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Failure To Communicate

December 25, 2007 By Jenny Ryan 3 Comments

My husband and I are both very much word people. We love to read, and we often make up our own words and phrases when we talk to each other. And now that he is having to learn Spanish for his job, we often throw in some foreign words to give our conversation a little international flair.

But sometimes I forget this fact, like today when we were opening Christmas gifts with his family.

It is their tradition that we all sit in a circle and open gifts one person at a time, so everyone can admire what everyone else receives. This means that before each round of gift opening, one person is assigned to retrieve gifts from under the tree, making sure that everyone has something to open.

This time it was my mother-in-law’s turn to play Santa, and she was having trouble finding a present for me.

“Oh wait,” she said finally, “this one might be for you, Jenny.”

She held the gift out at arm’s length, squinted at the tag, and then asked, “Are you…’queasy’?”

“Um, no,” I replied, thinking that she was asking about my illness. Then I had an idea.

“Do you mean ‘queso’?” I asked.

“Oh yes, ‘queso’,” agreed my mother-in-law.

“Yep,” I said, holding out my hand. “That one is definitely for me.”

Filed Under: CFG And Family Affairs Tagged With: christmas, funny stories

Christmas Meme

December 12, 2006 By Jenny Ryan 4 Comments

1. Wrapping paper or gift bags? Whatever my husband wants to use! He is an engineer, and his wrapping is precise and beautiful. I am a creative liberal arts major, and anything I wrap always ends up looking like ass.

2. Real tree or artificial? Real tree. Unless you live with my cat Tigger, who is a one-feline destruction team. Then your only viable option becomes a Pine Scented Candle.

3. When do you put up the tree? You mean “candle”, right? We put up the candle whenever one of our friends comes over, roots around in our drawers for something to light on fire, and discovers the candle which we’ve completely forgotten about.

4. When do you take the tree down? Whenever Jenny gets bored with the arrangement of things in the living room and wants to put up something new.

5. Do you like eggnog? Mmm, tasty!

6. Favorite gift received as a child? Any gift, EVER.

7. Do you have a nativity scene? No. See answer to question #2.

8. Hardest person to buy for? My brother, who apparently has eschewed all attachment to material possessions. Which is fine, because I’ve just gone ahead and picked up all of his slack.

9. Easiest person to buy for? Me, of course. Which is why my husband was forced to institute the “Jenny is not allowed to buy herself anything that could possibly be a Christmas gift idea for someone else starting on November 1st” rule.

10. Mail or email Christmas cards? Year-in-review update on your blog.

11. Worst Christmas gift you ever received? Apparently I’ve blocked this out. But we did get a few doozies for wedding gifts.

12. Favorite Christmas Movie? Diehard 1 and 2.

13. When do you start shopping for Christmas? Whenever the panic of, “Holy Cow, I’m not ready!!!!!” panic sets in.

14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present? I’m sure I have at some point. I know I did this with a few wedding gifts we received, so clearly the practice doesn’t bother me.

15. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas? Sugar cookies!

16. Clear lights or colored on the tree? Colored. Preferably the huge, ceramic, highly flammable bulbs prevalent in the 1970’s. Yet another piece of my childhood which the powers-that-be have decided to use to make me feel old, as there is now a Christmas commercial for a fake tree decorated with these bulbs and labeled as “Retro”. (Not that I’m bitter.)

17. Favorite Christmas song? O Holy Night, Joy To The World, Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree

17b. Christmas Song That, When You Hear It, Makes Your Eyes Bleed And Your Brains Start To Leak Out Your Ears, Because That Is Less Painful Than Having To Listen To That *&%^&$# Song One More Time! “Let’s Give A Christmas Present To Santa Claus”, and “[random words sung in Hawaiian] Is The Thing To Say On This Bright Hawaiian Christmas Day”.

18. Travel at Christmas or stay home? We don’t have any children, which I think is the universally accepted way you get to have Christmas in your own home, so we always go to one or the other set of parents for Christmas.

19. Can you name all of Santa’s reindeer? Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Donner, Cupid, Comet, Blitzen, Rudolph. Do I win a prize? Or get a gift?

20. Angel on the tree top or a star? Dude, enough with the tree questions already! I keep telling you, it’s a CANDLE!

21. Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning? Christmas morning. And let me tell you something, when you marry an engineer whose father is also an engineer, apparently you also agree to the Entire Ass-Load of “Unwritten But Must Be Perfectly Observed Or Else The Earth Will Crash Into The Sun” Rules About Opening Christmas Gifts. I guess that’s the price you pay for having beautifully wrapped gifts.

22. Most annoying thing about this time of year? “Should-ing” all over myself, as in, “I really SHOULD send out Christmas cards”, or, “I really SHOULD hand make all my gifts.”

24. Favorite Christmas Tradition? Making fudge on Christmas Eve and eating Texas Pizzas on Christmas morning.

25. Outdoor decorations? Icicle lights.

Filed Under: Holi-daze, Memes ("Me! Me!s") Tagged With: christmas, memes

Things That Make You Say, “What?!”: Christmas 2005

December 25, 2005 By Jenny Ryan Leave a Comment

1. My husband and I spent the Christmas holiday with his parents, in their newly renovated mountain home. We were all gathered in the living room on Christmas Eve, in that nice, mellow, semi-hypnotic stupor that comes from knowing that there is nothing left to prepare for the next day, and that all of your loved ones are together in one place.

As we were discussing the arrangements for attending Midnight Mass, I saw my mother-in-law look over her assembled family and prepare to speak. I thought she was going to talk about how nice it was to have everyone all together, or discuss what a pleasant holiday it had been so far. Instead, we all witnessed the following exchange:

My mother-in-law: (to my husband) “So, what do you think about cremation?”

My husband: “You mean, as an alternative to going to church? Um, I’d like to go to church.”

2. Christmas Eve is also my husband’s birthday, so my family and his family got together for brunch to celebrate with him. As I was walking back to the table from the restroom I heard someone say, “Well, for that you really need your own bazooka.” I was afraid to inquire any further.

3. A new acquaintance explaining their entry into the world: “I wasn’t born. I was gifted down to people from the gods.”

Filed Under: CFG And Family Affairs, CFG Says, What?! Tagged With: christmas, families

The Outsiders

December 23, 2005 By Jenny Ryan Leave a Comment

We’re pretty excited here in blog land because this is our very first post that we’ve ever done from a remote location, and not sitting at home in our office. But despite my new feelings of technological mastery I clearly have some more work to do before I reach the levels at which my husband and father-in-law are currently residing.

Here is the conversation that my mother-in-law and I were having on the way home from dinner:

My MIL: “See how they’ve decorated all the lamp posts in town with those white lights.”
Me: “That’s really pretty. Remember when they used to have those really big multicolored lights? I really miss those.”

Here is the conversation that was taking place between my husband and my father-in-law in the backseat.

My husband: “Tonight after the movie we need to get started on that black belt level Sudoku puzzle.”
My FIL: “What we really need is a copier so we have enough sheets to try out different possibilities.”
My husband: “We could generate a spread sheet in Excel to do that for us.”
My FIL: “I bet we could even create it so that it checked to make sure that all of our totals were correct.”
My husband: “What is the total?”
My FIL: “What’s 9 factorial? Is that it?”
My husband: “No! 9 factorial is huge!”
My FIL: “Oh, you’re right. What was I thinking?!”
(Snorts and chortling laughter as they realize their mathematical gaffe.)

Clearly, I cannot start drinking eggnog soon enough.

Filed Under: CFG And Family Affairs, CFG Grapples With Technology, CFG Says, What?! Tagged With: christmas, in-laws

Ye Olde Tyme Traditions

December 22, 2005 By Jenny Ryan Leave a Comment

Image courtesy of Free Photo.

Well, it’s that time of year again. The time when families come together to celebrate the holidays and strengthen family ties by participating in cherished, long-standing family rituals. And if I were going to sum up the essence evoked by my own family’s holiday rituals in one word, that word would definitely have to be…”speed”. Here’s what I mean.

Take, for example, the cherished tradition of the Christmas tree. Sure, there are many people who go out immediately after Thanksgiving, comparison shop to find The Perfect Tree, lovingly position it in the best spot in the house, and then create beautiful holiday memories of decorating the tree filled with homemade foods, holiday music, warmth, and laughter. Not us.

We prefer the thrill of the hunt. When Christmas trees are readily available at every home improvement store, grocery store, drug store, and church parking lot, well then we’re just not interested. Where is the challenge in that? But you just try and find a viable tree on Christmas Eve afternoon; that’ll get your adrenaline pumping.

Then of course there’s the Christmas shopping, and I can think of no better example to illustrate this than that of my brother. Every year he rolls into town about two days before Christmas. Up until this point he has completed exactly 0% of his Christmas preparations. But is he worried? Absolutely not. Because we are speedy.

He just grabs my mom and any other random family members who happen to be milling around at that moment and off they go. His personal goal is to go to one store, purchase presents for the 9 family members with whom we celebrate Christmas, and complete all of his shopping and wrapping (thank goodness for charities who raise money by wrapping gifts for crazed shoppers like us) in less time than it took him the year before. And somehow he always does.

(I decided to go along on the shopping trip last year, and because this is my blog I feel that I can TOTALLY take credit for the fact that last year, he beat his record by 50%. It now stands at under 30 minutes.)

Finally it is time for us to decorate the tree that we have so lovingly chosen speedily salvaged from the Christmas tree lot guy as he was closing down his business for the year. And here’s where the real fun begins, because in our house there are no rules. This stems from my mom’s childhood experiences of having a parent who forced her and her siblings to hang the tinsel on the tree strand by tiny, slippery, individual strand. (Even writing that sentence makes my head hurt in the place where my migraines start.)

So now that she is a grownup and can have her own Christmas tree, she has declared that anything goes. Anyone can put anything they want on her tree. If you can find a way to get it onto an ornament hook, it’s going up on the tree. This results in a unique, eclectic decorating style that I like to refer to as “Visual Anarchy As Staged On A Christmas Tree”.

I remember one year in particular where, in addition to the ornaments, our tree featured construction paper garlands made by my brother in elementary school, red, gold, and white tinsel garlands, at least 2 packages of individual tinsel strands, one tree’s worth of multicolored strands of lights that shone constantly, and one tree’s worth of blinking white strands of light hooked up to a variable-speed remote control. It was AWESOME! (Unless you are someone who prefers things like balance and visual harmony over absolute personal freedom. Then you probably wouldn’t like it very much. When I asked my engineer husband what he thought when he first experienced one of our Christmas trees he described it this way: “I felt the part of my head between my eyes and the rest of my brain shut down so I didn’t have to process what I was seeing.”)

So clearly our methods of celebration are not for everyone. But they work well for us. And so, on the eve (almost) of the 2005 holidays, I wish you a holiday that works well for you, or at the very least, a funny story to share afterwards.

Filed Under: CFG And Family Affairs, Holi-daze Tagged With: christmas

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