I have already wasted too much time discussing and thinking about Gilmore Girls

Not my photo, in case you were confused.

So I've been re-watching Gilmore Girls.

I know, I know.  Apparently I'm going through a crises wherein I try to relive my youth.  I first watched the show almost 10 years ago when my then-boyfriend, now-husband left me for the three months before our wedding to artificially impregnate salmon on a remote island in Alaska.  And then again for three months after our wedding.

I had some free time, is what I'm saying.

I borrowed the DVDs from my friend who had all but the second-to-last season, which I still haven't seen.  (I'm working up to it.)

I binge-watched them, obviously, spending hours watching and wishing I lived in Stars Hollow and worked at an inn and read even more books than I already did.

A lot has changed in my life in the last 10 years.  I got married, my husband returned from Alaska, we moved back home-ish, We became parents and then had another kid and I finally, sort of, started feeling like I had my stuff together as a Real Live Adult.

This is my frame of reference as I go through this saga one more time.

And you know what I've discovered?  Those two women are completely immature.  They have no idea how to be adults at all, even Rory.  They whine and are petty and lie about stupid things and GROW UP ALREADY.

But actually, that's what makes me like the show more, in a way.  It's realistic that someone who had a baby at 16 might not be the most mature and stable of adults.  Obviously that's not the case with everyone.  I know people who became parents young who are way more of an adult than people who started much later.

My point is, though, that it's believable that Lorelei would have made her daughter more of a friend than a daughter.  It makes sense that she took on that role and still acts like she's 16 because she never got to be a teenager and because she and Rory basically grew up together.

That being said, as someone who comes from a long line of women who value hard work and doing things for yourself and dear lord, don't ever scream when you see a mouse because that's just wimpy, the fact that Lorelei can't seem to do ANYTHING house-related makes me question how she ever survived life as long as she has.

And every time she whines to Luke about a broken window or roof problem or whatever makes me want to smack her and smack him, too.

Dude.  Cook a meal for yourself.  Clean your own gutters.  Do something other than watch tv and drink coffee!

And now I will excuse myself because apparently I've devoted entirely too much time and energy into analyzing Gilmore Girls.

Aaaaaaannnnddd I just found an old Myspace blog I wrote during the very last season of the show.  I cursed a lot more then.  Also I'm beginning to question whether I even enjoy this show at all or just enjoy torturing myself.

Please to be enjoying:

A blog-topic interlude to discuss the shit that is Gilmore Girls

11/29/2006 2:40:00 PM

11/29/2006 1:35:00 PM

I apologize ahead of time for this.  It's embarrassing to admit that I focus so much energy and thought onto this.  Please don't judge me!!! I do not like the Gilmore Girls, yet I will watch it.  I don't want to admit that it is complete crap this season and I will go down with its ship!  The show has gone completely and utterly off-track and I just don't understand.  Now granted, I hadn't seen but one or two before this past summer but I made up for lost time as I watched the first five seasons on DVD (thanks Lauren!).  So now I am an expert!  And the show has gone to shit.  Let me tell you why! 1.  Fucking Lorelei and Christopher.    ---Seriously?  Now they put Lorelei and Christopher together?  It's like the writers have been taken over by the super conservative crazies who believe that just because they procreated together they should be married, despite the fact that he's a big choad.  And oh yes, he is the choadiest of the choads.  I mean, who stops a knit-a-thon?  It's an A-thon!  It's not supposed to stop until the Thon is A-over!  He's been such an ass to the lady but that's all forgiven and la-la-la let's get married and live happily ever after!  2.  Luke and Lorelei ---They belong together.  I don't care that she's married and stupid.  The past 6 seasons have been about the tension between them because he is so very in love with him and she is completely oblivious.  Then they were together and all was right with the show, but of course there are supposed to be "obstacles" that get in the way, but it's supposed to turn out right in the end.  Do you remember Ross and Rachel?  That's just the way it goes!  And I can't suddenly turn that off and be happy about the Choad marriage.  Because if the writers wanted L&L to get back together, they would create some thick tension between Lorelei & Chris.  But I haven't seen it. 3.  Luke's hat ---Why in the world do they think that it's okay to keep him in the exact same costume for seven straight seasons?  Jeans?  check.  Flannel shirt?  check.  Backwards hat that looks really, really stupid and makes me want to rip it off his head and smack the costume design people with it?  Check!! 4.  I really don't feel like making lists anymore so I will just randomly complain.  I don't like Rory's boyfriend.  Where are all the dark and brooding boyfriends, like Jess?  I think she's probably supposed to end up with Jess.  Or even Marty!  He's dark and brooding!  The blond guy (what's his name?)  is just annoyingly rich and suave and I want to throw things at his head.  It's kind of funny that both Lorelei and Rory fought that whole elitist bullshit and are now wrapped all up in it.  I miss the poor Gilmore Girls!  And I miss the town!  They were so much fun!  There was a little bit of it last night but not nearly enough!  Is that enough?  What do you think about it?  Am I silly?  Do I need to just get a life?  Probably.  Okay.  Am done now.

Motherhood and More: Christmas anticipation fosters sleepless nights*

I think I might finally be a grown up.

I mean, I know it took long enough.  But now that I’m 33 ½ and have two young children of my own, I think it is time to call myself an adult. 

It didn’t happen when I turned 18, or 21, or when I got married.  And it didn’t even happen when I became a mother. No, I became an adult when I started sleeping on Christmas Eve instead of having insomnia caused by the excitement and anticipation of Christmas morning.

There’s so much build up, you know?  There are weeks spent planning and decorating and baking and shopping and wrapping and, in my case, knitting.  All of the preparation leads to this climactic night, this waiting for the accumulation of all the hard work to pay off.

And by all that I mean presents.  It’s hard to sleep the night before you know you’ll be receiving presents.  My family was always good about making the holiday about family and helping others, but still, there were presents.  And I have spent many a Christmas Eve night tossing and turning and willing myself to drift off because that would only make the morning come faster.

But alas, it never was easy.  I tried counting and meditative breathing.  I tried squeezing my eyes shut as tight as I could.  I tried putting the covers over my head.  Sleep was not easily achieved, no matter what I did.  I couldn’t tame the excitement, the butterflies in my stomach.  And when I did finally drift off, it was only for a few hours.  I would always, always wake up at an unreasonable hour and run downstairs to check out the tree.  And then I would have to go back up to my room and wait for my sister to wake up – my sister who could sleep through the apocalypse easily and deeply.  She never lost sleep on Christmas Eve, and would happily stay in bed past 10 a.m., which was ludicrous.  This was mostly because I couldn’t touch anything under the tree until I drug her out of bed, so Christmas morning usually began with a fight.  However it was easily resolved through the joy and good behavior of the season.

The past few years have been a bit more sleep-filled, however.  I’ve gone to bed and fallen asleep, slept the whole night, and only woken up when I heard my 6-year-old son sneaking down the steps at an entirely unreasonable hour.

And he will yell at his sister to get up while I drag myself awake, wiping my eyes, dreaming of coffee.  Of course he can’t touch anything until everyone is there, including his sister who isn’t quite as fast as he is to jump out of bed.

And I know he has lain awake at night, tossing and turning, and willing himself to sleep.  And maybe he’s woken up and gone downstairs to check on things sometime in the night, sometimes even before Santa has arrived.  I know he’s listened to hear Santa’s sleigh, trying to determine if that noise was a reindeer on the roof or just the wind. 

And he will probably be like this for years to come, even after he learns to drive or graduates high school.  Or maybe even after he gets married. 

Because it is exciting, you know?  The happiness and family and presents and time spent together celebrating creates something a bit magical. 

And who wants to sleep through that?

*This column originally published in The News-Enterprise on Dec. 24, 2014.

And I have how many days left until they go back to school?

I am currently 56 percent zombie, 41 percent coffee and the rest cracker candy.

That's because my sweet 4-year-old Adele had a minor freakout at 2 in the morning in the form of hysterical screaming about spiders in her bed.  (Spiders this time, not snakes.)  And so I lay with her for awhile to calm her down, and I noticed that she sounded horribly congested and wouldn't stop coughing.  I got her some cough medicine and hippie decongestant salve and returned to my own bed, hoping to quickly return to sleep.  I knew it was wishful thinking because I am self aware, but still.  I wanted to believe it was possible.

But then, of course, Adele began fake crying because she's not supposed to get out of bed and that was her way to get our attention.  She's not supposed to get out of bed because for the past few weeks (WEEKS) she has come downstairs in the middle of the night to our bed.  We let her stay for a bit then one of us (me) will carry her back to her own bed.  And neither parent goes back to sleep.

So instead of coming downstairs after we told her not to she put her head right by her door and fake cried until I made it back upstairs.  I gave up at that point.

I stayed in her bed until around 5.  I think I slept some.  A bit.  But not nearly enough.  And today I needed to run to the store for jewelry supplies because I had two necklace orders and desperately needed chains even though I was sure I'd bought an obscene amount the last time I stocked up and how did I go through so many so fast?  (Obviously, this is a good problem to have.  Just not today.)

So the kids and I went out, me partially awake and Adele majorly tired and possibly on the verge of a meltdown.  But luckily that didn't show up until we were waiting in line at the bookstore to get a drink and I refused to buy her a cookie.  We were at the bookstore because I didn't have the energy to disagree with my son who really, really wanted to go there.  That's also how we ended up with a chapter book.  Well, that and I'm a sucker for books and it's pretty awesome that he's reading chapter books and I'm ok with encouraging it.

And maybe I would have been okay with buying a cookie for the kids if they hadn't spent the entire weekend eating nothing but sugar.  We had three parties to go to on Saturday which included cupcakes and gingerbread house and cookie decorating and hot chocolate and chocolate covered pretzels and - and - and ...

And on Sunday we had my parents' Christmas party where the rest of us ate lasagna but my two unnatural children don't actually like lasagna and so survived on Pez.

So I thought I'd attempt to get them back on some sort of halfway-healthy-type of food plan, which didn't include overpriced cookies from the bookstore cafe.  Adele flipped out so we left that line and went in the book-buying line, which actually was longer than the over-priced coffee and cookie line.  And she wouldn't stop flipping out so I put her Barbie book back and just bought Sebastian's book because he was behaving like a civilized human being.

And then she screamed in the car when she realized I hadn't bought her book.

Thems the breaks, kid.

We went home and ate lunch and Adele took a nap, which means that she was exceptionally tired because she didn't even protest me forcing her in her room all that much.  I honestly think she was a little relieved.

I probably should have taken a nap myself but I had three baskets of laundry to fold and Gilmore Girls to marathon and so I just made another pot of coffee and had a few more bites of cracker candy an considered myself sustained.

Lest you think I was completely neglecting my older child, he was around, and perfectly behaved because he spent his afternoon watching youtube videos of a boy opening toys and playing with them.  Now, I don't necessarily understand the concept of evantube, but it keeps him occupied.

Good Lord, is it only the first day of Christmas break?

Spreading the Christmas cheer one animal sacrifice at a time

I maybe forgot I had a blog.

Okay - I didn't forget.  I spend every morning for the last little bit (when was the last time I actually wrote something?) planning to write, telling myself to write, even writing posts in my head.

But I seem to have forgotten to actually write.

But I'm here now!  At least for today, and really, that's all I can commit to because time and Christmas and work and all that.

My I Love Kentucky necklaces have become popular all of the sudden, with mucho orders coming in. (Maybe it was because of the giveaway?) Every time I see a new order I grin and tell my husband how excited I am because SOMEONE WANTS TO BUY SOMETHING I MADE!  You have no idea how happy it makes me.  I am goofy with joy.  There'as also been some interest in my new personalized motherhood necklace.  I wear mine all the time, myself,with my kids' initials stamped on the little hearts.  My son likes to see it on me and comments on how I like to keep him close to my heart.  I sure do, buddy.

So what with all the grinning and the celebrating people buying things and the making I am a bit booked up, you know?

And then, on top of that I decided last minute - as per my usual schedule - that I would hand-knit some presents for people.  Every year I say no - I'm not going to put myself through it because it's ridiculous to stress myself out as much as I do and also I have a million other things that require my attention.  And then I change my mind very close to Christmas because handknits are awesome and I like to spread happiness in the form of wool.  And that leaves me scrambling and up late and sore-wristed from all the knitting.  I think it will be manageable this year, though.  I've chosen a quick pattern and everyone gets the same thing.  So maybe it won't be so bad?

Do I say that every year?  I feel like I say that every year.

We'll see.

I also have lots of baking/food making to get done.  And birthday parties to go to and Christmas parties and then there's my annual animal sacrifice for snow on Christmas.  (I'm kidding. No animals were harmed in the writing of this blog post, or in the hopes of creating snow.)

This time of year is fantastic, isn't it?  I've honestly been a bit grumpy about the whole thing, trying to make myself feel more Christmas cheer than I do.  But I think maybe my standards are too high.  It's okay for me not to be ebullient over everything Christmas related.  I am all grown up now, even though I don't always feel like it.  Of course the season isn't going to be the same as it was when I was a kid so I should probably try to stop focusing on why I don't feel the way I feel like I should feel.  You feel me?

Instead, now I can create all that magic for my little monsters.  I can make the days exciting and full of all that stuff that made me so Christmasy in days past.

Which is a pretty great gig, if you can get it.