Happy New Year! Much earlier than auld acquaintance

I was discussing, with coworkers, how some towns are letting their bars stay open till 5 a.m. tonight ... I'll probably be close to getting up then. Amazing how times change. I already have plans to go walking with my friend Marj in the morning. We may push it till 8:30 since we both have the day off. Whoo-hoo, live it up!
It doesn't seem that long ago, New Year's Eve was an all-nighter. Midnight was mid-festivities. New Year's Day didn't start until about noon.
Tonight, New Year's festivities (dinner out with friends) will end by 11. We'll ring in the New Year with whichever children happen to stay awake until midnight, the two girls won't have a problem, the little guy might. Then my husband -- a nondrinker -- will take my mother-in-law home and pick up our teen. No sleepovers tonight, I just informed him.
All in bed, long before 1 a.m. My, how times have changed.

It's a smorgasbord!

My mother-in-law likes to cook dinner when she comes to spend a day with the kids, which she does for us once a week. With our sitter off this week, she's spending three days with the kids. I had to tell her yesterday: Don't bring any food with you. She did on Wednesday, and made two different pasta dishes. But our fridge was already busting with leftovers. We had leftover ham that I ground up for ham salad. We had a ton of leftover turkey, stuffing, cranberry and gravy. We had leftover garden salad. Now we had leftovers of the two pasta dishes. And I took the turkey and made turkey vegetable soup so we had a lot of that.
So last night, we took everything out and set it on the table, and we let the kids choose what they wanted on their plate then microwaved them individually. Everybody was happy, and now everything, save some of the turkey, is gone. Some of the kids had soup, some didn't, some wanted turkey and gravy, some wanted ham salad, the pasta dishes went, the salad is gone, the rest of the soup went at lunchtime today. And I'm going to make something with the remainder of the turkey tonight, maybe turkey salad. I keep hearing the line from "A Christmas Story" in my head, the one right after the Bumpus' dogs tear apart the turkey, as Darren McGavin's staring at the lost meal and Ralphie's adult-narrator voice is saying, "No Turkey, No Turkey Gravy, No Turkey Salad, No Turkey Pot Pie, No Turkey a la King, No Gallons of Turkey Soup!"
Now tomorrow, when the last of the turkey is only a memory, I'm sure I'll be hearing, "There's NOTHING to eat in here!"

How about this kid?

Imagine getting a whole school named after you ... when you're only 17 years old. That's what happened to a Harrison, N.Y. teenager, and she earned every bit of the honor.
Seems Rachel Rosenfeld -- shown here in an Associated Press photo -- read a newspaper article on a poor village in Cambodia, how the children have no access to education and that some girls end up being sold into prostitution by their parents. Rachel was horrified. So last year she decided to do something about it -- and within a year, she raised $52,000 to build a school and bring Internet access to 300 primary school students. She made her first visit to the region this week to be at the opening of the R.S. Rosenfeld School. Unbelievable.
Rachel sold, T-shirts, sent out hundreds of fund-raising letters and even offered naming rights for some of the school's structures. A couple of banks added another $23,000 to what she raised to help complete the project. What an awesome kid!
Get this: She set out to help, the article says, "after spending most of last year battling a stomach disorder that caused her constant pain." OK ... how many grown-ups would take on such a task after being ill for a good part of the year? Wow.
I'll close with my favorite quote in today's paper: 77-year-old Robert Schoff of Des Moines got stuck upside down in his septic tank on Christmas Eve, he lost his balance and was wedged in for an hour until his wife found him and called 911 when she saw his feet kicking in the air above. "It wasn't good, I'll tell you what," Schoff said. Gotta love those Iowans -- they know how to get a point across simply.

Remind me never to eat again ...

I'm STILL stuffed. Starting from the first thing in the morning, yesterday was quite the food fest. I always make an egg casserole the night before, throw it in the oven just before the kids come down, after an hour of unwrapping and trying things out, it's ready. I'll scribble down the recipe at the end of this for anyone interested.
I went light on dinner -- after all the chips & dip I ate, there wasn't much room for healthy stuff. The kids were having an absolute blast from beginning to end ... they're so excited.
After dinner at my parents' house, it was cookies & ice cream cake for dessert. Ice cream cake isn't our usual fare, but at my daughter's recent birthday party, both grandmothers decided to bring a cake. The ice cream one was "savable," so we sang Happy Birthday to Jesus last night. Hope your Christmas was a happy one this year, and if you're looking for an easy -- but warning, it's fattening -- breakfast for next year, or New Year's Day ... here it is:
A day before you want to make it, leave out seven or eight pieces of bread to get stale (some people trim the crust or cube it, I don't). Then prepare the rest the night before you want to cook it.
A dozen eggs, beaten, then mixed with two cups milk (can always used lowfat!) and two cups shredded cheddar cheese (I'm sure other cheeses work here too), salt and pepper (use your own judgment on how much) and some ground mustard (I used about a teaspoon). Mix all those together, then pour the mixture over the stale bread in a lasagna pan. You can let it go like that, or add stuff to the top if you'd prefer. I put chopped ham, onions and broccoli on half of it this year for the grownups, left part plain for the kids. Cover and refrigerate overnight. That allows the bread to soak up some of the mixture -- it comes out almost like a quiche. Cook at 350, start checking it after a half hour or so. I find it usually takes a full hour before it's the way I want it -- no runny stuff on it at all. Let it cool for a few minutes, cut and serve. Good re-heated, too!

Last-minute gifts

I used to keep a few bottles of wine around in gift bags at Christmastime for the friends who showed up unexpectedly with a gift or a batch of holiday cookies that they spent the whole week working on. I never could understand the lure of baking 45 different kinds of cookies. Heck, I send in "munchkins" for the classes on my kids' birthdays.
I've given up keeping spare gifts around the house, we don't really need them anymore. As we all started having kids, fewer people showed up with gifts, then I'd be left with all that wine. We somehow managed to find a use for it.
Now I've got a new dilemma. My teenager wanted to buy presents for all his friends. He's got a lot. And he doesn't want to go cheap. Problem is, he never got around to finding a job. Started applying two weeks before Christmas, insisting all along that he'd have money to go shopping, then was hit by the reality that nobody hires you two weeks before Christmas.
I loaned him the money for his girlfriend's present and told him not to worry about his siblings, we'd put his name on a package for each of them. But, I said, you're not going to buy presents for all your friends. They usually don't reciprocate anyway ... he tends to give more than he receives. Admirable, but not when you're broke, you don't work and you already owe your parents quite a bit for your girlfriend's presents, your cell phone overages, etc.
Last night, he was hanging out with one of his friends when her parents told him to come back next week, they bought him a Christmas present. He came flying in to see me when he got home, saying I had to run out and buy this friend a present because her parents bought him something. Augh. I explained: "They have one kid, I have four." "But I'll be embarrassed!" he wailed. I'll tell him to bake some cookies. He can't keep a spare bottle of wine around for another 4 1/2 years.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I'm one of those people who has to finish something once I get going. Last night, I did Christmas cards until 1:30 in the morning. This morning, I showed my kids' annual Christmas photo on the card to Patti Martin -- fellow blogger on this site. Seems I'm ahead of her this season. "Wow, you got your tree up already? I'm jealous. When did you get it up and decorated?" She asked. Tuesday night, I answered. "And you have your picture taken and cards done two days later? How'd you manage that?" I didn't want to rub it in that they're already mailed, too.
After dinner Tuesday, we decorated the tree, then made the kids sit in front of it so we could get a Christmas shot of them. I ran with digital camera in hand to Walgreens yesterday morning, picked out the card, picked out the photo I wanted to use and Voila -- they're done about an hour later. So realizing it was already the 19th, and my card says Merry Christmas this year (I usually make it "Happy New Year" to give myself a few extra days) I got to work, starting about 10:30 p.m.
A few years ago, I had a whole address book set up in my computer. When that computer, our first, finally gave up, I kept saying I would do that again. Made life so much easier -- print address and return address labels, slap 'me on with a stamp and bingo, bango, 60 Christmas cards done in about a half hour. But I never got around to it, until last night. So not only was I filling out the addresses by hand, I was also simultaneously setting up each one in an Address Book in whitepages.com so NEXT time, I can print out the labels again. I was there for a few hours after the kids went to bed, looking up the addresses I've lost, trying to remember who I was omitting. So, while I may be "ahead" of Patti in the Christmas tree/card department, she's ahead of me in the sleep department.

Counting my blessings

Whenever I read the statistics on autism in New Jersey, I mistakenly think only of parents with little children. Stories focus on parents learning to accept their child's disability, of finding the right programs, of getting people to understand their child's abilities and causes for their actions or tantrums. I don't always think about how those children get bigger, too.
In the mall yesterday, my mom and I were talking to a friend when we heard a commotion behind us. A teenage boy, a big kid, suddenly sat down, and his mother was telling him he had to get up, they had to go to the car. He let out a howl, and curled up on the floor, that's when we realized he was developmentally disabled. She tried again to tell him to get up, then when he did, he took off. And she had to run after him.
God bless that woman. And every parent in such a situation. Parenting is hard enough -- parents of children with disabilities face challenges we never even consider. A simple trip to the mall for me only requires me saying "No" to all the requests for various things they see. For that mom, I imagine it's a whole different ballgame to run to the store, even for one thing.
These days, whenever I see a kid acting up somewhere, I always think of a letter we got at the Press here awhile back, from a mom who was at at grocery store checkout line when her child was acting out, and the checkout person said, "Someone got too much sugar today!" The mom calmly explained that no, this is what autism looks like. She probably surprised the checkout person, but hopefully it was a learning experience for that person, and anyone nearby, not to assume anything.

He's headed right down Santa Claus Lane

Just about every day, my little guy asks me for a "Google" Webkinz ... the goofy looking little duck. I've told him to write Santa, and that drawing pictures would do since he can't write letters yet. He's very "into" the idea and plans to enlist his sisters' help this afternoon. I can't wait to see how this turns out.
My daughters are on the cusp of being over the "Santa" mystique -- I think the older one is probably beyond, although it hasn't been discussed. What drives me crazy is all the "I (do or don't) believe in Santa" references I see and hear on commercials and TV shows ... even when the outcome says there certainly is a Santa, I wonder if that pushes the unsure over to the nonbeliever side a little prematurely? And why would anyone question believing in him at all? Hmmm? I mean, he's right there at the mall, isn't he?

The weather outside is frightful ....

I want to be home right now. Badly. Looking out the office windows, all I can think is, wouldn't it be a great day to be at home, curled up and watching an old movie? I was almost tempted to play hooky today, and I never play hooky. But it was just starting to sleet when my son and I were leaving the house to get him to the sitter's and me to work. I just wanted to go back in, put my jammies back on and curl up with him and watch some Spongebob.
I rarely have days like this. Ever the optimist, I usually look out the window on a day like today and say, "Good day to be working!" Not today. The holiday season is hectic, and I'm looking forward to taking a break. I'm almost hoping the weekend does turn out like they're predicting. This kind of weather slows me down, and I could use a good slowing-down.

What's the "need to know" rule here?

Parents of students in the Manalapan elementary school where a substitute teacher came in, or got, drunk while teaching last week are upset that they weren't notified and had to rely on the rumor mill. I can't complain about how the school initially handled the matter. They had just a short time to get the police, get the teacher out of the school, arrange for a replacement and write a letter to the parents of the 24 fourth-graders she was teaching.
But other parents this week are saying they're upset with the lack of communication to the rest of them. The school superintendent said he thought it important to notify the affected parents quickly, and that "just because some other parent wants to know what went on, I don't think that's our role."
But what is the administration's responsibility to the other parents? They are updating their Web site. Maybe a short note sent home with the entire school population the next day would have been appropriate, just a quick summary of what happened and directing the parents to the school Web site for updates and information on how the matter is being addressed.
I can't imagine finding out that someone this hammered -- she fell out of her chair, was carrying her apparently spiked coffee cup around with her in the classroom and threw around books while "looking for something" -- was in the classroom with my child. But who'd have thought this would be a problem? As I understand it, the woman was a retired teacher who has been substituting at the school for a year and a half. I don't think the administration can be blamed for not being aware of her now-obvious problem. While I agree that the parents of kids in that classroom deserved first notification, a follow-up to quell the rumor mill would have been a good service to the rest of the school parents.

What do you do?

Yesterday morning, my kids and I were later than usual getting out the door, but still had enough time to get to school on time. As I was pulling up to the corner, I saw two people, a female with her back to me, and a little boy around kindergarten age who she seemed to be coaxing to get a move on -- he was doing what little kids do, stopping to look at things and taking his time. Last year, around the same time, I saw a mother and child coming from the same area on a wintry day and offered them a lift to the school, only a few blocks away. Knowing the two I saw yesterday still had those few blocks to go and not much time to get there, I called out, "Do you want a ride?" The female turned around and I realized she was a student too, probably around 7th grade. "Sure!" came the happy response from the two kids as they raced toward my car and hopped in.
Suddenly, I was confused. Should I have offered the ride? They don't know me personally. They aren't in my children's grades, but they likely see us heading off to school in the mornings and probably recognized our car and my children from being in the same small school. A minute later we pulled up in front of the school and they were all in on time, and I was left wondering if my giving those kids a ride was inappropriate. Did they recognize me from the morning routine? Should I have told the girl my name, in case she wanted to tell her mother? Should I have asked for her mom's number and let her know I drove the kids to school?

Miss you ...

I try not to forward a lot of e-mails, only the ones that actually make me laugh out loud or cry real tears. One I forwarded this week -- hesitatingly, as a Catholic -- started out with big letters saying, "I knew this was coming" followed by a headline that says, "German Pope makes changes (evening Masses only)." Underneath are photos, and, photoshopped into pictures of the Pope saying Mass, are -- in the place of the chalice of wine -- a pilsner of beer, and in the place of the Host, a large pretzel.
Before forwarding it, I gave it my "Uncle Bob, Is it funny or disrespectful?" test: Would my late uncle, a priest, have approved? OK, probably not. But would he get mad? I don't think so -- although he might have given me the "you-should-be-ashamed-of-yourself" look as he said, "Clarey!" in exasperation, with a hint of a smile at the corners of his eyes and mouth. Then secretly, he probably would have forwarded it, too. He had a good sense of humor. Sadly, we lost him in June so I can no longer get the real results of my Uncle Bob test. I miss him terribly, and something that made me laugh ended up making me cry.
But I think he'd laugh. As my friend Carol K. said, "When people in this world are calling for someone's death over a teddy bear, isn't it better to be able to take ourselves lightly once in awhile?"
Indeed it is.

Phone tapped

When do you make your kid take responsibility? I was really blown away by the length a mother would go to cover up something her son admitted doing, even though the whole scenario was faked. Last night I was driving home from the mall with my teen, in his quest to buy his girlfriend the perfect Christmas present, when he put on Z100 and it played a "Phone Tap" where people set up a relative or friend with a kind of phony phone call, with the radio show host as an accomplice. They'll call the person with some kind of strange news and goad the person into responding. Sick, but I have to admit, I've cracked up at some. Last night, I warned my teen that if he ever tried anything like this, he wouldn't live another day.
A college kid called his mom, with the radio host posing as an administrator at the college. The set-up was the student telling his mother that he got arrested for selling drugs, specifically trying to sell crystal meth to this administrator's own son. The son even tells his mother that authorities found more drugs in his room. The mother ended up turning on the administrator, saying his son was a drug addict who was lying about her son, that his son and his son's friends set up her son and planted the drugs in her son's room. She was threatening the fake "administrator" and calling his son all kinds of names, even though her son said he already admitted doing it.
It's one thing to say, "Don't say another word to anyone until I get there," as the mother did. That was smart -- if her son had done what he claimed, he needed a lawyer. It's another thing to go after the administrator and his son, who this woman didn't know.
Even though the whole thing was a set up, I was really disturbed by this mother's creating a whole, fake scenario for her son. She was accusing others of falsely accusing her son of selling drugs and planting them in his room, only minutes after her son told her he had been selling drugs to get extra money.

Shopping shopping shopping!

How did it get to be December already? It was just Halloween, right? Thanksgiving is a blur for us this year, since we spent a good deal of it 40,000 feet in the air. But it just doesn't seem right that it's Dec. 3 and I have very little Christmas preparation done. What's a busy mom to do? I'm not really an online shopper, either. I'd rather look for stuff myself in the stores, I just get a little claustrophic when it's crowded.
Fortunately, I have a few leftover vacation days to use up, and that's my shopping plans. I can't stand being in crowded malls for long periods of time.
This is the first year in several that I didn't get up at 5 a.m. on Black Friday and do the bulk of my Christmas shopping before 8 a.m. --- I always get the circulars a few days earlier, go through them, circle what I want then hit the stores early and fast. No browsing for me, I grab what I've chosen and run out. But I was too pooped to even figure out where the circulars were that day. Plus I had to work Friday, so I slept in until 8. So I'm behind. Oh well, I hope Santa will take care of everything for me this year.