Santa vs. Jesus

I wasn't brought up in a particularly religious household. Sure, we went to the odd Sunday service, and each of my younger brothers had their "born again" moments, but I never seemed to have one. I'm kind of still waiting for that to happen, because I do believe in God, and I think that the religion I am most familiar with (although I'm using familiar very loosely here) does have some very honorable tenets; Love thy neighbor, Do unto others..., etc. So, I'm not athiest, not really agnostic, just being, maybe lazy? Maybe cautious? Maybe wanting to believe but not wanting the baggage that comes with organized religion?
I also wasn't brought up in a household where Santa played much of a part. I don't remember ever believing in Santa. My memories of Christmas start off after my father died when Christmas was a depressing holiday for my mother. No magic there. No Santa. And I should remember Christmases from before I was nine, but I don't.
Flash forward, I have a three year old who is, just this year, very interested in the whole Christmas season. What the hell do I tell her? I am not an authority on the religious aspect or the magic of the season stuff, but yet my husband and I are to her.
Of course, when you don't really think it through and decide what your child will be exposed to, she will be exposed to the commercial side, the Santa Claus-y side, the lights and the music and the trees. This is good, we've seen a couple Christmas-type movies featuring Santas and such, read a couple of books. But then I wanted to tell her about the "true meaning" of Christmas, and she kept asking how Santa fit into the manger and the baby Jesus and stuff. Not sure. Don't really know. Make something up! How did this happen?
I don't know how to explain why we celebrate Christmas when I've never really introduced the concept of God and Jesus. I don't know if I want her to believe in a Santa that brings presents when it's really her loved ones that bring her presents. I do know that I want this time of year to be magical and full of meaning, tradition, and love.

Should really be sleeping...

Oops, I deleted my blog post. Guess I'll stay up a little later and re-do it, urgh!

Anywho, I wanted to post a few pictures taken by Hannah. She has taken a lot the past couple of weeks, mostly of various pieces of furniture from her perspective, many at a jaunty angle, some of me in my unflattering morning wear, etc. These three are just silly. The first two were taken earlier this evening and when I saw them, I had to think for a moment before I realized that it was just a few hours ago when they were taken. It's nice to have someone else doing some picture taking around here besides me, and she's great at getting a candid, real-life shot.

A little lost

I got a little lost over the past two weeks, you see, I have returned to work. I was getting into a groove with staying home to watch over two kids, a husband, a dachshund, and a mostly absent cat. It hasn't been the welcome reprieve I was hoping for. I didn't want to dread it, because it was inevitable that I would go back. I was looking for ways to make it sound like an alright plan. Now I'm looking for ways to get more home time. We shall see...it's only been two weeks. It's been a hard adjustment though.

On a lighter note, loving the sunny, crisp, fall days. It's my favorite time of the year. I like the other seasons too, but fall has the best of everything. More sun than spring, less heat than summer, a gentle reminder that a long winter is ahead, better stock up on your supply of sunshine and harvest veggies. This is the time of year I always think about ambitious projects to start and homemade Christmas gifts to make. I never seem to get around to making the homemeade Christmas gifts though, I guess the fun is in the daydreaming for me.

Evil Tea

I just finished the last of my "Evil Tea" which my husband made me. It's basically iced tea, with spiced rum. I really needed that since I spent most of my day out shopping with my almost 86 year old grandmother. LOL! Just kidding! LOL! No I'm not! Now I must sleep.

So I was just thinking...

Isn't it weird how, when talking about couples, you tend to always say their names in the same order? Like, Mike & Marie, Irene & Gary, or Bob & Judy. It's never Judy & Bob, that just doesn't sound right. Yeah, weird.

The Christmas photoshoot

So we tried to get a good picture of the two kids to send in our Christmas cards this year. After 20 or so shots, here's what we got...












Good job! Now let's try to smile on this next one!

Great smile! Try looking at Mommy now, how many fingers am I holding up?

Okay, forget the fingers, just look at me with a normal expression please!

I think the photoshoot is over, we should take what we can get.

Jobs I have had

I was thinking this morning about some of the jobs I've had, I've had some interesting ones...



#1 Babysitting during the summer in high school. This was actually fun, I'd ride my bike at 6 am to their house, we'd do things like play tag in the garden, ride our bikes to the park, and when they watched t.v. I got to read their mom's Danielle Steele novels!



#2 Waitress at a retirement home. We had to wear white shirts and black skirts, I served a lot of cranberry juice, the chowder was amazing on Fridays, the dishwasher was really cute, so many memories! R.E.M's Out of Time album was the soundtrack to that time in my life.



#3 Office assistant at a tax consulting business. Found that copying, collating & stapling aren't my cup of tea. High note: Costco chocolate muffins on break, low note: pretending to like the carrot juice my boss would make with his juicer, mmm, mmm good!



#4 Office assistant at sketchy computer consultant's home office, summer before college. Since I had planned to major in business in college, I thought this would be good experience. It wasn't, and I didn't. Weird boss, weird job. Made lots of tequila sunrises & made many runs to convenience stores for Pepto Bismol. Weird.



#5 U-Haul! Tootsie Roll brown pants (my boss actually called them that), driving (and parking) 26 ft. moving vans, sweeping out storage units until my hands were blistered. Oh yeah, the best, Saturday mornings when the store was packed with people waiting to pick up their moving van and having to tell them it wasn't available! Priceless.

#6 I had several jobs during college like working in the canteen; selling premade sandwiches and making bad coffee, or the computer lab; pretending I knew something about computers & making sure no-one was looking at internet porn. I also worked at a research lab studying fungi. A great learning experience to show me that I didn't want to do that for a living.

#7 Specimen processor at a medical laboratory. This was my first post-college job, and I was quite disappointed when I found that a degree wasn't required for the position and that I was expected to process specimens! Great memories though of blue lab smocks, receiving various body parts from the tube system from surgery, handling all manner of bodily fluids, and very interesting co-workers who were really the only reason this job was tolerable.

#8 The easiest job of my life - caregiver/friend/valet/chaperone of a fellow college student. It wasn't really like a job, and yet I got paid. Sweet!

#9 Whew, I think I may have missed a couple in there, but it all leads up to my current job, one that actually requires at least one of the degrees I have - - Registered Nurse! I think I'll stick to this one for a while, see where it takes me. Otherwise, I may just go back to processing specimens if this doesn't work out...

Good morning, my sweet.

I'm sitting here, getting the play-by-play of Yahoo news updates by my husband. "Roseburg bans roadside panhandling." "Temperatures to reach 70 degrees today." And so on. I'm up early today, wanted to try again to place a picture and, voila! A lovely shot from two whole summers ago at our bookclub meeting under the big tree. I think I've aged a lot in the past 2-3 years. I'm now a mother of two and a charge nurse. Wow, that sounds so adult-like! I still make no-bake cookies at eleven at night and eat most of them out of the bottom of the sauce pan. There, I've said it.

This is a test...

It's getting late, I should go to bed now but I wanted to post something to my new blog. It's starting out as a monthly journal for myself, we'll see if I actually want to share it with anyone (or if it's worth sharing!). Now, I'd really like to post a picture as well...how do I do this? Oh bollocks, no dice after three tries and now it's almost midnight. Nighty night!