So it's not really a break so much as it is a change. I don't have to get up at 7 am, unless the cats decide that I should, and they're being quite reasonable so far. I don't have to help with homework. And there's a Christmas tree in the living room and tins of cookies all over. Otherwise, not much different.
We had an OK Christmas, very low-key. I had struggled mightily with presents, and from the reactions I got I thought maybe I shouldn't even have tried. Oh well, I'll rethink this next year. Teen B was mildly pleased with his new t-shirt (he's worn it once) and his new pajamas (he's worn them twice). He pronounced his new slippers "zesty" and has not worn them. Teen A was not pleased with his soft gifts. He has not worn his new shirt nor his new pajamas nor his polar bear socks. Oh well. They both wolfed down the candy in their stockings, and Teen B has expressed interest in using the German pretzel mix he received (Teen A has pointedly ignored his 12 cans of oysters). Nobody has wanted to play MadLibs or make the new puzzle. Teen A didn't even open the "cat-a-pult" that was in his stocking, much less play with it.
I looked at the pile of paper and gift bags afterwards and thought: huh! What was the point of all that? Again, I must think this through better next year. Maybe we don't need a lot of presents to open. But if we get rid of presents, will the twins even want to celebrate Christmas with us? I started feeling insecure, like I haven't done a good job of instilling Christmas traditions in them over the years. For example, I've never really taught them how to give presents. When they were younger I used to get them involved in choosing presents for dad, and for our next-door neighbor. But these days they don't show any interest in buying or making presents for other people. That is undoubtedly my fault, and it's partly because I'm so lukewarm about the whole gift-giving thing anyway. They haven't had a good model. Rocket Boy is not good at it either. But also I think they're a little selfish, don't want to spend their money on other people. That was one thing when they had no money, but now they get $20/week. They could buy some little gifts for family members.
Of course, what would they get us? Rocket Boy didn't even get me a present this year. He asked me, rather desperately, what I would like, and I said a new frying pan to replace our two that have the non-stick coating coming off. I said it could be a joint present (since we both cook). So we went to McGuckin's together and bought it (I paid for it), and he put it in a gift bag. I couldn't think of anything to get him, since the house is full of chocolate and tea, and I promised him no more new shirts, since his closet is full to bursting. So on Christmas Eve I typed up some coupons that said things like "Good for one hike in January 2025," "Good for one movie in February 2025," etc., and gave it to him. So lame. And not a very good example for the twins to follow.
Oh well. Next year things will be completely different. We won't be getting used to having Rocket Boy around -- we'll be used to him. The twins will either be even more independent, or they'll be coming back around to us (probably the former). Whatever plans I make after this holiday will be upended by whatever situation we're dealing with next year. I just need to remember to revisit the issue in general. But for this year, I'm still sorry Teen A seemed to have such an unhappy Christmas.
Our Christmas ham has been a bit of a disappointment. We didn't start eating it until Christmas day (had salmon for Christmas eve). Teen A took one bite, said yuck, threw the rest in the compost bin, and hasn't been willing to touch it since. I don't know what the problem was -- he won't say. Teen B ate the ham for three nights, but now he says he's done too (we had it again tonight). But the ham's not done! Even though we got the smallest size, there are at least six slices left. I've promised to make something without ham tomorrow, and then I'll probably make my mother's rice ham dish, and then I don't know, maybe soup? Bean soup with some ham mixed in?
Anyway, we won't have ham for Christmas for another several years, I think.
I wanted the twins to come with us, and I couldn't think how to convince them, but in the end I just pretended to be a hard-ass, and they bought it -- they apparently thought, oh, Mom's forcing us to come, so they came. It occurred to me that the less you say, the less of a foothold they're able to get in an argument. I just said, we're going, and that was that. And I think they had a good time. They decorated (and ate) lots of cookies. But after that I knew I wouldn't be able to get them to do anything else over Christmas, and I was right about that.
Teen B really likes Sally's cookies. I don't -- I tried one, the green butterfly (that I decorated) and thought it was awful. But he likes soft cookies. I make my sugar cookies as thin and crisp as possible. Not his thing. So he's finished off the Sally cookies and I have (almost) finished off my sugar cookies. I've discovered that Mounjaro doesn't seem to prevent me from eating Christmas cookies, although it prevents me from bingeing on them. Each day this week I've had Christmas cookies for "lunch," i.e., for a snack in between breakfast and dinner.
This is probably as good a place as any for the Mounjaro report.
- Weight the morning I took my first shot: 254.6
- Weight last Sunday: 230.0
- Weight this morning (after 27+ weeks on Mounjaro): 229.2
Yep, that's right. Fourth
week in a row with a tiny weight loss, although this was a bit more -- almost a pound. And that's with all those Christmas cookies! I think what did it is exercise. We continue to have this very mild weather, and so I took advantage of it. On five of the days I took good walks outdoors, one day Teen B and I walked around and around Walmart, looking for something that I was too shy to ask a clerk about -- and I had my app turned on, and we walked 1.28 miles just in Walmart! -- and one day I was lazy. But six days out of seven I walked, and I think that's why I lost the weight. I will try to do that again this week (after tomorrow, when we're having a wind event).
Today, Rocket Boy and I went to the Denver Art Museum and saw the Maurice Sendak exhibit. I've been wanting to do this for a while now, even rejoined the museum in anticipation of it. But it's been hard to find a time, and the twins were adamant about not wanting to go whenever we did go. In retrospect, I think they made the right call. The exhibit involved a lot of reading (not their strong point) and trying to push your way past a whole lot of other people in order to examine tiny little pictures up close. I enjoyed it a lot, but they wouldn't have. So it's all good. And I'm glad we finally went.
On the way to Denver, listening to NPR, we heard the news that Jimmy Carter had died. 100 years old, so amazing. If my parents were still alive, they would be 102. So it's like someone from my parents' generation dying, and yet my parents have been gone so long. I remembered how when I used to work for the government, it was a problem when a former president died, because federal employees get a day of leave to either attend the funeral or watch it on TV, and this could be a problem when calculating people's leave balances, especially at the end of the year. I remember our budget analyst saying, "Come on, Ford, don't die!" but he did, on December 26, 2006, thereby messing up all the leave balances. Rocket Boy isn't a federal employee anymore, nor, of course, am I, so it won't affect us, but there are probably many budget people out there tearing their hair out right now.
He probably would also like to go play mini golf again. But I don't know what else. There's got to be something.
Tomorrow there's that "wind event," so we won't do anything then. I can read, maybe fill in the 2025 calendars (I annotate everyone's), maybe work on my New Year's resolutions. Try to enjoy another day when I don't have to get up early.
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