Hmm. December 10th. Seems like there’s something important about this day.
Oh yeah. Youngest Daughter is 18 today.
All of my kids are all grown up now.
I’m not sure how I feel about that.
My oldest was born in 1990. Youngest Daughter, in 2005. 8 kids in fifteen years.
190 years of child-rearing at this point.
I hope we got it right.
Saturday, I watched a couple of National Park Service divers on a livestream from the USS Arizona memorial (note that the audio is really quiet). They said during the stream that they dive on the memorial several times a month for various reasons, from research to cleanup. Apparently people drop a lot of things overboard. Go figure.
One of the divers said the after oil tanks (the forward tanks are what’re leaking right now) wouldn’t start leaking oil until 2225. That rather boggles the mind, that almost three hundred years after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the ship could still be leaking oil.
Oh Tannenbaum
We usually put our Christmas tree up the weekend after Thanksgiving, often picking it out on Black Friday. With the carpet going in last week, we decided to wait until it was done before we picked up the tree. So last Sunday we headed out to pick up our Christmas tree and for the first time in twenty-ish years, we went with an artificial tree. It wasn’t as hard for me as I thought it might be.
I grew up with a live/cut tree. The artificial trees that were available “back in my day” didn’t even try to look real. The “needles” were flimsy little bits of something or other, kind of like mylar to my memory. Dad never thought much of them.
There was a tree lot in Marietta between Greene and Pike Streets in an old industrial building, owned by Ralph Lindamood. I remember the trees hanging from short pieces of binder’s twine tied to the rafters, and just a few weak light bulbs lighting things up. We’d take the station wagon (first a Chevy Kingswood, then a Dodge Aspen) down there some time after the first weekend of December. I may be misremembering this, but since that first weekend was Messiah and we always had the after-party at our house (since Dad was the conductor), I think we always waited to put the tree up so we’d have more space in the living room.
In later years, after Hal and I moved out, Dad got the tree delivered. Mom did the same after Dad died.
I can’t remember if we put a tree up the year she died.
Both of her parents had artificial trees for as long as I knew them. At one point, her dad just quit taking it down. I think the last time he took it down was before we left Ohio, so twelve years at least. Her mom and stepdad found a train set designed for artificial trees and got one for us at one point.
I’m pretty sure we had a live one at Rob Roy for at least a couple of years. I know we went back to a live tree at Caties Way, because we ended up with a huge one at one point, where the top was at least even with the railing on the second floor.
The first Christmas we were in the RV, we traveled back to Ohio, so we didn’t put a tree up, though we decorated the inside of the RV with lights and ornaments and such.
We’ve stayed with live trees here in Oklahoma until this year. We’d talked about switching for several years now and I always argued against it. But the kids were never fond of the needles and having to water it daily, so I caved.
Diana and I went artificial for our first tree, though I don’t remember why. I think it had to do with her growing up with artificial trees, and being worried about Erica getting into it as a toddler. I do recall taking the day off work to put it together. That one had individual branches, each coded to the particular level they were supposed to be mounted to. Then you’d have to fluff each branch out to make it look nice and full.
It’s a nice tree with pre-installed lights and eight or so different patterns. I like the fade between the colored and white lights. Youngest and Middle Daughters like the steady white lights. I think Diana does too. My only complaint about the lights is that the colored lights are either all on or all off. I would have liked to see them cycle through all the colors.
It’s a little taller and thinner than what we usually get in a tree. Our angel topper (which has been getting a little ragged after 20+ years) won’t fit because of the height. I do appreciate though that GE saw fit to have a plug at the top for toppers.
Writing
I haven’t been able to get a good handle on a source for the Honorary Unsubscribe-like thing I’ve been wanting to do. I may end up choosing a random person with a birthday in the last week and sharing some quotes from them. I’ve got a friend who does that on Facebook and it’s a nice post in the middle of all the stuff you usually see there.
Words of the Week
“I wouldn’t say I’m without spiritual belief particularly, or rather, specifically. Maybe I’m agnostic, but I’m not quite sure there’s some great creator somehow controlling everything and giving us free will. I don’t know; it doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense to me.”
“I’m not terribly articulate in many ways and particularly when it comes to what I do. And, at the risk of sounding like Holden Caulfield, I don’t know if I would talk about it even if I could.”
“I’m very much a typical Midwesterner, and I don’t think the condition is curable.”
“It’s not a field, I think, for people who need to have success every day. If you can’t live with a nightly sort of disaster, you should get out. I wouldn’t describe myself as lacking confidence, but I would just say that the ghosts you chase you never catch.”
— Actor John Malkovich, born December 9, 1953.
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