I fell in love with Kina Grannis when I heard her version of “Can’t Help Falling in Love” in Crazy Rich Asians. This is her version of “Someday” by Sugar Ray, one of the songs she recorded during the pandemic.
Three beautiful things from my past week:
1. Watching World Cup soccer on big screens at an outdoor party in the middle of Dupont Circle.
2. Seeing holiday lights as we drove north.
3. Our new car takes regular gas, not premium, like the last one.
How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world lately?
Wishing you and yours a happy Thanksgiving (and a happy Thursday to those who aren’t celebrating today). I hope wherever and however you mark the day that you have enough, that you are safe, and that you feel loved.
This week’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl is a Thanksgiving freebie. While wondering what new giant balloons we’d be treated to in this year’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, I decided that although Macy’s has historically been great about making balloons that include characters from films, tv, and literature, they might like some suggestions for bookish characters we’d like to see moved from the page to the sky. Here are my top ten recommendations:
How about you? What characters would you like to see added to their giant balloon repertoire?
Also, would you like to join this year’s Virtual Advent Tour? Signups are now open for December.
Welcome to signups for this year’s Virtual Advent Tour. 2022 marks my eighth year as host of this annual event.
A traditional Advent calendar is usually a paper device designed to give kids a way to productively channel their holiday energy by counting down from December 1st until Christmas. Each day, you open a door to find a hidden scene, piece of chocolate, or some other treat. The Virtual Advent Tour is a bloggers’ take on that. In our version, each morning I point you to a post at someone’s blog in which they share something about their holiday season.
Would you be willing to share a holiday post or two in December? You don’t have to declare your topic beforehand, and your post can be as simple or as complex and in any format.
If you’re looking for inspiration, folks have shared new traditions they’ve adopted, old traditions they keep alive, favorite holiday music, charities, recipes, books, events, memories, and more.
If this sounds like your type of fun, leave me a comment below noting what day(s) you’d like. I’ll update this post as people claim days.
A few annual housekeeping notes:
While both the tradition of the Advent calendar and the timing skew Christian, the tour is inclusive and open to anyone who celebrates December holidays of any sort. We love reading about all kinds of celebrations and the traditions you’ve developed around them!
I tend to write my posts shortly after midnight my time (Eastern U.S.) and will schedule them to go live at 6 a.m. If your post is live when I’m writing, I’ll give a little preview and link directly to it. However, if it’s not, no worries. I’ll assume you’ll get it live at some point, and will just embed a song and a link to your blog’s homepage.
Feel free to download and use the 2022 Virtual Advent Tour badge. If you want to share on social media, I use the hashtag #VirtualAdventTour on Twitter.
Thanks in advance for making this one of my fun December traditions! (more…)
A small wave of grief hit me yesterday. It was enough to knock the breath out of me, but not so big as to yank my feet out from under me. But it caught me off guard.
It was a silly thing that did it: a cardinal ornament at the downtown holiday market, where I stopped last night after getting my flu shot. And I thought, I should buy that for Gramma. And there it was: smash!
It’s been more than seven years since my grandmother died. I don’t grieve her on a daily basis the way I did that first year, when I was surprised to discover that you could cry in your sleep, because I woke myself up sobbing one night. Most days, she lives in my memory, content to dispense no-nonsense rejoinders when I kick something while barefoot or roll out a recipe for me when I need a go-to dish and maybe less content that I still play the “even my dead grandmother” game when faced with an onerous task. She is firmly in the past tense now in my life.
Still, I shouldn’t have been wholly surprised by the reaction to the ornament. There were warning signs. I saw a friend on Friday to deliver some lemon squares, and when I told him they weren’t quite right, that they didn’t taste like Gramma used to make, I heard my voice get a little wobbly. But I caught it and we talked about the invisible ingredients that go into recipes that mean you’ll never quite replicate it and that that just has to be good enough sometimes.
I’ve been thinking about grief and the upcoming holidays recently. This will be the first big holiday for Rudi since his mom died, and I know it will be hard. My parents and I will be there, but that fact also will keep the wound raw. He’s got plans to leave us for a few days to head up to the World Cup races in Vermont, and I suspect that break will help. But it’s going to be hard regardless. We’ll all have to take a few extra breaths this year and give each other the time and space and kindness and grace to let our ghosts visit us without having them wash us out to sea.