Posted on by jsmith

On the fifth day of Christmas…

…I mailed out my Christmas cards.  If you’re one of my three faithful readers, you should be receiving yours soon.  And forgive me for not including a family letter with the card; it’s just that it’s hard to write about life in Kennewick and not sound like I’m bragging.  And you know me–I’m such a cautious writer, I’d die before I made a fool of myself in print like that.

Sending and receiving Christmas cards has long been one of my favorite holiday traditions.  Don’t you just love opening up Christmas cards from friends you haven’t seen in ages?  I think it’s because I’m a closet sentimentalist, and Christmas cards seem like the last true holiday tradition that hasn’t been modernized or shortcut in any way.  We send them paper, stamp and snail mail just like our parents and grandparents did.  They are the epitome of old-fashioned, Norman Rockwell-style Season’s Greetings.  I just love that.

However.  This morning, as I sat at my kitchen table sealing and stamping seventy-five cards, I couldn’t help but mentally tally up the cost.  And as I did so, I asked myself something for the first time ever:  how bad would it really be to send an e-card for Christmas next year?  Oh, to even think such a blasphemous thought!  And yet I did.  Not only did I think it, I am now letting the evil thought flow freely from my brain to my keyboard, soon to reach the judgment of all of you.  Yikes.

The more respectable side of me would never have considered an e-card, but this morning I began to examine the possibility for several reasons:

1.  It would be easy.

2.  It would be free.

3.  I could send cards out to twice as many people, thus convincing myself that I had twice as many friends.  The longer my addressee list is, the more popular I become in my head.

After mentally reviewing the above list, I’d almost decided that an e-card would be the right course for me next year.  After all, I surmised, Christmas e-cards will soon be the norm.  Why fight the future?  I bet Steve Jobs sent e-cards.

I was just starting to warm up to the idea when I stumbled across this:

Owie.  So much for riding the wave of the future.  My need to be seen as thoughtful overrides my need to be seen as techno-savvy.  (Both are trumped by my need to be seen as pretty, btw.)

Thus, after all my ruminating, you can bet you’ll be getting brick-and-mortar cards from me next year, my beloved besties.  And I had better be getting one from you.  (And not three days after you got mine–we all know that’s an obligatory reciprocation.)

(Actually, now that I think about it, go ahead; I don’t really care if it’s a sincere gesture, as long as it fills up some more space on my wall so I look extrasuperpopular when all those friends Stop By after reading my blog three posts ago.)

And so, without further ado, let the great Christmas Card Swap begin.  I, personally, cannot wait to dig in.  A card from a friend is the next best thing to a visit from a friend, so I’ll take it.  And a card from a faithful?  Well, that’s almost as good as a blog comment from a faithful.

Almost.

Posted on by jsmith

Emily was right.

As usual.  Dang those Godfreys.

I’ve been counting down backwards from the twelfth day of Christmas when I should have been counting forward.  Oopsie.  So I went back and changed my titles.

Thanks, Emily–you are definitely of newspaper editor stock! (And a part of one of my favorite families ever.)

Posted on by jsmith

On the fourth day of Christmas…

…I began to smell something in the air.  It wasn’t spiced pumpkin bread, or cinnamon waissell, or hot apple pie.  No, no.  On the fourth day of Christmas, I began to smell something a little more pungent, but all too familiar.  On the fourth day of Christmas, I began to smell…a Phase.

You see, last weekend my dearly beloved drove through three hours of ice and snow–out to the rural reaches of Northern Idaho, mind you–to obtain this little beauty for our family:

 

What–you don’t know what that is?

It’s a tablesaw, silly! Only the coolest machine for a boy to acquire since Danny’s best friend Kenickie bought Grease Lightnin’!”  (And  the saw’s in about as good of shape as the car was.)

What does a man, you are asking, need a tablesaw for?   To build stuff, silly!  What kind of stuff, you are asking, that can’t be built with a chopsaw or circular saw like most men have?  BIG stuff, silly!  Extra Extra Big Man Stuff.  At least, that is the answer Derrick gives me when I ask him this very question.

But don’t worry, girlfriends.  He got a “great deal!” on this tablesaw  and is “going to fix it up!”  Did you know that tablesaws come in varying degrees of “horsepower,” kind of like big pickup trucks?  This one, I’m told, is the MacDaddy, horsiest-horsepower of them all.  Apparently that’s why it’s in such bad shape; because they quit making tablesaws this powerful back in the ’80s, which is when this one was built.  And though it’s “hugely powerful!,” the saw’s advanced age is why it cost only a few hundred–not a few thousand–dollars.  Which is why my testosterone-driven-but-still-kind-of-cheap husband wanted it.  Which is why he braved driving out to the wildnerness to meet the seller who sounded like a gruff neanderthal on the phone and said he would need to “go into town” to use the Internet.  Which is why I told Derrick to be oh-so-careful and not end up like Jack Nicholson on The Shining.

Much to my relief, the purchase went smoothly.  So smoothly, in fact, that the Gruff Neanderthal threw in this bandsaw for an extra fifty bucks:

 

 What, you are asking, is a bandsaw?

Oh silly girl–it “can quarter a frozen elk!”  At least, that is the answer Derrick gives me when I ask him this very question.  (Never mind that my husband hasn’t hunted a day in his life and the gamiest thing he’s ever brought home is a sausage pizza.)  I’ve begged Derrick, repeatedly, to be serious and tell me what he’s really going to do with a bandsaw.  I have yet to receive an answer.  He just avoids making eye contact with me and keeps repeating the part about quartering a frozen elk.  (To be honest, I’ve never actually had frozen elk, but I do hear it’s good quartered.)

One thing I must concede:  since the Big Purchase, Derrick’s had a light in his eye and a skip in his step that I haven’t seen since his Food Dehydrating Phase.  He’s announced to anyone who will listen that “I’m reclaiming my garage!” and has given half our stuff away to make room for his new toys.

The upside?  When I asked him what he wanted for Christmas, he smiled and said “Nothing!  This is all I wanted.”  He looked so happy when he answered me, I couldn’t refuse him by purchasing what would surely be a grossly inferior gift.  I should probably just take the money I would have spent on him and, well, spend it on myself.  (It’s only right.)

The downside?  Until he gets his new “woodshop” in order, I have to park in the driveway, and it’s cold.  But the sight of my giddy husband leaning over his new tablesaw when I walk through the garage is enough to keep me warm inside.  In my heart.  In my soul.  In the pit of my stomach, which churns every time I think about him quartering that frozen elk.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas in the Smith home.  And it also looks like frozen elk is on the menu for Christmas dinner.

Are you coming?  Don’t worry.  We’ll thaw it out first.