Christmas Past

this is my car in the snow on the road

I am stuck at my boyfriend's house due to the snow and frozen roads (forgot to put the chains in my car on Friday when I left my house, so now the car sits inept in the road, surrounded in snow) and his TV broke a couple of days ago. Not a big deal, but inconvenient. And I am now learning that this guy has no games in his house (other than the video sort) when I have a whole cabinet of old games at my house. Oh yeah, I've got cards, uno, monopoly, life, the "real game of life", rumicube (an old favorite my Grandma Betty game me), oh the list could go on and on! I have some sort of silly LegoLand game, and a silly Pooh memory game. Oh the best game is this new magnet thing... I don't remember what its called, I'll post about it later... its a neat game!

Anyhow - I am just bitching... I've caught a cold from Mr. Tim (boyfriend) and I'm not too happy about that.

What I really meant to post here was how I have spent the morning reading people's blog entries, posting comments, looking at pictures of the snow all over the continent and my friend Sandy's chow dogs playing in the snow! Its awesome. And my conclusion (other than blogs rock my socks!) is that my favorite blog entry this morning was from my friend Aimee sharing a story of her favorite memories of Christmas back in NJ with the fam.

So I thought I would copy her:) Being that she is a genius!

My memories of x-mas back in Ohio are fabulous and colorful.

Big tree in the living room - the room that was rarely used for the other 11 months of the year other than my Dad taking his evening "nap before bed" on the living room couch every weeknight. There was a train set under the tree that I always really enjoyed - it was an old set of my Dad's - it was a bit persnickety and hard to get going, but I loved that! I would eagerly wait to see the little light glow when the circuit of the track finally met and then I would know that the train would run (this usually took hours)! I would make little clay houses and logs for the trainset and spend hours lying on the floor playing with it. I've always liked miniature things, and this sorta went along with that obsession - and the whole mechanical part of the train made it even more exciting than just a doll house or whatnot.

this is my current tree here in Portland - my stocking underneath is the big teddy bear

My favorite part of Christmas was always the stocking. My Mom hand-made stockings for Tony and I (his is smaller, but it has sequins, which mine does not - we still use them, you can see ) and she would lay them on the foot of our beds on Christmas night while we slept. In the morning I would wake up to weight on my feet and lift up my head to spy the overstuffed stocking. I think my Mom did stockings this way to keep us in bed and prevent the inevidable early morning x-mas wake-up of kids harrassing their parents to let them go downstairs and open presents. Then Tony and I would wake up our parents and see what was in their stockings. My Dad's was always full of stuff from the hardware store. My Mom's would be all stuff from Crabtree and Evelyn. And we kids always went on the shopping trips with each parent to these two stores to get stuff for the other parent's stocking, so it was never a big surprise.

There wasn't much myth to x-mas for me. My Mom fessed up to the whole Santa lie really early on. She was all honesty about life in general and I remember being in the bath-tub as a little kid (what 4 yrs old or sumthin?) and asking her if Santa existed, and she said No. Then I followed up with the rest of the pack: the easter bunny, the toothfairy, etc. and found out that they are were non existent. Strange tactic for my mother to do this to me. But I can relate, I probably would do the same thing to a child (note: I don't have them!) and if you are wondering what the results of such parental choices are: 4yr old little me ran right over to my next door neighbor best friend Sarah's house where she was eagerly looking out the window for Santa and proudly told my cute little friend that he wouldn't be coming, cuz he didn't exist. Sarah cried.

Christmas day for 17 years of my life was spent at my Grandmother's house. My Dad would moan and complain about this, so I remember complaining about it as well, but honestly it was a fun tradition. My Grandmother is not Italien, and is renowned for her lack of cooking skillz, so the x-mas "feast" was a buffet of cold honey baked ham (some people like this, I do not), deviled eggs and shrimp cocktail. It was like something out of a bad TV show like "Married with Children". Grandma likes to play tricks on people too, so every year my brother would get funny gag gifts (exploding snakes in the peanut brittle can, dirty socks, boxes inside boxes with something stupid in the middle, etc). Poor Tony, for some reason he was always the one who would get the gag gifts, and he never really had a big reaction to them, so it wasn't as if it encouraged them to continue. All the other cousins, including myself, would get normal gifts. Although my grandma would hide seemingly-unopened-Pringle-cans around the house for the various hungry and fat relatives to find and bust into and get startled by exploding snakes inside. Oh Grandma! I love you!! (she doesn't read this.)

My Dad has a big family, so it was always a good time. One year before my Grampa died someone hired a woman in a x-mas tree outfit to come celebrate with us. There are pictures to prove this. Wha?! My Dad claims this never happened. I have no idea what the expination was.

One year in the early 80s my Mom hid Billy Joel concert tickets in the inner branches of the tree, propped up against the trunk. It was painful to get them out, and that was the first concert I ever went to. ?!?

Christmas memories are fun. I hope I get to read many more of them in my friends blog entries. Clearly I could ramble on and on with Pellegrini family random holiday cheer. For years now I have done a misfit x-mas in my own home (no extended family, just loved ones and family). My bro and I do a tree decorated in my handmade glass ornaments and his plastic mexican wrestler dolls. Its awesome. This year he made a crowned sock monkey as the tree-topper.

okay - this is by far the longest babbling blog post I've ever written. I blame my winter cold, I feel all rambly.

Happy Winter Solstice Everyone! And big hugs and kisses to my Mom - its her birthday.