back again

Whew! It's been weeks since I posted, weeks since I had time to sit down and even think about posting. Two weeks at the mother-in-law's with only slow internet (and, of course, the expectation that one is "present" most of the time, rather than hogging the computer) is the main reason, though probably holiday-stress would have slowed me down anyway. This is my favorite part of the holidays, in some ways. The kids go back to school tomorrow, we are about to celebrate Epiphany (no hype but lots of meaning), and we have one more week before Mark & I go back to school. Not that a week seems like enough time to construct a new syllabus and revise an old one, but there you have it.

Some random thoughts from the past few weeks:

*is it just me, or was the last LOTR segment incredibly tedious? I mean, I could look at Viggo Mortensen and Orlando Bloom all day, but it feels like that's all I did.

*we may say Christmas is about the kids but it's stressful on them too. Mine, for example, aren't used to having only each other to hang out with for two weeks at a time. And it showed. That's all I'm going to say about that.

*the toy of the moment is always worth giving, even though it will break in the first 24 hours of play. Luckily Nick got two remote-control cars. Only one is broken.

*Legoland is for kids younger than 14.

*Trader Joe's can solve nearly every holiday crisis. Southern California has a grocery strike going on and it was pretty much the only place we could shop--and that was just fine. (Just buy an extra bottle of wine with each load of groceries...) Now if there were only one closer than 100 miles away...

*Am I the only person in the world who really loves holiday letters? One from my oldest, dearest friend began, "Both kids peed on me today." I think this is genius--and a real break from the holiday letters of my past. But I have always loved them, always loved reading about the goings-on of people I might not even have known, or remembered. So much the better when they're about people I do know and love. But as a genre I think they are widely dissed, and I am out to restore their value. Send me your favorite holiday letters, or lines from them!