I hate my big, fake Christmas tree, Sting sings country, we drink half and half, I reminisce about my cross-dressing days, and our elf is MIA

So, it's that time of year again. The time when I drag my big, fake Christmas tree out, set it up, growl and yell like a toddler when half the lights don't work, then spend $50 and 5 hours buying and applying new lights over the top of the old ones. It is also the time of year when I eat pie three times a day, and when the children whine that we've run out of milk, instead of going to the store, I announce "let them drink cream!" in a nasally accent, as if I were on a balcony at Versailles, instead of under my duvet reading In the Garden of Beasts.

Then the kids whine that all the cream is whipped, in aerosol cans, and gone, since I needed it for all the pie. So then we drink half and half. It is very tasty with Rice Krispies.

I know I should just get a real tree, but that requires strapping things to cars, which is stressful, because I'm always sure whatever is bungeed on is sure to fall off in the street (I am told this is an irrational fear, sort of like my fear of swimming with fish, except that, well, stuff DOES fall off cars, and who knows what that fish is planning? He looks fishy to me) and also because a real tree means EVEN MORE lights to apply (at least in theory). So anyhow, for the past 7 years, I've used the fake one, whilst cursing it. Annually. Here I am kvetching in 2007 about the horrors of 2006.

But Thanksgiving was good. Our friends from Utah came bearing about 15 pounds of chocolate, and we went to a Sting concert. Who knew he had like 3 albums I'd never heard, including at least one that is entirely COUNTRY? Do you know how weird country sounds in a British accent? But he looked and sounded great, and if all the songs had been as fantastic as his acoustic Message in a Bottle encore, I might not have nodded off in the middle, somewhere around a song about a western movie crossed with an old Broadway musical. I think Sting is a little out of touch, just sitting over in his castle next to Stonehenge, making all sorts of love and writing songs about barley and foxes. Sometimes it works (the barley, the sex- I'll have to take his word for it), sometimes it doesn't (the foxes weren't my favorite). Either way, he's still hot and rich, so what's it to him? We also watched a movie called Stardust (a little every night, since I kept falling asleep because I am either old or still jet-lagged), which was very good, and we ate Thanksgiving, where I ate so much I almost threw up, but did not (which means I consumed the perfect amount of Thanksgiving), and we went to SAS fabrics (where I became overstimulated sifting though a vat of old patches, but luckily Kari had some hard candies in her purse she keeps for her toddler, and I was ok again after I sat on the floor for a minute while she examined the rickrack), and got doughnuts on the way home (just found an apple fritter I hid from the kids, but it isn't good anymore, dangit. I hate when my food hoarding backfires), then met more friends (actually, relatives) for dinner at Joe's Farm Grill, and afterward we all retired to our living room, where we drank Martinellis from silver flutes, played some Peter Breinholt on the guitars, and talked about how when we all lived at the Riv over to the BYU, we used to dress like men, but also how I dressed the most like a man of everybody. (Even the men? This wasn't clear).

So now I've got to do something about our elf, who is not on the shelf, but is MIA. He didn't show up after Thanksgiving dinner, like he's supposed to, and the children are starting to riot.

So do you loathe Christmas lights as much as I do? Did you know about Sting's country songs? Did you wear men's clothes in the 90's? If you have an extra elf, can you send him here? Thanks in advance.

Rome wasn't blogged in a day

So, at long last I have accumulated everyone's iphone photos of our trip, and now I shall publish them on the internets, even though in many of them I am wearing very tight, very unflattering pants.

On October 3, we took the overnight British Airways flight from Phoenix to London. This was difficult for me, because although I really like British Airways and the stewardess' retro hats and how they offer you biscuits (that are really just cookies) with their lovely accents, and even how they sometimes serve weird airline curry that stinks everything up for hours, we only had one hour in London. No time for a West End show. No time for even a Cadbury chocolate bar from the Marks & Spencer, or a browse around the Harrod's in the airport, since we were running at top speed for like 4 miles between concourses. And then, to salt the wound, London was sunny and 70, which never happens. But whatever.

So, you probably want to hear about Italy, but first I need to tell you about a miracle. My eyes had been bugging me all night, but about an hour from our destination I decided: INFECTION. So then my Mom produced from her carry-on bag a bottle of prescription antibiotic eye drops. Right there, high above the French Alps! A miracle, I tell you. So then, I didn't have to go see a Roman doctor, or have to look like a 1950s librarian in all my Italy photos (my glasses are horn-rimmed, you'll thank me later). I literally wept with joy (although eyes were also perhaps already moist with infectious ooze).

Bacteria thwarted, we arrived at the Donna Camilla Savelli Hotel. Trastevere is supposed to be gritty and full of real Romans. But the Donna Camilla is also nearby the American John Cabot University, so it is also full of Valley girl accents and even a has place called T-Bone Station that serves (edible but not great) nachos. (I won't tell you how I know this.) Lots of restaurants and enotecas, gelaterias, pizza-by-the-slice type places (I really liked the potato and rosemary pizza).


Via Garibaldi, perhaps 9 p.m. By midnight, when we'd come back from our Rick Steves night walking, the whole street would be full of people, standing outside the restaurants and drinking.


Jake, in the gelato place just outside the hotel. Coconut? Or pistachio?

Some photos I 'borrowed' of the hotel:

Breakfast garden

That's me on the rooftop terrace. This place was built as a convent in the 1640s, and became a hotel two years ago. There are still a few elderly nuns living in one of the wings, who wander around the garden during breakfast, and pray in their impressive chapel just off the lobby entrance. I would have felt bad for taking over their place, but they've got bigger things to worry about, what with rationalizing that vow of poverty with living in a 4 star hotel.

The view from our room:

Anyhow, Rome.
I liked it.

On day two, we hustled over to ground zero: the Forum/Coliseum/Palatine Hill complex. We toured Mamertine Prison (where Peter and maybe Paul were perhaps incarcerated. There is no historical record of them being there written before the 5th century, but pilgrims had already been showing up, and this was the only prison in Rome for a very long time.) They had a super creepy English audio guide that had a lifestyles-of-the-rich-and-famous voice saying cryptic things about water and tables. Then they made us stand in the dark, before having us watch a weird, equally enigmatic video. Only later, between the Bible and Rick Steves, was I able to figure out what went on there (or didn't).

At Mamertine Prison. Sister Noel and Sister Beeson

Then, we ate some super tasty paninis from a street cart, didn't get food poisoning, then met our tour guide at this little cafe with a great view. Jake is chatting up a waiter.


So here we are in the forum (ancient marketplace turned political and religious center of Rome). I included this photo because my arm looks skinny.


A view of the forum from Palatine Hill. This is where all the ancient Italian movers and shakers lived. They worked down in the Forum. The Curia (Senate house) is the tall building at the top left of the photo. The Vestal Virgins lived in the bottom right. Maybe.

I smell a holiday card

Ryan

So I pretty much loved ancient Rome. It was really hard at first to comprehend how OLD this stuff is. Some of the temples are from the 8th century before Christ. (Although none of the really ancient ones are original, except for the foundations, but have been spruced up or rebuilt, then knocked down again, the new ones only like 2000 years old. Mussolini righted some pillars on the Temple of Vesta. He also built a horrid thoroughfare right down the middle of the Forum, but I think Rome got her (his? Since Rome is probably named for Romulus (Remus' brother) comeuppance with the whole shooting, hanging from a meat hook, stoning thing they did to him in 1945 in near Milan).  800 B.C. That's 1800 years older than Westminster Abbey! 1600 years older than the oldest Pueblo Villages found here in Arizona. 2400 years older than the oldest remaining early American buildings. (Don't look too closely at my maths.)

Tired and hungry, we headed back to Trastevere to change and eat before heading back into town. Jen was hoping to see something that wasn't ruined. She was in luck.

Spanish Steps

Trevi fountain.

Day three began with the Pantheon, built 126 A.D. I'm not sure I've even seen anything in my life cooler than the Pantheon. It was like all the stuff in the Forum, only not sacked by barbarians and looted by medieval Romans.

We met our guide, Jeb, and headed over to the Vatican. Those Catholics have collected and stolen some really great stuff over the past two thousand years.

This huge head, for instance.

The Sistine Chapel didn't do much for me. I wrote that small cuz it's pretty embarrassing. Sure, I appreciate that painting thousands of naked people, contorting and cavorting every which way, all in the throes of something (passion, sin, greed, pain, religious ecstasy, damnation, covetousness) is a tough project, and that until Mike and all his Renaissance posse dug up and copied the Roman copies of the Greek statues, nobody could do that stuff. Maybe I'm a closet pagan, but I found the Pantheon more impressive. 

St. Peter's Basilica was something to see. It was like if you could take another cathedral, say, Notre Dame, and inflate it to like twice or three times the size. It was HUGE. It isn't crammed with graves like Westminster, (only saints or popes on their way to sainthood are in the church, the rest go in the crypt) so it looks cleaner, more beautiful, but maybe not as interesting, nook-and-cranny-wise.

So I think I'm getting pretty tired, because I just wrote "nook-and-cranny-wise," and I am planning to leave it as is, and hit publish. So I should probably quit for today. 

Next stop: more ruins! Pompeii. And the pizza right across the street from the Eat, Pray, Love pizza. (Very tasty, and no line.)

Does my baby look like James Bond?

So every time I think of something super important I want to put on my blog, like how the family in the pew behind us at Church said Joey looks like a baby Daniel Craig:

 

(I'm dying to know what you think),

or how it is only 80 degrees outside, or how I washed down my family room walls this morning because they were covered in kid slime (was mostly dirt, but also snot and food), I think, I should write that down, but first, I should put up some pictures of Italy, so everyone doesn't think I made it all up and really went to Las Vegas to get plastic surgery (I hear that's a thing).  But really, I don't like messing with pictures (ones not already on my computer or the internet). 

Instead, I'd like to tell you how I saw the movie Anonymous last night, and liked it in spite of poorish reviews, because c'mon, of COURSE I'm going to like it. They had me at everybody being upholstered in brocade. Plus, it starred Spike from Notting Hill. Only I didn't recognize him without his goggles, and with his pants. But Jake did. He says he'd know Spike anywhere.

 And Spike was married to Emily, Ross Geller's British second wife, who is still as uptight as ever.  I should warn you that the whole thing is completely fabricated. It has no basis in actual history except that Queen Elizabeth had red hair, liked plays, and had a hard time keeping her throne away from her sister Mary and the rest of the Scottish Tudors. Also, since I'm warning you,  I should tell you that I was digging in my bag of Halloween candy, trying to tell mini Baby Ruths from mini Milky Way Darks with only the light from my phone, so I can't be sure, but I think William Shakespeare's hiney was in the movie. It might have been hairy.

Have you seen the movie? 

Did you like it better than Footloose 2.0 (that was last week's movie)? 

Do you think Joey looks like James Bond?