Questions

I wasn’t sure what my Q post was going to be, but some of you gave me the idea with your comments on my Ornaments post when you shared things about your ornaments and the stories that go with them. 

As I’ve mentioned before, my parents don’t celebrate any holidays.  So, my sister, Gabby, and I are both relatively new to celebrating holidays.  We’ve both happily embraced celebrating them.  Fortunately, Nick’s mom, Susan, is practically Santa Claus, so we’ve both had a very fun crash course in celebrating Christmas.  It also means Nick and I have never had the “that’s not how my family does it” disagreements surrounding holidays.

It does mean that I’m very curious about how other people celebrate the holidays.  I love hearing about other people’s traditions.  Last week, I learned quite a bit about how the Easter bunny works from one of the neighbor kids.  Nick told me he grew up with a different perspective on the Easter bunny, which made me even more curious about different people’s holiday traditions. 

So, I thought I’d list some of the major holidays, tell you what we do, and then ask what you do.  Feel free to comment on any or all of them, and of course, let me know if there are any you celebrate that I left out.

New Year’s Eve/Day:  We never do much for this one.  Let’s just say that Nick’s time working in the emergency services and my time working for a DUI prosecutor left us both with no desire to share the roads with people who have been drinking all night.  Early on, we used to rent a lot of movies from Blockbuster (that makes me sound old, doesn’t it?) and watch movies.  We usually end up falling asleep before midnight.  We usually only manage to stay awake on really bad years (2016 and 2020!) when we want to see them end.  Our neighbors have had us over for New Year’s Eve sometimes, and that is always fun.

Sometimes I cook collard greens and black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day, but more often than not, we don’t really do anything traditional.

I guess we’re pretty boring!  What do you do for New Year’s Eve/Day?

Valentine’s Day:  I used to think this one would be so romantic.  Now, I don’t believe in curses, but if I did, I would say Valentine’s Day is cursed for us.  Some of our Valentine’s Day misadventures include Nick having food poisoning on Valentine’s Day from us going out to dinner the night before and then being out sick from work when I had ordered chocolate-covered bananas to be delivered to him at work, my gardenia that Nick sent me at work dying because we shut down for almost a week for a snowstorm and it dying in the shipping box before we went back to work, and both of us coming down with the flu. 

Now, we never plan to do anything at all for Valentine’s Day.  It seems better for our health!  What do you do for Valentine’s Day?

St. Patrick’s Day:  Nick doesn’t drink at all, and I don’t like beer, so that eliminates most of the obvious celebrations for this holiday.  I used to attempt to make Irish stew, but I’m terrible at it, and finally gave up, deciding we had suffered enough.  Nick wears a uniform for work, so no green for him.  I always wear green.

This year, one of my co-workers went around checking everyone for green.  Another one of my co-workers said that he’d never heard of wearing green for St. Patrick’s Day.  Even as a kid, not celebrating the holidays, I thought everyone else wore green.  So, now I’m very curious.  Do you wear green for St. Patrick’s Day?  And do you do anything else for St. Patrick’s Day?

Easter:  Nick’s grandmother made the best Easter baskets.  Yes, she made them for us even though we were adults.  They always looked so pretty, and she always found a white chocolate bunny for mine. 

My first experience hiding and hunting Easter eggs was in 2019 with our neighbors.  I had no idea how much fun I had been missing out on! 

This year, they had us and some of our other neighbors over for dinner and an Easter egg hunt.  We (most of the adults and the older kids) split up to hide almost 300 eggs in multiple yards.  That’s a great thing about involving neighbors; you can use all of the yards.  The rule was you couldn’t hunt where you had hidden.  I’m terrible at finding eggs, but it was still so much fun, and the kids were very sweet and generous about sharing their eggs.  My bag somehow went from nine to twenty-seven eggs, thanks to their generosity.

One of the girls, I’ll call her Iris, since I don’t think it’s okay to name someone else’s child on my blog, told us that all you have to do is leave all of your empty eggs out in a bag and leave everyone's Easter basket out the night before Easter and that you should also leave carrots out for a snack.  Then, the Easter bunny, along with his brothers and sisters, will come and fill everyone’s Easter basket, hide some eggs in the house for a morning Easter egg hunt, and fill all of the eggs in the bag for the adults to hide later.  Iris advised us to make sure we remembered to leave Easter baskets out on Saturday night. 

Nick said he never believed in the Easter bunny, although he did believe in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy.  He said he always knew his Easter basket was from his mom.  So now I’m curious.  What did you believe about the Easter bunny?  And what do you do for Easter?

Halloween:  I’ve only ever dressed up once; the first year we were married, when some friends had us over to hand out candy, and she loaned me a Minnie Mouse costume. 

We used to hand out candy but kept getting fewer trick-or-treaters every year, so we finally stopped.  Now, I usually make chili, and we have a movie marathon with lots of candy.

What do you do for Halloween?

Thanksgiving:  Or, as I like to call it, the BEST HOLIDAY EVER.  I know, I know, most people don’t get that excited over Thanksgiving.  That’s okay.  I get excited enough for all of us. 

I love Thanksgiving for so many reasons:  When Nick and I were first engaged, and I was still getting to know his friends, we went to someone’s house for Thanksgiving.  We weren’t planning to stay long because Nick had to work that night.  They invited me to stay the whole time and drove me home later.  It was the first time I felt like Nick’s friends accepted me for me, not just as a package deal with Nick.  Thanksgiving feels like it has all of the hope and magic of the holiday season.  It seems like so many people are exhausted and irritated by the time Christmas is over, but Thanksgiving doesn’t have that.  It feels special.  I worry a lot about getting most of the holidays wrong and seeming rude or looking like an idiot.  Thanksgiving is the one I feel completely confident celebrating.  I love to cook, and I’m reasonably good at it.  Add to that the fact that we’ve made our very own special traditions, and I just feel good about it.  

I always take the day before Thanksgiving off from work and cook and bake all day, usually from 6:00 or 7:00 in the morning until 11:00 or 12:00 that night.  That may not sound like fun to everyone, but I love it.  We take the meal to the hospice house for lunch, and then we come back and finish getting everything ready for our celebration that evening, usually around 6:00 or 7:00.  We have friends and neighbors come, and we eat and play games.  It usually lasts until around midnight.  I go to bed exhausted but incredibly happy.

What do you do for Thanksgiving?

Christmas:  Christmas is my second favorite holiday.  As you know by now, I love ornaments.  Usually, we go to my sister Gabby’s house, along with Nick’s mom and step-dad, Susan and Alan.  I know it’s probably a little unusual, but that’s our little Christmas group.  Susan and Alan are both at higher risk from COVID than we are, and Nick and Gabby have a lot of exposure from work, so we didn’t get to spend the last two Christmases with Susan and Alan.  I’m hopeful for this year. 

We watch Christmas movies, eat tons of food (Gabby cooks for Christmas like I cook for Thanksgiving), celebrate Nick’s birthday, and always end up opening our Christmas presents early.  We all talk to each other about what we’re getting for other people, so usually, everyone is excited to see everyone’s reactions to their presents.  And our excuse for not waiting is that there are so many presents, we need to open them to have more room in the living room.

What do you do for Christmas?

Like I said before, feel free to tell me what you do on any or all of the holidays and tell me if there are any others you celebrate.  I’d love to hear about your holidays. 

The Quirky Quartet

Since Saturday’s post about painting with them went over fairly well, I thought I’d take today to introduce (or re-introduce if you’ve been around for a while) you to our quirky quartet of cats.

Milo & Howard

Howard is our oldest and first adopted cat.  I had him when Nick and I met.  He came from the county shelter, and wasn’t the cat I thought I was looking for at all.   But when I saw Howard I knew he was the right little guy for me. 

Howard is by far our friendliest and most outgoing cat.  He loves people and always greets company.  He also loves other animals and seems to greet any new pet arrival by saying “Hi!  I’m Howard, your new friend!”

Milo is our second oldest and second adopted cat.  He’s also the first fur kid Nick and I adopted together.  We adopted him a little over a month after we were married because we decided Howard need a kitty buddy.

Milo is probably our most high maintenance cat.  He’s very loving and affectionate toward very few people and doesn’t have much use for the rest.  He can also be very impatient and doesn’t handle disruptions to his routine very well.  He absolutely loves Howard, though.  The two of them are best friends and spend a lot of time cuddling together.

Frankie is our youngest cat, but third adopted.  A friend posted on Facebook about her sister needing to find a home for a kitten.  The next thing we knew we were adopting Frankie.

Frankie is more cautious than Howard, but definitely more of an explorer than Milo.  He’s very interested in scents; he loves to check out and sniff the vegetables that come in the CSA box.  Frankie also adores hair products.  I don’t use very many, so my hair is always a disappointment to him, but he loves to smell my friend Crystal’s hair.

Tara & Frankie

Tara is our second youngest and last adopted (for the moment!) cat.  She’s a failed foster.  We housed Tara and one other cat while the no-kill shelter was being renovated.  She was so timid and scared at first that we couldn’t stand the thought of taking her back to the noisy hustle and bustle of the shelter once she started to warm up to us.

Tara is still very timid and not a very social cat, but she adores Frankie and loves spending time with him.  I think she feels safe with Frankie.  She also likes to play with little things that she can bat around on the floor.  She loves the little toy mice and little things like bottle caps. 

So that’s our quirky quartet.  They all have their own quirks, and together they’re quite a quartet, but they keep life fun and interesting for us. 

X-Rated Posts

I have to say that I was not looking forward to X, not at all.  It is probably the letter I have worried about the most during the challenge.  My usual fall back plan of googling “words that begin with” didn’t yield great results.  I just can’t see myself writing a post on Xanax or xylophones, or even x-rays (though I’m sure I’ve had more than my fair share). Then inspiration struck when I was visiting this blog, and read the Q post.  Yes, I realize it’s a bit of stretch to get an idea for X from a Q post, but here’s what happened.

I was tossing around the idea of X-rated posts as my topic, not in a dirty way (minds out of the gutter please), but in a “what makes you uncomfortable” kind of way.  I’m sure we’ve all seen a lot of different blogs, in a lot of different styles this month.  Some of the posts have encouraged further perusal of the blog, some have had me looking for the “follow” button as fast as I can, some have really made my day.  Then there are The Others; the ones that have had me clicking the X in the top right corner like a madwoman, the ones that have me feel like I need a shower, the ones that have made me feel like I overheard a conversation I really wasn’t meant to hear, and the ones that have just annoyed me in general. 

Don’t get me wrong; I really, really look forward to clicking on different blogs every day.  The vast majority have at least been a look at something from a slightly different perspective, or a new fun fact; something positive.  So I decided to try and figure out what it was that made me decide I would NOT be coming back to certain blogs, and here’s what I came up with:

Too much personal information – yes, we’re all sharing a lot about ourselves with a lot of people, but for me there are limits.  Hearing about your struggle with infertility is one thing, detailed posts about the state of your cervical mucus is quite another.  I also do not feel the need to know if you post naked or not.  I don’t consider myself a prude, that’s just not in the need to know category.  Bodily functions are also another topic that will send me clicking away from a blog in a hurry.

Language – yes, there are times when only a four letter word will do, and I’m no stranger to them, but when the post has more words I wouldn’t be comfortable using in front of my mom or my boss, I’m not inclined to keep reading.

Tone – this is a much more subtle one, but if a blog’s main intent seems to be to educate the illiterate masses (i.e. those of us who aren’t the author of said blog), or to preach a religious doctrine, or to promote a political ideal I tend not to come back.

Now for the fun part and the part that was really inspired by the blog I mentioned earlier, what are the things that you consider “x-rated”, that make you uncomfortable, or very unlikely to return to a blog?