Merry Christmas!

Have a wonderful holiday! We wish you lots of love…

Merry Christmas & Happy Sexism!

It has been over ONE YEAR since my last blog entry and man, what a difference  year makes. No need to fill you in on all the details, because hey, who wants to hear that? I’m not good at the Christmas time run down letter that encompasses all the good stuff we’ve done, so here it is in standard bullet form:

-Emerson turned one – everyone got sick from her birthday party

-Vic left his office job to revive his own business – going well and kicking A

-I left (also called, “got laid off”) from my job and have a new, better one (boo yah old job)

-Emerson does hilarious things and is awesome

-I regressed in my literature taste and became frightfully obsessed with the Twilight series for approximately 2 weeks in which I read all four books and saw the movie. Ouch. (Spoiler: The movie isn’t that great)

Em in the back yard getting used to the sled idea

There are other things, but those are the highlights.  Emerson, Vic and I braved it outside the comfort of our space-heater toasty bedroom to enjoy the snow that we’ve been having. Oregon really is beautiful when it snows in a winter wonderland sort of way. And oh what an wonder it has been! We lost power for a night and got all “state of emergency” on it with flashlights and sleeping by a fireplace at Vic’s parents’ house. It was quite exciting, although it really did illuminate how not-prepared we are for an emergency. If any of those end of the world movies hold any truth from sub-zero temperatures to bombs—you name it, we’re not ready for it. It made me want to stockpile my canned food supply and invest in arctic gear and gas masks, but it was just a one night power outage so I’m sure I’ll forget about it soon. Phew… thank goodness.

The "Misfits"

On to more important topics like movies. Maybe I’ve seen it one too many times, or maybe I just have a new lense of adulthood on, but “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” is quickly climbing my list of sexist, oppressive movies we commonly show our children. Example:

Donner (Rudolph’s Dad – I didn’t even know this) has been acting a fool and making Rudolph cover his red nose because it’s different (Reminder – this was made in 1964). After getting heat from Dear ol’ Dad and other Reindeer not letting him join in any games for long enough, Rudolph runs away with Hermey the Dentist-wannabe elf. Donner decides he should probably head out to find his son and goes to tell Mrs.Donner (that’s right, she has no name, just Mrs. Donner) his plan and here’s what goes down:

Narrator: Sam the Snowman: Now you can bet that Old Donner felt pretty bad about the way he had treated Rudolph, and he decided the only thing to do was to go out and look for his little buck. Mrs. Donner wanted to go along, naturally, but Donner said…
Donner: No! This is man’s work!
Narrator: Sam the Snowman: And no sooner did the man of the house leave when Mrs. Donner and Clarice decided to set out on their own. Now they were really taking their chances.

Those crazy women… they were really taking their chances now since they didn’t have Dad-of-the-year Donner with them…

That’s just one of the more interesting themes in this tale. I have other theories regarding other lead characters, but that’s a little taste for you. Clearly I’ve seen that too many times this holiday season.

Well, that’s all for now.

See you soon… or in a year:).