Post in which I reveal that I'm a little bit of a scrooge

Sorry! If you're way into the Christmas spirit, don't feel that you have to read this. So why am I doing this Christmas meme if I can be a bit of a scrooge? Because that's what scrooges do! Actually, it's not so bad. I'm only a little bit of a scrooge, not a full-blown one.

I'm not sure who began this meme; if it's you, let me know and I'll give you proper credit.

1. Egg Nog or Hot Chocolate? Hot Chocolate. I don't have much experience with egg nog. I'm open to change, but I doubt I'll develop a taste for it.

2. Does Santa wrap presents or just set them under the tree? I wrap them. Or sometimes I make the Hobgoblin do it.

3. Colored lights on tree/house or white? None. We don't decorate. Now there's a reason for this -- it's because we almost never celebrate Christmas at our place. We travel to my parents' house and stay there for a few days, so it doesn't seem worth the effort to make the house look festive.

4. Do you hang mistletoe? No.

5. When do you put your decorations up? We don't.

6. What is your favorite holiday dish? Um ... pie? My mother makes delicious sweet rolls for Christmas morning -- that's my favorite.

7. Favorite Holiday memory as a child: Trying with my six other siblings to wake my parents up so we can open presents right away.

8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa? I don't remember.

9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve? Sometimes. Since the Hobgoblin and I celebrate Christmas at my parents', we sometimes open a gift privately on Christmas Eve, away from my family. I don't think this has quite become a tradition though.

10. How do you decorate your Christmas Tree? I don't.

11. Snow! Love it or Dread it? Dread it. Most years we drive to western New York state where my parents live. If you know anything about winter weather in western New York state, you know this is a very bad idea.

12. Can you ice skate? I did it semi-successfully a time or two when I was a teenager, but not since then. So no, not without some time to practice.

13. Do you remember your favorite gift? Books, always.

14. What’s the most important thing about the Holidays for you? A break from school -- whether I'm taking classes or teaching them. It's lovely to hang out at my parents' place and do meaningless things like extremely difficult sudoku puzzles for hours on end.

15. What is your favorite Holiday Dessert? Christmas cookies with frosting and sprinkles.

16. What is your favorite holiday tradition? Attending the Christmas Eve church service with my parents and then complaining to the Hobgoblin about how awful it is.

17. What tops your tree? Nothing.

18. Which do you prefer: giving or receiving? I'm supposed to say giving, right?

19. What is your favorite Christmas Song? No Christmas music, please!

20. Candy Canes! Yuck or Yum? Well, I'll eat 'em. But I prefer Christmas cookies.

There. Now I'm in the holiday spirit!

Cam's poetry meme

The Hobgoblin tagged me to do Cam's poetry meme, so here goes:

1. The first poem I remember reading/hearing/reacting to was.... Surely nursery rhymes were among the earliest. This question makes you think about what a poem is, doesn't it? I remember nursery rhymes, songs, chants from when I was a kid. I remember reading Tennyson's "The Charge of the Light Brigade" for school. Oh, yeah, and I remember reading Ogden Nash early on too.

2. I was forced to memorize (name of poem) in school and........ I wasn't forced to memorize poems in school until I got to college, and then only one professor required it. That's quite a shame, really, because there's no better way to learn about poetry than memorizing it, I think. You get an intimate feel for how a poem works. I memorized W.H. Auden's poem "Under Sirius."

3. I read/don't read poetry because....I read poems because I enjoy it and want to figure out more about how poems work. I only began reading poetry semi-regularly early this year, so I still feel strange calling myself a poetry reader. I read poems when I was in college and shortly after, but then I stopped for a long time. It's not that I didn't want to read them, I just never figured out a way to fit them into my life. Now I have a volume I keep on my shelf next to my reading chair, and I read a few poems a week. It's not much, but it gets me through a book in a couple months.

4. A poem I'm likely to think about when asked about a favorite poem is .......I'd have to name poets rather than poems, as favorite poems don't come to mind. Favorite poets? Elizabeth Bishop, Mary Oliver, Emily Dickinson.

5. I write/don't write poetry, but..............I don't write poetry, although I can't say I never will. But I just have no idea how to write one. I mean, what constitutes a poem? What should it be about? I have no idea. And I have little idea, to be honest, about what makes a good poem. As someone who teaches poetry now and then, maybe I shouldn't admit that, but it's true. It's easy to teach older stuff because it's generally accepted as good, but newer stuff, I have a hard time saying. That's one reason I'm curious about reading more poems, to get a feel for how they work and what makes a poem great.

6. My experience with reading poetry differs from my experience with reading other types of literature.....I don't really get poetry. My students sometimes say that and they mean it negatively, but I'm not being negative here. I don't really think there's anything to "get" about poetry, actually -- that makes it sound like there's a key or code to understanding it, which there isn't beyond being familiar with tradition and form. I just mean I find it rather mystifying -- and that's part of what makes it fun.

7. I find poetry..... well, mystifying. In a good way. Sometimes enlightening, often beautiful.

8. The last time I heard poetry....The local coffee shop has an open mic on Wednesday nights and last February they had a day where people could bring their love poetry/erotic poetry to read. A lot of people showed up to read and to listen, and there was a lot of good energy in the room. It was fun.

9. I think poetry is like....Litlove wrote in a comment a while back that a poem is like a dream, and I've found that idea useful. I was initially resistant because I generally don't find dreams and dream interpretations all that interesting, but the analogy does work; a poem often has loosely connected images that fit together in some shadowy half-known way, just as a dream does. A poem can get at truths in that sideways way a dream can.

I tag ... whoever wants to do this great meme!

Early reading meme

Kate's got a great meme on early reading, and it's high time I did it.

1. How old were you when you learned to read and who taught you?

A frequent refrain in my answers will be "I don't remember exactly," but I'll do my best. I think I learned to read in kindergarten, when I was five, although apparently I knew my letters much earlier. My dad tells this story about how I was going to school and going to school and going to school until one day I came home and picked up a book and out of the blue began reading. I have a memory of coming home from school and beginning to read out loud to my parents' delight, so maybe my memory and my dad's story refer to same thing, although there's no knowing for sure.

2. Did you own any books as a child? If so, what’s the first one that you remember owning? If not, do you recall any of the first titles that you borrowed from the library?

I have an early memory of owning a copy of Dr. Seuss's Yertle the Turtle. I'm sure I owned others, but for some reason the huge stack of turtles sticks in my mind. Later I remember owning a complete set of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House on the Prairie books, the ones with the yellow covers that came in a yellow box. My friend had a set of the Little House books with blue covers and a blue box, and I was a little jealous as I liked the blue set better. I remember finding the Betsy-Tacy books in the library, as well as the Louisa May Alcott ones.

3. What’s the first book that you bought with your own money?

I'm not entirely sure. I know I bought Nancy Drew books at some point, though, which I loved very much. But most often I got books from the library or read ones my parents owned. I was a very frequent library visitor as a child.

4. Were you a re-reader as a child? If so, which book did you re-read most often?

I most definitely was a re-reader. An obsessive re-reader, in fact. I practically had the Little House books memorized, as I really wanted to be Laura Ingalls. I re-read the Alcott books, Little Women and the others, including Eight Cousins and Rose in Bloom. Also I read the Anne of Green Gables books frequently. I think I re-read Nancy Drew books, and I'm sure I re-read the Betsy-Tacy books.

5. What’s the first adult book that captured your interest and how old were you when you read it?

I don't have a clear memory of this. But I do remember reading books from my dad's bookshelves, so the first adult book was likely one of these. I know I read David Copperfield very early, so it's quite possible Dickens was one of my earliest adult reads. I read Ayn Rand early on (shudder!).

6. Are there children’s books that you passed by as a child that you have learned to love as an adult? Which ones?

I read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe when I was young, but I didn't read the rest of the series until I was an adult. I can't say I learned to love those though. Other children's or young adult books I've read as an adult weren't published when I was a child, such as the Philip Pullman books and Harry Potter (I've read only the first one of these). I somehow never found L.M. Montgomery's Emily books as a child, and I still haven't read them as an adult, so I think I'll seek them out at some point. I never got into the Madeleine L'Engel books as a child, but I suspect I might like them now, so perhaps I should give those a try too.

Memes

There are two brand new memes out right now that I'd like to do; Kate has one on childhood reading, and Litlove has an "Aspirational Meme" that is designed to get you to think about "what would make life that bit better." Since this past weekend was a little rough (the Hobgoblin is now safely in Houston visiting his father, and Muttboy and I are left here feeling lonely. Poor Muttboy -- there's nothing sadder than a depressed dog.), I think I'll go for the aspirational meme first to get myself thinking about how life could possibly change. Here's the meme:

What part of the past would you bring back if you possibly could?

Summer vacation. I haven't had a summer vacation -- meaning the entire summer off -- in a long while, since I've had jobs that go year round for the past few years and before that I've had the summer "off" but have had things like course papers and dissertations to write. I'd love to have a real summer vacation and have months with nothing to do but whatever I want.

What character trait would you alter if you could?

I'd like to be more relaxed. As I'm sitting here typing, I can feel the muscles in my shoulders all tense and tight; I've been seeing a chiropractor for a long time about neck and shoulder problems caused by tension, and she tells me ways to stay relaxed, but I just can't seem to. I'm uptight and anxious an awful lot of the time.

Which skill would you like to have the time and energy to really work on?

I'd really like to become a better reader (read more kinds of things, read difficult things, become a better reader by writing more about reading), and I'd really like to become a better cyclist, and I'd also really like to be good at yoga. I suppose this last one is the best answer, since I already do "really work on" the former two. But yoga is the thing that I skip when I run out of time and that means I skip it a lot. And doing more yoga would really help keep me relaxed.

Are you money poor, love poor, time poor or freedom poor?

Time poor. I could use more money but I'm usually okay there; I'm not love poor in the least, and I'm not freedom poor, except to the extent that a lack of time and not having tons of money keep me from doing some things I'd like.

What element of your partner’s character would you alter if you could?

You know ... I'd better stay away from this one. The Hobgoblin is far away from home now and he's probably not reading my blog from Texas, but he still might read through my archives and find this answer. Maybe I can say that I wish he had a knack for making lots of money? Otherwise, he's perfect :)

What three things are you going to do next year that you’ve been meaning to do for ages but never got around to?

Practice yoga regularly. Hike the entire Long Trail (it runs the length of Vermont and will take 3 weeks). Read Don Quixote.

If your fairy godmother gave you three wishes, what would you wish for?

Just a little more time, a little more money, and some peace of mind. With too much time on my hands I get depressed, so I only need a little more, and too much money would make my life more complicated, not less so. I can do with tons of peace of mind.

What one thing would you change about your living conditions?

While I love my town, I wish I could live in a more open, rural area. I really love the countryside. I also wish this hypothetical place still had the four seasons like my current place does, but was on average 5-10 degrees warmer from November to March. That would be perfect.

How could the quality of your free time be improved?

I need to be able to forget about work while I'm not working. I've gotten better at compartmentalizing my work and leisure time, but I'd still love to obsess less about work problems and really be able to relax.

What change have you made to your life recently that you’re most proud of?

I'll agree with Litlove on this one -- beginning to blog. It's added so much to my life.