December 2009

You are currently browsing the monthly archive for December 2009.

Christmas Day

December 25, 2009 in Experiences | No comments

Jewish Christmas Dinner was a success, although I got a bit tired of all that beige food.  (Why is it all beige?)  But I enjoyed cooking it and everybody had their favorite dish.  I think Sammy ate most of the latkes, Adam loved the apple cake, and I, of course, loved the brisket, although the matzo ball soup was surprisingly good, too.  Only the broccoli souffle was a disappointment.  Luckily, it was much better for breakfast this morning!

Unfortunately, we’re all sick.  Adam and Sammy are on the tail end of a bug but I think I muscled through those two days of cooking only to crash hard today.  And Christmas Day is not a good time to be off your game.  Well, not for me, anyway.

I’m not so sure I like Christmas Day.  It’s so chaotic and messy.  There are a million presents mixed up with wrapping paper.  I’m constantly paranoid that gifts will get thrown in the trash.  Also, I’m generally very uncomfortable when there are too many objects around me.  I feel like I have to keep track of every object and it overloads my system.  So after a while I freak out and make everyone clean up before moving on.  But where are you going to put all the stuff?  Nothing has a place yet because it is all new, so there really is no putting away.  And you really don’t want to put it all away, right?  That would not be fun at all.  You want to pile it up and go back to the pile over and over throughout the day.  But that pile of stuff, oh my god, it just drives me nuts.  Does anyone have a system for an orderly Christmas morning?  I fear that when we have two children that I might have to just excuse myself from the whole event.  I mean, I’m exaggerating here, but I do have a real problem with too much visual input.  I’ve been meaning to write about that for some time but now it will have to wait until next year.

My neurosis didn’t cause too much trouble though, because Sammy seemed overwhelmed as well.  The mess didn’t get too bad because she only opened about half her presents, and that took all day.  She’d go off to play with the latest thing and then she’d forget about the presents and want to color or wash her hands for a half hour (her normal activities).  Also, the only thing she really seemed to want was candy.  She begged for candy all day.  Candy was the number one thing on her wish list when she visited Santa at the mall.  I swear, we said this last year but I’m saying it again:  I will never again make the mistake of allowing so much candy at Christmas-time.  Sugar turns my daughter into an unpleasant creature, to put it kindly.  Next year, we will not do an advent calendar with candy (maybe I’ll write cute little notes or find tiny toys), there will be one small piece of candy in the stocking, and if we make cookies, Sammy will get one.  One cookie, and then the rest are given away or go in the trash.  But we cannot have cookies available in this house for an entire month, along with chocolate and Pez and all the candy that is given out at the stores.  No, no, no!  I swear, never again.  Will you remind me, please?

So anyway, we’re off to New York tomorrow, where Adam has a conference.  We decided to make a little family trip out of it and stay a few days.  It’s been quite a while since I’ve been to The City, and I’m really excited.  We’ve got a list of fun activities planned, but really, I just want to soak up the unique energy of the place. 

So long for now.  I’ll be back in 2010, reporting on all the Little Things going on in my world.  I wish you a Happy New Year!

Objectivist Round Up

December 24, 2009 in Ideas | No comments

Miranda Barzey has the Christmas edition of the Objectivst Round Up at her blog, Ramen and Rand.  This week the round up has a theme:  The Benevolent Universe Premise.  (Objectivists often refer to this idea as the BUP.)  Leonard Peikoff describes the Benevolent Universe Premise this way:

Although accidents and failures are possible, they are not, according to Objectivism, the essence of human life. On the contrary, the achievement of values is the norm—speaking now for the moral man, moral by the Objectivist definition. Success and happiness are the metaphysically to-be-expected. In other words, Objectivism rejects the view that human fulfillment is impossible, that man is doomed to misery, that the universe is malevolent. We advocate the “benevolent universe” premise.

The “benevolent universe” does not mean that the universe feels kindly to man or that it is out to help him achieve his goals. No, the universe is neutral; it simply is; it is indifferent to you. You must care about and adapt to it, not the other way around. But reality is “benevolent” in the sense that if you do adapt to it—i.e., if you do think, value, and act rationally, then you can (and barring accidents you will) achieve your values. You will, because those values are based on reality.

Leonard Peikoff, The Philosophy of Objectivism,
lecture series (1976), Lecture 8.

What a perfect theme for Christmas!  I hope you enjoy the round up and I wish you all a Merry Christmas.

A Little Thing

December 23, 2009 in Little Things, Uncategorized | No comments

Adam:  Sammy, you’re so much fun we’re going to make another one.

Sammy:  MAKE ANOTHER ONE!  MAKE ANOTHER COOKIE!

Jewish Christmas Dinner

December 22, 2009 in Food and Drink | 4 comments

When I was growing up, my family usually had two big dinners for Christmas, one at my parents’ house on Christmas Eve, and one at my aunt’s house on Christmas Day.  My mom and my aunt are both great cooks, but despite my aunt’s fantastic shrimp cocktail appetizer and chocolate mousse dessert, by the time the evening of the 25th rolled around I felt like Christmas was over.  Santa had come and gone, the presents had all been unwrapped, and everyone was a bit tired.

Christmas Eve was always the big event for me.  Even as a child, I think I loved Christmas Eve as much as I loved Christmas morning.  Christmas Eve is when we sang Christmas carols and felt the magical anticipation of what was to come the next morning.  Christmas Eve is when the kids would plot how we would stay up late enough to catch our parents playing Santa Claus, while the adults got toasted and argued about politics, God, and football.

So as an adult, I decided Christmas dinner would always be on Christmas Eve in my house.  And a few years ago, I stumbled upon the idea of cooking traditional Jewish food for Christmas dinner.  I think I had the itch to make a beef brisket and the idea just blossomed from there.  That year I made brisket, potato latkes, a buttery noodle dish called kugel, and a fruit dish I’ve forgotten the name of, although I do remember it had Manischewitz wine in it.  That mostly-full bottle of wine sat in our pantry for over a year, mocking Adam by bringing back all of those painful Passover memories.

Anyway, I fell in love with the idea of making Jewish Christmas Dinner a tradition in the Mossoff home.  I was looking for some kind of food-theme that would carry over from year to year, and I’m not really crazy about turkey or any of the other traditional foods.  I also love the humorous dig at the supposed religious nature of the holiday!

That was in 2005.  Now, finally, in 2009, we are having Christmas at home again and I’m getting my second chance to cook Jewish Christmas Dinner.  I spent 3 days planning the menu and making my shopping list.  Today, I do the grocery shopping, and tomorrow, I start cooking.  I had to create a written schedule for the cooking because so much requires advance preparation (brisket is much better after sitting in the fridge for a day).  Here is the menu:

  • Matzo ball soup (appetizer)
  • Beef brisket
  • Broccoli soufflé
  • Potato latkes
  • Jewish apple cake (dessert)

And check out the cooking schedule:

Wednesday

  • Noon – 1pm:  Prepare and brown beef brisket
  • 1pm:  Get brisket into crockpot on high
  • 2pm:  Turn crockpot to low
  • 4 – 5pm:  Make chicken soup and refrigerate
  • 7 – 7:30pm:  Remove brisket from crockpot, separate meat and veggies, and refrigerate

Thursday

  • 10am – noon:  Make apple cake
  • Noon – 12:30pm:  Prepare matzo balls (don’t forget the schmaltz from soup) and refrigerate (for at least a half hour)
  • 1 – 2pm:  Prepare latkes batter and refrigerate
  • 2:15 – 2:30pm:  Take 6 eggs out of fridge and separate.  Keep whites at room temperature.
  • 2:30 – 3:30pm:  Boil matzo balls and reheat soup; add matzo balls to soup and cook for a few minutes
  • 3:30pm:  Serve matzo ball soup
  • 4 – 5pm:  Prepare broccoli soufflé
  • 5pm: Put soufflé in oven
  • 5 – 5:30pm:  Prepare brisket and veggies in 9X13 pan for oven
  • 5:30pm:  Put meat in oven with soufflé
  • 5:30 – 6pm:  Fry latkes
  • 6 – 6:15pm:  Make thicker sauce for meat if necessary
  • 6:15:  Dinner is served!

I am so excited to cook all of this good food!  And now there are 3 of us to eat it instead of just 2.

Adam Sandler

December 21, 2009 in Humor | No comments

I caught Adam Sandler’s Chanukah Song on the radio the other day and it made me smile for about an hour.  You’ve probably heard it before, but who can get tired of a song that rhymes “Scrooge is” with “Stooges.”

Music, Maids, and Mail

December 17, 2009 in Three Good Things | No comments

Three Good Things for the day:

  1. I finally started practicing on the piano, and it’s all coming back to me.  For my first song, I’m going to learn Sammy’s favorite, The Rainbow Connection.
  2. I had somebody come in and clean the house for me.  What a luxury!
  3. The Christmas cards are pouring in.

Objectivist Round Up

December 17, 2009 in Ideas | 5 comments

Rational Jenn has your Round Up number 127.  I like that number because it includes 27, my favorite number of all time.  27 is 3 cubed.  And all good rationalists know that 3 is the best number of all.  Check out these philosophical triads.  And don’t forget that all good/bad things come in 3′s, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, or Leonard Peikoff’s Disintegration, Integration and Misintegration.  

Have you ever noticed that when I give examples, I almost always give 3? 

It’s not just me.  3 is a magic number:

Writing Files

December 17, 2009 in Writing Files | 4 comments

I haven’t been working on my fiction writing as much as I would like to lately, but I do find an hour here and there to work on my story.  I’m hoping that things will lighten up after New Year’s and I can get back in a groove again.

I’ve run up against two new challenges.  First, I can no longer bring the whole context of my story to mind in just a few minutes.  I usually have to read through my notes to get back to the place I need to be in my head.  This makes the logistics of working on the story much more difficult because I don’t have access to my notes while walking the dog or driving around town.  Right now, I have notes in a paper notebook and in a Word document, so I need to be at my desk.  I’m considering trying to summarize what I need to know into a few sentences and putting that on my new Droid phone, which is always with me.  That might be enough.  That phone has already helped me a lot by allowing me to make voice recordings with the touch of a button.  I use that feature all the time.  Hurray for technology!

Another option is to try some outlining software for writers.  I’ve read about such software but I’ll have to go back and find out if it does what I’m looking for.  Any suggestions on that, anyone?

Next, I’m in a research phase.  I’ve already done research in the form of trolling for ideas, and that’s how I found the key element of my story.  But now I have to get more detailed.  I usually don’t like doing research but so far this has been kind of fun.  I guess research isn’t so bad when you’re actually interested in the subject, as opposed to writing some paper for school on a topic you picked because you had to pick something.  I’ll have to keep this in mind for my future homeschooling days.  Still, since I’ve never liked it, I’m not particularly good at research so I’m having to figure out what resources are out there and how to find things and all of that kind of stuff.  That part can be a bit tedious.

That’s where I’m at right now.  The story is definitely becoming more defined.  It used to change dramatically each time I worked on it, but now the basic ideas are in place.  I have four characters who are pretty well defined and a few other optional ones.  The main characters have clear motivations in regard to the plot, although I’m having trouble with a sticky issue with one lady.  It’s almost like solving a mystery, trying to find a way to weave all of these things together.  Sometimes I think I have the answer but then I go back and realize that I didn’t account for some other element. 

Bottom line:  I’m still loving it!

A Few Holiday Quotes

December 16, 2009 in Three Good Things | No comments

I forgot my Three Good Things yesterday, but not because there weren’t any.  It was actually an ok day, but I’ve been so busy I forgot I had a blog.  I thought tonight maybe I’d do Six Good Things for the past 48 hours, but I really can’t remember yesterday at all, so I’ll just stick with the usual format.

  1. Sammy came home today singing OH CRADLE CRADLE CRADLE, I MADE IT OUT OF CWAY, AND WHEN IT DIE AND WEADY, OH CRADLE I WILL PAY.  I learned that song in Montessori when I was a little girl, too.
  2. When a man in line at the post office asked Sammy if she mailed a letter to Santa Claus, she replied, YES, AT THE MALL.
  3. Sammy is allowed to take down and play with one Christmas ornament from the tree at a time.  She was playing with a red ball when I heard her cry out to the dog:  NO, TOBY!  YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO LICK MY BALLS!

A Few Random Updates

December 15, 2009 in Parenting | No comments

Have you noticed that I haven’t done The Sam Update for a while?  I thought I might change it from monthly to quarterly, but I just realized that I should have done it on Dec. 2.  I guess that’s the end of that tradition.  It makes me sad, but now that Sammy is 3, a regular update doesn’t seem to capture her development as well as the more subject-specific updates I’ve been doing like those for potty training and how we use rewards.  Besides, I’ll never be able to do a monthly update for 2 children, and I’m hoping that will be the situation soon enough.

Speaking of which, I’m finally back to normal, physically, and we can start trying again.  We’ve had luck in December twice in the past.  It’s a good month for us.

A few updates on Sammy:  she went 4 days without an accident last week, and on one of those days she skipped her nap so there was no mid-day diaper for her to rely on.  Yesterday she had 2 accidents, but she also had 2 successes.  I know there will be more setbacks, but at least for now, I have some relief.

Adam and I are so proud of our girl because she is really learning to control her emotions and use nice words and questions instead of throwing tantrums.  She went through that angry period a couple of months ago, and even after she improved, we’ve had to remind her dozens of times a day to “use a question, not a demand,” and to say “I can’t understand you when you scream; try talking in a normal voice,” and “Can you ask me nicely?”  But it seems that we’re getting through.  When she screams, whines, or demands, we try really hard not to get angry or react emotionally, and we also try not to take the easy, range-of-the-moment solution and just give her what she wants.  This takes huge effort and focus, but once we really knuckled down on ourselves and gave her a few weeks of consistency, she started responding.  I’ve seen her change from yelling to talking in mid-sentence.  Sometimes she’ll demand something and I’ll just look at her and she’ll use a polite question instead.  A friend of mine made me realize how self-aware Sammy is for her age when I told her about something Sammy does that I didn’t know was unusual:  When Sammy gets really upset, she likes to be alone.  So, now, when she really loses it, she’ll say, I’M GOING AWAY NOW. I GO TO MY ROOM AND CLOSE THE DOOR AND FEEL BETTER.  THEN I COME BACK AND TALK NICELY AND HAVE HUGS AND KISSES.  And she’ll do exactly that.  My friend thought that was amazing self-awareness for a 3-year-old, and I suppose it is. 

Our newest challenge with Sammy is a sleep issue.  She has decided to pull out all the stops to get us to come to her in the middle of the night.  First, it was that she wanted the hallway light on.  She would open her door (but not come out, since her Teach Me Time Clock was not green) and demand that the hallway light be turned on.  Once we convinced her that we were not going to turn it on, she decided that she just had to check on the hallway light a hundred times a night.  So she’d wake up and open her door and say, HALLWAY LIGHT OFF, and then close the door.  Over…and over…and over.  So then we had to convince her that she was keeping us awake and she needed to keep the door closed.  She could turn on her light and play with her toys or read books if she was not sleepy, but she had to be quiet.  So she gave up on the hallway light and now she just opens her door and screams, I WANT MY MOMMY!  I WANT MOMMY TO COME IN MY ROOM AND MAKE ME FEEL BETTER. 

There’s nothing particularly confusing about this.  We just need to stay consistent and not go in her room.  (Simple to say, but torture to do.)  If she opens the door and yells out, we tell her that if she can’t keep it closed, we’ll have to lock it.  (We reversed the handle on her door a long time ago to make sure she didn’t accidentally lock herself in, so now the lock is on the outside.)  Locking her door is not a threat meant to punish her.  We always explain that we will do it to help both her and us sleep.  She certainly does not like the idea, though, and one warning has been enough so far.  Sometimes before bed, I’ll ask her if she wants me to lock the door so that she is not tempted to open it.  She always says NO, but it’s my way of showing her that it is something meant to help her, not punish her.  I’m sure we’ll have to do it someday, because she’s testing every limit lately.  But in the meantime, we’re a very tired family.

Sleep, Search, and Sharing

December 14, 2009 in Three Good Things | No comments

Until I can get over this strange illness, my Three Good Things will continue to be a difficult exercise:

  1. Sammy and I had a 2.5 hour nap today.
  2. I made an appointment with a new doctor tomorrow.  I’ve been using the walk-in medical care places for the past year and a half so I’m hoping that I like this practice.  And I’m really hoping that they can fix my ear.  I’ve had fluid behind my eardrum for 11 days now and it’s driving me nuts.  But desperation is what drove me to finally try to find a permanent doctor, and that could be a really good thing.
  3. In talking about our respective projects, Adam helped me with my research and I helped him with his.  Cool!

Mysteries

December 14, 2009 in Mysteries | 7 comments

Why do parents make the rule, “no running in the house?” 

And while we’re at it, why do parents make the rule, “no jumping on the bed?”

Baffling.

Potential, Anticipation, and True Love

December 13, 2009 in Three Good Things | No comments

Three Good Things for the weekend:

  1. We picked out and ordered new lighting fixtures we’ll need to install before we paint the house.  We decided to take a chance and go for a very modern style.  Our house is a piece of crap right now, but only on the surface.  I have a vision, and I think it’s going to be quite beautiful when we’re done.  I love owning and improving a home.
  2. I reorganized Sammy’s playroom again.  Had to make room for Santa’s gifts!
  3. We got some Christmas lights up on the outside of our house.  Just a few gold lights along our stairway banisters.  It’s not ideal.  Personally, I’d like to have every square inch of our house and yard lit up and decorated, but Adam has more refined tastes.  When we had a detached home in Michigan, every year we used to argue about whether to put up the small, white lights or the big, colorful bulbs.  Adam won the argument every year by default, just because we didn’t own any big bulbs.  But the last year we lived there, for Christmas he bought me 4 packages of big, multi-colored big outdoor lights, which was his way of saying that he knew how important it was to me.  Unfortunately, we moved, and now I have no idea how we can use those big bulbs on the townhouse.  Next year, he might have to get me a big, blow-up yard ornament.

Clean Home, Playful Home, Happy Home

December 11, 2009 in Three Good Things | No comments

Three Good Things for the day:

  1. Sammy has not had an accident in 3 days.  3 days! 
  2. Somehow, in our little townhouse with only 800 square feet on the main level, we’ve managed to keep the space open enough so that we could enjoy a rousing game of fetch with the dog (and child) tonight, inside.
  3. There’s no place like home for the holidays.  So true.

This Is Why I Own a TV

December 10, 2009 in Three Good Things | No comments

Three Good Things for the day:

  1. For the first time in a couple of weeks, I walked the dog, showered before noon, styled my hair and put on jewelry, worked on my fiction writing, and cooked a real lunch for myself and Sammy.  It wasn’t the first time I did all of those things together, but the first time I did any of them, and I did them all today.  Good day!
  2. My cat is becoming a lap cat.  Pets are nice in their old age.
  3. We just finished watching Battlestar Galactica.  It was amazing.  I loved it.  I was not disappointed.  This was one of the greatest stories, ever.  I’m already thinking about the next time I’ll watch it, and how old Sammy should be for us to watch it with her.  Just beautiful.

« Older entries