Category: love and marriage

I Miss Christmas

It may seem kind of funny to say it on December 19th, but I miss Christmas.

It’s just six days away and there is time yet to feel the entire joy and ho-ho-ho of the season, but honestly, I just don’t think it’s going to happen.

It is the nature of the work I do that December is an incredibly busy month. This is not just at my current employer but has been true across the entire span of my career.

Ramped up work and steep deadlines mean it becomes awful hard to plan and decorate and celebrate and feel the joy that is the holiday season.

It’s hard to feel much more than incredibly damn cranky, to be honest. The kind of tired and cranky that not even a Captain Morgan spiked egg nog can fix.

When I was a kid, I used to love Christmas. Ok, sure, every kid loves Christmas, but for me it wasn’t about the presents. It was about the magic.

I loved the ritual of pulling out the box packed with ornaments and greeting each one like an old friend before hanging it on the tree. (This is still one of my favorite parts of the holiday, by the way.)

I got into the prep and planning for the baking that my mom and I would do. Sugar cookies with colorful frosting. Biscochitos. Mom’s divinity fudge. Cinnamon rolls. Tortillas to go with posole. The windows would steam and the house would smell heavenly.

As it got closer to Christmas, I’d begin the prep work for luminarias. The dirt, folding the bags, making sure my mom got the right kind of candles.

Sometimes we’d pile in the car to go see the lights. We’d drive slow down good blocks so we could take in all the lights, the crisp air outside tinged with the unmistakable scent of burning piñon logs.

Then home for some nog, mom might light a bunch of candles and put on soft Christmas music and I’d look out our big picture window to the world outside and dream.

My mom had this funny little candle, something she had bought from Avon and it only came out at Christmas. It was very fancy, gilt gold on the outside and red on the inside and some holly berry spice something fragrance to the candle. If I close my eyes I can still place the scent because that smell was so very Christmas to me. That along with our advent wreath and a few other candles put a soft flickering glow to my world and made me calm and peaceful.

As the years passed by and I became an adult, I tried to keep my own Christmas traditions alive including baking, having a real tree on which to hang all of those ornaments from my childhood, and lighting a bunch of candles on Christmas Eve.

New traditions came along as well, like looking for a fun white elephant gift for the office party and finding a pretty dress or two to wear to friend’s parties.

But over time even this has changed. Very few companies do holiday parties anymore. My current employer is so uptight about the various cultures and religions of the people who work here that they barely acknowledge that a holiday is forthcoming. And even if they did, there wouldn’t be any holiday party during these times of budget austerity.

Most of my friends now have kids and they are focused on family things, which is fine. It just means no more grown up parties to attend.

Then there was that fun holiday break in which to rest, recoup and get ready for the new year. That’s also a thing of the past. We don’t get any time off next week other than Christmas Day and New Year’s Day. I could take vacation, but I blew what I had in my vacation balance on my trip to New York (and it was totally worth it).

This year the twelve days of Christmas will entail no partridges or pear trees, but a lot of Karen a leapin’ to get work out the door before the 31st.

I wanted to make cookies and bought the ingredients only to remember that my mixer is in a box in our storage room and I don’t even know which box. The Good Man said he would disassemble the storage room to help me find it, but I decided no. Too much work.

It should be said here that we’ve lived in our place for a year, but I work so many damn hours that unpacking boxes on the weekends just feels like more work. And so it goes…

It seemed like I felt the happy holiday feeling, really and truly, for a little while during our trip to New York. It’s awful hard to look up at the tree in Rockefeller Center and not feel the holiday spirit. But that time in New York is like a little bit of encapsulated perfection, not just about the holiday joy, but in many ways.

And then we came home and my nose went back to the grindstone and the willingness and want to and give a damn just sort of frittered away.

We have a real branch wreath on our door and a real tree in our house and somehow I just can’t summon up the joy and peace and magic of the holiday season.

This makes me sad.

I know that I’m the one that has to make the holidays bright. The spirit of Christmas lives inside of me, and it’s on me to bring it into reality.

But somehow this year I just can’t find it. Maybe next year.
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.
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(I just reread this post from last year. Evidently a holiday lament is my new holiday tradition. LOL on me.)





Memories of Christmases past. I made these mints, a family tradition, just last year.




Old Tradition, New Problem

The human animal was made, for better or worse, with a pretty good capacity for both memory and a lot of nostalgia. That may be what separates us from other species.

For me, almost every holiday over the course of a year has a tradition. Something, usually food related, that I feel I must do or ingest in order to properly celebrate. The connection usually relates to something that happened when I was a kid and having that food, the preparation, the tasting, the memories, evokes good memories for me.

I’m very driven by food related memories.

Examples include Cadbury eggs at Easter, a hamburger over a grill with burned edges for Fourth of July and a big pile of stuffing with gravy on top for Thanksgiving.

Getting my drift?

And then there’s Christmas. There are plenty of happy food memories we all have at Christmas. For me it’s tamales (how much do I miss living in New Mexico where neighbors and coworkers would give me tamales at the holidays?), Biscochitos, and mom’s homemade cinnamon rolls

And there is one more thing I really love in the month of December: Egg Nog.

Oh lord how I love Egg Nog.

I don’t generally like fluid milk, but add the cream back to it and I’m totally on board. I mean, egg nog is basically milk, cream, sugar and eggs with some spices. That’s it.

You wouldn’t normally tip back a container of full cream and glug glug it down…except at Christmas where a spicy glass is like a mother’s hug. I can drink glass after glass of the stuff.

Totally unhealthy, but what the hell, it’s the holidays! Wooo!

Oh wait.

Yeah, one small hitch. I’ve recently developed a wee bit of lactose intolerance.

When I cried to my doctor to fix it, he simply chuckled and said this happens to a lot of people as they age.

Awesome. Thanks, pal.

I recently read a great article in the Australian online magazine, “The Peach” where the author speaks bluntly of her lactose intolerance.

I found one paragraph completely describes how I feel about it:

Lactose intolerance is very much bowel related which makes it an awkward allergy. A peanut allergy can make you go into anaphylactic shock, sure, but you won’t crap your pants in the meantime. A bee sting can make you swell up like a pumpkin, but here’s hoping you won’t let out a giant fart on your way to the emergency room. There are so many life-threatening allergies out there, so I am extremely lucky to have one that simply makes me bum-sick…

Source.

Yeah. But still…..

Lactaid is certainly helpful, but it’s a very imperfect solution. It makes the issues less, but does not alleviate them entirely.

Which means after slugging down two glasses of Egg Nog for dinner last night (not with…FOR) about an hour later my darling spouse was treated to some rude behavior from my lower digestive tract.

Just don’t let my chestnuts get too close to that open fire, if you know what I’m saying.

And I think you do.







Image by -rentnarb and downloaded royalty free from Deviant Art.



The Great White Way

So here I find myself at Friday, the end of the first long work week after my return from a fantastic vacation.

I’m a little tired, a little stressed, a little melancholy. A week ago today The Good Man and I were walking the High Line in Chelsea and feeling relaxed and happy.

Today I’m sitting at a desk feeling anything but relaxed and happy.

And so to curate the memories from my time off just a little while longer, I’ve decided to write a review column.

While in New York, The Good Man and I took in three Broadway shows. Below are my reviews of the three shows, presented in the chronological order in which they were viewed.

And away we go:


The Anarchist

The Good Man and I arrived in New York in the early evening on Saturday and so we simply had some good food and slept. Sunday we started exploring, and late in the afternoon, decided to hop over to the TKTS booth to see what sort of Broadway tickets we might scare up.

Most of the shows were already sold out, but The Anarchist still had seats available. The show was still in previews and the opening wasn’t until the following Saturday. The play was written and directed by David Mamet, he of the Glengarry Glen Ross fame and a well known and well respected playwright.

In addition, the play starred Patti LuPone and Debra Winger, two notably amazing actors.

Basically, we reasoned to ourselves, a new Mamet play with two amazing performers should, by all accounts, be worth seeing.

So we plunked down the cash and went to the show.

I knew going in that any Mamet show was going to have a lot of talking and not a lot of doing. Oh dear god. I had no idea what was in store for me.

Here I’ll borrow someone else‘s words to set the background:

The play is set in a prison. LuPone is Cathy, an anarchist who had shot police officers and has been in prison for 35 years. Winger’s role, as Ann, is less clear. She is probably a prison psychiatrist. Ann asks questions and Cathy answers, philosophizing about religion, the meaning of life and redemption.

Naturally, Cathy wants out. She wants to see her father before he dies and argues that she has served her time.

Ann keeps asking her where one of her accomplices is, and Cathy says she does not know. Ann asks her about redemption and about being born a Jew who has been reborn a Christian in prison. They talk about it and then talk some more.

The show began as most Mamet works do, right in the middle of the conversation. You as an audience member have no context. You just gotta run, hop on and don’t ask too many questions.

The freight train sped along for just seventy minutes then abruptly stopped.

We in the audience applauded because the performers did the best they could with the material.

Then when we stopped clapping, we all looked at each other like “what the hell just happened?”

My biggest fear at that moment was that The Good Man was going to turn to me and say “wasn’t that great!?!?!”

He did not.

Afterwards, over an egg cream, we talked about the show. At first I felt really disappointed in the whole thing, then I got a little mad.

Mr. Mamet has always been massively self-indulgent in his works, but this went beyond the pale. And that he forced two fine actors to rattle through his haphazard script is pretty much a crime.

Basically, this whole thing left a really bad taste in my mouth. Isn’t Broadway supposed to be the best of live theatre?

(A final note: Just this week, in the wake of the official opening on December 1, the show has received awful reviews and will close December 16th after just 17 regular performances. Seems it wasn’t only The Good Man and I that were put off the show.)




Image from backstage.com



Nice Work If You Can Get It


Two days after the disaster on 45th street, The Good Man and I dove back into the fray.

We visited the TKTS booth again and this time picked up tickets to the show Nice Work If You Can Get It.

This combined two happy elements for us. The book is inspired by some of the works of PG Wodehouse, he of Jeeves and Wooster fame and author of hundreds of hilariously funny books, and the music and lyrics of Gershwin.

Oh, and it stars Matthew Broderick.

As an aside, as we were stepping up to the ticket taker at the very doors of the theatre, he said to me “hang on a moment” and from behind the door came Mr. Broderick’s wife, Sarah Jessica Parker. She was extraordinarily nice to everyone, thanked the man taking tickets, said excuse me to us and made her way out. She must have stopped by for a quick pre-show “break a leg” to the hubby.

As she walked away, The Good Man commented, “wow, she’s really cute in person” and I totally agreed. She is actually quite adorable in real life and very sweet. I think the camera does her little justice, actually.

After the star sighting, we found out seats. As the curtain went up, both The Good Man and I had very high expectations for the show.

Very, very high expectations.

And not only were these skyscraper high expectations met, but also blown right past. (< - terrible grammar, and yet I don't care) Set in Prohibition era New York, the show had a zany story line that roughly centers around a rich guy on the eve of his third marriage who, stumbling home sauced after his bachelor party, bumps into a sassy bootlegging girl, and is a bit taken with her. Through a series of funny events, the bootleggers end up hiding their gin in the basement of the rich man's Long Island home ("I never go there"). When the man and his new wacky wife show up to honeymoon at the same home, they end up surprising the bootleggers. Lots of singing, tons of dancing and a lot of hilarity ensues. The cast is amazingly talented and the show just flowed beautifully from start to finish. Mr. Broderick really can do anything, can't he? Sing, dance, act, theater, television, movies. All of it. And while Mr. Broderick was the most well known actor in the cast, really Kelli O'Hara is the star of the show. She is luminous and definitely enchanting. Hell, by the end of the show I was ready to marry her! What a great show and what a great way to regain my trust in the quality of the shows on Broadway.




Image from Entertainment Weekly

And finally…


War Horse

We had seen War Horse here in San Francisco and it really resonated with me on a very deep level.

In fact, The Good Man and I had been talking for a long time about a trip to New York, and it was my desire to see War Horse on Broadway that became the motivating factor.

I didn’t want no TKTS who knows what seats we’ll get scenario. I insisted The Good Man buy tickets early and get the best seats he could.

Oh boy did he. Second row. From start to finish we were right in the middle of the action.

Since New York’s Lincoln Center has a pretty big stage, the production was a little different than in San Francisco and in many ways the performance was far better.

Whereas when I saw the show at The Curran in San Francisco, we sat quite a bit back and I was very into the storyline of the horses, meaning I stared at them the whole time and the actors were secondary.

Being so up close this time, the puppet horses simply integrated into the scenes and I was all up in the middle of the characters and their story. Being able to see facial expressions and quite literally sit in the middle of the action was a profoundly different experience.

As with the last time, I was completely engaged in every moment of the show and when “the big sad part” came along I did again cry my eyes out, but it was so much more real this second time. When the lights came up I had dried up my eyes, then immediately started crying again. Then I stifled it and went to the restroom to clean up. And so I cried again.

All of this crying occurred even knowing what was going to happen and when. And knowing how the situation resolved itself.

There is really something about the crucial scene when Joey, our lead horse, is caught in the barb wire on the battlefield that about does me in. I should probably hire a qualified therapist and figure that out. It just demolishes me. (and that’s good theatre, folks!)

As The Good Man hugged me while I wailed like a baby, I said to him, “I don’t think I can do this again.”

My goal after seeing the show in San Francisco was to see it again in New York, then see it a final time in London. But have mercy, I don’t think I can go through that again.

What an amazing show. For anyone reading this who may say, “Oh, just watch the movie” I say no. Absolutely not. The magic of this show is the amazing puppetry of the animals. This play is the story of World War I told from the view of a horse which makes it groundbreaking. It’s the puppetry of the horses that makes it exceptional, and there is no way a movie using real horses can even come close.

Whew, just thinking about it again gets the tears burning at the sides of my eyes. It is just so profoundly good.

Our original plan after the show was to go to Rockefeller Center to watch the tree lighting. No way that was going to happen as I was a soppy mess, so we tucked into a family run pizza joint and noshed and kibitzed with the owner and watched the lighting on TV.

Yeah, pretty much among the top five most amazing days of my life.




Image from performingarts.about.com


Ok, well there you have it. What I wouldn’t give to have the kind of time and money to go back to New York and see every single show on Broadway. I’d love every single ding dang minute of it.

Well that’s that, and my lunch hour is over. Back to the salt mines.

Oh, I see I have eight new emails from the Boss Man. How fun.



The Right Answer and the Best Answer

Today was pretty much a banner day in my little life. Here I am in New York enjoying the city life, eating good food and loving every minute of it.

Today just took it up an extra notch.

What precipitated this trip to the big city, as described here, was the chance to see the Tony Award winning stage show “War Horse.”

After seeing this amazing show in San Francisco on its closing weekend, I suddenly knew I needed to see it again, and I wanted to see it in New York.

The Good Man and I had been batting around the idea of a trip to New York for a few years, but this idea of seeing War Horse on Broadway really put a charge into the idea.

And so today, all of those plans came together.

The show is staged at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre.

I had never been to Lincoln Center and in fact in my one visit to New York prior to this week, I hadn’t really spent much time above 50th and Broadway.

Lincoln Center really is an amazing place.

I have much more to say about the show and about this magical day, but I just wanted to stop a minute and share one of those slice of life moments. This is a very telling story, indeed.

You see, we arrived a bit early for our 2:00pm matinee, and so The Good Man and I decided to stroll around a bit so I could see the layout of the Lincoln Center.

It’s quite lovely.

And as I looked around, all amped up and excited to see the show and to be in New York and to be seeing all these things I’ve not seen before, my eyes fell upon this building:






Now when I saw this building, in all of my geekery and excitement and still-got-a-little-New-Mexico-hayseed-in-my-hair, I turned to The Good Man and I asked “Is that THE Julliard?”

Now, pause here.

True confessions: That’s a pretty dumb question. I’m not even sure why I asked it.

And yet….

My darling husband, a man of Brooklyn from his childhood and in many ways still a New Yorker probably should have turned to me and replied in deep New York accent (with much sarcasm), “No, it’s the other one,” and rolled his eyes.

But he did not.

My darling man replied, “Yes, honey. That is THE Julliard. Pretty cool, huh?”

Then I kind of laughed and shook my head and said “well, that was a silly question.” Then I thanked him, because the right answer was probably the sarcastic one, but he is used to my propensity to geek out, so he gave me the best answer instead.

And when he’s being that much of a Good Man, I just gotta let him know how much I appreciate it.

Then I told him I was going to blog about it.

Hi honey!





Photo Copyright 2012, Karen Fayeth. Taken with an iPhone5 and the Camera+ app.



I Got A Date

Ever since I was a young girl in New Mexico, I always knew there was a big old world out there full of cities much bigger and much grander than my beloved Albuquerque.

Even as I was a small town girl and in many ways feared big cities, I was inexorably drawn to them as well. Always fascinated.

Once, The Good Man and I were talking about growing up. He in Brooklyn, me in the ‘Burque. I summed it all up this way, he grew up in New York knowing he was in the center of the world. I grew up in Albuquerque knowing I was pretty gosh darn far from it.

I’ve gotten around this big blue marble a little this year and I’ve seen some truly world class cities, but to me, New York (and to be precise, Manhattan) really is the center of the world.

And now, after a very long year with a lot of hard work, I have a little vacation coming due.

So The Good Man and I are getting on an aeroplane.

I have a date with that little ol’ island and I can hardly wait.

(Please forgive if the blogging is a little sparse this week. Just know I’m out there having fun!)









Image from Barewalls.com.