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!

Filed under general, fish-eating, winter, Christmas, food | Comments (2)

the wacky wednesday worries

“Elena!” I burst into my dorm room and accost my roommate without even saying hello. “Can you give me some advice?”

Elena looks up from where she had been peacefully drinking coffee and looking out the window at the snow-covered world. “Uh. . . sure.”

“Is it stupid to go to town in this much snow?” The heavy flakes hadn’t stopped falling all morning. I’m a southerner (at least by adoption), and I admit once again that I thoroughly lack knowledge about how to order my life in the winter. What does a snow advisory mean? What snow is too much snow? How early do the trucks get out there and salt the roads? What do I do if I hit ice? How much farther than normal should I follow behind a car if there’s a single snowflake in the air? Should I be carrying a shovel in my car? Or emergency flares or something?

“Well. . . I don’t think you’ll die or anything,” Elena said, clearly laughing at my panic. Seriously, though, if those large snowflakes had been falling on Hartselle, Alabama, everything would be closed down. If there’s even a forecast of snow, people buy the grocery store out of milk and bread.

You may laugh, too, but my anxiety level about driving in the snow is acute. Especially since my car developed a coolant leak (out the main intake valve — whatever that means) last week and the “Service Engine Soon” light has been on for a month. Oh, my ‘97 Chevy Lumina. Reliable, sort of, in that it so far it has not yet developed problems when I’m in the midst of the 13.5 hour drive home.

I’m not alone in my car troubles (and I hope not alone in my panic over snowy roads — although that sounds like I am wishing panic on my friends and I am certainly not!). Many of my college compatriots are driving used and/or elderly cars. Most of us also look forward to the day when we have real jobs and can afford a car with a little less personality and a little more reliability.

A car with personality does mean, however, that we can come up with amazing names for our cars. My lovely delapidated Lumina is named Gustav. For some reason, Gustav sounds like a name that ought to be green, like my car, and frog-like (which my car is not, at least, not yet. I’m not ruling out the idea that it may someday transmutate while I’m en route to the grocery store into something green and undriveable, remarkably like a frog). I asked around the office and it turns out that car names can be horrifically original. “The Red Death Wagon” is one Matt remembers from his college days. Apparently it saw 100 mph on a regular basis. “Edna” is another delightful moniker for a mechanical monstrosity. Oh, and my favorite? Dan Custer’s sisters named their car “Shabookie Bessie.”

I think my car got off lightly. Even if I do berate it when it breaks.

Filed under general, absurdity, humor, winter, snow, incompetent southerners, oddly named cars | Comment (1)

“and when we sing I hear another devil dies”

I love fall and winter. These two season are an equation for both stark and abundant beauty. And together, they equal lots of hot chocolate and tea and coffee and cuddling up in blankets to read my favorite books. Well, at least as a kid they equaled my favorite books. Now it’s more like homework. Can I ask a question to northerners? Is there an equation for determining when it is appropriate to get out one’s winter coat? I didn’t even own one until I came to Messiah, since I live in Alabama where we get an annual snowfall of one flurry. And it never even sticks to the red Alabama clay.

Maybe I over-reacted to the cold, just a little, that first winter. I wore three layers at all times and the coat my family kindly purchased so I didn’t freeze to death on the way to class is so puffy and huge that in itself it weighs fifteen pounds. It is also, coincidentally, the same bright yellow-green of my living room walls back home. I didn’t exactly master appropriate footgear for winter at first, either. The first snow delay we had at Messiah, I went out to play in the snow — in clogs. Um. . . yeah, that was cold.

Then came learning to drive in snow. I didn’t realize that I should check my antifreeze, get a shovel to put in the trunk of the car, or budget time to warm up the car before driving anywhere. I also didn’t exactly grasp how much extra time I would need for braking, either. At least I learned without actually getting into an accident.

So now I’m seeking out things to do indoors to entertain myself. Not that midnight walks are unpleasant in the winter, there is just much more gearing up and girding of the loins that goes on. And somehow I lost one of my gloves since last winter. How does that happen? Are there glove gremlins or something?

One of the indoor activities my boyfriend and I enjoyed last weekend was a visit to the Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire, conveniently located only 45 minutes from campus (although maybe Messiah does not tout that as a local attraction).

Mmmm. . . I remember my sophomore year Lucy and I visited the Faire and had roasted pecans. . . So delicious! So sugary and warm! It rained all day, so we were among the very few visitors and got to interact with many of the Faire’s denizens (including Will Shakespeare!). And Lucy is an individualized major here at Messiah, studying Medieval and Renaissance history, so she loves the old language and food and of course the enthusiastic improv. My favorite part of that visit involved Will Shakespeare. He tried to get us to act out Romeo and Juliet, feeding lines from the play to participants. He abridged, them, however — and Lucy knew the play so well that she quoted the correct, full lines, and Will was flabbergasted. We were so glad to get into the car afterwards and turn the heat on high.

But wait, you say, it sounds like the Renaissance Faire is outside, and I thought you were seeking indoor activities! Why yes, it is outdoors, and in fact it’s also closed for the winter. However, the Faire also hosts various performances throughout the winter months, such as spooky performances of Edgar Allen Poe’s work near Halloween and Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol near (you guessed it) Christmas.

Greg & I went to the super spooky Edgar Allen Poe performances, where we saw interpretations of “The Cask of Amontillado,” “The Pit and the Pendulum,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and last but certainly not least, “The Raven.” All the characters came back from the dead (so to speak) to entertain visitors at the old mansion on the Faire property. Surprisingly enough, Will Shakespeare appeared in this performance at the Faire as well. Only this time, he appeared as Fortunato, who gets walled up in a basement and buried alive in “The Cask of Amontillado.” I’m sure he didn’t remember Lucy or I, but I enjoyed seeing him take on another role.

I admit, I enjoy blogging on Fridays. I can wholeheartedly speak cheerfully about the coming days, because they’re the weekend. I myself intend to abandon the role of conscientous student, at least for today, and curl up with a movie, some hot chocolate, and maybe a book. Have a happy Friday!

Filed under general, lollipops, the renaissance faire, winter, fall, snow, incompetent southerners | Comment (1)