Friday, December 19 - Saturday, December 20

Kicking Christmas into high gear. Friday was the girls' last day of school. Greta went out after school with two friends to get a manicure. And then--once home, we're home to stay. Lucia wanted to HANG OUT WITH A FRIEND this weekend and I said no. This is Christmas family time. Everyone stays home. The kids are mine until after Christmas. 

Friday night I made broccoli cheddar soup and we watched Unaccompanied Minors, a Christmas movie the kids really like and that we watch every year. Saturday was my shopping day--I finished it all by heading out very very early in the morning so I could beat the crowds at Target, Ulta, Trader Joe's, TJ Maxx, and more. I finished putting our Christmas cards together--they won't arrive until after Christmas, but they'll arrive this week at some point. We all spent a lot of time working on our homemade gifts. In the evening, we had TikTok pasta (pasta with tomatoes and feta) and watched a Hallmark movie called The Snow Must Go On, where a Broadway star returns to his hometown to celebrate Christmas with his sister and winds up directing his niece's high school Christmas musical. And, of course, finding love and meaning beyond his High-Stakes Audition In New York City. Andrew and the kids also made cookies while White Christmas played in the background.

Throughout the day, I continued to clean out and organize the basement kitchen--making good progress. For anyone who has not seen our basement kitchen in person, it is a semi-functioning space that includes a refrigerator (works), a cooktop with four burners (somehow works, though ancient and very scary), a dishwasher (does not work), a sink (old and icky, but works), and an ancient trash compactor (does not work). Plus a bunch of cupboards, which, when we moved in five years ago, I stuffed full of all our craft supplies. Those cupboards are now urgently needed for actual kitchen things, since this will be our kitchen for the next three months. And so I emptied them. And oh, the absolute hoarding! How did some of this actually make the move with us from New Jersey? Melissa & Doug watercolor palettes from when the kids were toddlers; Prang watercolor palettes from when I was a child; a red-alert-alarming number of empty spice containers; old Play-Doh; dried out jars of nontoxic Crayola paint. And on and on and on. Evidence of old projects, old activities, the old panicked preparation for long winter days at home alone with little kids. 

I organized the things worth saving into Berenstein Bears-level labeled shoeboxes (IYKYK), threw away a mountain of unusable items, and prepared some bags for donation. (The Prang watercolors--they're staying, an entire childhood contained in the rich colors that no modern-day watercolor set can match.) Excavating a deep trough like this is difficult and emotional, but also satisfying. I keep the things that matter and have meaning; and it is good to stop hoarding actual trash. And now we have an organized, functional kitchen space where the craft supplies we might actually need are in sight and useful. Work remains, but it's looking good.