Mild Amusement

Christmas is one of those holidays that is lined with traditions. From watching Christmas movies to making Christmas cookies , there are lots and lots of traditional activities for celebrating the holiday. Some families also have traditional meals, where certain items make an appearance during the festivities. It doesn't take too much imagination to see how these things happen a few years in a row, and then suddenly it is a family tradition. In the case of the Mild Home, we do appreciate a nice panettone and hot chocolate, but we don't have a go-to recipe yet. Many times we visit our respective families during the holidays, so we have left-overs that we will happily feast on. We did make a seafood paella a couple of years as a means of celebrating, but it didn't stick around as a long-term thing. Basically, we're still experimenting a bit. For this latest go-round, we decided to make a prime rib. We both appreciate it, but it wasn't something we had ever prepared...

Continuing with our Christmas 2020 series , today's blog post will talk about cookies. Specifically, let's talk about Christmas cookies. I know that making and eating Christmas cookies is a tradition for a bunch of families, but it never really became a huge thing for my family when we were growing up. I don't really have a good explanation for it, but I don't exactly have a sweet tooth ( given what happens when I have dessert right before bedtime , this is probably a good thing). I just never got those cravings, so I never felt like I was missing out on anything. This means that I didn't make gingerbread people or houses, I didn't cut out sugar cookies in the shape of Christmas trees, and I didn't decorate those cookies with red and green frosting. I have plenty of happy Christmas memories and I enjoy the holiday just fine, but that particular bit of nostalgia just doesn't exist for me. You know who it does exist for, though? The Mild Wife. And since we...

With Christmas recently past us, a lot of the chatter and mental energy has recently been directed towards Christmas in the last couple of weeks. That naturally means that my stories and blog posts are going to be Christmas-themed for a bit, so strap in, boys and girls. It's time for a few Christmas tales of amusement. The first anecdote I'll start with has to do with movies. There are a few movies that are traditional around this time of year, but businesses in the movie industry also try to cash in on that trend by pumping out their own Christms movies. I will admit that the Mild Wife and I have watched our fair share of Christmas movies, including a rom-com or two. It's not even so much that we expected them to be a ton of fun or great literary works, but we just got into the spirit of Christmas, and we felt like watching something Christmas-related. However, some of these movies are Christmas traditions. For a bunch of people, that list includes " The Sound of Musi...

(The title is a reference to a running gag my siblings & I have. Usually, that line is preceded by something like, "Whatever, you're the troublemaker in the family." This usually leads to a bout of calling each other "Chang" for a while. Should this happen in public, hilarity is likely to ensue) My siblings and I have known each other for over 20 years, so we've had some time to more or less figure each other out. That makes for all sorts of fun when we all hang out at family events, but it also makes gift-buying slightly problematic. We can usually figure out what the other person wants, but that also means that the person is likely to purchase it before receiving the gift. Take my sister's Christmas gift this year. She is a fan of Steve Nash, and as a result, she likes to watch the (Phoenix) Suns. So I figured I'd get her tickets to a Warriors game when the Suns are in town. Short of her actually going to Arizona, that's probably th...

I recently remarked to a friend that you need a sense of humor to run in my family. For example, I got a pack of beer & a weighted jump rope as part of my Secret Santa gift this year. My parents saw the beer, and said, "the gift-giver must think you're an alcoholic." My sister saw the jump rope and said, "the gift-giver must think you're fat." See, sense of humor. My cousin is about to find this out first-hand. See, she was over at our house on Monday while I was at work. My sister was wrapping my present at the time, and she invited my cousin to help out. I'm not sure who's idea it was, but they decided to have some fun with it. Specifically, they decided they wanted to make it harder to open my gift. I haven't opened it yet, but I'm told it has multiple layers of wrapping, and my cousin went to town on it. She even started writing things on the wrapping paper, as an extra taunt. But they told me about it, so I had time to sche...