{"id":4243,"date":"2018-12-17T23:57:42","date_gmt":"2018-12-18T03:57:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/?p=4243"},"modified":"2018-12-18T00:00:22","modified_gmt":"2018-12-18T04:00:22","slug":"christmas-news-interesting-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/?p=4243","title":{"rendered":"Christmas News in Interesting Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all, the above statement is true, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s also true that we live in interesting times this holiday season, whether we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re beach dwellers or not.<\/p>\n

Case in point: I enjoy the movie A Christmas Story<\/em>, especially Ralph\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s narration (e.g., \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Oh, rarely had the words poured from my pen and pencil with such feverish fluidity,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153In the heat of battle, my father wove a tapestry of obscenity that as far as we know is still hanging in space over Lake Michigan\u00e2\u20ac\u009d). So I find it fascinating that now, not only can you tour the actual house used in the movie (located in Cleveland), but you can also rent it for a night<\/a>. Several sources are reporting the nightly fee is $3,000, which I found fascinating in an I-didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t-see-that-coming sense. However, because I am nothing if not thorough, for fun I tried putting a couple of different nights in my cart (one in December of \u00e2\u20ac\u212218 and one in December of \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc19) and found that the actual rates were around $1,000 a night. Just saying.\u00c2\u00a0 As a less costly alternative, the Bumpus House<\/a> (remember the next door neighbors and all their mayhem-causing hounds) is also available, minus the hounds; guests can rent either half the house or the whole thing, with rates starting at $195 a night. Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all stop and imagine, for a minute, a Christmas getaway, or any kind of getaway really, at the Bumpus House.<\/p>\n

These are strange times, my friends, times I never knew I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d live to see.<\/p>\n

In other news, this is a good week to spot a comet with your naked eyeballs<\/a>, if that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s something you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d like to do. Comet 46P\/Wirtanen is reportedly (my own eyeballs haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seen it yet) green, special-like for the holidays. Sunday night, December 16, was the night it was closest to the earth, but experts assure us that if you are committed, naked eyeball sightings are still possible throughout the week. No word on why they can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t give all comets simpler names, like they do with hurricanes (Irma, Matthew, or Stan, for instance).<\/p>\n

Here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a growing trend I love: putting real Christmas trees out on the base of coastal dunes after Christmas is over. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve seen this done many times on our islands as a way of building up dunes that have eroded from summer storms and northeasterlies. The branches hold in wind-blown sand and provide nutrients for the dune vegetation. This will be especially awesome this season after so much of the Carolina coastline took a hit from Hurricane Florence. Check out Coastal Review Online<\/a> and this video from Surfrider Foundation<\/a> in Carolina Beach, North Carolina to see how it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s done.<\/p>\n

Finally, this year, my tree topper, the tree beads, and many ornaments went MIA (one box never made it out of storage we think), so I decided to change things up a little. Instead of beads, I purchased ribbon to use in their place. My problem, however, manifest itself in two parts. One, I can only craft in my head. Nothing attractively crafted ever makes it from my brain into the real world. \u00c2\u00a0Two, in an attempt to remedy this inadequacy, I decided to watch videos on how to ribbon-dress a tree. This was like opening up Pandora\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s box of anxiety. Early on, I learned you need layers of different kinds of ribbons, which I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have. Then, I was shocked to discover that sophisticates don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t wrap the ribbon in circles around the tree; they cut large pieces of ribbon and loop them through the branches, letting them somehow take on a natural, organic, and yet artistic shape. Honestly, I thought this was stupid at first, something only people with perfect children and too much time on their hands would do. But then the experts started throwing out the term \u00e2\u20ac\u0153tree goals\u00e2\u20ac\u009d like they are actual things you should have. And they went on with all this stuff about \u00e2\u20ac\u0153it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s important to add depth and interest to your tree\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (Wait. What are those?), and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153If you are ready to have an actual grown-up tree,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and suddenly there I was, cutting and looping and crying, because who doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to be a grown-up, and also because my loops didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t look natural, organic, or artistic. They just looked like loops, and they don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t match my tree skirt.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Ah, well. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sorry to report that we are now living with a pseudo-grown-up tree that isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t coordinated and that looks a little\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwell, loopy.<\/p>\n

I told you we live in interesting times.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all, the above statement is true, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s also true that we live in interesting times this holiday season, whether we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re beach dwellers or not. Case in point: I enjoy the movie A Christmas Story, especially Ralph\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s narration (e.g., \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Oh, rarely had the words poured from my pen and pencil with such feverish fluidity,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4247,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2316,2317,2314,2318,2315,2313],"class_list":["post-4243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-islandlife","tag-a-christmas-comet","tag-christmas-trees-on-the-dunes","tag-fun-things-about-christmas","tag-i-do-christmas-ribbons-like-an-adult","tag-renting-a-christmas-story-house","tag-weird-things-about-christmas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4243\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.anislandmom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}