I can hardly stand the wait Chipmunks

Getting up before the sun is not one of my strongest skills so it was something of a pre-Christmas miracle when early, early in the still-dark hours of this morning (okay, so it was only 6:15) I hauled my sleepy self out of bed, threw on several layers of clothes (long johns, sweaters, scarves, the fleece pseudoberet, etc.), hopped on the bike and rode into town for a 7 a.m. Community Picnic planning committee meeting. Twenty minutes later I arrived at our meeting place, an unintentionally kitschy faux-"home spun" family style chain restaurant popular with the senior set—and before I even got off the bike I could hear the obnoxiously squeaky sound stylings of the Chipmunks' Christmas Album wafting through the chilly pre-dawn air. I knew then it was going to be the longest meeting of my life ....

Ugh. The Chipmunks. At 6:45 a.m. On outdoor speakers. Just so everyone can enjoy them.

Actually, even I can tolerate one or two songs. The whole album—two of them, in fact, played back to back over the course of our meeting—is a little too much. But whatever. This is my fifth year on this committee and I've endured endless repetitive meetings, smashed fingers, sunburned shoulders, the biggest wood splinter I've ever had right in the palm of my hand (as if my faithfulness has blessed me with the stigmata?!), earwigs in the corn, a big grease stain on my favorite t-shirt, and the counting, by hand, of more than four hundred raw sausages per picnic (my personal responsibility for the last three years). After all that, the Chipmunks are not going to deter me. All the same ... please, Christmas, don't be late! I can only stand so much.

Finally, since I'm already 'munk bashing, I just want to also report that when I went to Amazon to grab the picture of the CD cover, I could not resist checking out some of the Chipmunks' more recent work, namely, Club Chipmunk, The Dance Mixes. All I'm going to say is that their rendition of "Play That Funky Music, Chipmunk" literally made my hair stand on end—I felt a shudder pass through me, and I looked down at my arms and the hair was standing straight up. And not in a good way.

Moving on: Saturday was Mr. A's father's 90th birthday. We got up early (this seems to be the way of things lately, so much to do) and spent most of the morning sitting in a freezing warehouse waiting for our auction lot to come around, then left for the birthday lunch, then returned to the auction just in time to bid on and win the object of our desire: a late 19th century carved stone Buddha with the most beautiful hands and feet. It's so pretty I don't even care if it's not really as old as they said—it just makes me happy to look at it. Such a serene face.

But—back to the birthday. It was nice. When we got there everyone was gathering in the kitchen to surprise him when he came in from the garden (he keeps the most amazing enormous garden). We waited and waited, and he didn't come in and didn't come in, and finally somebody went out to find him and he was asleep in the sun on the little bench in the gazebo. And I thought, what a nice way to spend your 90th birthday—sleeping in the sun, then coming in to find your entire family waiting to celebrate your life. I was secretly hoping he'd take advantage of the occasion and the captive audience to make some kind of commemorative speech or proclamation, but I think everyone else in the family was glad he didn't (since they've been subject to his extremes of imperiousness all their lives). Instead we had sandwiches and cake, wandered around the house chatting with everyone, took a few pictures, and headed back to the auction.

It left me thinking about one of the differences between Mr. A's family and mine: the approach to ceremony. In my family, every occasion is blessed with a prayer at some point, and very often there's some kind of speech as well. It's usually very simple, just welcoming everyone or thanking them for coming or giving some kind of information (for example, "Save room for cake"), or even just a brief moment of quiet before the prayer, but I love it because of the way it creates a space and brings everyone together into it.

This kind of thing doesn't happen in Mr. A's family. When we get together for Sunday dinners, or any occasion, it's all much more open-ended. People arrive, food appears, people fill their plates and eat, visit, and then say goodbye and leave. There's almost never that moment when everyone pauses to acknowledge the same thing all together at the same time—though we did sing Happy Birthday the other day, which was something, and there were some toasts at his parents' 60th anniversary party last spring. It makes me feel lonely, somehow. Adrift.

I might be tempted to think that this is mainly just because I'm used to having that happen, and so when it doesn't, I notice. But Mr. A misses it too, probably even more than I do, and he's never had it. I think it's something all people just naturally recognize and respond to and want—that moment of acknowledgment, whatever you want to call it. I want to think of some new ways to bring more of that into our lives.

In other news, we spent the entire day yesterday completing about 99% of our Christmas shopping. Now I just have to wrap it all and get it in the mail before it's suddenly the end of July again and I find myself wondering if she would really think I was crazy to send her a Christmas ornament as a birthday present ... Yes, you! :)

Listening to: Play That Funky Music (White Boy) – Wild Cherry ... just to get that nasty chipmunk taste out of my ears!