holidays

Myrna Loy Primping for William Powell

/ wvfurandroot / 2 Comments

white-shoulders-cologneLately, I’ve been very annoyed with my perfume bottle.

Not the perfume, mind you. I’ve worn the same perfume since I was 10 – White Shoulders. I love it. I have always loved it and, recently, I learned it was the first perfume my dad ever gave his mom. He was about the age I was when he saved his money to buy it for her.  It was given to me by my great aunt and except for a brief flirtation with some heavily advertised brands in the early 70s, it’s the only perfume I’ve ever worn.

It’s a delicate scent that mixes well with my body chemistry. While it’s an affordable perfume, it’s not cheap. Someone generally gets me a bottle every other Christmas which works out well because that’s about how long it takes me to go through a bottle.

perfume bottleThe last bottle was not a spray bottle. I just opened a new one and it’s been aggravating me – trying to pour out just enough and then splashing it around like after shave. It’s a barbaric way to handle a delicate scent.

I’m on the “one for them, one for me” Christmas gift shopping plan. On a recent online foray, I ran across perfume bottles with those old-fashioned rubber squeeze bulbs. Oh my.

Now we know how I feel about my dressing table. And we know how I feel about the elegance of times past.

So how could I not buy it? Honestly.

It arrived today and it’s just wonderful. I feel like Myrna Loy primping for William Powell.

I love Christmas trees.

/ wvfurandroot / 2 Comments

16littletreeI’ve probably mentioned before that Christmas trees are my favorite part of the holidays.

For a time, I had a Christmas tree, albeit some were quite small, in every room in the house. A few years ago, I consolidated those into the Big Tree and the Little Tree. This year, I’m adding Doug’s big-ish tree to the guest bedroom – so three of them – Papa Tree, Mama Tree, and Baby Tree. Nevermind, the baby is a mere 7’.

I’ve loved Christmas trees for as long as I can remember. When I was a child, I was the first one to clamor for us to put up the tree. I was adamantly a real-tree person for decades until my carefully (and expensively) decorated tree fell over on me. As the ornament collection grew, so did their weight, and real trees just weren’t straight enough with heavy enough branches to handle it all. Enter artificial trees into my life. I’ve grown to like them, especially the pre-lit ones. They still take a lot of fiddling farting, but nothing like stringing lights.

14littletreeThe ornament collection is out of control. I select ornaments based on events in my life, or my child’s, or other significant events. I choose ornaments as memorials to folks gone, ornaments of pets past and present, ornaments as souvenirs from vacations, ornaments of pop culture that caught my attention or my son’s.

I believe my love of Christmas trees is genetic and Chef Boy ‘R Mine inherited the gene although it’s lying dormant right now. But when he was little, he was as entranced by the tree as I was. To protect him and the ornaments, I gave him a small, one-piece tree with battery-operated lights and a number of fabric ornaments that I procured from here and there.

He loved that tree from when I gave it to him at 18-months-old until he was 12 and felt manly men didn’t cotton to such things. He dragged that little tree around, decorated and undecorated it, augmented his ornaments with toys, dishtowels, potholders, Grandpa’s watch and anything else he could drape on it. I believe he was mimicking my penchant for ornaments never intended to be hung on a tree (like a McDonald’s Happy Meal Johnny Depp Stuffed Pirate.)

As Chef Boy ‘R Mine got older, his tree got bigger and his ornaments now icluded the stuff he made at school and collectible Star Trek ornaments I began buying him.

25littletreeWhile developing his tree, “my” tree continued to grow. I bought Wizard of Oz ornaments by the dozen to celebrate my love and my son’s love for the movie. I bought Alice in Wonderland ornaments to signify the wonderful time he and I both had reading Alice aloud. A few years ago, my mother gave me the ornaments she made for the family tree – precious little figurines of ceramic angels and wisemen and shepherds.

When my son was about 9, I caught him and my manly-man brother lying on the floor engrossed in The Nutcracker Ballet – so engrossed they didn’t hear me ask them a question about dessert. The Nutcracker ornaments were procured.

All of these and more are now the ornaments that go on the “Little Tree” – a white extravaganza of whimsy designed to appeal to children and inner-children. I usually put this tree up first and some years it’s the only tree that goes up. It’s bright and colorful. It’s cheerful. It’s friendly. It reminds me of my son and the best years of my life.

I’m going all out with the Christmas decorations this year. The first year Doug saw my house decked out in full, he was charmed. I don’t, generally, these years put everything out, but this year it will be a memorial to him. There are ornaments on the little tree that I got because of some shared experiences with him (the lobster) and some he got (Santa in a coal truck.)

24littletreeEverything on the tree has some significance even if I can’t remember what it is. I should write this stuff down before I forget it all. I hope that Chef Boy ‘R Mine comes to his senses by the time he inherits all this stuff – I hope to see it loved for generations to come.

The Big Tree is just as commemorative of my life, but more elegant and traditional. I’ve got the behemoth set up and arranged, but ornaments won’t go on until Tuesday. I don’t know that there will be time, but hopefully on Tuesday we can arrange the village that lives underneath it. Yes, I’ve arranged for help with the Big One – it’s overwhelming for one person.

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The Zen in Tedium

/ wvfurandroot / 3 Comments

ironA lot of the stuff on my to-do list is just tedious. I have a very long to-do list. If I were to actually write out the entire to-do list, it would be in volumes.

I’m not sure what stage of grieving involves nesting. In preparation for the holidays, I do tend toward nesting behavior and I define nesting as a comforting behavior centered on home improvement whether it be a simple cleaning or an intensive makeover. This year I’m in hyper-drive. I think it’s because I know the holidays are going to be hard and the more serene the house is, the better I’ll be.

Now nesting is a comforting behavior, but under normal circumstances such activities as cleaning windows and dusting under the table are simply chores to accomplish so one can get on to the more fun activities like putting up the Christmas tree or lounging about admiring the sparkle of china against newly cleaned glass.

chinaI’m involved in something that’s a combination of simple cleaning, organizing and intensive makeover. There’s a lot of tedium involved. The latest project is the living room/dining room and the latest activity of that project was the installation of hardware and hanging of draperies. (They’re flipping gorgeous, by the way.) One of the subtasks was the ironing of eight drapery panels badly wrinkled by having been stuffed in a package the size of a trade paperback.

Erma Bombeck said, “My second favorite household chore is ironing. My first being hitting my head on the top bunk bed until I faint.” In another column or book somewhere, she also said something along the lines of children of nonworking mothers never enjoy the warmth of a hastily ironed shirt as they race out the door to the bus stop. In short, Erma and I shared a hatred of ironing and only did it at the last minute, under duress and as quickly as possible.

ironingYesterday, I decided ironing wasn’t so bad. I cleaned off the dining room table, set up the iron, spread the panels, one at a time, on the table and ironed them. It took me 30 to 40 minutes to iron each panel as there were frequent breaks to enjoy the newfound orderliness of the room and to laugh at the cat trying to attack the robotic vacuum cleaner.

There’s zen to be found in tedium – if you do it right. I had a fine time ironing yesterday. And after ironing, I embarked on stringing ribbon and fishing line through prisms to hang from the exposed drapery rods – a very tedious activity. I enjoyed that too.

The key is to not be in a hurry. You hear this all the time, but “being right here, right now” goes a long way from changing something from dreadful to a meditative experience. “Wax on, wax off.”

I’ve commented in the past on how it seems I get more done when I don’t have a to-do list. I know now it’s because to-do lists are antithetical to zen. Doing is not being, but if you do it right, just being gets a lot done. How’s that for a conundrum?

But I think this all might be a bunch of hokum, because I tried to zen my way through the cleaning of the litter box tonight. No dice. So my theoretical explanation of the zen of tedium needs some corollaries – the first being that nothing can be meditative when there’re cat turds involved.