That's a loaded question...

Mass e-mail from co-worker (edited to remove identifying information):

Hi Everyone!

For our Holiday Party, I am collecting your best/worst/funniest holiday memory.

The Social Committee will be using this information for a fun activity we have planned for the party.

Please try to keep it concise (a line or two at most) and email it to me privately.

If you could send it to me by EOD Friday, that would be great!

*** *** ***

OK, I'm assuming by "worst holiday memory," they are looking for worst/we-can-laugh-about-it-now stories about the time Santa left a lump of coal in your stocking, or you had one too many glasses of eggnog & woke up with a hangover -- that sort of thing.

Because, honestly -- do they REALLY want to hear people's WORST holiday memories?

I mean, let's face it, I love Christmas -- but most people's Christmases, even the best ones, rarely if ever measure up to the Norman Rockwell ideal. And I'm pretty damned sure nobody wants to hear about MY worst Christmas.

Do they REALLY want to know what it's like to be expecting a baby in November -- to have your mother exclaim, when she learns the due date, "A baby for Christmas!!" -- to dream about bringing that baby home for the holidays to her adoring grandparents & great-grandparents -- only to have that dream totally, utterly shattered when the baby is stillborn in August?

Do they REALLY want to know why you can't bear to hear or sing "Away in a Manger" anymore? (especially when, one year, the choir changed the lyrics to include the line, "A baby for Christmas...")

Do they REALLY want to know what it's like to start crying every year while you're watching the Santa Claus Parade, because it brings back memories of your pregnancy & your secret wish that you'd be able to watch the parade from the windows of the hospital (on the parade route) with your newborn daughter in your arms?

Do they REALLY want to know what it's like to go to the mall and be confronted with oodles of toys, impossibly precious holiday clothes at Baby Gap & Gymboree, and a massive lineup of adorably dressed babies & toddlers waiting to see Santa Claus, when you'd give anything to be doing the same thing with your daughter?

Do they REALLY want to know what it's like to lose your grandfather just a few weeks after losing your baby -- the grandfather you adored, secretly thought was Santa Claus, and spent every single Christmas of your life with?

Do they REALLY want to know what it's like to go to your Christmas party -- the one place where you think you're safe & looking forward to kicking back with your co-workers -- only to have the colleague who was pregnant at the same time as you were & due just a few weeks before arrive? WITH her baby girl in tow?? And then be told that not just one, not just two, but THREE other coworkers just announced their pregnancies? (See my post about the Worst. Christmas Party. Ever.) And then leave the party early & spend the next two hours sitting numbly in the train station, waiting for your husband (who is at his party -- this being pre-cellphone days), & reading the same page of your People magazine over & over again, because you keep replaying the night's events over & over again in your head and just can't focus?

Do they REALLY want to know what it's like to decorate the Christmas tree in silence & without smiles or laughter, that first Christmas?

Do they REALLY want to know what it's like, searching for the perfect ornament for the tree to memorialize your stillborn daughter?

Do they REALLY want to know why your entire Christmas tree is now covered in teddy bear angels & Classic Pooh Christmas ornaments that you've accumulated over the past 13 years (hint: the baby's nursery was to have had a Classic Pooh theme)?

Do they REALLY want to know what it's like to read the cards that your mother received from her friends (who obviously haven't heard the news), saying things like, "Congratulations! You're going to love being a grandma!" and "Being a grandmother is the best!" and "How's that grandbaby?"

Do they REALLY want to know what it's like to hear everyone around you mouthing platitudes like, "Christmas is for kids"?

Do they REALLY want to know about how awful it felt to watch your father's face crumble as he started to take the traditional "family around the dinner table" photo, set down the camera & retreated downstairs so that we couldn't see him cry?

I didn't think so.

(For the record, I sent the story about my parents giving me the stereo I had been bugging them about for years -- complete with turntable & cassette deck. It was 1981 (30 years ago, eeek), I was in third-year university and I honestly didn't expect they would ever buy me such an expensive gift (which seems so Little House on the Prairie-ish these days, when I hear about parents buying their kids iPods and iPhones and game systems and television sets and Ugg boots, & taking them to Disney World) -- you can see in the pictures that I'd been crying from shock! They hid it under a roll of carpet in the shower stall of an unfinished basement bathroom in their new house, and sent me on a treasure hunt to find it. I still have it, in my basement, along with all my vinyl albums.)

(Not) the most wonderful time of the year :p

(Sorry, I hit "publish" before I was quite finished. And Blogger has been acting wonkily enough that I couldn't go back in & edit -- I had to copy & paste into a Word doc, delete what I had posted before & then report -- ARGH. So if you read my first post in a reader, this is the correct version.)

For awhile there, I thought I was going to make it through November without my annual "I hate November" whine. The weather has been unusually mild (which actually makes me a little nervous, global warming & all that) -- & SUNNY (which lifts my spirits enormously -- part of the reason I dislike November is the constant grey and gloom, at least here in southern Ontario). I got through Katie's 13th birthday/due date relatively well. The stress of year-end activities at work has been pretty manageable up to this point (although the daily 1 p.m. project meetings were really putting a cramp in my day). I got an early start on my Christmas shopping. My cousin recently moved just a 15-minute drive away from me (after 26 years of being surrounded by dh's family -- nice people that they (mostly, lol) are -- I FINALLY have a relative living closer than 1,000 miles away!!) -- and invited us to dinner for his daughter's birthday last week. Not only did I get to eat perogies, homemade by his visiting mom (my aunt), it was American Thanksgiving and they cooked a turkey dinner with all the trimmings.

Last weekend was lovely. I got to sleep in, & slept pretty well. Housecleaning went quickly. We took Christmas stuff to the cemetery to decorate Katie's niche which, although a sad reminder of what we've lost, also made me feel better to see her little corner of the world looking appropriately festive. We had dinner at a new local restaurant (Irish pub) -- the food was good & hot (we'll be back) & had a $10 coupon to pay for part of it. We had a nice, leisurely browse at Chapters without too many disruptions from screaming children in the toy section or inconsiderate dolts sitting sprawled out on the floor, blocking the aisle, while talking loudly on their cellphone. Sunday, we went to see "The Descendants" with George Clooney, & while the subject matter was on the depressing side (middle-aged man with two daughters dealing with his wife's impending death and the discovery that she was having an affair), the performances were excellent. Plus the scenery was gorgeous (not only George, lol, but it was set in Hawaii).

And then Monday rolled around (as it always does) & everything has been downhill since then.

It's crunch time at work -- major milestone coming up on Friday. A couple of projects will be more or less off my plate at that point, but (of course) other have come to take their place -- urgent stuff that needs to be done well before I leave on my vacation, of course.

Everyone is under stress. Dh is under stress at work -- and he has a mancold. :p And when I woke up this morning, it was pouring rain, and hasn't stopped all day. The sky has been dull, dark and grey.

Christmas decorations are springing up everywhere, I see people everywhere with shopping bags, but I don't have time to take a full lunch hour to work on my Christmas shopping, I'm too tired at night to head to the mall, and the thought of the mall on a weekend makes me cringe. :p

And so, just like that, I'm into my annual November sulk & feeling sorry for myself.

Update: Things are slightly better tonight, since I started drafting this. We had some hot soup for supper and assembled the Christmas tree (decorations to come later this week). Doing something a little Christmasy helped, I think.

To quote Scarlett O'Hara (watched the movie for the umpteenth time other night, Kleenex in hand), "Tomorrow is another day."

November 2010: Black Friday
November 2009: November blahs
November 2008: November again
November 2007: November: The cruellest month

New header, new look

What do you think? The new header photo comes courtesy of Melissa, Stirrup Queen extraordinaire , who used it in a recent post & generously designed a new header for me when I complimented her on it. Absolutely love it, but it didn't quite fit in on top of the template design I had, so I have been playing around with new ones.

I was thinking I needed to update some of my links, etc., so this was the kick in the pants I needed to get started -- and it wasn't hard at all to add in the header either. Thank you, Mel! : )

Guess I'm not alone ; )

Opened the paper this morning & found this article: 

Hello marketers? Pay attention to professional women 

Sample quote:

“Marketers are still targeting moms, just like they’ve done since the 1950s,” lamented Marti Barletta, chief executive officer of Chicago-based TrendSight Group, which provides insights about marketing to women. Ms. Barletta expresses her frustration with this short-sighted approach since people are having smaller families than they did years ago, and because marketing to moms resonates most often with first-time mothers only. “Marketers who were supposed to be trend forward, leading-edge and future-focused are the most outdated people on the planet,” she complained in an interview.

"Moms rock" -- oh, really??

I came home tonight & found a brochure from a certain telecommuncations company in my mailbox. Below my name & address was the line, "Learn how superphones help moms do more with their day." 

On the flipside, the title: "Moms Rock. Superphones help them roll." 

"What makes superphones so super? Just like moms: They're great at multitasking... They make every minute count... They don't just work hard -- they look good too." 

(!!!) 

Inside: "Super selection for super moms" -- and this bit of advice: "If your kids are old enough for a phone, you can add them to your plan." 

Gee, thanks, B.e.ll.Can.a.da, for rubbing the absence of my child (who should be a teenager bugging me to get a cellphone, if she hadn't already sweet-talked her dad into getting her one) in my face (and not just once but over and over again in a single piece of marketing material). Flattery may get you everywhere, but you are barking up the WRONG tree here. :p 

FYI -- and for some reason, this seems to be a hard thing to grasp -- just because I'm a WOMAN does NOT automatically mean that I am a MOM. I know that moms are a favourite demographic in the marketing world these days -- but there's a growing number of us out there who, for whatever reason, don't have kids. (Although my guess is that the vast majority of us do have cellphones). 

Many of us are great at multi-tasking and making every minute count. And we look pretty damned good too, if I do say so myself. ; ) 

Sincerely, 

Me

This year's model

As I've written in the past, I can be pretty picky when it comes to the Christmas card I send out every year. Since Katie, I tend to go for either angel designs or Classic Pooh (when I can find him -- sometimes he's pretty elusive...!). Almost without fail, I know "the" card when I lay eyes on it. I might look for awhile longer, but I almost always go back to that first one that made me go "aha!"

This year was no exception. I've bought Papyrus cards a couple of times in the past, and a Papyrus store opened in the concourse of my office tower this fall. When they set out their Christmas card display (in October, ugh...), I had a peek & instantly knew I had found my card. I did look around a few other places, but a few weeks ago, I went back & bought a stack of boxes.

It's by an artist I love, Rebecca (Becky) Kelly. On her website, Becky cites the Swedish artist Carl Larsson as an influence. I've seen his work at IKEA (of course, lol -- his artwork is on the gingersnap cookie tins I bought there) & liked it (maybe being 1/4 Swedish has something to do with it too). I also know that another artist I like, Tricia Romance, was heavily influenced by Larsson. I've been to her gallery in Niagara on the Lake (down the road from the Falls), one of my favourite places for a getaway, and my Mom gave me one of her plates, Star of Wonder:



Anyway, here is this year's card, by Rebecca Kelly:




Here's a link to the card on the Papyrus website, if you're curious & want a different view.

Here's a Becky Kelly design that was on my Christmas cards some years ago (but also post-Katie -- you can see in the right-hand corner that it's dated 2001). I'm sure you can see why it appealed to me. ; )



I didn't blog about my card last year but, if you're wondering, it was a picture of dh & me, taken with a self-timer on our 25th wedding anniversary. : )

2009 card
2008 card

Odds & ends

• I now have 100 followers!! : ) I have to admit, I've never "followed" anyone myself (insert red-faced icon here) -- I read/follow my regular blogs through my Google Reader (where I have 224 (!!) subscribers)(is there some advantage to being a Blogger follower vs Google Reader subscriber?) -- but I really do appreciate my regular readers & commenters, through whatever medium. : )


• Thanks to all of you who sympathized with my vent about Katie's due date and the anticipation of listening to baby shower talk from the weekend. As almost always happens, the anticipation was worse than the reality... the shower talk was not too horribly excessive (we're too busy at work these days to spend a lot of time standing around chit-chatting), & when it was, I found that rolling my eyes behind the sheltering walls of my cubicle while others talked was a great tension reliever. ; )


• New definition of heartbreak: watching your husband as he wistfully looks on while his cousin's husband dances with their 10-year-old daughter at a recent banquet.


• I got busy yesterday afternoon & didn't watch the Santa Claus Parade this year. Probably just as well, given my history with the parade in recent years. We had the radio on CBC news at noon, & a mere description of the massive crowds lining the route had the tears welling up in my eyes. (Then Stuart McLean finished me off with a story on the Vinyl Cafe, about Dave and the Big Narrows Centennial Baby, which ended with an an ode to community historians & memorykeepers -- something near & dear to my heart. I'd heard the story before, & I don't recall if I cried then too, but I was obviously in the mood.)


• But for some reason, I was able to hit the mall later & shop for PNGD with gleeful abandon. The Children's Place, Baby Gap, Gymboree -- I hit them all (even just a few years ago, I would have avoided them like the plague) & had a blast. I even stopped off to watch the kids with Santa, and didn't even flinch. (Of course, tomorrow I could be a mess doing the same thing... but I'll take my small victories as they come...!)


• I Lost a World stumbled onto a brilliant video this week, which she shares on her blog -- about Christmas cards, infertility, and how we define families. The kicker is that she realized it was done by someone she knew. I know this is an issue that many of us face at this time of year. Go have a look.