Week 11

The thing is, if I continue to publicly bare my soul on this blog, I am not being completely honesty until I confess: in addition to loathing Okra Ikea and despising Halloween . . . yes, I have a bone to pick with Christmas as well. This must not come as much of a shock really. “Lighten up, Chick,” you must be thinking, “is there nothing in this world you enjoy?!” Believe me, I have caught myself thinking the same thing actually. I wasn’t always this way. As a child, of course, I fully subscribed to the magic and fun of all of these things (aside from Ikea, which I’m pretty sure I never enjoyed). I won’t bore you with another self-indulgent diatribe on overdone holidays (see my post on Halloween for that) except to say, as an adult, the garishly commercial presents presence of Christmas suddenly seems to be all I can see what with the gnawing responsibility of forming something as enormous as, oh I don’t know, a child’s belief system. So when we travelled to Prague last week in Keegan’s self-proclaimed search of not so elusive Christmas, I was quietly relieved when we realized we had neglected sufficient due diligence and found ourselves touring the city exactly one week BEFORE the festivities and infamous Christmas Markets arrived. Herein lies the irony, however. The one holiday, gobble gobble, I actually do enjoy (which in turn Keegan scoffs at, another subject entirely) is the ONE holiday I had completely forgotten due to current location until my NYC friend said, “What are you guys doing for Thanksgiving?!” “Oh crap, Thanksgiving is this week?! I guess we aren’t doing anything . . .” I couldn’t get off the phone with her until I accepted the warm and generous invitation of dinner at her place and Liam and I spent an intimate late afternoon with her and her hubs, her parents, and the kiddos. We enjoyed a scaled down version of the classic Thanksgiving spread, complete with our contribution of Pumpkin Pie.

And by the way, regardless of my grumpy and cynical sentiments towards all things completely fantastical to a child, I do manage to put on a happy face for Liam’s benefit and more often than not, his excitement is so freaking contagious anyway, it’s not always an act. In fact, I even felt a slight authentic twinge by our plans to take Liam to “Winter Wonderland” in Hyde Park this weekend and do a bit of Christmas shopping together on Saturday date night, wishfully thinking perhaps here would be different given every holiday since I have arrived in this country has been the complete opposite experience from home. Alas, by the end of the weekend, however, Scrooge had returned to his mighty throne upon my left shoulder, whispering into my ear bad, bad thoughts regarding Santa and his eight reindeer. My intention was to have beautiful, emotive photographs of ice sculptures, twinkling lights, and Liam’s angelic face as he saw “snow” falling from the sky. Instead I have a mostly empty camera and my British Life in Instagram (a fun change of pace for me to create photos so freely on the spot with the I-phone) to share for now. I have great hopes for photographic genius this weekend as we have planned both the annual Anderson Family Self Photoshoot with tripod and camera (why I have not hired a professional for this over the last few years I cannot explain only to say that stupidly, I continue to think I can manage it on my own) and a day trip to Cambridge (squeal). More to follow . . .