Thursday, November 24, 2005

dahmoo doray


Everything good is coming and I can barely take it.

Thanksgiving is fine, but I always just want to leap over it and stuff Nat King Cole's Christmas album into the cd player. Anally, anally, each year I make a little production of putting his version of "The Christmas Song" on, for it must be the first bit of Christmas music I hear in my house. This has been in place since I was about ten years old. My family bore with me, and even got a little fond of this quirk. I think if I missed a year, I might spin out into some sort of gently tragic obsessive-compulsive fugue state, where I'm replaying over and over in my mind the horrid usurper carol that took its place.

I make myself wait until December to inaugurate the Christmas music, but I've never had a blog before, so I felt that there was no law about my styling out the ol' blog in holiday wear a little early.

IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO OVERSTATE HOW MUCH I LOVE CHRISTMAS.

Yes.

ALSO.

Tonight, we had Thanksgiving with my cousins. This was a vegetarian nutloaf-y affair, with grace said in Latin and an impromptu cello/recorder concert given by my little cousin Irena and her mom -- they were totally excited and totally out of tune and we all just gaped and grinned and applauded like crazy. After Dave and I came home, we were watching a story on CNN about some woman who gave birth to quadruplets, and when one particular shot came on of the mom holding one of them, I burst into tears.

It's real. We're really having a real baby. A lot of the time this all feels still like an abstraction, and I have a few glimmers of what is going to happen here. But something about seeing that baby tonight just drove it home for a second, deeper than it had been driven before, and I just broke out into joyful Peanuts-style flying-out tears.

Our poor child is screwed next Christmas. Finn is going to be so severely elfed-out he may never forgive us. Dressed like a little candy cane one day, a reindeer the next, a gingersnap the next, and so on. Believe it. For I do not jest. Two motherfucking great tastes that taste great together, a baby and Christmas. Goddamn. Good DAY, sir. I SAID GOOD DAY.

7 comments:

la Ketch said...

i am writing to officially request dressing him up like a little present. with a bow.

la Ketch said...

holy shit. i just clicked on your new photo. that is so funny. i love it.

Eve said...

My HEAVENS! You have Christmas spirit absolutely shooting out of your ears! That is going to be SO fun for Finn!
If you are a Christmas lunatic NOW, the joy of sharing it with a baby and child is going to drive you over the edge into a snowfflake gazing, ribbon curling, carolling, tinsel-covered, snowman making, elf spotting, reindeer riding, raving Yuletide MANIAC!!
Christmas + Baby + Tina's spirit= the Perfect Holiday Storm!
I can't wait to see the pics next year!!
Your Christmastina picture is great!

Anonymous said...

I AM SO HAPPY YOU LOVE CHRISTMAS I LOVE CHRISTMAS TOO!!!
I just got so excited I yelled in my comments... sorry!
The new cheery look is lovely.
I am glad your little bean is wearing a santa hat.
Yay for christmas. Soon I will be baking cookies!

john said...

Finn is also the name of the Peter Dinklage character in The Station Agent, thus making your choice extra wonderful in so many ways since the character/Dinklage was:
- wise
- complex
- HANDSOME
- empathetic
- droll
- deeply human
- empathetic to others in need.

Very nice choice of name. We've sometimes had to explain to (our daughter) Kate's cousins that no, she is not an elf, she is a dwarf. One is pretend, one is quite real.

john said...

And I just realized I said "empathetic" twice. This was intentional so as to emphasize his capacity for empathy. Or something.

Tina Rowley said...

Hil: Present. Little bow. Yes. That might be his default outfit all year long.

Eve: If I can just pull it off in such a way that he doesn't hate Christmas until he's dead, then all will be well.

John: What a nice set of comments. Thanks for both the thumbs-up and the reminder that it was Peter Dinklage's very empathetic character's name. What a nice thing to remember! I have warm feelings towards Mr. Dinklage - not just because he's such a great actor, but because he and Ian Bell go way back, and Ian said once that he felt that Peter Dinklage and I would be friends. I've since then gone ahead and launched my end of that hypothetical friendship.

Pete Dinklage, if you're down and troubled, and you need a helping hand...