The Whirl of Gaiety

This last week has been one of fun and frivolity…at least such as a couple of middle aged folks with a teen daughter living in the suburbs could expect. And actually, that means a very nice week indeed.

Saturday, of course, was Christmas. We slept in a bit, which befits the teen daughter thing. Those of you with young children have this to look forward to…the day when you have more trouble sleeping on Christmas Eve than your child(ren) do(es). We woke her up at 9ish. We had a nice morning here, with gifts and omelets and phone calls with family. Then we took showers and got dressed and went out to a Christmas celebration with more family, more gifts, dinner. All really nice. My contribution was a lovely pear & cranberry crisp. Yum. Here’s a picture of me and Gen…look at how cute she is in her Christmas Elf collar!

Sunday was shopping and returns. Mostly for Maya. Someday I’ll learn not to buy clothes for a teen, but somehow it seems more fun for her to open boxes of clothes she doesn’t want than a gift card for things she does want, so I ask far away family for the cards, and I buy her things she might want, which she returns. This is a process. When she was younger, she lied to me and said she liked what I got her. I prefer to return the clothes and get her something she will wear. So, she took back clothes, and cashed in gift cards, and ended up with a lot of new clothes. I remember being 14. Clothes rock.

Monday, Ted and I took a trip on the Napa Valley Wine Train. His parents gave us tickets for Christmas LAST year, and we finally got off our butts and used them now. My impression of the wine train is that it’s worth doing a few times. It’s beautiful scenery, esp in early winter and early spring. After that, things turn kind of brown around here. Note that the price of a ticket includes the trip and a nice lunch or dinner, but not wine, so if you don’t drink alcohol, you won’t be missing out. If you do, the wine is reasonably priced, so you can have as much or as little as you want.

Ted made a slide show of pics from my new camera (thanks Dad!) here.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgCe4wTBjV8[/youtube]
One of my Christmas gifts this year was two tickets to Cavalia, which is perhaps not accurately, but still best, described as Cirque du Soleil with horses. If you don’t really care about horses, this probably isn’t the show for you. Because if you’re looking for horses to do all sorts of crazy things that horses cannot or will not do, you’ll be disappointed. But if you love horses, if you think they’re gorgeous and understand a bit of their capabilities, strengths, weaknesses, and beauties, then I think you’ll love this show. There are 52 horses in the show, a combination of stallions and geldings, from 6 months to 18 years. Some of the horses are not happy with being ridden, and they are encouraged to learn the kind of training and tricks that people and horses can do together without riding. Some of the horses are very happy with being ridden, and for them there is dressage, stagecoach/roman chariot racing, and western riding. And there are acrobats, flying through the air with the aide of ropes. All accompanied by live new age music/drum beats. Ted gave me two tickets for Christmas, and told me to ask whomever I want. A generous gift indeed, as the tickets are NOT cheap. I asked my friend Janet, who I went to school with in Stockton, but who now lives in Texas. We took BART in to San Francisco, had a nice lunch of lobster bisque and crab salad at Boulevard, then went to the show. After the gorgeous show, we came home and had a delicious roast chicken dinner, made by Ted. I married well, don’t you think?

Wednesday was mostly relaxing, though we went out for a lovely dinner (hit and miss, actually), at one of our favorite restaurants, Rivoli (link is to Ted’s review). I was happy, because I ordered well, but Ted’s fish was charred, and Maya’s ravioli a bit too rich. They recovered well, and I suspect we’ll go back…though to be honest, I’m not as happy with their ambiance since they redecorated as I was before.

Thursday was mostly relaxing, though Maya and I did go downtown and spend some more Christmas money on clothes (for her), plus boots and a jacket, also for her. I like the rhythm of one busy day, one quiet day, on vacation, so this was fine for me. Oh, I also had my annual mammogram on Thursday. Not my favorite dr. visit, but not the worst by any means, and I’ve had friends who have had breast cancer detected this way, so it’s not something I take lightly.

Friday was my birthday, which we spent going out to a nice brunch in Berkeley at Fat Apples (love it!), which is famous for their whole wheat pancakes, pumpkin pancakes, burgers, and Caesar salad, with Dorothy and John. Then we went to the track to watch some horse races, which was a lot of fun. Once you get past the depression of the folks there to gamble in a serious way, and get outside into the fresh (cold!) air, with the beautiful horses, all is well. We had a mixture of wins and losses, but we all had a great time watching the gorgeous horses run their hearts out. The first two races I wasted a bit by trying to get a picture, and missed the action.

The first race I got nothing, the second, I got empty track, then the last horse flying by, but not the winners. Learned a lesson about living in the moment right then, didn’t I? We came home, and Ted made a wonderful dinner of Spaghetti and Meatballs, and we watched one of my all time favorite movies, “Out of Africa”, then went to bed at about 1. We took a break in the middle and went to see Ted’s family at a New Year’s party, which was a lot of fun as well.

Saturday (New Years Day) was mostly relaxing. We intended to take down the tree, but didn’t get down to it. Went to see the amazing and VERY intense Black Swan, and came home for a good luck dinner of split pea and ham soup, from one of my favorite cookbooks ever, the New Basics Cookbook. I had worn my old copy out so much that it was falling apart, so I was very grateful to receive a new copy for my birthday.

Today we’ll get to that tree, I’m sure. Also wanting to clean out one of our closets, but I need to go to target first and hopefully get some kind of container for gift wrap first. It’s a rainy sort of day, which I adore. And we have a party to go to this afternoon, for some friends who are visiting from Australia. It’s a pot luck, and I’m bringing a pasta dish from that same lovely cookbook. Nice!

It was a great week, and I’m really glad that we all had it off from work and school. I think of people who suffer depression after the holidays, and I think maybe that’s from the rush up to Christmas, and then a let down after. For us, yes, there’s the rush before, but then we have that week after to relax and enjoy ourselves before jumping back into the routine of daily life, so it’s not depressing at all. It was a lovely week indeed. Happy New Year to everyone.