in spite of it being a great year.

new year's resolutions.

A couple of years ago, while enjoying the fruits of full time labor in my own place and a particularly violent case of pink eye, my best friend and I made the most basic of New Year's resolutions: we assured each other that we would do something amazing that year.  It was not particularly difficult as I had, in a most resigned and desperate fashion, already mailed off an application to one graduate school.  So to be amazing was not too difficult considering I felt my acceptance was assured and quitting your job and filling your car with crap to move to another state is not so hard once you somebody gives you the go-ahead to do so.

This year, well I don't know about this year.  Maybe it's because the thoughts can't get through the background din of a cooing baby and Potato Head playing children-- that's what I'd like to blame it on-- but doing applications this time around things feel much less assured and I feel like resolutions presuppose-- and even require-- a certainly amount of stability to ensure follow through.  So I am mystified as to what to resolve to do.  Of course I will graduate; but making goals to do the inevitable seems kind of redundant.  Having no clue as to where I will wind up by July puts a kink in the great garden hose of my life plans, complicated by the vagaries of what one does with a master's degree in the humanities.  

And maybe it's not the noise or my own circumstantial instability.  Perhaps it is the unsure nature of our times (of course, historian, blame it on context!), but I don't feel resolute on this dreary gray New Year's Eve.  2009 looks as cloudy as this Washington morning, and my inclination is to do nothing more than immerse myself in the fleeting pleasures of Potato Heads and to wait and see what happens with everything else/

big brother thinks this is funny after drinking a forty.

what i have been doing lately.

Don't think that I've forgotten about you lately!  I've been home living as my alter-ego, Auntie Mel.  As Auntie Mel I find myself getting up before nine, reading stories, trying to placate the baby, partaking in auntie-niece tooth-brushing sessions, supervising the clean-up "game," indulging in the occasional snuggle and getting nibbled by Frankie the Dog.  And drinking.  

It's nice to get in touch with all of the variety that is so easily accessible here in Tacoma.  Between Trader Joe's, Metropolitan Market and the seeming endless number of available draft beers, I have been filled with holiday cheer.  Here's what I've sampled since I got here:

Cook's mimosa, beloved adopted family's house

Big Horn Brewing's Big Red Amber Ale, growler, beloved adopted family's house

Livingston Blush, wine, Grami's house

Boring German white wine, mom stash, Grami's house

Lovely German Pfalz ice wine, mom stash, Grami's house 

Yellowtail Shiraz/Cabernet mix, Grami's house 

Rainier Beer, can, Brother's house

Rogue Dead Guy Ale, forty, brother's house

Dick's Cream Ale, draft, Parkway Tavern

Mac & Jack's Serengheti Wheat, draft, Parkway Tavern

New Belgium Mothership Wit, draft, Parkway Tavern

Trader Joe's Honey Moon viognier wine, brother's house

Charles Shaw ("two buck Chuck") cabernet savignon, brother's house 

more lovely German Pfalz ice wine, mom stash, brother's house

Brown's Point Porter, draft, The Hub

On tap:

Frontier Red wine

Snoqualmie Avalanche winter ale

Pyramid Snowcap Winter Ale

Schloss Biebrich champagne (New Year's)

giving the brothers grimm a run for their money.

The past few nights that I've been here I've had the privilege of getting to help Niece One get ready for bed.  I cherish those mellower, quiet moments with her as she moves from the intensity of play into relaxation and sleep.  The other night after reading a couple of books to her I asked her to tell me a story.  She is a precocious little person who enjoys books and the oral tradition of her grandmother's "when I was a little girl" stories-- not to mention constant interaction with her gifted storyteller of a father.  After I told my brother the story she told me, he suggested I share it here on my blog.  So here it is, as best as I can remember it:

Once upon a time there was a family, a mother and a father and a little boy and a little girl.  One day some bad guys broke into their house and wouldn't leave.  So the family fled to the beach where they bought a tent to stay in from the lightbulb store.  The bad guys turned into foxes and they tore the mother and father's sheets and they still wouldn't leave. The family wanted to come back to their house so they caught one of the foxes and cut him up into little pieces.  (at this point she seemed satisfied that the story was over, so I asked for a happy ending).  But the other fox still wouldn't leave.  Then that fox destroyed the little boy's sheets and the little girl's sheets, so the family used magic on the fox.  Then the fox went like this (she put a finger in each of her cheeks and pulled her mouth into a smile) and that's the happy ending.  The family got to move back into their house again.

Extraordinary for a three year old, isn't it?  I love that kid!