am i still eating boxing day meatballs? why, yes i am. and am i still drinking leftover mulled wine? happily so. (though not at this moment) and is it gray and raining outside? why, yes it is! (though to be fair, we just had some gorgeous rays that lasted for a few days.)
and so begins another year. we put away our decorations last night, the main reason being we are expecting the delivery of a new bed this week, and need all the space we can get. our place seems so much bigger when the tree and decorations are put away. (even if it was a little tree.) i do get so excited to have them up, but then, i do get so excited to take them down. start fresh. clean slate. we had a lovely relaxing christmas day, and my missing of my family was greatly appeased by skyping with the whole family, all at the same time! if you are wondering if a 6 party skype is possible, well, it is! and so much fun. the whole 2 week vacation was chock full of fun: (and i just posted some xmas pics on flickr) favorite movies old and new, (francis got to see his first gremlins!) making cookies, eating cookies, visiting friends, a trip to greg's brothers for an overnight with cousins, a very merry christmas day, our bi-annual boxing day party, some severe vegging, a harry potter marathon, games, and a new year's eve downtown with good friends. many late nights. monday morning's back to school was rough. on all of us.
and now it's a new year.
i do not make new year's resolutions because i do not need any reminders of how many times i fail. but i make lists continually, almost daily, so... on my list for things to do this week is: organize my list!! it has swamped me. i have little lists for things that need immediate action, then i have far-reaching lists of things to do someday, and lists of pertinent things to do at a later date. it is all rather out of hand. for our boxing day party, we cleaned up the "office" portion of the kitchen, meaning: put all my papers in a box to hide in the closet, and i took down all my post-it notes that were all over the kitchen. i have talked about this before. how they become so familiar a sight that the urgency drifts away. they become yellow checkerboard wallpaper in my kitchen. and how strange: things are not getting done!? so. that is top of my new list.
already in this new year, we are dealing with brand new things. one big thing is: the kid finally got his own set of digits! he got his first cell-phone for christmas. we held out for a long time, i do believe he is the last of all his friends. and already: we have had to tackle the discovery of his lacking cell-phone etiquette with -- rules--. no, you are not allowed to call your friend's parents (while they are working, mind you) to serenade them "don't stop believin'". (sorry, rob!) discussions on pranking. but, yesterday marked the first time he texted me: "the 5 just came" (he takes the city bus home from school and it was very late, the main reason we got him a phone in the first place!) and i texted him back and it struck me: we have entered a new form of communication. so i hope for good things.
and along with communication comes another big thing we are dealing with right now: R rated movies. alot of his friends are watching them. monster flicks. zombie flicks. horror flicks. it never even occurred to us. it was not even on our radar. we do not think we are especially strict, as he has been watching many PG-13 movies well before he was 13, and has been allowed, (albeit, begrudgingly) to play Halo for a long time now. but this caught us completely off guard. this is a whole new territory, he has no idea. with R comes language, of course, much more graphic violence, and very likely: sex scenes. how we found out about it is: remarkably, francis told us that while at a neighbor's house, the group of kids wanted to watch the new Predators and francis spoke up to the mom and said he wasn't allowed to watch R rated movies. so then the mom announced "sorry, kids, you're gonna have to pick another movie: francis isn't allowed to watch R rated movies." horror of horrors! needless to say, francis hasn't been invited over to watch any more movies. and now we are put on the spot with having to decide over his mental well-being vs. his social well-being. i would greatly appreciate your thoughts on this matter, for or against. are we being too harsh? isn't that the rite of passage for junior high? --sneaking adult content? i can still remember junior high slumber parties and leaving the room if they were going to watch a horror flick. i guess it's easier for a girl. i don't think it would go over so well with a room-full of boys. i've never liked gory movies and i still don't. but i have friends who love them. even as a kid. did your parents let you? did you sneak them? shoot me an email if it will be long(as i have personally discovered that blogger comments have limited space). so far our status is: we have made a pact: if he will come to us with the movies he wants to see, we will not just say no. he is to make a "movies i want to watch" list: we will assess each request, and if we can accommodate him with a tv version, we ask in return that he accept our judgment. (the list has already started, and at the top is Aliens.) we will try to be most fair, knowing what is at stake. and if we say no for now, it is because he is only 12 (ok, almost 13) and that we may be open to it in a few years, say, when he is 14 or 15. this all sounds so formal, but basically it came down to: let's keep the communication lines open, ok? and to kick it all off, as a show of good faith, we let him watch (the tv version of) Die Hard. he... loved... it...
so there's another thing added to my list: watch Predators. i guess it's time to see what all this hoopla is about...
