Watching MTV's Grandchildren and the End of Break....
Most years I like to leave our Christmas trees up until January 6----honoring the entire 12 days of Christmas you know. That's what I had planned this year but the tree in our living room had gotten so dry (perhaps it would have helped it we'd continued to water it, instead of forgetting after the first few days....) that it was practically hurling ornaments to the ground. For awhile we blamed the cats whenever we heard a suspicious metallic tinkling but soon enough we had to admit it that it was just the tree begging to be put out of its misery. So first we said we'd just take the special ornaments off----then we said we'd just take that one tree down and then, soon enough, we were in for the whole deal. And as much as I adore our trees and having them up it always feels wonderful to have them gone as well.
Taking the ornaments off and packing them off took the entire afternoon. Dinner was easy because I had a tourtiere in the freezer. I'd read that it's traditional to have meat pie for New Year's as well as Christmas----and I couldn't bring myself to only make one meat pie for Christmas so I had thrown one in the freezer. I pulled out the one I'd made and baked it, had it with cranberry sauce and leftover kale and romaine salad with apple and pecans.
We had a fire in the fireplace and I buried myself in the end of the new book on MTV. I must say it really absorbed me over the last few days. What kind of fascinates me about the whole thing is what a short period the music video ruled. The changes were so extreme---from the earliest days to the last bloated days---it's hard to remember what a short timeframe it was----just over a decade. Pretty absorbing book actually.
Later in the evening we watched....and I hesitate to admit this....but we did it.......we watched the Food Network's Rachel vs. Guy: Celebrity Cook-Off. It seemed somehow appropriate----following a couple of days of reading about MTV. It sort of seemed like MTV's grandchild in a warped kind of way. We sent the boys to bed and watched a couple of episodes of Portlandia. Some of them miss the mark for me but some of them REALLY amuse me.
Today we got up, hung around the house and then we took the boys to see the Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked movie. Yes, it's roughly two hours of my life I won't get back (and the theater was really warm....ugh) but even Leo wanted to see it and I found that strangely endearing so damned if we weren't going to see the damned thing. A nice day....punctuated by the unexpected snow. When we left the movie theater the skies were AMAZING. Back to work tomorrow---and a funny quiet little break it's been....but good. Very good.