The Ankle Biter @ Quibbling.net

Have arrived safe to Tom’s family’s place in California. There were two little yippy dogs on the flight who were the reason we couldn’t bring our cats along. They sounded like the noise your sneakers make on the gym floor. Guinness could so have eaten one of them. Jack would have put a pretty good dent in the other one.

There was also a family with a couple of kids in the row in front of us. I know what you’re thinking, “Ugh, children on a cross-country flight.” But they were actually very quiet and well-behaved the whole time. Their parents had brought some coloring books and whatnot, and of course JetBlue has the TVs at every seat, so there was much cartoon-watching. It’s one of the times when I am totally in favor of using TV as an electronic baby-sitter.

Just after we took off, though, the little girl cried out very excitedly, “Mommy! Are we FLYING now?” Made my ovaries hurt, it was so cute.

Back when I was small enough to not feel crammed into the seat, I thought flying was that exciting too. Now I just snark about the Gestapo TSA.

I haven’t mentioned this over here before, but Magic Pot of Jobs has been nominated for Best Third Party Recruiting Blog in the Recruiting.com Best Recruiting Blog Awards.

Voting ends tonight. Vote your conscience.

There’s a long piece in the Post today about the supposed “war on Christmas”. I don’t really have time for an extended, well thought-out post on the topic, but here are a few scattered thoughts:

- Why is it worth getting in a twist over what the White House holiday/Christmas/whatever cards say? As a Christian, I prefer to send religiously-themed Christmas cards myself, but I am also not the president of one of the most pluralistic nations on earth. And a card from the White House is different than a card from the Bush Family.

- That said, it’s really dumb that there are people out there who get snippy if you wish them a Merry Christmas. I’m wishing you joy and blessings on a day that is holy to me. Take it in the spirit in which it was intended, and get over yourself.

- While I certainly understand feeling surrounded on all sides by hostility to one’s faith, I don’t think the “religious right” or whatever is doing the name of Christ any favors by being assholes about whether stores include the word “Christmas” in their advertising.

- Christmas, to secularists, is still supposed to be about love and kindness and generosity. To Christians, it’s about all of those things plus a God who loved his creation so much that he became part of it, to experience life as one of us, and eventually to sacrifice himself for our redemption. The least we can do is be kind and charitable to everyone, even people who don’t believe as we do, okay?

- The more I think about it, the more convicted I become that the religious establishment that spends its time circulation petitions about whether Target should mention Christmas or not, that gets all in a twist over words in a Christmas pageant without even investigating the reasons why, is our modern day parallel to the Sanhedrin, who apparently had nothing better to do than ask Jesus about paying taxes to Caesar and give little quizzes about the law of Moses. How about a little more Christlike behavior from us all? A little more buying sandwiches for the homeless people begging outside our favorite lunch places, a little more generosity of spirit toward those with whom we disagree? Our Lord reached people by loving them and building them up, not with curses and petty whining.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Tree and Monument 2

Originally uploaded by tjbax.

Tom and I finished all of our shopping, wrapping, and shipping this weekend.

The last couple of presents were a bit more labor-intensive, but totally worth it. Now there’s one package on its way to California, and one on its way to Pittsburgh.

And we are DONE. We’re celebrating with egg nog. Mmm.

I have found a new TV guilty pleasure. On the We Network, there’s a show called Bridezillas.

Don’t laugh- okay, well maybe just a little.

I think this show is designed to make people like me feel better about ourselves, and more secure in our moral superiority.

A couple of choice quotes from just one episode:

43 year old Bride: “This is what it’s all about. This is my dream. I’m a princess.”

Father of the 30-something Bride: “Well, we thought we could do it for $50,000, then it became $70,000. I think by the end it was $80,000-$90,000. I think if you’re going to do it right, you really can’t go into it with a budget. We just decided to spend what we had to spend to give her what she wanted.”

Dawn mentioned to me recently that she wanted to hear “all about the wedding plans you’re so graciously not putting on your blog.” When Tom and I were with my family over Thanksgiving, my mom mentioned that grandma had been asking about the wedding plans but that they hadn’t heard anything to tell her.

You see, at the moment, there aren’t really any firm wedding plans. The plans have kind of fallen apart. Don’t misunderstand- the marriage plans are very much still on- but we’ve had one setback after another with the plans for the actual event and at the moment we’re in wait-and-see mode.

We remind ourselves that really, this is all just a complicated and expensive party we’re trying to plan, and no matter what happens, we are getting married, even if it means a trip to the courthouse and dinner afterwards.

In fact, the more we struggle with this wedding planning crap, the more appealing that option sounds. So on our morning commutes, we’ve been engaging in elopement and semi-elopement fantasies. How much notice would our families need to get to DC, anyway? Could we get married on New Year’s Eve? What kind of honeymoon could we plan on that kind of notice?

It’s not that we don’t want a celebration of this important step in our shared life, it’s that the more we try to plan said celebration, the less celebratory we feel and the more we just want to get on with the rest of our married life. I used to think those couples that handed over control of their weddings to the Good Morning, America audience were crazy, materialistic, and spoiled. Now I think maybe they were on to something…