just call me laura ingalls.

Okay, Thanksgiving is over. I ate 4 different meals, one of which I cooked all by my lonesome (pictures may follow). I waited, respectfully, until yesterday before...Christmas music!

I do feel bad that all the other holidays get swallowed up by the Santa-candycane-tinsel maelstrom, but I have a shameless love of Christmas. I was shocked to hear my first carol of the season on the day after Halloween. I am a little disturbed by seeing twinkle lights while I still have leftover turkey. But. Burl Ives is like a sedative.

I was trying to explain to John the other day what Christmas was like for me as a kid. It reminded me of an episode of "The Golden Girls," where Rose is describing Christmas on the farm in St. Olaf and I think Dorothy asks something like, "Who was your father? Michael Landon?" Such were my idyllic childhood holidays.

I remember one year, I was probably 8 or 9, my mom's parents were visiting from LA. My dad's parents lived across the street from us, so all four grandparents were there. Because Grandpa Jack was just hanging out at our house, he always worked on little (and sometimes large) projects whenever they stayed with us. This particular visit, he made a large wooden star that he strung white lights on. We put colored lights along the porch railing and upstairs in my and Amy's windows. We opened our presents on Christmas day and it snowed. A beautiful snow. Deep and crisp. We all went outside that night to look at the lights in the snow. I wore my dad's size 14 shoes, so I practically skied down the hill. I think most of us made snow angels. I made snow angels with my grandparents, I remember that much. I can vividly remember, as we walked back to the house, my dad said it was the best Christmas he'd ever had.

I get teary-eyed every time I think about that. I also really miss my grandparents.

you can't improve on perfection.

Yesterday I finished reading the Hemingway novel that everyone says is his worst: To Have and Have Not. I've owned this book since at least '99, but hadn't read it. I originally bought it as a junior in high school for the huge research paper I had to write. It was one of three books I focused on, but I never actually read it. I just picked through it and pulled out quotes. Not the way to enjoy a book or write a paper.

I finally started reading it last week on a vacation with my mother-in-law, her two sisters, her mother, and a friend. We took a cruise from Miami to Calica, Mexico, by way of Key West, where we toured the Hemingway house. While it was interesting to be there, the house didn't feel very authentic. It felt more like a money-making scheme than a museum and our guide was just a little too practiced. A little too smooth. I'm not saying they shouldn't have a uniform speech that all the guides say, but this one made me feel like he wouldn't be able to answer any questions not covered by his spiel. That's probably not true, either, but that's how it felt.

I started reading To Have and Have Not on the plane to Miami because I knew it took place in Key West. Maybe it is his worst, but I really liked it, actually. My problem with it has nothing to do with the content, but with the synopsis on the back of the book. It ends by saying that Harry Morgan's "adventures lead him into the world of the wealthy and dissipated yachtsmen who throng the region, and involve him in a strange and unlikely love affair." Doesn't that sound like he'll fall in love? Or maybe, I don't know, at least meet a woman? Well, Harry only talks to two women in the whole book, one of which is his wife. I have the sneaky suspicion that whoever wrote the synopsis read about as much of the book as I did in high school. Either that or they just watched the movie. I haven't seen the movie, but I did a little research on it yesterday and found out that it takes place about ten years later (present day for the year it was made) than the book and instead of smuggling Cubans in Key West, he's trying to get members of the French resistance away from the Nazis. Oh, and of course he isn't married yet. Lauren Bacall plays a character named Marie, which is the wife's name in the book.

Except for a stack of four, all my books are still in boxes, waiting for me to build shelves for them. As I sit here, anticipating what will feel like Christmas when I get to unpack my books and put them on new, custom shelving, Amazon.com, a.k.a. Enemy #1 for independent booksellers everywhere, is pushing its new ebook. For the record, I'm anti-ebook. I hate the idea completely. It was on the cover of Newsweek, with the subheading, "Amazon's Jeff Bezos already built a better bookstore. Now he believes he can improve upon one of humankind's most divine creations: the book itself." This annoys me on so many, many levels.

another way to tell if you've got nothing going on.

My new favorite thing is my full-sized ironing board. I've been using a very annoying tabletop-sized one because I haven't had room for a real one since I graduated college and left Bowling Green. (Which does beg the question, what happened to the one I had in college? Why did I just buy a new one? Shouldn't the old one be waiting for me somewhere?) The first thing I did this morning was iron a tablecloth. I literally woke up and thought, "I can iron a tablecloth now!"

You must understand though, the tablecloth still looks pretty crappy. And my mom is going to tell me I should iron it. And when I tell her I already did, she'll tell me to wash it and take it out of the dryer when it's still damp and do it again. Should I do this? Yes, yes, I should. But not today. Today is a day my kitchen table will no longer be naked. Besides, John would never notice and he's the only person who'll really see it.

We also have a washer and dryer now. (They're the ones I had in college... They knew my old ironing board. Why are they still here waiting and the ironing board is gone?) No more searching my car's floorboards for quarters for the dank and scary laundryroom in our old building. No more having to go to the bank for rolls of quarters.

By the way, I'd forgotten about drive-through windows at banks. They're sort of genius. And there's no bullet-proof glass anywhere. I could actually reach out and slap the teller. Not that I'd want to, but I could.

The washer and dryer have been eclipsed by the ironing board. It's really too bad that I suck at ironing, because I'm super excited. The little tabletop one's legs would start to fold in while I was ironing. Not at all convenient. This is a new era.

i'm back.

I'm back in Tennessee. We just got our DSL hooked up yesterday. We still have several boxes to unpack. I'm going to build shelves for my books, so they'll stay in the boxes until that's done. That's going to take a while, too, since I haven't bought the supplies and have a long list of things to do beforehand. Aside from the books though, we just have a few boxes left.

I've had an extreme case of culture shock. It's only really extreme because I wasn't expecting any at all. I haven't really lived here since I graduated high school in 2000. A lot can change when you're gone over seven years. But the biggest differences are adjusting to being in the country after three years in the big city. For example, there are bugs everywhere. I was sweeping the floor yesterday and something in my dust pile was moving. It didn't even look like a bug. It was a tiny, teardrop-shaped worm thing with antennae. What was that? Oh, and our house had mice. We think we've caught them all (which makes them sound like Pokemon and, I assure you, these mice are not the kind of thing you want to carry around with you), but I was more than a little freaked out. I've never been afraid of mice before, but I was filled with this feeling that one was going to scurry out at any moment...like constantly anticipating someone jumping out and screaming "boo!" at you.

Okay, so bugs and mice aren't really examples of culture shock. They're more like examples of why pest control companies should be so successful here. As for my actual culture shock, I went to Wal-Mart within two days of getting to TN. There weren't any Wal-Marts in North Hollywood. That pretty much says it all.