2004-12-16 - 7:15 p.m.

On the internal soundtrack: "If This Is It", Huey Lewis and the News

December 13

Well, I spent most of the weekend doing things that should have convinced me that Christmas really is less than two weeks away, but I'm still having a hard time believing it. I'm beginning to wonder if I'm going to actually get through the entire holiday without really believing it's Christmas. I've got a weird feeling of detachment about it.

On Friday Poindexter put together the Christmas tree and put the lights on it. We have a horrible little fake tree that we bought supercheap after Christmas one year. I'm not a fake-tree person at all, but Poindexter is, and since we have traveled to Florida for Christmas for the last 4 years, a real tree didn't make much sense. If we're going to be using a fake tree on a regular basis, I'd like it to be a better one. I'm hoping to get a pine (with the longer needles), although I don't think they make tall skinny pines. We have little floor space but our ceilings are something like 15 feet. Anyway, this year I will be purchasing some pine boughs closer to Christmas to get that pine smell in the house.

On Saturday I went up to my aunt Marianne's house (she is my youngest aunt). She was making tortellini with two of her sisters (including my mom, who brought along my dad), her husband, and her mother-in-law. All told there were over a thousand tortellini made over the course of the day. They had Christmas music playing, and the sisters were chatting, singing, and dancing around the kitchen in between wrapping tortellinis.

On Sunday, I ordered all the online Christmas gifts while Poindexter put lights and garland around the dining room railing, placed various other Christmassy items around the house, and we then decorated the tree together. He complained that we had too many ornaments. I said "No, we need a bigger tree."

All this, and yet STILL I feel like it must be early November. Maybe it's because we had a warm fall, and because we spent half the month of November out of town.

Today I'm going Christmas shopping at the mall with my mom and to my cousin's daughter's holiday concert. Perhaps it will sink in today.

During one of the many lively discussions we had at Marianne's house, Marianne said something (and I can't remember the context) about one of the sisters saying to her (more than once), "You're so loud." As though it were a bad thing.

I said, "I like loud people. I choose to be around loud people, not quiet ones. The more obnoxious the better." And it's true. For one thing, they're much less likely to mumble and make it IMPOSSIBLE TO LIPREAD GODDAMMIT. Quiet people make me batty for that reason alone -- they are disproportionately mumblers. But quiet people freak me out for other reasons too. I'm all about the companionable silence, but when I get together with people for a social event, I expect there to be chatting. An exchange of stories, information, ribaldry, and general nonsense. If I ask a question, I want a long rambling answer with a few tangents, not a brief unelaborated reply! I wouldn't be hanging out with you if I wasn't interested in listening to you talk! The only request I have is that you leave room for me to ask more questions. I know that sometimes people are worried that they'll be boring, but it's more boring for me if you don't talk at all!

My college boyfriend's family had the most civilized, quiet dinner table conversations. I could barely hear people when they spoke. It was a huge contrast to my loud family dinners, particularly when siblings and grandparents got involved, where there are usually two or more conversations going on at once, with voices escalating to be heard over the other. That is normal to me.

The hardest thing for me about quiet people, though, is that I don't know where I stand with them. Loud obnoxious people also tend to be expressive (probably THE MOST important quality for me in a person), which means I can read their body language and tell what mood they're in, how much fun they're having, etc. With a quiet person, though, the signs are usually too subtle for me to read, and I can't tell if they're having a good time, if they're just tired, if they just want me to SHUT UP ALREADY, or if they're enjoying my own loudness as a contrast to their own quiet state, or what. It's very nerve-wracking for me.

And then there's the fact that I myself am loud (why do you think I write parts of sentences in all caps? that's me being loud for emphasis) and obnoxious and talk about weird things, so I worry all the time that I'm being offensively loud and obnoxious to quiet people. Sigh.

December 15

I went Christmas shopping with my mom on Monday. When I first got there, my mom had been watching the kids visit Santa. There was a six-week-old boy wearing a little Santa suit -- red velour with the fuzzy white trim. He was SO FREAKIN' CUTE. I love how really young babies are like a squirmy sack of potatoes. There were also dressed-up little girls all over the place. Little girls dressed up in Christmas finery is also SO FREAKIN' CUTE.

The Santa was REAL. He had a REAL beard and a REAL semi-bald head with REAL hair on the non-bald part. I was so excited to see him. If I'd had more time I would have sat on his lap and gotten a picture.

But we were pressed for time, because we were going go (my cousin Stacy's daughter) Kelsey's holiday concert. The concert was a hoot. Kelsey's younger brother Lee, who is three, was dancing in his seat and in the aisles. When his mom pointed out Kelsey on the stage, just after the crowd quieted waiting for the song to begin, he was excited to see her and yelled loudly, "HEY KELS!" People all over the audience laughed, as well as Kelsey.

I had hoped to see my mother eye something with longing, so that I could go back later and buy it for her, but I did not see this. Argh. She is really tough to buy "surprise" presents for because she honestly doesn't seem to want anything. I, on the other hand, had to fight very hard not to be distracted by women's clothing stores and tweed skirts and focus on the task at hand. My mom thought it was funny and said we should go clothes shopping together ("for you", she said) after Christmas.

In the Carolyn Hax chat last Friday, someone shared this favorite Christmas memory:

Favorite childhood memory: our parents had a rule that no kids could leave their bedrooms to see what Santa brought before 6:30 a.m., so every year we sent someone to the bathroom with a Polariod camera. The scout would go to the bathroom, flush the toilet, and take a quick photo of the living room on the way back. Then all of us kids would huddle over the photo as it developed, trying to see what Santa had brought.

That is SO FUNNY. I love those stories about how kids get around their parents' rules and restrictions. If you have a funny kid-on-Christmas story, tell me or link me to an entry in your journal.

I can't think of a good Christmas story, but I have an everyday naughty-kid story: Sometimes in warmer weather, after my parents put us to bed, my brother and I would get up, dress all in black, and sneak down the stairs and out the front door. The door was at the bottom of the stairs, so it was an easy exit. The rec room, where my parents usually spent their evenings, was on the other side of the house.

Then we would run around in the backyard in our black outfits and play "spies" or "ninjas" or something (I have no recollection of what this entailed, exactly). When we got bored or tired we would come back inside and go to sleep. And my parents had no idea. We told them about it years later and my mother was shocked.

I think it's best that parents don't know everything their kids are up to. Some of it is probably too nerve-wracking for them.

December 16

I went to the Italian Market yesterday morning. I told my aunt that I would bring table cheese for Christmas at her house, and Stacey and Brent were coming over for dinner so I figured I could use them as cheese guinea pigs.

Here's what a dork I am: There were two stores with cheese that I wanted to try, and they are right next to each other. Claudio's and Bruno's. I decided to get a little bit from each store and compare and contrast. I was very nervous about asking for cheese samples (I was afraid I might get yelled at, like you do at Pat's or Geno's if you order your cheesesteak wrong). I was also nervous about being seen in the second store with a bag from the first store. Like they might be offended that I was shopping at the other store.

I am such a DORK. I'm a believer in competition, since it forces people to do better to succeed, so there is absolutely NO LOGICAL REASON FOR ME TO FEEL THAT WAY. I do NOT have to buy equal amounts from each store so they both feel good. UGH! Where does this feeling come from?! I am also a believer in good customer service, which means it's the store's responsibility to make me feel welcome and encourage me to buy cheese and olives without feeling pressured.

As it happened, the people in both stores were very pleasant and helpful, and nobody in Claudio's seemed to notice the DiBruno's bag. I bought three kinds of Italian table cheese and three kinds of olives. They let me sample the cheese in the store. OH. MY. GOODNESS. I knew I liked cheese, but I don't think I really understood until now just how amazing cheese can really be. I tried one kind that seemed to have three different flavors in it, which is not something I recall having experienced in a cheese before.

I have a mild, slightly softer cheese which is called "toma piemontese", made from cow's milk in Piemonte, Italy. The label says: "Toma" generally refers to semifirm premountain cheese with earthy flavors. Piedmont Toma is from two milkings, giving it a slight acidic tang balanced with a creamy, nutty mouthfeel. Flavors of walnuts and mushrooms with a fresh milkiness. Refined but rustic.

Talk about snooty cheeses!

The second one is called "moliterno", made from sheep's milk in Basilicata, Italy. It is a pecorino cheese aged "incanestri" (in baskets) to drain whey and give a distinctive marked rind, rubbed with olive oil and suet, moliterno retains moisture as it ages and takes on a pleasant nutty, meaty, and substantial flavor without overwhelming sharpness or salt.

The multi-flavor cheese, which is hard and a little dry, is Prima Donna, supposedly like a Gouda but less sharp. Apparently what I am tasting is its "sweet, nutty flavor" in addition to the "cheese" flavor.

The Prima Donna was both Stacey's and my favorite, with the toma piemontese second. Those were so good that the moliterno seemed rather dull in comparison, which is a shame because somehow I ended up with more of that than anything else.

Stacey had requested the olives, since a friend of hers had served a type of green olive once that was very mild, without the strong vinegar-y flavor green olives usually have. The closest I found to this at DiBruno's was the "Green Bella di Cerignola", which Stacey liked a lot. At Claudio's I bought some regular Sicilian green olives and also a "spring mix" of olives, which I thought I recognized as being something Stacey's friend had served. There look to be a dozen different types of olives in there, including one green type that is extremely mild. But it also has some really strongly vinegary ones, some like I get in Middle Eastern restaurants, and one that was tinged red and had hot pepper in it!!!

Remember in "Rocky", when he's on his morning jog through the city, and he runs up a street with awnings on the fronts of buildings and tables laden with produce and such? That's the Italian Market. And remember how there were rusty oil drums with fires in them? THEY STILL DO THAT!!! Every other vendor had a fire going in an oil drum. Ooh, look, here's a picture of one!

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