Yesterday was Amazing

...for a couple of reasons.

One was, I got the Christmas lights put up outside. We have a couple of evergreens in our back yard -- one was installed when we had some landscaping done about fifteen years ago, and the other was our attempt to have a live Christmas tree indoors which we would then plant outside. Both are huge -- about twelve feet high for one, fifteen to twenty for the other -- and while I realize that by redwood standards, they’re minuscule, they dominate the landscape back there, and we like that. Two years ago, I had the thought to put lights on one of them, and this year, going out to do it again, I found that I had to scavenge another string of lights just to get two thirds of the way up. You’d think the thing was growing, or something. They come on with a timer, and its just so nice to look out in the darkness and see it glowing there.

The other was, we did something spontaneous, and we did it, as my partner likes to say, ‘as a family’. We were eating dinner, and spoke a bit about the movie that my wife and daughter had gone to see while we were up at her mother’s house. This was while I was swearing under my breath, and not so far under, at the Dell That Would Not Start. My daughter said that she liked the movie and all, but the one that she really wanted to see was National Treasure. This took us by surprise. You realize, I said carefully, that this is not a kids movie. There are no cartoons, no princesses, no goblins, no ponies. I hate ponies! she announced. And I want to see that movie.

We shared the Parent Look across the table (can we/should we/is she old enough/we'd have to leave pretty much right away) and the long and short of it was, we did it. And you know what? We had a great time. She got most of the ins and outs of the script( though there were times where she shuddered and turned her face away from the screen, and I had to promise to tell her when it was over). She was riveted by the action (it helped that she'd been to many of those places). And to cap it, on the way home we actually discussed the plot with her. She spoke lucidly about it, and she actually liked the parts that we liked. Amazing!

Pretty cool.