Sunglasses Always Fit

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  What do you call an old snowman?         Water.

• Why did Santa’s little helper feel sad?           He had low elf esteem.

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  I’ve got a thing on the side. Yeah. That’s right. A side blog. I am a giant child in many things – frosting, passion for costumes, ability to misplace important objects or dates within five minutes, etc. Another facet of this extended childhood is my enthusiasm for fireworks and cartoon movies. (I mention the fireworks just to warn you if we’re ever stuck in a fireworks show together.) I started a side blog to discuss children’s movies as “the wine aunt.” This means I want to watch Disney while enjoying an adult beverage and talking about all the things we missed when we were four years old and going to see “The Little Mermaid” for the first of several hundred lifetime viewings, later throwing up M&Ms in the back of your aunt’s boyfriend’s car. Anyway, it’s small and starting, but I’ve been offered a spot on a movie review blog, and I’d love to know your thoughts or suggestions, so check it out here in it’s baby steps!

• It’s been 24 hours since I last listened to Adele’s album. It’s so good. I just put it back on.
• What do you get when you cross a snowman and a vampire? Frostbite.

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  Two years ago today I was living in North Carolina, in a huge house with a roommate of unknown age and unknown sexual orientation, and his devil cat. I was newly single, he was sympathetic, we had too much wine in the house, and there was a snow alert. We decided to decorate. Four hours and two bottles of wine later, the house was wreathed and bedecked and bedazzled within an inch of itself. The only problem? We had forgotten to check each strand before we’d meticulously wound and strung each one up. The final result, you see in this picture. The best part is we lived in this old fancy neighborhood, where people hired other people to do their lights for them, and we stubbornly refused to take ours down. People would drive through our beautiful neighborhood and then reverse to look at our house again, sure that some cool light show was about to happen. Nope. Not here. Just a bunch of idiots.

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  To cultivate the aforementioned kid-movie as wine-aunt blog, I invited some lovies over Friday night for family dinner and movie. It ended up being a mani-pedi-makeover evening, and we had such a good time. I love being friends with young families and playing auntie, and these feelings could be bestowed on no subject more thankful than my dear Jossie. At one point, I was doing her toes, Anysia her nails, Rachael her hair, and then some tasteful makeup.

  

  You’ve never seen a happier 4-year-old girl. It was lovely. I can’t believe I didn’t have to pay for the gorgeous pedicure she graced me with. I wear it as a badge of honor, and only wish I had thought to put on a bra for what turned into an evening of photos.

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  This weekend I did the most Brazilian thing I’ve done – went to my friend’s mom’s birthday party. We went to a corner bar with smoke rising from the churrasco and the 8-member band playing, and bodies of all shapes and sizes dancing samba. We received kisses from strangers, endless food and drink, rain that didn’t stop the party. Barefoot kids ducking under elbows to chase each other around, kicking soccer balls, second and third helpings of rice and farofa. It was glorious. Then we went to my friend’s house and taught her the glory that is Aaliyah and Selena music. Solid night.

• I learned a word. Exulansis: The tendency to give up trying to talk about an experience because people are unable to relate

  

  to it. There have been a few times in my life I have done something that was such a singular experience – a mission trip or travel or even a relationship – that someone asks me “how was —” and I’m only able to say “It was fine. It was great.” and just wish for the conversation to move on. I feel that way now . . . and December 1st came and went and all of us on contract had to say yes/no/maybe to staying here until June 2017, which seems like a foreign, far away, impossible number.

Starting over somewhere else also sounds impossible, and trying to explain the experience of living abroad, of living in Brazil, of teaching English to kids from a million different places sounds impossible. And living in Christian community, with all its good bad and ugly but ultimately thoughtful way it guides my life towards something nice, sounds difficult to duplicate. So maybe I won’t just yet . . . I dont know I dont know and I dont know how I’m supposed to know, but I was reading this weekend and I remembered –

“Not I, nor anyone else can travel that road for you.
You must travel it by yourself.
It is not far. It is within reach.
Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know.
Perhaps it is everywhere – on water and land.”
― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

I’ll get there. Wherever I’m supposed to be, I suppose I will get there. I feel grateful, so very grateful, for this moment I’ve been living in Brazil. I’ve learned so much about me and all around. And I’ve had fun – you’ve all given me so much fun. I’m happy. I’m happy.

And if you need to hear it and you haven’t yet today – sometimes all it takes is another glass of water.