socking-stocks and rit-mit-reeeeeeeeeth

A is occupying himself in the exquisite, silence-inducing act of painting. Whenever he paints, he enters some other part of consciousness that is found in no other activity. It must be truly Right-Brain-Land he's enjoying. The thing is, I am a recovering control-freak, so the "It will make a huge mess I need to clean" part of my mind usually outweighs the "I love silence" part. And really, he only makes a huge mess when he has huge amounts of paint to work with. These are the weeny little paint cups manufactured in some god-forsaken Chinese factory, with tiny brushes that he is expertly dipping and cleaning (!!! a kid who cleans his brushes??). He did learn from me, consciously or not. I'm kindof a freak when I paint.

So it's Christmastime. I listened to the entire Christmas-album-bonanza by Sufjan Stevens yesterday, as A and I put up our new fake Christmas tree. The old one was a shorty, which we used for several years after we moved in. The great advantage of a short tree is putting it on a table, just out of reach of Mr. Curious, and having lots of room for presents underneath. Now I can just about trust A with all our ornaments, and he helped me put them all on the tree. He has a "fravrit shecshon" of the tree, with all his most cherished ornaments in a group: the Bat Signal by my sister Molly, the Batmobile, a popsicle stick manger he made in preschool, and the " 'dominal snowman" from the Rudolph special. I haven't corrected these mispronunciations, since they are so entertaining and cute, and it reminds me of Pepe le Pew when he was covered in snow; "I am zee abdominal snowman, no?"

He also calls stockings "socking-stocks," and gets them mixed up with Woodstock, Snoopy's friend. At the moment he's painting socking-stock ceramic ornaments we got at the craft store, and doing a fine job.

Another of my family's odd traditions, if one could call it that--phrases, maybe--is calling Christmas trees "rit-mit-reeeeeeth!" in sortof a nasally, not-too-intelligent voice. Probably the association for cognitively delayed people would be offended, but it isn't making fun of anyone, I swear! When we passed a stand of trees, that's what my mom would say and it stuck. Much like saying "you'll freeze your winkies off" if one goes out without a coat. What's a winky, you ask? No idea. But you don't want it frozen off, so put your stinkin coat on.

A gift which will not spend any time under the tree is my new Mac Book laptop. It came in the mail today, an exquisite present from my lovely husband, and I can't wait to hook it up and use a computer that doesn't make me feel like an idiot. Even the packaging was gorgeous. They know how to put a thing in a box at Apple, lemme tell you. It may not seem like a big deal, but these are the things I notice and prefer paying a little more for. If I got a new PC it would probably come with Vista, too, which is a big stinking pile of an operating system from all I hear. So it's a joy to look forward to a nice clean interface, and get used to having my toolbars in different spots again. It's got a boatload of memory as well, and no hot-running fan to get clogged with schmutz from my desk and threaten to catch fire. This computer has lasted through many a challenging year, but it's time to start fresh.

Merry Rit-Mit, a little early!