What There's Time For

Things that are working for the moment

• One song on repeat for weeks on end.  Most annoyingly, this is the only way the kids want to listen to anything.  Most mercifully, they almost always agree on which song must be playing.  After the big roadtrip this summer (sound track provided by my cool sister), we listened to "Oh oh oh oh" for at least six weeks (that would be Britney Spears, Till the World Ends).  It got so bad that whenever Shmoogie caught sight of phone, she would beg, howl and scream for "Oh oh oh oh" until I got it playing and let her hold the phone.  Then she would smile and dance bouncy-like until it stopped and the cycle started over again.  Thus the discovery of the one song repeat function.  We have since been through a slightly shorter period of obsession with "Night!  Night!" (the music video is not family friendly (also, depressingly unimaginative) so I'll just link to the music with lyrics on screen: Black Eyed Peas, I Gotta Feeling).  And now, in a classic mixed blessing, we have moved on from catchy tunes the children love with disturbingly sexual/druggy lyrics the children do not understand to a catchy tune the children love with disturbingly martial lyrics the children do not understand — "Moon, Moon!" (The High Kings, By the Rising of the Moon).  (Mr. Pants, who has lately been asking penetrating questions about the causes of "The Civil Whir", seems to believe this song is a lively celebration of night time.)

 

• Mindless knitting while watching WWDC sessions about preparing your app for iCloud syncing.  It's true I sometimes have to rewind to listen to something again to really get it, but it's actually less often that was happening when I tried to be serious and just watch.  My mind kept wandering.  The knitting seems to help prevent that through the information-poor sections.

 

• Paper chain motivation.  We've had a sticker chart going for months with very little success.  It was too complicated (Mr. Pants could earn up to seven stickers per day for putting on various articles of clothing by himself, then seven stickers translated to $1 which he could spend on whatever).  This is simpler and clearer:  he wants a Lego space shuttle set.  It costs $25 on Amazon.  I helped him make this chain with 25 links in it and when he's completely dressed himself for the day, he gets to take one link off.  So far, he's motivated.  And it's obvious to him how much farther there is to go (instead of the old system where he didn't really understand the concept of stickers translating to money and didn't really understand how much money things cost and kept asking me if he had enough for xyz yet and then having a tantrum when I said no).

 

• Candy Rules:  one piece per day; you pick when you want to eat it.  Even if it's before breakfast (which it very often is).  I got the idea from It's Not About Nutrition and I'm liking it much better than the Great Pumpkin mistake of last year.

 

• Staying busy enough that it is easy to maintain my delusion that Christmas is still months away.

 

What's working for you right now?

***

Now that I've written this, I realize it's partly inspired by Ask Moxie's post, How is running a factory like raising children?  So I might as well link that.  :)

Days

 

The other morning, while I was making toast or something, Mr. Pants asked me, "How many days do we have?"

"What?"  I wasn't sure I'd heard him.

"How many days do we have?"

"What do you mean, 'how many days?'"

"How many days do we have?" he offered no clarification.

I tried one more time, "How many days for what?"

"I don't want to die."

Oh.  "I know, sweetie.  No one wants to die, it's ok."

"Will I not die?  Not ever?"

I looked him in the eye, "Honey," I said, "if you never died, you would be the first person ever who never died."

 

He was quiet for a little while and I asked, "Why are you thinking about dying?"

"Because Abuelo died," was his reasonable answer, reasonable except that we really haven't been talking about Abuelo especially often lately.

"Oh, why are you thinking about Abuelo?" I wondered.

"Because I really love him," he said, sadly.  To which I had no better answer than to hug him and say, "That makes me feel really good."

And, oddly enough, I've had a perfectly matching old song running through my head for weeks now, a song which the Internet helpfully informs me is Thanksgiving Eve by Bob Franke.

What can you do with your days but work & hope
Let your dreams bind your work to your play
What can you do with each moment of your life
But love til you've loved it away
Love til you've loved it away

I'd love to sing it for you, but, you know, copyright and all that.  You can find the full lyrics on Franke's site and you can hear a clip or buy the full track there, too (it's on the third album, The Other Evening In Chicago).

A Morning on the Town

Maybe not everybody's idea of a hot date, but Mr. Right and I had a wonderful time at the Hofburgkapelle for Mass this Sunday.  Hearing the Wiener Sängerknaben (Vienna Boys' Choir) has been on my list of things to do before we even knew we'd be living in Vienna.  I was not going to let this last best chance slip through my fingers just because we have stuff like packing to do.

I'd done some significant legwork just to figure out how to reserve the tickets*, then hauled both kids downtown to pick them up on Friday (between the hours of 11 and 1 only), and we'd gotten the baby sitter to show up before 8 AM on the weekend.

And here, in no particular order, are reasons why Sunday morning Mass at the Hofburgkapelle makes a great date, from my perspective:

1.  You're awake in plenty of time, anyway, because your preschooler wakes you up.  And you barely have to serve breakfast before the babysitter arrives, meaning you're going out as a couple before anything's gone seriously wrong with the day or you've gotten exhausted.

2.  Walking through the center of Vienna, cobblestones washed in clean spring sunshine, before much of anyone is on the streets with you is lots more romantic than braving a crush of drunk humanity after dark on the weekend.

3.  When the highbrow buzz of attending a classical performance wears off, you've still got a chance to chuckle at the music nerd jokes in the program (e.g. Mozart left his first planned Credo setting for this Mass unfinished, just after completing the line 'cujus regni non erit finis'), and if that made no sense, at least make sure you get the reasonably-priced seats with a view of the choir boys (you'll have to watch the priest on a tv screen, though) and they'll entertain you plenty, whether it's one of them grinning and waving at you before the service starts, the beautiful gusto of their opening Kyrie, the bored faces-propped-on-fists during the trilingual homily, the poised seriousness of the boy soprano soloist, the I-so-LOVE-this singing grin of the boy alto soloist, or the realization as they all file out that there are, like, five adults hidden in the background to keep about 30 boys in line.

4.  Picking up coffee and breakfast/lunch on the way home is loads cheaper than dinner.

***

*In case you actually have a chance to go yourself, the process is explained (in German) on their website.  Googletranslate would probably help, but the key point is, you have to send an email with your name, the date you're interested in (list of options on this page), and the price class of ticket you want.  They send an email back to say if they had what you wanted, and then you go pick them up at the box office, with cash.

Mass Emotion

Until two hours before The Wedding, I didn't even realize it was happening on Friday, that's how clued in to the whole wedding hoopla I was.

But then I opened my browser and the front page of the BBC site was covered in headlines featuring the words "wedding" and "today" and I finally figured out...  The royal wedding is today!

So I watched it (the live stream I complained about on Friday got fixed in time, yay!  and Shmoogie napped, double yay!).  And I loved it.

I know lots of people think it's ridiculous to care, that it's a waste of British tax payer dollars and unseemly in the face of budget cuts hurting people who are already hurting...

But there's something about a wedding, isn't there?  I thought the Bishop of London said it perfectly, "In a sense every wedding is a royal wedding."  

Indeed, our wedding was nothing like the royal wedding... and yet exactly like the royal wedding.  Our friends sang Sicut Cervus every bit as beautifully (even more beautifully, in my memory) as the Chapel Royal Choir sang Ubi Caritas.  I know the bride's bouquet smelled like heaven, because mine had lily of the valley, too (which was, in February, a less virtuous choice on my part).  The love and happiness our friends and family beamed toward us felt like the adoring cheers of besotted billions.  And the trumpet fanfares in my heart could have filled any cathedral.

I love going to weddings; each one reminds me of ours and the joy and solemnity of life-long commitment.  Which is why I think the interest in this wedding was not entirely about it being royal (how anachronistic!  how unseemly!), and a lot about it being a wedding.  We the Public hardly ever get the chance to collectively watch any wedding, much less one of such grandeur.

On top of that, who can help feeling moved any time great masses of global humanity are united in emotion over anything?  For the most part, I think, that's a wonderful thing.  The hope when the Wall came down, the excitement over the dawning of this new millennium, the joy that finally came for the people in Tahrir Square, the sense of triumph over a blighted history that came with the election of Barack Obama, even the grief shared around the world on September 11th or after tsunamis and earthquakes.

What's frightening is how easy it is to feel the same heart-swelling collective emotionalism when the root is something more sinister.  Anger, say, or empathy-squashing triumphalism.

I think it's wrong to cheer for death, no matter how awful the person that's died.  And yet, when I read about the jubilant crowds in front of the White House last night, cheering the news that Bin Laden had been killed, my head thought, That is wrong; wrong and dangerous, but I can't pretend my emotional system wasn't already pumping whatever it pumps to make my eyes prick and my chest burst with sympathetic feeling.

Our natural instincts are both wonderful and awful.  At least on Friday, those instincts were channeled towards celebrating love and hope for the future.  (Though I grieve that the news from Syria keeps being buried, I'm not sure that's entirely the wedding's fault.)

***

Let's end with music, shall we?  We don't have a recording of our wedding service, but this is the same song our friends sang for us (we had sung it in college choir together).  The text is from a psalm and says roughly As the deer longs for flowing water, so does my soul long for you, God.

 

A Friday Smile

Is there such a thing as a tragi-comic ballad?  Because I'm pretty sure that's what this is...

 

Ah, the things I am getting out of my German lessons.  :)  I love this song, though the words seem kind of misogynistic.

Aber bitte mit Sahne, by Udo Jürgens.  The translation is (very very roughly):

 

They meet up every day at quarter past three, aaah, oh yeah,

at their table in the corner of the pastry shop, aaah, oh yeah,

and they rush to the cake buffet

to the Black Forest Cherry and the cream stuffed pastry,

to the fruit ice cream, pineapple, cherry and banana,

but please, with cream, but please with cream.

*

They chat and they smack and then get for themselves, aaah, oh yeah,

some more butter cream torte and Bee Sting [that is a delicious one, btw], aaah oh yeah,

they puff and stuff, almost nothing else will go in,

only a Moor's Head more, then it must must come to an end,

for Mathilde, Ottilie, Marie and Liliane,

but please with cream, but please with cream.

*

And the end of the song you have all surely guessed, aah, oh yeah,

Death skims them off, one after the other, aaah, oh yeah,

the ones left behind are too pained for words,

with Sacher- and Linzer- and Marzipan Torte

Liliane, the last one, stayed true to the flag

but please with cream, but please with cream.

*

Then also for Liliane was it finally all over, aaah, oh yeah,

she tipped off the chair in the pastry shop, aaah, oh yeah,

on the coffin instead of wreaths were sugared cakes

and the priest buried her with peaceful words

that the Lord God would pave her way to Heaven,

but please with cream, but please with cream.

*

One more little cup of coffee, but please with cream,

one more little cream puff, but please with cream,

or should it perhaps be only a cookie?

But please with cream.

Some Things, No Amount of Poppyseeds Can Explain

Haydn.  What do you think when you hear the name "Haydn"?  Beautiful, refined instrumental music... Meticulously powdered wigs and precisely buttoned coats...  Aristocracy and patronage and empire...

Yes?  And then a delicately ornate lamp and an understated sign announcing the "Haydn Explosiv" exhibit installed at the very palace where Haydn spent most of his career would seem entirely appropriate, perhaps to the point of being unremarkable?

It would, until you stepped into the exhibit and were confronted with a truly extraordinarily bizarre mash up of staid aristocratic portraits, carpeting in such a variety of clashing prints as to baffle even someone recently employed as a funhouse clown,  lovingly preserved fragile wooden instruments laid out in glass cases, all of it surrounded by the most disturbing sky-blue wallpaper printed with the disembodied neon-toned heads of Haydn and (I think) his patrons, matching drapes, plus modern art of no apparent relation to Haydn or music of any kind, and multimedia presentations clearly conceived by someone with a tenuous grasp on reality.

Like, see, there's one big room in the middle of it all with the carpet everywhere and the wallpaper and some nice old oil paintings to tone it down a little, although they have to compete with the four projection equipment boxes which are encased in mirrors, just in case you'd missed the really incredible carpet, and there's Haydn music playing (at least *that* makes sense) and the serious array of projection equipment is beaming an ever-changing video montage onto the ceiling.  A montage which every once in a while has a few close ups of musicians tuning their stringed instruments (again, sense!) but is mostly composed of grainy clips from (I think) the Apollo 11 launch, slow pans across a sheet of postage stamps commemorating the moon landing, a high-def image of a suited astronaut floating in space, and (change of subject) maps of the Esterhazy Palace grounds (sense!  more sense!) which first arrive on the screen embedded in the back of a very large insect which gave the strong impression of a cockroach, though I believe it was actually something else (uh oh, lost the sense again) crawling across a sheet of music (ah!  there we are with the making sense!).  Then the screen zooms in so all you see is the map, but just when you're starting to relax, here come a small platoon of cockroaches crawling randomly across it, leaving in their wakes fuzzy-edged "erased" paths through which you can see more sheet music. 

Full points for creative expression!

Anyway, we were only in the exhibit to kill a half hour before the start of our tour and to entertain the kids (the nice ladies at the ticket desk told us the kids would love the movie on the ceiling).

The tour (of the "highlights" of the Esterhazy collection) was much more what one would expect.  A room devoted to an enormous china table setting, another room devoted to the largest silver service exhibited as a complete ensemble in the world, some more stately portraits, a few through-the-ages chairs paired with appropriate wall-covering samples, that sort of thing.  There was one baroquer-than-baroque console table, gilded and inlaid with indelicate hunks of brilliant turquoise glass, which the guide was quite proud to tell us was the absolute only one of its kind anywhere in the world (the world should be grateful, is all I have to say, though I'm sorry we didn't take a picture).  And some beautiful old toilets under renovation (Mr. Pants was intrigued).

The children were less enamored of the tour, though Mr. Pants got through it fairly well on the promise of a "treat" after lunch as soon as it was over.  He still asked to be picked up several times and was noticeably fidgety, but I did manage to understand a certain amount of the German-only tour.  Tidbits like the china having cost as much as 4 houses (not sure what sort) back when it was ordered by Prince Somebody-or-other.  The silver service was made not that long ago from all the previously owned family silver which Prince Another Somebody ordered melted down for the purpose.  Not many large silver services remaining in Europe because so much of it had through the ages been sold to finance wars and other excesses.  And the (hideous!) turquoise console table was made just after the Venetian discovery of a new glass recipe which made their glass (the glass from Venice, the glass in the table) the most clear and brilliantly colored glass ever known at that time.  Oh, and either my brain was shutting down from German overload by the end of the tour or Mr. Pants was wanting my attention, because all I caught about this lovely set was that it is the something-est something in Europe.

Now, lest we be in danger of laughing ourselves silly over the whole ridiculous thing and forgetting that, in fact, Haydn's music is amazing, the final stop was the Haydnsaal - a really beautiful concert hall with (according to our guide) the very best acoustics in the world and having certainly hosted many premiers of Haydn's works.  Perhaps with luck and diligence we'll land ourselves tickets to a real performance there, but for this time we had to make do with a recording.  Still impressive.

I Hired a Babysitter Yesterday

It was an early Christmas present to myself and kind of a spur-of-the-moment one.  It's not often that a babysitter is available in the middle of a weekday!

Anyway, I ran some really really mundane errands.  And the biggest one (getting yet another oil change) didn't even work.  I tried a cheaper place (read the post about the last time if you missed it), where they looked the car over and said they didn't have the right filter, sorry.

How depressing, right?  Except, I cannot tell you the feeling of lightness that comes with running errands ALONE.  No one yelling, no one asking me 1001 questions, each differing only very very mildly from the last, no one to buckle in and out of their carseats at every single stop (and then to swing into the back pack), no one whose nap is being infringed on, no one who might just disappear briefly in a parking lot, leading me to imagine (however briefly) that that car right over there might be just about to smoosh him.

It was awesome.

It was so awesome that I hired her again this morning - just to go to the grocery store and make a couple tiny pre-Christmas stops.  So so nice.

And now I might have enough energy to make some more cookies with Mr. HelpfulPants.  Or maybe a project involving glue.  He loves glue almost more than he loves cookies.  Actually, I think he loves glue more than he loves cookies.

But before I go, I've been wanting to ask and just keep forgetting (Amazon links for simplicity's sake - I gain nothing by it!)...

What's your favorite Christmas (or other holiday) music?  (We've loved Traditional and Modern Carols for years.  We even listen to it sometimes when it isn't Christmas.)

Favorite Christmas (or other holiday) book?  (As you already know, I love A Child's Christmas in Wales to no end, but Humphrey's First Christmas is a happy new discovery this year.)

Favorite cookies?  (Mine are probably bourbon balls - a classic yellowed-newspaper-clipping recipe involving Nilla wafers and corn syrup - which in my earliest memories were "for grown-ups only" because we "wouldn't like them" but which quickly became our responsibility to roll into tiny sugar-dusted balls and I remember once being greatly concerned that my little sister was eating way too much of the dough, which my mother considered with a furrowed brow and then issued her judgement, "Well, the sugar would probably make you sick before the bourbon would hurt you.")

Any other favorites I should know about?

Snow Day

It turns out that when Mr. IwannaMakeCookiesPants stays home from school partly because of an icky cough and partly because this...

...got dumped on us overnight, with more coming down at a good clip all day and the roads not good (I tried; it was ill-advised)...


...there is no time for blogging until after bedtime.

We did make cookies, after which the kitchen looked like this (except that most of the floor that you can't see is covered in flour)...

...and doesn't anymore.

We also watched The Nutcracker, which Mr. IwannaMakeCookiesPants nearly chickened out on before it even started because the MGM lion roar "startled" him.  He was actually pretty interested in the whole movie, but needed me glued to his side through the whole thing.  I was highly entertained by his commentary, especially his concern that the Snowflake dancers would be hungry because, where is their refrigerator?  And his delight that, See!  They're turning around just like I do!  Also, his because-I-said-so deus ex machina at the very end when he declared that Fritz (the mean little brother) had become good, see (even though Fritz wasn't even on the stage for the second half and Tchaikovsky seemed really unable to care less about any potential redemptive glimmer hiding in that character).

And then we tried to collaborate on a Christmas present for Shmoogie.  He was going to hack up some pretty colors of felt, which I would then arrange artfully on the hat, but he's still just getting the hang of cutting paper with scissors and the thick felt was not a big success.  Maybe he can pick out buttons.  Some other day.

Way Back in the Early 80's

Way back in the early 80's, the first tree I can remember was the most splendid tree I've ever had.  For years, the trees just kept getting less amazing (though I still loved them enough to wake up in the middle of the night, plug in the lights, and sleep the rest of the night on the couch) and it took me a long time to realize that the trees weren't changing and my memory wasn't ridiculously rosy, it's just that I got taller.  See, way back in the early 80's, our Christmas tree was more than twice as tall as me.

Also way back in the early 80's, I loved Sesame Street (and Mr. Rogers, but that's a different story).  When it was fund drive season, some nice person would come on the screen and say, "I have something important to tell your mommy or daddy - could you go get them for me?  I'll wait for a minute," and I would dutifully go and get my mom (not always easy) to listen to the special message.  Normally, I think, my parents gave a regular annual donation to our PBS station and ignored the pledge drives.  But there was one year when the entry-level "thank you gift" was an LP of the brand-new Sesame Street Christmas Sing-Along.  I wanted it sooooooo badly.

Eventually, an exception was made, the album arrived weeks later in the mail, and Dad copied the LP to a blank cassette tape.  (I don't know if they were releasing it on cassette that first year, but if they were it would have required a much larger donation.)

 My sister and I listened to that tape for years every night at bedtime.

Anyway, you can imagine how much I have wanted to have that album for Mr. LovesBertPants.  But the original cassette is long gone, the LP is at my Mom's house, and the second cassette my Dad made for me the year before he died (without me asking; it was very sweet; he put the sound track to Annie on there, too, but that's a different story) got lost (or stored) somewhere in the shuffle of moving overseas with a toddler while pregnant, renovating our house, and passing on the car which had our only cassette player in it.

I wanted this album for Mr. LovesBertPants so badly, I even asked my Mom recently (who is not at all the sort of person you would ask for something like this) to figure out how to digitize the LP.  All this, because repeated Internet and iTunes searches had turned up nothing.

But yesterday?  Yesterday was an awesome day.  Not only do we now have a tree more than twice as tall as me...

...we also jammed to The Sesame Street Christmas Sing-Along while putting the lights up (a lengthy process handled primarily by Mr. Right, who required a beer break after the needing-a-ladder (and in some cases a bent coat hanger) section).

I don't know if they just re-released it, or if I'd been somehow searching on not quite the right terms all this time, but it's on iTunes now.  And the best song is on YouTube (at least the best song I remember clearly - it seems I must have always fallen asleep during Silver Bells).

 

Of course, now we've just destroyed any chance Mr. LovesBertPants would have had to repeat his originally-proportioned Christmas tree memory as an adult, but he might not mind, since he kept gravitating towards the ones just a few inches taller than him.  Don't you want that really big one, hon?  We kept asking.  No, he kept scowling, Let's just get this little one.  He was overruled.  But he does seem to like the big one pretty well now.

Every Blasphemer Needs a Theme Song

If the Mr. MusicPants original composition "Song about Lightning the Queen" starts out, I wanna be Lightning the QUEEN!

...and his freshly original "Song about Mater" is essentially, I wanna be MATER the tow truck!

 

... I'm guessing you won't be surprised that the ever popular "Song about Thomas" goes, I wanna be Thomas the Tank ENGINE!

And you could probably guess the first (and, really, only) line of the precocious young artist's "Song about God"?