(Click picture to enlarge). So, let me get this straight– you’re trying to sell me a device that will monitor the television habits of the children that I don’t have? Because I’ve “shown an interest in television and parenting?” I wish these emails came with an option to ask follow up questions– exactly what, pray tell, did I buy that made Amazon think I was a tv hating nazi parent? Why does Amazon think I have an interest in parenting? I feel like I got drunk on our first date and talked about baby names with a guy I barely knew and then became baffled when he wouldn’t call me back. And meanwhile, he was hacking into my Amazon account and giving glowing reviews to a bunch of Dr Laura books or something. Now I’m going to have to buy a bunch of Sports Night DVDs (my life is SO HARD) just so Amazon understands that I’m pro-television.

“Hey sexy, you don’t happen to have a National Book Award nominated first novel in your editorial portfolio, do you?”

“Why yes, in fact, I do. Also, may I say that your right arm looks incredibly well defined and I applaud your recent gym efforts to accomplish as much? Maybe now step it up with the left one, though.”

“Excellent suggestion. I hope that we can devote the rest of this wedding to trying to explain to relative strangers that we’re not secretly in love with one another.”

“I think there’s little doubt that will happen. Can I accompany you to the bar for some tequila?”

I’m also going to: visit WaWa with Allison so we can have our picture taken next to the “{x} days accident free!” sign just above the meat slicer and hope that they don’t remember me as the girl who bought $5 champagne from them every other day in 2003; check in with the fire escape at my sorority house and think about the time climbing down it during the alumni reception almost got the two of us booted out of the sisterhood; have dinner with W&M friend Kyle and His Lady, Beth so he can make fun of me in person instead of over the internet, which just isn’t the same; hold my niece and try not to get too freaked out by how much she’s starting to look like my brother only without the needlessly large head that typically plagues our people; alphebetize the baby’s library and take notes as to what books she’s still missing. And hug my brother and take lots of dopey pictures with him. And hug my sister in law and see if I can get her to convince me that I don’t have reason to spend the next decade fearing the pain of childbirth almost as much as I fear said imaginary child getting into 3rd grade and NOT being in the accelerated reading group. Talk about pain. Anyway.

There’s a lot I want to talk about, but getting ready for this trip has inhaled all of my downtime (I accidentally got to work at 7:30 today. One of my bosses made a joke about me having given up my lease so I could stay in my cube all the time. I admit that this was a mistake in timing and I won’t let it happen again. That was 30 minutes where I could have been watching How I Met Your Mother or trying to finish out season one of Friday Night Lights so I could finally get into season two. I’m going to devote miles of Tifaux space to this as soon as I’m capable, but, honestly, it has been a very long time since something on television made me feel the way that Friday Night Lights does and I don’t like football. In particular, I’m not terribly fond of high school football after all those years in the marching band thinking about how I’d rather be a cheerleader {there, I said it!}. But I’ve gotten to the point where just hearing the theme music to this show can make me cry. Watching it is like feeling your heart grow three sizes. I so want the people I love to love this show that I gave Cousin Erin the DVDs for her birthday two months early just for the joy of getting text messages from her that say “there was no one at our school even close to as hot as tim riggins.” Which is true. I’ve slowed down on watching the DVDs because I don’t want it to end. It’s on Fridays, you don’t really need the backstory, and you’ll thank me) and that makes it hard to ramble about how SPUD and Run and The Wednesday Wars are all on my to-be-read-right-now-damnit list and I’m seriously excited about all of them and I want Thirteen Reasons Why to immediately follow (has anyone read this yet? Everything I’ve heard has been great). So I’ve been phoning it in and only posting baby pictures (look. how. CUTE. SHE. IS.) but I’m hoping that will change soon. And now I’m going to go pack a suitcase full of professional looking things and festive looking things and I’ll see you guys Monday.

Father Bob was taxed with the daunting job of producing christmas presents for all 10 of his brother Joe’s grandkids. During one of those years where I Had No Shame and really hadn’t learned the meaning of true embarrassment, Cousin Erin and Cousin Janelle and I spent a lot of time dressing up and choreographing lip synching routines that we would perform for our drunk relatives as Christmas night wore on. We called ourselves the Pointless Sisters without realizing how truly accurate that moniker really was. On the Christmas that followed our most impressive medley, Father Bob got us all a joint gift for the first time– a karaoke machine. Had I actually been singing and not just mouthing the words, I’m sure he would have rethought it. I cannot sing. At all. This somehow doesn’t keep me from turning down opportunities to karaoke, particularly when Katie and Ali are organzing private room karaoke and they come equipt with cups that say Happy Birthday Baby Jesus.

Being in the first wave of people to arrive at the den of karaoke we were treated to The Rules by the karaoke master at the front desk. Father Bob’s only rule for the karaoke machine was “Share.” At iBop, the rules included “If you’re going to throw up, do it in the toilet and NOT the sink.” Any night that starts out like that is bound for awesomeness.

I did a lot of terrible renditions of fantastic songs (“I Would Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That” with Maggie, “To Be With You” with Anna) while other people were doing fantastic renditions of fantastic songs. Maggie spotted the TV theme songs section of the karaoke offerings and immediately jabbed in the number for “The Nanny” and rocked the face off of that song. I’ve always known that I was wildly in love with Maggie, and I was pretty sure that I was also wildly in love with Webmaster Kyle (Maggie’s man), but seeing them do karaoke solidified for me that I had, in fact, encountered the rare couple that is made of equal parts of amazingness. In case you need proof, Maggie sang Golddigger and the theme to The Nanny and Kyle sang Piano Man and Free Fallin’. Thank god I am friends with them, and not just because I couldn’t have rejiggered my blog or kept up on Regan gossip alone.

Then Jordan came and we did our old standby (Bon Jovi’s “Always) and a few favorite (“Say It Ain’t So” by Weezer) and everyone rejoiced.

In all of these pictures, I am (A) wearing a t shirt with a picture of Santa on it that says Don’t Stop Believin’ and (B) Holding a tall boy of Bud Light. In some of the pictures of Jordan and I, he is holding a 40 of Heineken, and the huge drinks kind of make us look like we might be midgets. Which would be magical, if only for a night.

Speaking of magical– here’s us doing the title song.

2. I’ve developed a small obsession with Christmas music, which is a problem I’ve never had before. This past weekend I spent an embarrassing amount of money on iTunes working on my mp3 collection. (I later called The Boyfriend, terribly proud of myself, and recited the new songs I had. He started talking about his Christmas music collection and I casually asked him how many Christmas mp3s he had. He replied “297.” Information that would have been useful to me before the iTunes jaunt).

Anyway, the two of us spent a good part of last night looking for an ULTIMATE version of O Holy Night. My requirements for this include vocals (obvi), and a really, really powerful “faaaaaaallllll on your KNEEEEES!” part. We settled on Nat King Cole but I think we can do better. Suggestions?

Part I: The True Meaning of Christmas

I got into a fantastic conversation at Maggie & Webmaster Kyle’s holiday party this weekend about The Gift Of The Magi, which my dad used to reference to me all of the time when I was little (most likely because Christmas Eve on Sesame Street– which I had on a record when I was little– included their own version of it, where Bert sells his bottle cap collection to get Ernie something for his rubber duckie and Ernie sells his rubber duckie to get Bert a coveted bottle cap and then they realize that the best thing they could have on Christmas is each other. And also, that they’re in love). Someone (jeremy?) made an excellent point about the original story– yeah, she sold her hair for that watch chain that he’ll never use because he sold his watch… but hair grows back. She’ll be able to use that comb eventually. So the whole point of the story doesn’t really work. ANYWAY, Christmas is about giving and stuff. So here are some ways to do that:

1. I’ve talked about Heifer International before– it’s an organization that allows you to donate livestock to third world villages that need the animals to, you know, live. And no, you aren’t just sending them off to the slaughter, you can give geese or bees or sheep or trees (rhyming!) that help sustain life. My dad started doing this a few years ago and on Christmas we wind up shaking all of our presents going “is it a trio of rabbits, maybe? This one sounds like a flock of chicks!” Which, incidentally, is what I’m getting my bosses for Christmas.  

Anyway, my brother’s mother-in-law now does a Heifer Christmas as well, and at work I saw signs that someone posted about contributing to a cow donation which, as you can imagine, is pretty hefty. In any case, it’s a great organization, and you would not believe how excited people get when they found out you got them a goat.

2. I have a small magazine subscription problem, and I recently discovered my new favorite magazine ever to which I will devote much, much space in a later gift guide. A few months ago I realized that I was getting about 12 magazines a month and not really USING them to my benefit, so I started ripping out anything that interested me during my first read-through of each magazine. This means (1) if you come over, I have lots of holey reading material for you and (2) I have an enormous file folder of Informative Stuff. It contains many, many appetizer recipes, and also an article about Good Magazine. By donating $20 through the website, you get a subscription to the magazine, which is all about other people Doing Good and how you can Do More Good (but, in a liberal, ass-kicking way and not a hippie feel good way). AND, you get to decide where your $20 gets donated. They’re looking to donate a million dollars by mid-next year, and you can pick ocean preservation, Katrina relief, developing world libraries… you name it. And you can do gift subscriptions.

3. I’ve talked about anysoldier about a million times but, once more! With feeling! Second verse same as the first: if you go to the website, you can get information on how to send a care package to soldiers that are in harm’s way, and the “point people” soliders that get the packages have volunteered to distribute the items to soliders that aren’t getting as much mail. They give lists of requests, and you can pick boys or girls, and what branch of the military you want. And, if you’re like me, then you spent over 3 hours on Christmas cards this weekend, which means it would be really, really easy for you to write a letter to someone in Iraq and send it, which is what they request more than anything else. And it feels really strange to write to a complete stranger but once you get into the “here’s who I am and what I do and I hope you’re okay and I’m thinking of you” trend then you do just fine. I promise. If you’re more into homefront-based action, unmetneeds.com gives grants to military families to help with living costs.

4. Lastly, this is my new favorite organization– so, some of my hobbies are equitable to those of an 80 year old retiree, and I crochet. A lot. Whenever I’m in front of the television which, as you know, is quite a lot. And while I like making full-sized blankets, I generally do those as wedding or engagement presents and by the time I’m done with them I’ve spend so much time working on them that I (a) hate how it turned out, and think it’s the ugliest thing ever and/or (b) merely can’t stand the sight of it and want it away from me as soon as possible. So I spent a lot of time making baby-sized blankets, which started when I began working in a nearly all-female industry where my coworkers are popping out midgets left and right. And during a baby lull when I was still making blankets I started looking for something to do with all them and found Project Linus (get it? Like, Linus on Peanuts?) which I love. On the website they have a bunch of different chapters listed, and there’s a great chance that one is near you. You contact the chapter head via email and they tell you where to send your blankets. Project Linus then donates them to children that are seriously ill, traumatized, or otherwise in need (quoting the website directly). And if you want to keep making blankets for people as gifts, you could do that and then spend 2 days making a junior version of their blanket in matching colors, take a picture of it, donate it, and give the recipient of the “real” blanket the picture of the little blanket along with an explanation of where it went. And everyone wins.

Then this afternoon, a plane carrying a local baseball player flew into a building in my neighborhood, and I found myself again trying to make New York a lot bigger than it actually is, both for my own comfort and to assuage my parents. “19 blocks and three avenues is, what, 1.4 miles away? That’s an eternity. It wasn’t even close.” But it is close. And impossibly, horribly sad, for his family and the city. It feels like a very small island today.

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