Honbons: And Other Year End Gifts

Mama and Papa Hon showed up on our doorstep the weekend before Christmas. There was a collective firing up of ovens in preparation for seeing each other. Laurie and Don arrived with breakfast casserole, Frosted Heroine, peanut M&M's, espresso toffee, peanut butter buckeyes, and homemade muscadine sauce, and Dad had a full supper on the table when they arrived. Buncha feeders.

The Holiday Shanghai Tournament began around 10pm. We put on a James Taylor radio station and tried our hardest to focus on the game even though we were all talking over each other about life. We noted that we've haven't seen each other so close to Christmas before and the added red velvet details and sparkly glittering trees made it all feel extra special. We promptly began discussing our future existence on "The Compound" - a farmlife-lite style cultish existence, ideally on Wadmalaw Island, where upon each family has their own home on the perimeters of the "Club House, where we will play cards and eat things until we all die. Brett isn't sold on the idea - he knows he'd be the groundskeeper as everyone else descended into decrepitude. We snacked and hummed. Dad blamed his unintellectual comments on his medication and Don provided background bass and obtuse musings.

Because they are beaming light sources of peacefulness, we had Springtime weather while the Hons were here. Will, Kate, and Evan had to sit this one out on account of moving to Richmond VA on that very weekend. Instead we brought over Georgie, Gigs, and Dave for a lowcountry boil. Ellen, Lee, and Brett were there too but they had to sit at the kids table in the other room. At the dinner table, we told stories of travel mishaps and bathroom blowouts. These are the things that matter. 

A visit highlight was a boat outing with Uncle Dave. The grownups went to a late breakfast at James Island's newest eatery, and then we met Uncle Dave at the marina just in time for low tide. We all stared at the boat landing with its few inches of wiggling water. "This'll be fine," someone said, and then Dave backed the boat right on down and sure enough, it floated. 

The Union clan thought it was chilly but the Hon's think we're just a bunch of sandlapper weenies.

We puttered and sped all through the harbor, spending a long chunk of time watching a containership make its way to the port. We passed by Brett's biggest engineering project to date, the raising of the Battery Wall, and all noted that it doesn't look any taller. We bobbed passed neighbor Jeff in a friend's boat, peeked in on the Tetanus Party Boat, and then came on in from the "harsh" elements. 

I like this next blurry picture because it looks like Don is recoiling from me, which is what I imagine most people wish they could do when I approach with thoughts and questions. At this moment though, Don was telling me about Woodrow Wilson, and I remember this because I wondered what made him think of U.S. presidents in the first place. I think it all started with Taft, but Don was sitting up there by himself so it must have been his own stream of consciousness.   

Brett and I had a Christmas party to go to, so I missed the final night/ Holiday Shanghai Tournament Finals, but I'll tell you that it ended with a tie. 
But you know I showed up bright and early on Sunday morning to soak up the last few nuggets of wisdom. First the Hon's planned to go to church before they headed home, then everyone decided to watch church from home, and then, before we knew it, we had talked through the whole thing. Laurie told us all about Evan, Dad talked back surgery, I told them about the time decided to be a life coach and wound up chatting with a handicapped, wannabe trans-person with a bad attitude, and Mom made sure the coffee pot never went empty. 

Ooh what a cozy warm way to wrap up a year. Until our next Christmas on the compound...

A Bustling December

You see how much time has passed between these informative blog posts? We've been all hustle and and bustle and Christmas cookies around here. Oh there have been birthdays and friend visits and holiday gatherings. Baking and barking and small backyard fires. We had a Hon visit in there too, with a low country boil, a boat ride, and the Holiday Shanghai Tournament. 

I'm using this post as my end of year photo dump, starting with my Elephant Ears because they've only got a few weeks left before the frost will kill 'em and I just really like them.

Ahh we started the month with our last wedding and subsequent last round of Car Tetris for the year. Packing the cars with all the wedding crap is something I enjoy doing. Everything is square or rectangular so it's really just a wet and heavy 3-dimensional puzzle. I'm honored to be known for my ability to efficiently pack anything from suitcases to grocery bags. I rotate and arrange and use every square inch available, and the results are pure satisfaction. Now why have I paired a car full of blooms with a gooey caramel cake? Because my holiday baking just couldn't wait for the appropriate season, so I started baking back in November. The total number of cookies baked must be in the hundreds. There was a babka, Moroccan pasties, multiple cakes, and a failed attempt at a puff pastry tart, but the point is, I need to cut back on The Great British Baking Show. 

Just before the last wedding, Brett began setting yard residue on fire, including lots of my dead sticks and stumps from the wedding season. Usually I throw everything into our compost bin but it is currently at max capacity. The roaring flames enlivened Brett's caveman ancestry and he rummaged around all over looking for things to burn. He was still out there well after dark.

We celebrated Chelsea's birthday at a fun spot on the water. It was a balmy nice day (we've had a wonderfully mild December) and we ate all the things a person should eat on their birthday.

Dad has continued what seems to be a month long experiment with his facial hair. We've had the pleasure of lots of family time, which means lots of one-liners from Popples. We mostly enjoy watching him enjoy his own commentary. 

The girls partook in a series of Holiday brawls, mostly indoors when we least expected it, and are now living in a light lockdown. They are together for just a few hours each day and otherwise rotate between being locked in a bedroom and having the privilege of "family time." We're loosely trying to figure out who we can give one to. We can't live like this... but we love them so much. Their previous warden/trainer Simms, is coming back by in January to "refresh" their lessons and help brainstorm some solutions. 

Here's Brett using our big new table to stretch out his quads. He's had a stressful month - one not conducive to spending all waking hours with your in-laws. All of his project clients got all whipped up about end of year deadlines and threw extra work at him just when he expected to wrap things up.

This year we did Christmas Eve with The Unions and Christmas Day with the Eisenhauers. And by Unions, I mean Mom's side. Aunts and uncles and cousins, oh my! There were squirming tikes, lots of sweets, and Erik and Chelsea were honorary family members for the night. 

Over at Jeff's house, we celebrated with four boys under 7 years old and it was a kind of mayhem I haven't experienced since Christmas in Orangeburg. Jeff's two boys (right) and Maura's two (left) shared a bench seat and they swatted and slapped and cackled all through dinner. I thought of the Brady Bunch and found myself wondering if Jeff and Maura have seen the Brady Bunch. I thought of the boys all being in high school at the same time and the amount of food they will consume. 
Brett and I relished in how quiet our house was when we got home. 

Foolishness

How have I only done one post this month? I've been writing up a slurry of things - seems like some of it should have wound up on my blog space. In addition to the "important" things I've been working on - more on that later- I've been thinking about two things. 

1.) My tendency to have conversations with myself out loud as though I'm not alone in a room.

2.) People describing me as a calm person. 

I'll start with the former. Every morning I sit with my cup of tea and I say my prayers. These I say internally, so you'd never know I was working up any sentences. Towards the end of my prayer time, my thoughts descend into lunacy and I wind up on a tangent that God probably tunes out because there are no direct requests or notes of gratitude involved. I imagine he mutes himself and takes another call because I forgot to hang up and he's much too loving to ever hang up first. 
While he helps another person with their real problems, my train of thought on Ellen having a healthy baby will lead to an indictment against excessive human breeding without preconsidering the many obstacles. "What do you mean?" I ask myself internally. But at some point I answer out loud, as though I'm being interviewed. When I realized I'm being interviewed, I have to turn on the charm, you know, for the audience, and before I know it I'm telling a riotous story from the college years as though there is someone else in the room with me. 

While I don't think this is normal behavior, I don't worry that I'm alone on this one. That being said, I've always been over confident in the relatability of my human experience. If I think and feel it, surely everyone else does. However, I am often told I'm strange, so maybe I should worry. Somedays my prayers turn into a job interview (I always nail 'em), the retelling of a classic Union story, sometimes I'm working out a complicated political system (helps to say it out loud) and other times I'm a featured guest on The Graham Norton Show. 
Today my prayers turned into the larger question of why I so frequently have audible discussions with myself. I offered many reasons: verbalizing leads to articulation, because no one else will talk to me, a lifelong fondness for interview shows, and because it helps to keep your thought train on its tracks. Your mind can't wander as far when you can hear the mania in real time.

Enough about that. Number 2. 

I am frequently accused of being calm, which mostly delights my but occasionally I feel like a real con artist. "You're so serene," a coffeeshop girl will tell me. "You have a soothing aura," a hairdresser stated. "Love your chill vibe," said a girl with a lip ring. 

"You see Laura there," a teacher once said to the class, "She'll be great with high pressure clients because she's so calm." I took their words with great pride and also hoped I'd never have high pressure clients.
I sure am a calm person on the outside, but it's just a mask I wear to try to fool my insides. Inside, clowns are doing cartwheels, bombs go off in morse code patterns, and there's water rushing from somewhere. A red alert alarm rings in my ear all day. "What was that sharp pain my chest? Is that car listing towards me? I think I sent those tourists in the wrong direction."

It's that the reaction part of my brain is calibrated all wrong. I'll really panic when things aren't so bad, like running late for a meeting or accidentally insulting someone. Oh my mind explodes with worry. My mood sours, my patience wanes, my heart beats up in my ears. My ability to perform simple tasks crumbles beneath my steadfast thumbs. 
But when something goes very wrong; medical emergencies, dog fights, or flower shipments that don't arrive, I loop back around to being a zen master. 

Below is a chart I've made of Big Lue's Reaction Calibration

Sure, I glide down the sidewalk with no reaction to the world around me. But that's because if I react, my brain will go into a true panicked state. It's like living with a nervous toddler narrating my consciousness. I've had to develop a second stoic-adult-consciousness to reassure the first one.  I must deny the toddler. If I give in even a little, I'll drown. 

It's like that time Ellen and I were on that winding bus in Budapest, both on the verge of blowing chunks. If I sat still and focused, I could make it through. Ellen however prefers to release her anxiety steam by narrating the very catastrophe before our eyes. I don't suppose there is a correct way to handle your problems, but no one ever calls Ellen calm.  

Anyways, here are a few silly pictures from Thanksgiving at Gigs n' Big Dave's.

Happy Things

 Here's a picture of Olivia looking like a porcelain doll. 

I've finished the last of my weddings for the year and have three weeks "off" to bake things and write stories and find ways to outrage Brett. I've put "off" in quotes because even though everyone around me scoffs at my working hours and chuckles when I'm relived to be free, I still have emails and proposals and bride meetings during my breaks, so there. 

Somehow I've been added to a list of contributing writers for that newspaper I was telling you about. I didn't sign up for this, nor did anyone ask me first, nor do they pay me, but they send me assignments and deadlines and I'm not entirely sure that I'm happy about it. It is a fortuitous happenstance and that's not lost on me. It's how the lazier version of me wanted things to go in life (that whole "opportunities falling into your lap" bit) but I don't have the time, or perhaps ability, to do the job as well as I'd like to. I wouldn't have taken on a monthly column writing job with the mix of things we've got going on at the moment. Now I know I just pointed out that I'm free for three weeks but that doesn't mean I'm watching reality tv and eating ice cream. Also, they've been making me interview business people for the column and I really don't like doing that. But I'll keep writing for them because I'm too polite to tell them that it's an inconvenience. However, in honor of the holidays, I interviewed my lovely friend Chelsea about her cookie business. You can read it here if you're interested. 

Pippi has reached a balance of pill-popping and personality and she's back to laying on me whenever possible. The more uncomfortable I am, the more she likes it.

She is well-known (and loved) at the vet's office by now and will strut right in to get her blood drawn because she's a seasoned pro. She's the most interesting mix of fearless and skittish. 

Grace is still indifferent towards existence, but she's sweet when Brett is around.

We met some new friends while celebrating Ellie's birthday...

and made Erik come over to try Brett's "Lee-inspired" eggnog and these molasses cookies we've discovered. He left happy about it.

Something came over me and I went berserk on Cyber Monday. In previous posts I've mentioned the inability of any direct descendent of Sadie Union's to pass up a deal. Now that the phones and computers keep track of what you're perusing about, they all teased and seduced me with major blowout sale prices. I bought lots of things, which is something I rarely do, and I've been staring through the window, watching for the mail lady everyday since. I'm embarrassed for her to notice the extreme uptick in packages. "What a greedy little troll," she will think about me as she heaves a hefty thigh out of her mail truck and waddles up the path to our front door. (Am I being defensive?)

I take a lot of pride in my thriftyness. I'm also proud to be empathetic and accommodating, and I always thought these would be the traits of mine that my future husband would really admire. But in reality, Brett wishes I would throw away the "rags" that I wear, buy some clean new clothes, and quit being so selfless. You just can't please some people. 

He was proud to hear that I cracked open my wallet and he's been overly approving of my new duds just to prove a point. It all looks ridiculous and we both know it. I also ordered a small piece of furniture and didn't tell him about it. It gets here on Friday and I'm 92% sure that he won't like it. 

I had also figured that my future husband would leave the "nesting" to me. Do you think Chris Union cared how Mom arranged the furniture? Do you think Chris Union even knows what color the walls are in his own bedroom? Crap no! Earlier this year he complimented a "new" painting Mom had hung. "It's been there 15 years," she replied.

Therefore, I learned that men don't care about these things and I have free rein over interior design. I was shocked to find that Brett has opinions on this matter (I genuinely asked him if he was in the closest - he resented the question and continued to date me anyways) and frequently protests my decorative additions. The green velvet piece of furniture that arrives on Friday is sure to spark holiday outrage.