So this is the new year!

J-term! It sounds odd to have one class for a month, three hours a day, but I’m unabashedly enthusiastic about January term. Focusing on one class means that you can really devote yourself to the subject matter. In past years I’ve taken Intro to Graphic Design and Intro to Creative Writing (and really liked both!). For creative classes, where the focus is on spending large quantities of time making things, I love the mandate to spend all your time practicing your craft. And without the need to juggle work for five or six classes, I almost always do a lot more socializing and sleeping in J-term.

I did take full advantage of Christmas break while I had it, though! I watched a lot of old westerns with my dad, had a bonfire and de-veined shrimp on New Year’s Eve, caught up on sleep, decorated and then took down the Christmas tree, watched Pride and Prejudice (the 6 hour BBC version) with my mom, found out my brother spent his first semester in college being hilariously social and upholding the (absurd and wonderful) traditions of his dorm, and got to see my youngest brother do responsible things like drive and go to work.

What? My youngest brother is old enough to drive?! My other brother is old enough to be in college?! And my mom is (apparently) old enough to go back to school to get her master’s degree in nursing?!

All in all, I think this will be an eventful new year for my family. With three of its members enrolled full-time in college, it will undoubtedly be a challenge.

Thinking back on New Year’s Eve, though, the bonfire keeping away the cold, the fireworks’ cacophony suddenly disrupting the quiet of the middle of nowhere, and the stars slowly becoming visible after the fireworks’ glow faded, I think I’m ready. The year will undoubtedly also include a few beautiful things.

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i do not joke with you. pennsylvanians are crazy.

Pennsylvanians are CRAZY. CRAZY HARDCORE.

This is a tale of Pennsylvanian Christmas Hardcore-ness.

Preface:
I spent Saturday night at Greg’s house, with his family, because he invited me to the Howe Family Christmas on Sunday (his mom’s side). On the way to Greg’s house at about 9 p.m., it was sleeting and dark and freezing and unhappy — the edges of his windshield were forming little ice patches as we drove. The salt trucks were out makin’ the highways safe(r). People were driving stupidly. I was hoping Greg’s new car would not suffer damage in such bad driving conditions.

Act I:
Now, Mrs. Snader has massive amounts of siblings — 7 I think — so mere preparation for this event was way hardcore. Mrs. Snader cooked and carved 40 lbs of turkey the day before, and her sister cooked and carved 35 more. In case you can’t add, that’s SEVENTY-FIVE POUNDS of turkey.

I mean, holy crap, right?

I wake up Sunday morning to the usual Snader household apocalypse (I guess with 5 kids the definition of “inside voice” changes). All six of us kids shower, breakfast, dress, caffeine, bundle up and venture outside. . . ready to go.

Act II:
The weather was not ready to let us go, however. We walk outside to a driveway sheathed in almost a quarter-inch of ice. Every individual blade of grass is iced over, and just shatters underfoot. Halos of ice surround every twig, branch, and tree trunk. The cars? Oh, the cars. Also sheathed in a solid quarter-inch of ice. We used the one ice scraper to chip at the ice around each door of the two cars; half an hour later we’ve broken in and are ready to pile in and leave. (the whole time we were trying to break the ice to get into the cars, Greg’s youngest brother is hip-checking the side of the car to try and shatter the ice.)

Then three people remember things in the house they’d forgotten to get/do, so we wait a while longer.

Then Greg, Charlene, and I pile into his new car and leave to get gas — the driveway was so slippery we don’t want to follow close together. We drive with one tire in the grass. It is way hardcore. Greg cannot see out of either of his side mirrors because hey — they’re still covered in a quarter inch of ice.

Act III:
We get a phone call at the gas station — after we’ve broken into the gas tank — the windshield wipers on Chris’ car are broken. So we go back, pick up the other three kids at the bottom of the driveway so we don’t have to try an drive up the steep icy slope, break into the trunk without an ice scraper to deposit all our belongings, then cram six people into Greg’s car.

Then we drive an hour. Loudly. And with much poking, arguing, yelling, teasing, smushing-one-another-around-curves, more sleet, and lots of rain. And lots of reminding ourselves why the heck we were leaving the house on a day like today, when the weather is utterly terrible. Seventy-five pounds of turkey. Just remember, we have to go eat 75 pounds of turkey.

Finally we arrive at the Howe reunion. We eat almost all of the turkey.

Filed under general, absurdity, humor, travels, winter, snow, Christmas, food | Comment (0)

“and now good morrow to our waking souls.”

This semester has been the weirdest semester of my entire life.

I have never spent more of a semester fighting mad, I have never felt so socially displaced, strengthened a relationship so much, I have never written better poetry, enjoyed a class more, hated a class so much, been more outgoing, been more awkward, made better work, worked less in the studio, worked so hard, enjoyed my job so much, had so many possessions break in a week’s time span, written so many letters, gotten so many letters, learned so much about myself, confused myself more, looked forward to graduation more, and hated the idea of graduation so much.

You begin to understand the jumble?

I never wait until New Year’s to make my resolutions. By the end of the semester, I’m all full of resolutions like “I’m going to work harder, get all A’s, sleep more, eat more healthily, make more friends, and generally kick butt at my life.”

Then I spend the first three days of Christmas break unconscious, waking just in time to celebrate the Advent with my family in fine fashion.

This year, the older of my two brothers is a freshman at Hope College, in Michigan, so I’m looking forward to hearing how his first semester went and whether he will honest-to-goodness be an engineering major. Also, my mom just finished her first semester of grad school (she’s going back to get a master’s in nursing to become a nurse practitioner). I’m sure the break will be full of both academic anecdotes and amazing culinary achievements. I’m going to make an Italian meal, complete with tiramisu, for my family, and we have a traditional new year’s meal with excellent crackers, exotic cheeses, smoked oysters, shrimp, summer sausage, and whatever other delicious delicacy we can think of and pile together. Sometimes we have fondue, since my mom came to love it while she studied abroad in Switzerland.

You know what’s bizarre sounding but delicious? Boursin cheese and grapes. No really. I don’t lie. If you try some, you’ll be glad.

I don’t know if I will post next week, since on Friday I’ll be on the plane toward home, but I will certainly be back with holiday updates on January 11. I only have five finals, and then freedom. . . for two weeks!

Merry Christmas!

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