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Dizzy in the New Year
Cheers to you and to everyone who actually managed actual reveling. New Year's has never been my favorite holiday (the chill, the abundance of people who have drunk much much too much) and that combined with the impossibility of finding a babysitter made for a night in and a chance for me to practice one of my culinary exercises. I actually find that the people I know who do manage excursions rely on their parents to handle baby-watching.
My other issue with New Year's - or really, any moment where one is supposed to mark time's passage and think about what one has or has not accomplished - is that is always triggers bouts of dissatisfaction and something very much like regret. One has never ever done enough, never ever gotten enough done, never ever lost the weight or gotten tidy and organized. And there it is, that new calendar page looming. I have managed some things this year, both professional and domestical, among them these non-denominational holiday and birthday stockings, which I finished against all odds (and my husband was not above placing odds on the unlikeliness of my completing this mission). I need to approach so many other things with the kind of zeal that comes when one suspects people are betting against one. But that's what the new year is for. They say.
But one thing I can say with great force is that I am truly done with the holiday season. Felix has been asking to go back to school since December 23rd and in spite of my best efforts to entertain and keep everyone lively, we are having these ridiculous fights about who will put the tissues in the garbage can (the lot of us has been congested since Halloween... at least), and why in 19 degree temperatures shorts are ill-advised. I did my best, tried to safeguard against boredom, found activities, dragged the entire family out to the Museum of Modern Art as soon as it was open yesterday morning (go go go go go see the Pipilotti Rist installation), but I think I must admit defeat. Nothing beats school.
On other fronts, while languishing on vacation and under the weather, Felix finally did watch his first movie from start to finish, which suddenly made relevant Emily Bazelon's recent piece for Slate about why "G" ratings are not useful for parents who are trying to figure out how much sleep they'll be getting/not getting the night(s) after seeing the latest kid offering. I have no fondness for the MPAA rating system and never have, but now as a parent I realize exactly how useless it is.
posted by Elise at 4:00 AM
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said...
In 1985, when my older son Oliver was three years old and had seen the original Wizard of Oz several times without experiencing any sort of trauma, I naively took him to see "Return to Oz," thinking that no movie about Dorothy, Toto, the Wizard et al. could terrorize him. The opening tornado scene was so menacing and frightening that Oliver leapt out of his seat into my lap and wrenched my neck like I'd taken him to a Freddie film. We left fewer than 10 minutes into the movie. Since then, I have had no respect for the "G" rating. Here's the film's synopsis, which surprisingly has a relatively high rating on IMDB:
Dorothy, saved from a psychiatric experiment by a mysterious girl, is somehow called back to Oz when a vain witch and the Nome King destroy everything that makes the magical land beautiful.
Definitely a "family" film for the younger set...
1/03/2009 4:06 PM
said...
I love those stockings! Do you mind sharing where you got the pattern?
1/08/2009 6:19 AM
Elise said...
Actually, I made the pattern up myself and spoke to the needlepoint store I use about painting the canvasses for me. I can't take credit for the actual artwork, but the designs were my idea (and I supplied a lot of dragon/gryphon images to help).
1/08/2009 5:16 PM
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said...
Elise said...
