A few months ago I made reservations at the Gaylord Texan hotel in Grapevine. I figured that it would be a nice way to celebrate Perry's graduation and we could enjoy their vast climate controlled atrium since I figured the weather would be cold and dismal in mid December. I was wrong. It was just as nice outside as in the atrium: 72 degrees.
Perry and I stayed at the Gaylord two summers ago and had a good time. This time wasn't as great. The food wasn't as good we remembered and the place was packed with families, complete with strollers blocking the walkways and screaming children darting in front of you. It was also over-the-top decorated for Christmas.
They even had a huge gingerbread house with a mosaic on the side. You could smell the sugar before you could see the house.
This is the part of the interior that I prefer.
Around midnight we ventured out to the atrium again to get something to eat from the 24 hours cafe and it was a lot more peaceful. It was kind of like walking through a deserted Disneyland.
We had freezing temperatures last week which killed the last of the plants outside. It was kind of weirding me out that my rose bush was still blooming well into December, but I was still sad when I came home from work and all of the buds had turned brown.
Everything may be dead outside, but it's spring in my living room. New stalks are emerging on my ZZ plant and the Christmas Cactus is about to start blooming.
Perry graduated from university last Friday. When we went to his parent's Christmas party yesterday they presented him with this:
As much as Perry likes to pretend it's not, graduating is a big deal. He is the first one in his family to do so, and he didn't exactly have a linear path to his senior year.
His freshman year he became severely depressed, stopped going to all of his classes which he then thoroughly failed, lost his full scholarship and dropped out of school. After a year of working at the local convenience store and seeing a psychiatrist, he dipped his toe back into school by taking a few community college courses. When that went okay, he re-enrolled into the same university that he had left.
Three years later he has his bachelor's degree and is excited to start his career.
Even though it sounds a bit patronizing to me, I am very proud of him. I admire him a lot.
And I guess I was already feeling a bit despondent after hearing about the elementary school shootings, because I started crying about two minutes into it.
It made me think about how hard people try to be "normal" and how we will fight against our nature and suffer just so we can fit in with those around us. Everyone seems to have their own definition of "normal", but usually it is whatever you're raised with and the people you're surrounded by.
In my community, being Christian and heterosexual is normal and growing up, I always assumed that I was also. It wasn't until my late teens that I began to question whether normal worked for me.
As a teenager, I had never heard of anyone's definition of God that made sense to me. I didn't like that people gave God the worst and pettiest of human emotions like anger and jealously. If there was a God I believed that he/she/it didn't care about if I believed in him/her/it and was nothing like human. In spite of all this, I still labeled myself a Christian. So, I stopped.
I never had to question my "assumed" sexuality. It was pretty obvious to me that I was heterosexual, so that one was easy.
As a female, it is also normal to want to have babies. I had never felt that strong, biological desire that I heard other woman talk about, so I figured it was one of those things that would just happen in time. At age 30, I'm still waiting, however I've have come to realize that having biological children is another "normal" that I will most likely never fulfill.
Do these things make me "bad"? I don't think so. I think they make me me. I have not doubt that denying or ignoring them would make me unhappy and unfulfilled.
There are no rules on how to live life correctly. I think that's why people want some. We are given absolute freedom over our lives and we want so badly to give it away. Myself, included. I feel that as children we are a bit of victims of circumstances. However, as we get older we have important decisions to make and need to take responsibility for our own happiness, and the first step in doing that is finding out just what makes you happy: not society, nor your family, not your friends. It sounds simple, but it may be the most difficult thing that some people can do.
Every year my mom has an "ornament and cookie exchange" party around Christmas. Every year thus far I've been off of work the day of the party. But not this year. And I don't think I'll do it again if it's on a work day. I was tired about two hours into it. Very tired. I even made my cookies a day in advance.
I don't bake very often, but I never make cookies besides the ones for this yearly party. With cakes and brownies, you mix shit together and pour it in a pan and put in the oven and you're done. With cookies there isn't one "just put a pan in the oven and you're done" part. There are several. You're stuck in the kitchen for a hour, just taking cookies in and out of the oven.
These were my cookies this year:
They're cinnamon roll sugar cookies and they're not exactly winning any beauty prizes, but they tasted really good. They're a soft sugar cookie rolled with butter, cinnamon and brown sugar and then iced. There was really no way they wouldn't taste good. I've won "best tasting" a few times at these parties, and it was never because the cookie I made was that fantastic, but because I had one of the only edible ones there. People try to add too much razzmatazz to their cookies, like weird spices and vegetables. Just keep it simple. People love cookies because of butter and sugar, not sage and zucchini.
There's also an ornament exchange part.
I had no idea what kind of ornament to get the first time my Mom threw this party, so I was wandering around Target looking for something to get and I was surprised by how many ornaments were really weird and gaudy. So I got one of those. One year it was a glittery cucumber, then a shark in a hula skirt, a hippo in a Santa bikini, a bucket of beer.
I am extremely lazy when it comes to my hair. In the morning I comb my hair and put in up in a bun, and that's the last I think about it until the evening when it's time to take a shower. I've never colored my hair. I don't own a hairdryer, curler, straightener, etc. I think hair was one of those things I tried caring about in high school, but my hair was determined to be straight and limp, so I let it have its way.
One of the perks of being a girl is that I can let my hair grow out as long as I want and it's socially acceptable.Yay! I don't like getting my hair cut, so I only do it once a year. I also don't like strangers touching me, so I haven't been to a hair salon for a haircut since I was a kid. My mom has been my designated hair cutter over the years. I don't exactly have a complicated hair cut or anything; if you can cut in a straight line, you can cut my hair. I let my boyfriend give it a go last year and he did well, so he now has the job.
Last week I could tell it was time for my annual haircut because I was getting slight headaches after having my hair up all day, which is the usual sign it's getting too long. The only problem was that I told Perry to cut a little too much off.
So, this isn't exactly "short" hair. The problem is that it's now too short for me to put up in a bun properly anymore; hair pokes out everywhere and it looks pretty awful. I turned to the internet for ideas of what to do with my hair until it grew out a bit longer. I was lucky enough to find an alternative fairly easily. I just wanted an updo that was fast and that would actually stay put with my extremely slippery and thin hair. I ended up settling on a style called the "Gibson tuck." The internet made it look really easy. You just make a pony tail then flip it up and tuck the tail in your hair. It actually worked for me.
The only adjustment I had to make was to add some claw clips to secure it, or else my hair would try to come unflipped after an hour or so.
Here's a side view. I like how with this updo, your hair will naturally try to cover your ears.
My mom has made it a tradition to visit the Dallas Arboretum every December and have their "holiday tea". It's always a good time. There's three courses: a soup, an assortment of tea sandwiches, and then an assortment of scones and cookies. Each course has its own flavor of tea. This year my mother, middle sister, Perry, and I went. My sister doesn't even really like tea, but she likes the food.
my sister staying classy
Normally when we go to our tea in December, it's cold and drizzly and cloudy so we almost have the whole arboretum to ourselves. This time it was 83 degrees and sunny, so there were actually other people out and about. It felt odd with it being so warm. A lot of the flowers and roses were still blooming.
Another factor that might have contributed to the crowds was that the arboretum was hosting a Chihuly art exhibit. All of the installations were beautiful. They ranged from enormous to subtle.
The arboretum is already full of photo ops, but the art exhibit provided even more. There were even some professional photographers out with light reflectors and everything.
See that little girl behind the hulking guy in the black shirt? Well, apparently this wasn't her first photo session. She was voguing up a storm for the camera.
This girl was doing a photo shoot in an awesome rainbow dress. My mom thought that they might be taking pictures for her quinceanera. Teenagers keep looking younger to me every year.
Look! It's that sassy diva again. Work it, girl!
When I become suddenly and inexplicably wealthy, I will travel the world and take pictures of people taking pictures of people in front of famous places and things: The Tower of Pisa, The Eiffel Tower, The Golden Gate Bridge.
