Futility Now

We are now in the slow, arduous process of recovering from Christmas. Mostly this involves walking around in a daze and trying to figure out what the hell we’re going to do with all the candy that my interlocutor’s family likes to throw around at Christmas time. Motivated more by love than common sense, she has supplied me with a bottle of Fernet Branca as a holiday tipple. Hopefully this won’t set us back far enough to interfere with rocking out for New Year’s.

So the near-complete circumnavigation of the chair by pinked masking tape was groundwork for assembly-line paper chain construction by little S. and me.  This was the end result:

In fact, the photo jmags loaded of the tree was captured long before we were done dolling it up.  I’ve never chopped down a ten foot tall tree before, you know?  I only have so many origami birds to hang.

Granted, this photo was taken during the daytime, in the blinding reflected light of the snow pack, but it still looks festive, don’t you think?

We have been indoors for several days now.  For the most part, we’re all being well behaved, but today we all got punchy during our late morning/early afternoon pancake breakfast.  It’s too bad I was giggling so much that the shot ended up more than a little blurry.

That’s whipped cream cascading off of the pancake and onto the adolescent.

I’ve been very busy with cooking and holiday projects, and also some new developments with clay that I plan to share soon.

Boy is it ever the great blizzard of Aught-Eight here in Portland Oregon. In contrast to the rather flaccid winters that rounded out my time in NY (yes, there was one dramatic storm in early ’06, but come on) it’s definitely a doozy. I’m not quite ready to have Western Mass flashbacks, but it doesn’t seem as out of the question as you might expect.

We have been trying to keep warm using fires and eggnog.

Also, we’re finally all on vacation and stuff, although the ladies who are involved in schools had the entire last week off. Lots of holiday-related crafts have been going on.

The tree:

I don’t really have any idea what’s going on here:

So here’s what happened: first, we got a bunch of booze.

That Chinon was a helpful suggestion from a friendly passer by at New Seasons, and while I’m sure her intentions were deeply good, it was thoroughly mediocre. I guess it’s my own fault, as I should really know better than to take wine advice from strangers. As expected, all of my selections were excellent.

We also scored a turducken. In this picture, it’s sausage-stuffed cavity is pointed at you, dear reader.

Here it’s looking a bit more presentable, don’t you agree?

So, here’s how it all looked when it got onto table.

And a plating (vestigial chops from my service career).

As the people who set the playlists for horrible department stores know, once you’ve had your turkey it’s time to crack straight on to Christmas. We were no different: we set out on Sunday to get a tree.

So there you have it. Festivity city!