days

How do you say hello to a new neighborhood?

Play hopscotch in the park.

Smell the flowers.

Look at the sky. A lot.

Find treasures among the hellebores.

And among the growing lilies.

Go barefoot.

We moved in January, and since then I’ve come face-to-face with what, I think, is my genetic destiny: I must, without fail, save every. single. thing. I’m not Hoarders worthy, but still. It’s RIDICULOUS.

For example:

I’m working in that chair. On that desk, next to those shelves stacked with stuff freshly unpacked from dozens of boxes. You can see just a few of the, oh, 65 Nancy Drew books saved from my childhood. I have stacks of slides, old wooden stamps from my dad’s business, dozens of arrowheads collected from all over North Carolina. Jars of buttons my mother collected maybe 25 years ago. Notebooks filled with school reports and stories I wrote in school.

And these boxes? Office supplies, journals from elementary school on, letters from high school friends, files of notes from stories written five years ago, one marked “IDEAS,” which I haven’t even opened yet.

I’m a child of parents who grew up during the Depression. They saved everything. I mean everything. When my sister and I cleaned out the house after my dad passed away, we threw away cabinets full of jarred peaches and green beans that were, oh, at least 15 years old. At least. We filled a dumpster full of things my parents had squirreled away in the nooks an crannies of their house. It’s hard to watch your parents hard work (even work that had spoiled) tossed into the garbage. I took what I could.

My physical connection to my parents is through the stuff they’ve left behind. For Iver, it’s all she’ll know. The arrowheads. The metals from Senior Olympics. The slides and the scraps of paper with their handwriting. The horse show trophy from the 1957 North Davidson Easter Festival Horse Show. The “if you haven’t used it/worn it/read it/looked at it in a year, then it’s not that important and should be shed” advice doesn’t work on me.

I know. This is weird. Melodramatic, maybe. It’s hard for me to let this stuff go.

But we have to make room for Iver, while also sharing with her half of who she came from, right? How do I do that? I’m trying to figure it out.

And so the boxes are sitting. Have been sitting, in fact. I’m working around them, trying to make headway on ever-growing lists of things I need to do. Like try not to be a pack rat. Or something like that.

A note, before we start: It occurred to me in the middle of the night last night that it’s a little more than slightly insane to publicly pledge to do this advent calendar/daily holiday celebration stuff when one is 37 weeks pregnant. So, if I disappear from here, you’ll know why, right? Because 1) Have a Baby and 2) Recover From Having Baby pretty much preempts every single bit of holiday spirit I could eek out within the next 24 days. OK? OK!

And another note: Sorry for the delay here. I got stuck dealing with car/truck problems (flat tires! broke coils! hooray!) most of the day, after taking a trip to the vet. Ugh. Happy holidays, neighborhood mechanic and overpriced veterinarian!

Now, onto the task at hand: Day 1 of our 2009 advent celebration! Let’s play!

Holiday memory: When I was a kid, our family kept the board games — along with coats and the vacuum cleaner and dusting rags — in the hallway closet of our creaky old house. On winter nights, my mom, sister and I used to go to the hallway and pull out the round tin of Chinese Checkers. Did you have those, too? The marbles swished around inside the tin, and we’d pull it open and dump out the reds and yellows and whites and greens and blues and put them on the corresponding color of the six-point star. Then we’d play. For hours. I loved it, and wish I still had that tin Chinese Checkers game.

I searched around today to find a replacement, but no luck, really. Luckily, the Internet always pulls through! Thank you, and goodnight!

But if you’re looking for more strictly holiday-themed games, how about Santa? He’s always fun. And these games are some of the best ones I’ve found recently:

• Santa Balls 2 (Your typical ball destruction game. Turn off the truly annoying music, but miss the crass Santa sayings. Your choice.)
• Kill Santa (WARNING: Not safe for work. You are killing Santa, after all. After some provocation, *ahem.*)
• Sling Shot Santa (Hilarious. To me.)
• Fat Santa (Oh, no. I feel the same about brussel sprouts.) And,
• Find Santa (Like Waldo, only better.)

Did you play games when you were a kid? If so, what kind, and have you found any fun winter/holiday online games you’d like to share, too?