Death Trap

Over the long Christmas weekend we decided to hang out with family.  We took a flight and rented a car.   The car we rented was a 2011 Chevy Malibu.  We were totally big pimpin'.

As we are driving two hours away to go see my brother and his family the car starts shifting in and out of gear, on the highway.  We get off the highway and then it starts accelarating on its on.  The power steering goes out, the locks starting locking and unlocking and the volume starts blasting and going silent.  It was basically a poltergeist death car.

We called AVIS.  We pressed the number that we were in an accident even though we weren't thinking it would get us a human being faster.  It didn't.  We were on hold for 45 minutes.

God bless the iPhone.  We used it to find a close AVIS place and while on hold we carefully and with poltergeists making the car lurge forward went about 3 miles.

We exchanged it out and got a mini-van.

And that is how we spent Christmas.

Follow up: Fail

So remember when I wanted to run a marathon?  I still do, someday, but have to let it go.  With two small kids, the sun setting at 4:30 and it being 30 degrees outside my dreams of being a runner to save the Athenian troops from the Spartans only to die at the end of my epic 26 mile run, has to be shelved.  Someday I will have my life back but right now it is rented out to my small children and that isn't going to change for a while.

However, that doesn't solve my need for exercise problem.  I live really close to a Gold's Gym.  It has a big nursery and classes but I have just hated it.  They have given me a week trial twice and I have yet to go because without even starting I already hate it.  I hate the fictional argument I am going to have when I tell them I living abroad, I hate the idea that I would start thinking about wearing semi see-through hot shorts because that is standard wear, I hate that they are forcing me to meet with a personal trainer who will recommend something like eating 1400 calories and lifting weights.  I don't want any of that.  So I won't join.

My exercise problem was still not solved.  So today I went to a local community gym.  It has a small nursery and Stella went there as a baby when I was trying to get back into shape.  I went to a step class and I was the youngest one in the room.  It felt good.  I am not thinking about hot shorts.  Plus it makes me feel more involved with my community which is important.  Plus on these frigid days it gives the kids somewhere to go.

The Christmas Anti-Miracle: Be Careful for What You Wish for

I love Christmas.  I love the smells, the music, the lights, all of it.  I always have.  And I am not going to lie, I love the presents.  Of course, I like receiving and giving gifts but the thrill of discovering what I am getting has always had the most appeal.  The rush of it all.  I like to peek, I always have.

Every year as a child my siblings and I would make it our goal and mission to figure out what Christmas presents we were getting.  The first year this hunt started I was about six.  My brother matter-of-factly informed me Santa Claus was not real and we were going to find our Christmas gifts which were stashed somewhere in the home.  It was easy that year.  They were in the closet, behind the silk Japanese bathrobe and black cowboy boots that my father owned for some unexplainable reason there they were: Transformers for Spencer, and a roller skating doll for me.

We weren't about to let success go to our heads. My brother made sure to teach us the art of pretending to be surprised.  Here was the schtick, you smiled, shook the present, put your ear to it and then slowly, carefully, you take the present apart only at the last moment to go ballistic and rip it to shreds with excitement that you got _____.  There were some other pointers too: don't try to go for your big guns when picking out the next present to open.  That was a dead give away.  Go for the small stuff and let mom and dad have the grand surprise finale at then end with your best performance yet.  My parents bought the act (just like they bought our presents).  Or at least we thought they did.  

Mom and Dad must have sniffed out our curiosity, because the next Christmas present peeping was not as easy.  I didn't care. I was hooked on the hunt.  That year my mom had all of the presents wrapped at the store so we couldn't see them.  Not a problem for the Darley kids.  We pilfered a razor from the tool kit, carefully cut the tape, and opened the wrapping just enough to see the packaging.  Then we positioned a new piece of tape over the old one so no one would know.  That year I got a Light Bright.  It was awesome. 

The year after, things got even more difficult.  I would like to blame my younger sister Shari who was 3 or 4 at the time --  too sweet to keep a dirty little secret like this.  That year my mom pulled out the big guns.  She hid the presents in the trunk of the Buick, already wrapped.  

Us kids countered with stealing the car keys.

The arms race escalated, and the year I turned 11 my mom never brought the presents home.  Instead they went straight to a neighbor for safekeeping. 

We couldn't get to the gifts, so we followed the trail of paper: a sheaf of receipts my mom carefully kept in her disheveled organizer.  The receipts gave us many clues, many likely gifts, but who would get what?  I knew what I wanted most: an art set.  Not just any art set but a huge professional Urtech art set with water colors, colored pencils, paper, and acrylics with brushes.  This was not a kid's art set.  My mother is a professional artist.  Not a mom who has a hobby but an honest-to-goodness professional artist who sold her paintings for thousands of dollars.  She was not about to buy some generic art set with a few finger paints. She was going to do it right.  And I wanted it.  

The night of Christmas Eve my parents went to the neighbors to claim the goods.  The youger kids had gone to bed, and my older brother Spencer had grown too cool for the hunt, but I was still too excited at the idea of sneaking and figuring out what I got, even though I would open my presents in less than 12 hours.  

I crept downstairs to discover my destiny.

Mom and Dad put all the presents in the center of the living room.  I snuck around the corner and listened to their conversation as they wrapped and sorted who got what.  They couldn't see me and I was so excited to be sneaky and hear not only what I was getting, but everyone else as well.  

They started sorting and figuring out what gifts should go to what kid.  I got excited when I learned I would get a book of fairy tales, an atlas (I was a geography nerd), and a sweater.  I about screamed when I heard Spencer was going to get a Sega.  Then as the gifts were almost done being doled out I heard my non-artist father say, "The art set.  Well, Sunny's pile is looking a little spare.  Let's give it to her."

Mom replied, "Sunny?  Oh she's not very good at drawing or painting.  Lets give it to one of the other kids."

Tears streamed down my cheeks that Christmas Eve.  I sobbed a silent hard cry.  I had heard what my mother thought of my art skills and it killed.

The next day I woke up and pretended to be surprised.  I even pretended to be happy when Michael got the art set that I coveted.  I knew why he got it.  Michael had won the coloring contest at the local grocery store (the prize: an Oreo themed go-cart).  Michael and my mom would spend hours together "drawing what they saw." My younger sister Shari, now a professional artist herself, was not far behind. She created her own illustrated childrens book with my mother, at four.  My mother submitted it for publication and it was considered.  Spencer and my mom would spend hours working on their clay sculptures. My brother John who was a fetus in my mother's womb at this time was even better candidate for the kit than I was.  He went on to become a professional artist.  All of my siblings were very logical choices for the art set.  They all had the natural talent they inherited from my extremely talented mom.  But I wanted the art set because I wanted to be like her and like them.  I wanted to be talented and good at something and more than anything I wanted my mom to believe that I was talented.

I stopped peaking after that year.  Even though the urge was still there, I knew that sometimes it is better not to know.