking out to one of Painted Post's public parks or high school parties.
3. Putting up with endless jabs and jokes on our end, but never being able to make one of your own.  You have to deal with the harassment of three children and a husband, but the minute you try to put in your rebuttal all you get is tears.  "I'm not fat Mom, I'm in COLLEGE.  Why don't you understand me?"
4. Actually, putting up with everything.  Jon has farted ON you before.  Kristin has called you from the middle of traffic after running out of gas.  I have called you before and just cried without speaking.  Dad bought a $400 bike and spandex shorts with cushions when he has biked maybe seven times in his entire life.  How do you do it without medication?
5. Driving around the country for a million different reasons.  College visits, sports games, riveting all-state band concerts.  Some are fun, some... are not.  We all know which ones are not fun, and even though I pretend it's not okay, it is.  No one wants to watch the French horn, no matter how much you love your kid.  And at least you got there in time to PRETEND to have seen it.
6. The labor part.  I don't think I need to comment on this one.
7. Cheering us on, no matter what.  Even when we suck (like when I ran track).  Even when we have done everything wrong.  Even when you're mad at us.
8. Using so much butter in your cooking but not telling us.  No wonder family dinners were so delicious.  And no wonder we spent $10 on butter in a week.
9. Making sure we have everything we need for family vacations.  And by everything we need, I mean everything that could possibly fit in the van.  "Why don't we bring the TV?  And this cooler?  And the beaver costume?  Is there still room?"
10. Being really focused when packing for family vacations.  So focused that the one time Dad kicked the ladder out of the loft in the garage and was left there for 45 minutes because we were all so busy packing.  "Where the hell is your father?  I sent him to get the turtle out of the garage an hour ago!"
11. Getting things we need IMMEDIATELY when driving.  Someone needs tweezers once we get to our destination?  No, I will get it right now, even if my ass slams into Dad's face as I stand up to walk around the van.  Safety can be suspended so long as I can get my toiletrie case.  Maybe I shouldn't say thanks for this one, because even if you CAN stand up in a moving vehicle because your five feet tall, doesn't mean you SHOULD.
12. Cheesy birthday things.  The seven days of Sari, the many cakes of Kristin (esp. the glass shards one)... forgetting Jon's birthday.  Hey, it happens.
13. Having good genes.  Seriously.  Thanks for the metabolism and the skin.
14. Loving the boyfriends and girlfriends even when they suck.  You know who I'm talking about... no one likes giving people rides to Buffalo when they sit in the backseat and cry the whole time.
    
15. Saying the hard things.  The things no one wants to hear but needs to.  Like showing Kristin she can't support herself being a bartender ("Oh.  That's not very much money.")
16. Holding us accountable.  Because we need to learn those lessons on our own.  Adolescence is a time to make mistakes, but it's also a time to be held responsible for them.
17. Being a hundred million things at one time.  Nurse, teacher, counselor, cook, bartender, masseuse, cheerleader, police officer, parole officer, house (you know, when we were embryos), referee, role model, friend... but above all, being a mom.  Thanks.  I'd be lucky to be half the mother you have been to all of us (and not because I'd be REEEEEALLY skinny).

There's No Place Like Home for the Holidays

I heard this song during a drive to work one morning. At first, it made me feel pretty depressed. I haven't been home since the end of July and don't plan on going home until... I'm not even sure.

We haven't been home for the holidays since 2006. The past couple Christmases we've braved the holiday travel traffic to drive 24 hours from our house upstate to my Nana's condo in Fort Pierce, FL. Originally it was because my grandfather had gotten too sick to travel, but even after he passed away in March of 2008, we continued to go, craving the warm sunshine and cold beers that Christmas Day has come to mean. Now, in the living room of my sparse Charlotte apartment, my brother cooking bacon on a too-small skillet and the Yule log flickering from the TV screen, I'm really beginning to think that the song is bullshit.

Not one to call Christmas songs out for being bullshit, I'm adjusting my position. The song is assuming that home means only a concrete place, something that is fixed in the foundation of a house that has been in a family for years and years and years. But when I think about what home actually means, I know it's less of a place and more of a feeling. So whether it's pouring rain in Charlotte and we're sitting on the floor for lack of adequate seating, or we're on the each cracking Coronas, "Home for the Holidays" really just means wherever we happen to bring our hand-knit personalized stockings and holiday special edition twelve packs.

Season of Giving

My class, right before the celebration :)

Cute little moment today during the non-denominational classroom celebration we had.

First of all, holiday parties are really just a mid-year teacher revenge against the parents, stuffing their children full of any and all sugary processed foods you can find and then piling on the bus just before the sugar rush hits. By the time they get home their eyes are practically out of their sockets. You don't admit it, but you let the kids that give you the most... challenges... take an extra sprinkly sugar cookie, or two, or three. Or let them lick all the frosting off the remaining 35 cupcakes. Or give them an IV of Hawaiian Punch, pumping it straight into their bloodstreams. Merry Christmas to your mom and dad... heh heh heh....

Not really but the thought did cross my mind. A couple times.

The cute part was before the celebration, when I had them sit in a circle and explained that there were some very nice people in Charlotte who had "extra" and decided to give that "extra" to our classroom. I pulled out this bag of wrapped books (donated to TFA) and we counted them together. After figuring out that there wasn't enough for everyone to get one, I told them that I had decided to use these books to give to our classroom as much as we could by making a lending library. Then they all got to open the books and show the book they got. A couple of the books were repeats, and we decided that since we had "extra", we should give it away too. So we picked the five repeat books and walked them to the five other first grade classrooms to give to them. They were so happy to be giving them... it was so cute. Although it didn't necessarily go as smoothly as I just described it, considering that when we were lining up to walk to the other rooms, the kids just ran down the hall without me because they were so excited. Oh well.Anyway, it was a cute day. Tomorrow will probably be awful, riding out the after-effects of today's sugar high. Maybe I can counteract it by giving them salty (in the form of the 14 extra bags of chips I have... so much extra food).

I am thankful for...

Two posts in one day... what you get when I get to the airport so early.

Anyway, I figured that a tribute to all the things I'm thankful for is something I have to do, some kind of generic rite of passage that each blog should contain. Plus I was a little inspired by my Starbucks cup (even more generic, ick). I had my kids start with the prompt above, so I guess I'll use that.

I am thankful for...

Family: the people I can count on to say the only things more ridiculous than the things my kids say. The people that inspire everything I do, for better or worse. My family is hilarious and I'm so lucky to have them. It's weird to be doing this now, without them around me, because usually this conversation is reserved for Thanksgiving dinner, fueled by glasses of wine and food comas. At this time there's oil all over the kitchen floor from my dad's careless oiling of the paper bag ritual for the turkey (top secret family recipe). There's leftover bagels in the trash and hot cocoa spills on the porch, splotches that eerily resemble blood splatters from a murder scene. It's not a murder scene, just the transition to the Pie and Glove race early in the morning, when my sister and I are still sleeping off our Thanksgiving Eve hangovers. The circular discussion usually centers on things we are jokingly thankful for- "Dad, for holding my hair back," "late night Doritos," "Not getting arrested"- because what we're really most thankful for doesn't need to be said. One year my grandmother really killed the buzz by exclaiming after her thankful speech that she prayed every day that we would stop drinking. Everyone but my 15 year old autistic cousin had a drink in their hand. Oh well.

Friends: another cliche one, one that I can't really talk about because my friends and I are so weird that anyone reading about us would just be confused. But I couldn't be more thankful for finding people that I can be a weirdo with, that appreciate my horrible jokes and my strange tendencies, and that can answer back with horrible jokes and strange tendencies of their own.

Lovers: that's you, Jack. So actually I guess it's just "Lover." Your first name mention in my blog... you should feel special. That's all ya get though.

My School and Support People: I would have been face first in the bush outside of creepy-downstairs-neighbor-Randy's balcony if it wasn't for all the staff at my school and in TFA who listen to me cry like a baby and complain and freak out and have meltdowns. Thanks for choosing (or not choosing, some of the people I vent to are only there because I corner them... hah) to calm me down and help me out.

My Kids: I don't know when it happened, but now my kids are really MY kids. As much as they drive me crazy and I want to run out of the room on them, they have really brought a lot of good things into my life. Stress, anxiety... oh wait, right. GOOD things. I spend 5 hours straight with them, and they make me laugh almost as much as my friends and family can. They try to impress me, they do things behind my back, they put things in their mouth that they aren't supposed to, but in the end they teach me something new every single day whether it's about myself or about people in general. And they're learning. Almost all of them are meeting their goals for this time of the year, and I'm pretty grateful for that (my sanity is grateful for that, too).

For their Thanksgiving prompts, most of my kids talked about their moms and dads, their cousins or pets. Some of them talked about God (this is the South, after all). One kid, though, talked about something else.

He said, "I am thankful for learning how to read. My teacher taught me how to read. It was fun. Now I'm a good reader. A real good reader."

Unfortunately, I still haven't taught him how to write so it looked more like this: "I am thankful for lrng how to red. My TCR tote me how to red. IT wuZ FUN. NoW I'm a GuD ReDR. RiL Gud RedR."

I didn't let him take it home... kept it for myself, for those days I do feel like throwing myself out of my classroom window. Maybe he's the biggest suck up in the class, the one always pulling on my arm to tell me he's being a good helper, the one asking my TA to tell me that he was "very focused," the one who loudly proclaims, "Please share the crayons with me and be a good friend," just to try and please me. It's still something I'm thankful for.

Holiday Crazies

In typical me fashion, I have arrived at the airport a full two and half hours before my flight. When I say arrive, I mean I am sitting at my gate, settled and ready for boarding, meaning that I parked more than three hours before departure. I'm going to pretend that I really thought it would take that long, but the truth is I wanted to sit in the airport and people watch. Weird, I know.

During this time, I also realized that I broke the rule mentioned in my last post, that Thanksgiving must be given its own moment of glory before Christmas can settle into its overbearing reign over December (and January, for me).

I only had two days of school this week, but the kids were crazy enough for one full week. They're so intuitive and I think they knew in their little brains that they needed to squeeze in all their antics in those two days. At first, I was annoyed. Why is it that the holidays cause them to go so nuts? I never appreciated having Halloween on a weekend more after realizing how much time children ACTUALLY need to recover from the sugar rush that comes along with it. The problem is that by the time they get out of that candy trance, along come Thanksgiving and Christmas, which set them off in a way that makes Halloween look like Flag Day.

The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized that this holiday frenzy is something that affects kids and adults in very similar ways (I use adult in a very loose way here, because I'm actually including college students in that classification). I can complain about the way that kids go nuts, acting like they've been snorting Pixie Sticks on the bus, but I think I react in kind of the same way.

Let me explain. I love the holidays (clearly, from my last post). Very recently, Thanksgiving Eve and Thanksgiving have climbed up in the rank of important holidays, especially with the passing of my 21st birthday. I was finally able to get out to the glorious strip of bars in my small hometown, one street of tired libation stations littered with the kids from my high school that never left town. Thanksgiving Eve is the biggest night of the year, a drunken procession from bar to bar, searching for old faces that dominated my childhood and adolescence. My friends and I went crazy, reuniting and reconnecting, reliving our nights the next day in the only restaurant (a pizzeria) worth going to.

In college, the approach of Thanksgiving meant a sharpening of the dichotomy of social life and academic life. As dates for final exams and massive papers loomed closer, so did Christmas parties. My senior year, we had our first Christmas party the weekend before Thanksgiving, a party that began with us tamely drinking red wine, watching the Yule log, and admiring the newly chopped down tree our guy friends had just put up in their room. It ended with Michael Jackson videos and paper snowflakes poorly cut out from the empty beer cases.

The holiday season in college is characterized by pop-y remixes to Christmas favorites, usually with a new rap verse added in and half-naked girls in Santa hats dancing in videos. It means glittery tops and wrapping paper on walls and candy canes sent in care packages from overprotective mothers. My junior year it meant nearly puking every Sunday. That was the year when every alcoholic drink we made contained milk, a recipe for hangover more certain than tequila. Try ingesting gallons of eggnog, Bailey's, hot chocolate with peppermint schnapps for three weeks straight. It was not pretty.

But the bottom line is that we use holidays as an excuse for giddy behavior, whether we're young or we're old. It's not just the kids that go crazy. Just take a look at the frenzied shoppers holding 12 boxes of Christmas lights, at the increased traffic in liquor and package stores, at the stupid cards and little gifts sent just because you're "feeling the spirit." I forgot that the holiday fever affects us all equally, heightening our craziness beginning with Black Friday and lasting until we;ve caught up on sleep after New Years.

I guess I'll just have to embrace the fact that my kids are going to be off the wall for the next three weeks, and maybe that's okay. Maybe I just need to go off the wall with them.

Christmas Countdown

For some reason, The Station for Soft Rock 102.9 has decided that it is the appropriate time of year to play Christmas music, at least from 5:30-6:00 am and 6:30-7:00 pm (the times I'm going to and from work). I thought there was some kind of commercial rule that Christmas had to wait its turn until after Thanksgiving. Sure, Christmas decorations are put out right on November 1st, as the Halloween decorations go to rot in back warehouses and all the stray pieces of candy corn are collected from the gutters and repackaged for the next year (sometimes they're given out to elementary school teachers in an effort to keep them from going crazy throughout the day... or maybe that's just at my school?). BUT it seems like the Christmas hype- all the sentimental commericals and boy band remixes of "Let It Snow" and employees wearing red and green- waits until after the quiet, turkey/pie/beer-induced coma has passed.

Let me be clear. I have absolutely no objection to this early Christmas madness. I love Christmas. I would play Christmas music all year round if I could. I would be lying if I told you I skipped past Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas is You" when it comes on my iPod shuffle in April. But part of what makes it so special is that it only happens for that one part of the year. For me, that one part just happens to last approximately three months.

My love for Christmas began in my childhood. Our Christmases were further proof of the fact that my parents relished in the idea of tricking us. I think they got a little too much pleasure in our gullibility. Christmas home videos reveal timestamps of 12/28/89 and 12/23/91.

"Christmas came early that year?" my sister and I would ask when we dug up the ancient VHS tapes crammed behind the endless monotony of cross country races on film. They were known for telling us that Santa was waiting to visit our house last, or that my mom had called him up and told him we'd be out of town. We joke about it now, how the birth of Christ was the same for everyone except us.

On Christmas morning, we would have to wait at the top of our stairs, peeking shamelessly into the living room where our presents were arranged in five piles, one for each family member. We'd wake up at 6 am, me still sleepy-eyed with my skullet* and my brother and sister twirling and tumbling, drunk with the excitement that can only come from the combination of Christmas morning and unmedicated ADHD. (Note: skullet is a term coined by one of my college teammates after seeing a baby picture of me. I didn't have hair until I was three, and when it finally started to grow in, it sprung from the center of the back of my head, curling down on my neck in tendrils while the top of my head remained only slightly grazed with blonde peach fuzz. Party in the back, skull in the front-> skullet). The rule was that until my parents had a cup of coffee (or 3 or 4), we had to wait at the top of the stairs, hopelessly close to the presents that were still just out of reach.

They'd take their time getting the video camera set up, a mammoth piece of equipment only seen in the '80s. I think it weighed about fifteen pounds, if I had to make a guess. Only then were we allowed to waddle down the stairs, clapping our pudgy hands and squeezing each other's arms in unbridled excitement.

Jon was sadly the recipient of my sister's and my hand-me-downs, despite being the prize male child of the family (hah). One video shows Kristin coming down the stairs, decked out in brand-new yellow foot-y pajamas, followed by the child-sumo-wrestler version of me, The Incredible Skullet (did I mention I was overweight and ate everything in sight before the age of five?) in decidingly older blue foot-y pajamas. Finally, came Jonny, no exception to the pajama uniform of Christmas, his pink and fraying version threadbare in the foot portion, with a piece of the arm gnawed off (probably from an incident where breakfast came too late and I couldn't contain myself). His blue eyes sparkled and little curls bounced, oblivious to the fact that he wore foot-y pajamas that had already endured the bodies of a hyperactive tomboy and an overeating child genius (yes, I came o ut of the womb reading "Are You My Mother?").

It was the same smile he wore when he got a "new" bike for his fifth birthday, which was really the Barbie bike I had helped Kristin unwrap for her fifth birthday, one we shared until a few days before when my dad spray-painted it a manly black and orange for Jon. See? Tricked!

If we ever noticed this trickery, or cared about it, it never showed. We were always intoxicated by that Christmas time happiness, characterized by new sparkly tights (even for Jon, hand-me-down ones that kept him warm under his courdoroys), evergreen garland that hung everywhere in our house, and Harry Connick, Jr. on repeat.

My parents egged on this Christmas mood and continued to do so as we got older. My dad is the only male in his school that participates in The Great Cookie exchange, baking 12 dozen sugar cookie angels to bring to the middle-aged teachers at his school. One year, when Kristin and I were in college, he had this brilliant idea of doing the Fiorillo family shopping exchange. Each of us got $100 from him and had to spend $25 on each family member. We had two hours in our tiny mall to gather all of our presents the day before Christmas Eve. I worked methodically, a detailed list in my pocket of what I would buy each person, the prices and tax calculated precisely next to each item, as well as a plan of when I would go buy a cinnamon sugar soft pretzal with the $2.69 that would be leftover. I ran into my sister mid-spree, holding a three-foot long, three inch diameter cylinder in her coat.

"What the hell is that?" I asked.

"A sausage," she said breathlessly. "How am I gonna hide this from Dad?"

Just then, my cell phone rang. It was Jon. "What do you need?"

"What does fleece mean? And how much do I have left to spend if I already spent $17 on Mom?"

The funniest part was that my mother had gotten Kristin a new cell phone, but had to use it as her own until they could switch the numbers over after the holiday. It was a new kind of flip phone that was way over her head to use, and whenever I tried to call her to ask where she was, she would answer flustered...

"Hello? Hello?! What the... is this thing even on..." Click. So much for only spending two hours in the mall.

When we exchanged presents, we saw that my dad had gotten us all mugs with a family picture on it. He smiled, completely satisfied with himself. "This is what started the whole idea!" He exclaimed. "Wasn't that great?"

"NO!" We shouted in unison. "Why didn't you just buy them for us while we stayed at home and watched Toy Story 2?" He had seen the sausage Kristin had tried to hide from him, and my Mom had nearly broken Kristin's new cell phone when she tried to answer it discreetly with my sister right next to her.

One of the Christmas videos, the one made about three days after Christmas, starred only my sister and me. I was too young to fully grasp our family obsession of Christmas, still bald and too fat to bend over without looking like a plumber, but Kristin was already drinking the punch. My dad was video-taping us coming in from the car, probably from Buffalo where my mom's family lives.

"Sai-wah! SAI-WAH!!! IT'S CHWISSMAIS! SAI-NTA CAME!! OH MY GOSH SAI-NTA!!" (please note the glorious combination of upstate New York accent and a tongue thrust speech impediment that my sister had... priceless)

Kristin opened her first present upon entering. I was more skeptical, boasting my signature two-year-old look of "I'm too busy for this"- my few strands of hair in the back matted beyond recognition and Mardi Gras beads that I demanded from my mother adorning my neck.

"Look Kristin," my mom explained, her inch-thick '80's glassed taking up half of her face. "A sweatsuit. Just what you wanted!" With those four words, came a frenzy of screaming that took over our house for the next half hours. Those words implanted an idea in Kristin's head, one that still exists today. It is the idea that every single thing she saw was just what she wanted. She could be happy with a pet rock, a house with no door, living at home in the basement... anything. But on that day, it was exclusively a Christmas idea.

"Just what I wanted!!" to a pair of dress-up heels and purple sparkly boa.

"Just what I wanted!!" to a pair of jean overalls promptly thrown to the side at the sight of another present.

"Just what YOU wanted, Sai-wa!" to a Christmas sweater embroidered with gingerbread men that I eyed, licking my lips.

"Just what I wanted!!" to my Dad's new kitchen spatula.

"Just what I wanted!!" ... "Kristin, that's a piece of wrapping paper."

That one video really sums up Christmas for our family. No matter what Christmas is during a particular year, whether perfect or going all wrong, it is just what we want. The year we were in Buffalo and a 6 foot snowstorm required ALL the family adults to "rescue" my uncle, abandoned on his snowmobile, by taking him to a karaoke bar with all 12 cousins under the leadership of Kristin. Christmas in July while we were camping with my Mom's college roommates and our van got hit by a deer. A Christmas Eve party at my Nana's condo in Florida, with no one under the age of 75 besides us (no alcoholic drink under the proof of 75 either). Christmas decorations still up in late March, the Harry Connick, Jr. CD left in the CD player, scratched but still working. It's still our crazy family, just what we want.

A Whole Lot of Sara Blogging... BAM. In Your Face.

I've been a little absent in the blogging world... okay, maybe a lot absent. I've felt lost for words lately, and I'm not quite sure of the reason. Maybe it's a confidence thing because I have about 17 saved drafts that I feel aren't good enough or interesting enough to post... perhaps I should bust a few of those out if another dry spell occurs.

My life most recently has been consumed by the perfect storm of administrative nightmares. I'll give you a brief list so I don't get myself too worked up:

1) Report cards: IT SUCKS. It's hard. It's putting a number on your kids, especially in first grade when you have a scale of 3. THREE. Imagine rating guys or girls on a scale of 3. It wouldn't give you a good picture of whether someone is actually good looking or not. For some people, you don't need a good picture though, I guess. My boyfriend's friends sometimes use binary code to rate girls, giving them thumbs up ("Yeah, I would...") or thumbs down ("No, not even with a bag on her head."). I'm sure it's just them... he would never be that crude (not).

2) SQR=FML: I've officially found my least favorite education acronym so far. School Quality Review, basically the school equivalent to your overprotective mother in law coming to visit. As much as it was stressful and tons of work and tons of pressure to get everything presented all nicely, it felt good to be so organized and on top of things when it was all over.

3) Data: Don't get me wrong- I like data. I don't like testing and re-testing my kids 8 trillion times though. Not when I want to... hmm, what's the word? Oh right... teach.

Clearly a lot of complaining on my end. Believe me, you wouldn't have wanted to be one of the people on my speed dial these past few weeks. All of it's a part of education though, so I guess I'll have to get used to it.

On an exciting note, I'll be returning to my college campus for some Homecoming activities and I could not be more excited. Especially about seeing all my old friends and teammates... and of course the BF. He's a 1 (in binary code, duh). Or maybe I should say a 3- consistently meets expectations (FYI consistently is defined on the report card as 80% of the time or more). I'm not looking forward to physically being in New England in November, because it's quite lovely down here in North Carolina. BUT I feel like it's been Christmas Eve for 4 days straight. WOO. Can't wait!

And of course, I think some birthday festivity recap is necessary. That 10 of a boyfriend of mine finally tuned in to my love for greeting cards, sending me TWO. Two good ones, too. I love cards. My sister's boyfriend is still in the phase where he feels the need to suck up to me, so he sent some delicious (and pretty) cupcakes to my DOORSTEP (he must really like Kristin). My roommate was amazing, as usual, probably winning the prize because she got up before 5 am to make me cinnamon rolls before work. The teacher that is in the room next to me (I would be completely neglecting her influence on my teacher life if I did not acknowledge her for this) jumped in my room and yelled "Happy Birthday!". The best part of that one was how she reminded me about how special it was about 7 more times after she did it. I love sarcasm. And I love my birthday. I always feel so... loved.

My mom was here this weekend to celebrate with me, and it was just what I needed. Literally. She bought me all the clothes I needed. But really, it always helps to have her around, talking me down from the ledge and giving me endless wisdom about teaching and life in general. We have too much fun together, especially when she pretends she's my sister and that our waiters are hitting on her. Good one, Mom.

We got to go to my aunt and uncle's house for a little family dinner, which was also nice. I underestimated how great it would be to have family around, especially because I didn't spend much time with them before moving here. Overall, an excellent birthday weekend, only to become BETTER because it is extended to last for Homecoming. Did I mention I can't wait?