End-of-Week Attention Grabber

What if I were a real blogger? Someone who thought they were she was interesting enough to add their her favorite posts/photos/songs this week to the deluge of Friday link-roundups? (No, the pronoun article did not really interest me in the least.)

This would mean I thought I was pretty cool. Look, guys, look at all the things I liked this week, most of which you did not read or see or hear, because you are not me, and we read different things. (This is actually a useful practice, in that respect.)

But a list of links makes me panic a little. It's like the pile of tabs I have above this draft post, waiting for me to read them/send them on/put them on the list of things I meant to read but haven't yet. Those lists. Those lists. There are so many links in the world! So many links.

Should I really contribute? Can I even remember what I liked this week? Do real bloggers keep a running list on an e-sticky note on their desktop, so they know where to send their readers at the end of the week?

*  *  *

A-ha!

Nico posted this great video of old-timey Moscow. 

Emma returned to the blogging world recently! And blogged about captivating photos from the USSR.

Russia continued to be a bad place. (Spiegel probably told me this a lot, but I delete Spiegel newsletters as soon as I've looked at them, because anxiety.)

I continued to not be Emma, and didn't read that much about Russia.

I'm halfway through this post about William James and being an expat in Berlin. It was published in December. I like it.

John showed me how he makes these delicious chicken pot pies, adapted from Stephanie on 3191, adapted  from a cookbook. (We added potatoes and decreased the other veggies.) All I want for the rest of forever is a pile of them in my fridge. And a few useful belts. 

I thought a lot about big dogs, and soon John was, and now I have this great series of photos to look at whenever I want.

The Billfold posted a link to a useful-looking budgeting spreadsheet. I'm attached to mine, which is unwieldy, poorly organized, and almost six months in, so I don't know if I'm going to try this one out.

*  *  *

How'd I do?

Now That the Epiphany Is Long Past: My Family's Christmas Miracle

As I promised on Facebook: the Christmas miracle of sustainability that confronted my family's apathy and laziness with holiday cheer.

Before Christmas, I talked to my brother John. He had to work on the 23rd, and the 26th, and so would only be home two days. I would only be home for three -- three glorious days without work, two of them paid!

My family has suggested cancelling Christmas most years I can remember. There's a lot of work, you know? You have to leave the house and deal with the commercial world, at the most commercial time of year. You have to clean up the living room. You have to purchase presents. Wrapping them? Ha! Christmas trees...can't we just skip the tree this year?

NO.

NO.

NO, we said, every year. I think my high school boyfriend helped me buy a tree one year. John started going with me. Occasionally, my dad agrees to come along, like we used to do.

This year, I talked to John. Then I talked to my mom. "It's probably not worth it this year."

"I guess you're right," she said. "But I like the tree."

The lights on the tree are my favorite part of Christmas. But why support the death of a tree (albeit one from a tree farm) for only two days of maximum enjoyment and so much griping from my dad? He always has to take the ornaments off it, because John and I are back in Ann Arbor. He hates it.

I started to get sad about the tree. I decided to bring my tiny Euro cypress tree from Trader Joe's home with me, complete with its string of ten little LED lights from Ikea. The string was far too large for this itty plant, and the bright white of the LEDs was too strong for so little foliage, and not that lovely goldy twinkle I look forward to. But at least it was a Christmas "tree."

I was pretty sure it was dead, but I would stick it in the cupholder in Emma's car for the ride home, and it could adorn the coffee table in the living room or something. 

(Later confirmed: very, very dead, with such painful little prickles.)

December 23rd came around. We woke up to a sunny morning, and I had no obligations. Just pack and go home. Maybe sample some fancy truffles at the nice cheese and liquor store on the way out of town.

Good choice.

But before Emma and I loaded up her car, before I threw five outfits worth of clothes in a bag -- over-prepared for my three-day trip to cat and dog hair everywhere -- my boyfriend ate his oatmeal, donned his coat, and left my building through the front door.

It was meant to be! Who cares if you throw out a tree after three and a half days of use if you're the second family to enjoy it! It cost nothing! 

I rescued it from the curb, and was delighted to find it was a Frasier fir. And not so little, either...

It took up Emma's entire backseat, and the top foot was sticking out the window, the whole ride home on I-94. 

When I knocked on the door to my parents' house, Finn barked through the window at me in excitement and my dad came to let us in. Emma claims that he looked horrified to open the door and find her standing there with a surprise tree on her back.

Oh well. All he had to do was trim the bottom and the top and stick it in the stand. I did the lights, and we skipped the ornaments, to make it easier for him to take down later. Pretty good for a free tree, right?

I got two ornaments for Christmas, though:

Such cuties.

And there were wrapped presents to open under the tree, and The Hobbit to reread and then watch in the theater as a family, and my Isa-kitten, who treated me fairly well, this time. (Sorry about the pictures in that old post...I think the ones from Facebook aren't working. Rude!)

I'll spare you the saga of the floor-clearing, and the table-clearing, because that is the most boring saga. But the rest was a good, good time. We ate so many clementines and delicious macarons and double-cream brie and roast beef. Yum. The End.

I Resolve

...that this plastic-wrapped, chocolate-enrobed peppermint oreo (it's a "jo-jo," ssshh) is going to be the last sweet I eat for a week. Because it's the last prepared sweet in my apartment, so it probably has to go before I've got a shot at this.

In the meantime, I've had two cookies at work, because THEY WILL NOT END. They're not even good after five? days on the counter, but I'm hungry and I can see them and they are chocolatey.

Ghosts of Christmas Past

The attic apartment with Emma. And Table Cat and Haroun. Life there was often louder than life now, living alone, but it was also full of peaceful moments. Watching television on the couch. Finishing book after book. Napping with the cats. Here I was finally finishing the Niccolò series in the glow of our prickly tree.

That year, I had two trees. There was also the little Fraser fir in Detroit, with only one ornament. We kept it until my boyfriend's roommate demanded it be removed for the umpteenth time. Something about fire hazards. She obviously didn't get that it was the tree, not the expensively reupholstered midcentury modern couch, that made the room.

Can't Escape the Greeting Card Business

I started making cards on my family's computer with Print Shop Deluxe, operating under the name Marisa Cards, Inc. I used Print Shop's convenient "coloring book" setting to print them with our painfully slow black-and-white printer, then colored them in with markers. After I got my first digital camera, I switched to photo cards; but by the time I got to college, I was drawing them by hand again. Not that I'm very good at it.

Last December, I tried pretty hard at cards and gifts. Though I purchased the birthday card (what a face on that cat!), 

I included this generous coupon for my dear Rachel, with a simplified but perfect rendition of my  living/bedroom, if I do say so myself. (She cashed it in not once, but twice this year! : )

The Christmas card for Rachel and her family was simpler, and possibly an inside joke with only Emma and my brother and not with Rachel, and certainly not with her family (who can remember when I started singing these lyrics), but anyway, I got a kick out of it. And I was missing my Peepers-kitty; he'd only been gone a couple months at that point.

Here's Mr. Pepys, my dearly departed golden tomcat.

Then we have the masterpiece, conceived of almost a year before it was created. Haroun's taco truck.

Many of us true cat-lovers believe fervently in elaborate facets of our felines' personalities that are, well, impossible. (Like Holly's tricksy French cat, Charlie, who told her husband "Mazel Tov" was French for "Happy Birthday!" Hilarious!) We have rich inner lives. 

My boyfriend insists that Emma's younger cat, Haroun, is a taco salesman. On many a late night, he has wished for a plate of Haroun's tacos.

"May all your dreams come true," read the card. (Yes, the close-up drawing is a bit freaky.)

This year is different. This year, Rachel opened her mail to find this puzzling piece of paper.

Merry Christmas! Happy birthday! You live in Florida now, so I am drawing cute-but-bizarre flamingos all over! Happy Fourth of July -- I only have red and blue pens in the office!

Rachel called this card "fantastic," "truly one of the best." Still, I hope to do better next year.

Christmastime in the City

Multiple cities, obviously.