Christmas

A Christmas Story

~ Lee Swanson ~ 6 Comments

My 92 year-old mother-in-law has discovered the Hallmark Channel. And sometime in mid-August, the Hallmark Channel discovered Christmas. Those two things only relate to me because my mother-in-law lives with us and for twelve hours a day has complete control of the television in the family room.

One of the disadvantages of retirement is that I am sometimes at home for long stretches of time. And, while I avoid the family room as much as I can, I do pass through now and then on my way to the scotch.

There’s a certain, shall we say, sameness to the Christmas movies on the Hallmark Channel. All the women smile constantly. No matter what problems and travails beset them, they smile through every line of dialogue. They are all also searching for the perfect man, though they don’t know they are. All the men are congenial, incredibly sensitive and understanding and, otherwise, completely devoid of personality and genitals.

Tonight I walked in on one about a law student whose true passion is her small town’s annual ice sculpting contest. Because, who doesn’t love standing in sub-zero temperatures for hours on end with a chain saw and chisel? She happens to meet a guy who, it just so happens, also loves ice sculpting. What are the odds? They decide to team up and lo and behold win the contest. No one could ever have predicted that. As nearly as I could tell they sculpted a house with an elk on the roof and a dolphin in the front yard. And that tells you a lot about the other sculptures, none of which are shown. But wait, there’s more. They fall in love and she turns her back on the law to become a full-time ice sculpture contestant, which must be able to occupy her for a solid three weeks a year. And the prize money? I don’t know, probably in the high double figures. Her family, who put her through law school at great personal sacrifice, is, of course, overjoyed that she’s found true happiness. Who wouldn’t be? She’s our little girl after all.

That happy story was followed immediately by a woman whose full-time job – eight hours a day, five days a week, twelve months a year — is to select the official Christmas tree for Chicago. She searches high and low for a tree, presumably at pine forests. She has an office full of assistants. Can you say fiscal responsibility? But that’s not the point. She is known as Miss Christmas and her name is, wait for it, Holly.

Ten days before the tree is supposed to be delivered the truck driver manages to somehow scrape half the limbs off the Official Tree. But the next day Holly finds another tree, which of course begs the question if you can find a “perfect” tree in a day what do you do the other eleven months and twenty eight days of the year? But, hey, it’s a movie.

I suppose there are a couple of twists and turns along the way to flesh out the story for an hour and a half or however too long these things run, but I can’t fill in that blank for you. About the time a bunch of people sat down for dinner and smiled and toasted and smiled some more, I lapsed into diabetic coma.

And this goes on hour after hour, day after day, for months. If there wasn’t already a war on Christmas, I’d enlist in one.

Bah humbug.

 

 

Sequels Are Hard

~ Lee Swanson ~ 2 Comments

Christmas cards are hard. So many decisions. First, are they Christmas cards or holiday cards? Do you buy cards that appeal to you, or cards that you think will appeal to the people you will send them to, and if so, which people? The relatives? The friends? If your answer is business associates and people at work, stop reading right now. You’re in the wrong blog.

If you want to send a photo card, the problems only get bigger. What to wear, where to stand, who to include?

Then there’s the letter. Most of the people who will read it have only a vague idea of who you are and what you do. You haven’t actually seen them in years. If you’re going to explain who the people and events really are, it’s going to be a very long, and not very interesting letter. You know the names of your children, in-laws, grandchildren and pets, but no one else does. I tried to solve that once by including an index so people understood that the one who had knee surgery was the dog and not me.

And you try to be clever. Clever is hard. One year, about thirty years ago I think, I achieved clever. Every year since then, people have said they look forward to the Christmas card. That’s a lot of pressure. And a lot of disappointment.

I feel that. Not enough that I spend any real time on the card and letter. I just hope something comes to me. And if it doesn’t, maybe we skip that year.

The last time I had an actual Christmas card idea was 2009. We were in Scottsdale and wandered into a shop filled with knickknacks and gadgets. It was also a stationery store. There was a display of sample invitations, printed and embossed for a party at some fictional house. A sales clerk came by and asked if I had any questions. So, I asked why anyone would buy invitations to a party at someone else’s house on a date that is already past. She patiently explained that it was a sample, to show the design and the quality of the work they do. I did my best to look perplexed.

But when we came home I bought a stock photo of a generic family and made up a story about them. Sent it off to be printed, signed by the fictional Tisdale family. The only real sign that it was from us was the return address. Some people thought it was funny, so that was good. Other people couldn’t figure it out at all, and I thought that was funny, so that was good too.

It was something like this: Tisdales 09

Hi Everyone,

          This picture was taken last year before the trial, when Adam was still vice president of accounting. He’s doing as well as can be expected. We’ll be celebrating on the Tuesday before Christmas – or as we know it, visitors’ day. We won’t have gifts; he’s not allowed to have anything in his “room” and what he can get by bartering with cigarettes we wouldn’t want to have. But at least we’ll be together, even if it’s on opposite sides of the glass.

Chip, our youngest, is a criminal justice major at URI and has had a hard time adjusting. His sister Amber just finished her MBA and the two have talked quite a bit, so Chip seems to be catching on to how things work in the real world.

Between driving out to visit Adam and making restitution payments, Suzanne is keeping busy.

It hasn’t been easy; the neighbors have become standoffish since the fire. We try to explain that we’re sure our car was the only target and they don’t need to be afraid, but it’s probably natural for them to worry. It’s not what they’re used to.

 We can’t help but look forward to this time next year when we’re really together again. We have been thinking that once the electronic bracelet comes off we might move to a warmer climate, maybe even change our names and start over.

 So, next year, if you get a holiday card from somewhere like San Diego signed “Cheryl” and “Lee,” and it talks about how they adore their granddaughters, just know that it’s really from us and that we’re healthy, happy together and still living the good life—even if we’ve had to trade the Gulfstream for an Airstream.

Happy 2010

Adam (HK518503), Suzanne, Amber and Chip

Every year since then, I’ve tried to be interesting and mildly amusing. I’ve failed. So this year, I went back to the well.Three Generation Family Standing Together Against Sea At Beach

Hi Everyone,

This has been a very good year for the Tisdales. The best we have had since the difficulty that abruptly shut down Adam’s company. Always one to see opportunities where others see obstacles, he used his time away to make contacts and refine his entrepreneurial plans.

What’s more, many of the people Adam met while he was on his federally enforced vacation contacted him with exciting business propositions and he’s helped them leverage their ideas into several powerful enterprises. After getting them established, Adam provided insurance so their dreams came true, undisturbed.

Suzanne is re-establishing herself as a fundraiser, with or without a cause, and we all hope she is successful beyond our wildest dreams. We took great delight last summer when the governor appointed her to the state ethics commission. She’s become quite upstanding.

Amber, our oldest, and her husband Nathan are raising our grandchildren and assuring that the legacy we are building will be secure. Her no-nonsense approach has proven to be a great asset in the Family business.

And then Chip. We hear that he’s been named a deputy district attorney back east. Apparently sometimes the apple does fall far from the tree.

Now we’re looking forward to those golden years we have promised ourselves. We’ll be here in San Diego if you have a chance to drop by. Just please call first. Unexpected visitors at the gate make us a little nervous, as you might imagine.

Happy 2016

Adam, Suzanne, Amber, Nathan, Amelia and Mason

Some people thought it was funny, so that was good. Other people couldn’t figure it out at all, and I thought that was funny, so that was good too. Some people looked at it and thought, oh, this again. And that was not good. This year’s card was not as good. I know it. You know it.

Next year I may have to fall back to boring old reality. Because Christmas cards are hard. Sequels are really hard.

Seven Years of the Cancer

~ Lee Swanson ~ 14 Comments

Offstage announcer:

Previously On “Seven Years of the Cancer”

(Graphic: January 2007)

(Phone rings)

Voice on telephone:  “Lee we’ve got the results from your physical and we want you to come in and take the blood  test again. I’m setting up an appointment for you with a hematologist/oncologist”

Lee: “A what?”

(Cut to doctor’s office)

Doctor: “I’m the hematologist here and you have chronic lymphocytic leukemia.”

Lee: “I don’t know what that is, but you’ve made a mistake.”

Doctor: “It’s incurable, but it’s treatable, so come back in four months and we’ll do another blood test.”

Lee: “What does this mean?”

Doctor: “It means you come back in four months and we do another blood test.”

(Tight shot Lee, rolling eyes, shaking head)

(Graphic: April 2007)

(quick montage: Internet pages, conversations, Lee and Cheryl driving to cancer clinic, meeting new doctor)

(Golf course: Lee and three friends on a green)

“Look, maybe you have all the time in the world, but I have cancer. There are a few other things I’d like to do with the time I have left. Will you just putt for godsake.”

(Graphic: January 2008) (Infusion center: IV in the back of Lee’s hand, Lee and Cheryl holding hands)

(Graphic: September 2008) (Lee and Cheryl in exam room. Doctor walks in holding papers, smiling.)

“You done good..”

(Lee walking the dogs down the sidewalk)

(Graphic: February 2012)(Lee in the infusion center. Two nurses overheard talking to each other)

“He seems a bit depressed.”

(Graphic: September 2013) (Lee being led to an exam room, door closing behind him.)

Lie on my stomach and wait some more.  A lot of idle chatter about the weather and then she jams a sharpened metal drinking straw into my hipbone.  Poke in a needle and draw out some fluid, and then some kind of gizmo that reaches in and snips off some bone marrow. They tell me it’s supposed to be painful. And this time it fulfilled that promise.

(Graphic: October 2013)

After looking at the bone marrow biopsy, my doctor declared I’m fairly healthy for a guy with stage four cancer.

(Graphic: April 2014)(In exam room going over paperwork with the director of clinical studies.)

We had talked about it and had a pretty good idea of what we wanted to do. Is there any reason not to wait? Will it be any easier or more effective if I’m older and sick? If anything, it seems like the right time for it now.

(Graphic: May 2014) (Lee in hospital bed, IV in arm, taking a handful of pills.)

(Graphic: August 2014) (Exam room. Doctor sitting on stool, with papers in hand.)

“That’s really amaz.. really good.” Lee and Cheryl squeeze each other’s hands.

And now, the season finale of Seven Years of the Cancer

(Graphic: December 2014)

I finished the infusions in November and no matter what will continue to take my pills for another three months, maybe longer. So the next step in the process is to figure out how it’s working.

I’m at the hospital at 8:30 in the morning to drink a quart of iodine water so that whatever they’re looking for will show up on the CT scan. The scan doesn’t happen until 10:00 and it’s pretty uneventful. Cold room, thin warm blanket, get dressed and leave.

Breakfast wasn’t allowed before the scan and my next appointment is at 11:00 in another building so there’s no time to eat yet.

Bone marrow biopsy number I’ve-lost-count is next and again, like almost every time, they have trouble getting through my hip into the marrow. Something about strong bones. That’s good if I live long enough to fall like so many old people, because odds are I’ll do more harm to the sidewalk than my hip. But it’s not good if the objective is to get a hole in the bone and snip off some marrow.

She kept trying and it was pretty aerobic for her. Didn’t bother me though. Every couple minutes she would ask if I was having any pain until I finally said that answering her questions was the only thing keeping me awake.

Anyway I finally was able to eat and then Cheryl joined me for the doctor’s appointment and at least a partial verdict.

He had the results of the scan and except for one small lymph node under my arm, the rest were gone. Now, I wouldn’t know a lymph node if it were on the table next to me, but the fact that the scan can’t find any is a good thing. The one it did see is described as fatty tissue. Well, that’s embarrassing. But have you any idea how hard it is to get a lymph node to eat right and exercise?

So my doctor is pretty impressed with how it’s going and we won’t have another appointment for three more months. Even so, the biopsy results won’t be in for a couple weeks so all in all it’s a hung jury.

Then, in the morning of Christmas eve, I got an email. From my doctor.

“Regarding the bone marrow biopsy: the liquid aspirate showed only a tiny tiny amount of CLL: 0.01% of the cells were CLL cells. This is about as low as it gets before it’s no longer detectable. It’s possible that we will want to repeat the marrow biopsy in about 2 months to see if the 0.01% residual goes away.”

As we kind of suspected, there wasn’t enough marrow to test but the conclusions from the aspirate were conclusive enough for me. Considering I was in the mid-double figures six months ago, getting down to one one-hundredth of a percent is pretty good. And I’m still taking pills. Could root it out altogether. Have at least kicked the can down the road a good long ways.

When we opened the champagne on Christmas Eve I was toasting something in addition to friends and family.

Coming soon: Season Eight.

Obama Executive Order Has GOP Fuming

~ Lee Swanson ~ 1 Comment

(Washington, DC) – Reaction to President Barack Obama’s latest executive order has been swift and angry. On Friday, the president issued an order declaring government offices will be closed on Friday December 26, 2014. Republicans are vowing to stop the order from taking effect.

“This sort of scorched earth approach to governing has got to be stopped,” House Speaker John Boehner told a hastily called news conference. “The American people expect their government to be working for them,” he said from the clubhouse foyer at Congressional Country Club in Bethesda before the House leadership adjourned to the golf course.

“It is the purview of the Congress to shut down the government,” Boehner added. “It cannot be done by executive order. As the president said himself, he is not an emperor.”

The Speaker brushed aside criticism that the House will be in session a total of only 17 days from October through December. “This is about a president who ignores his oath to uphold the Constitution. If we have to, we will file a lawsuit to stop him,” Boehner said angrily, his face turning from its usual bright orange to deep red.

Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas), a presumed presidential contender, declared the president’s action a “fiscal disaster waiting to happen.” He claimed the one day closure will cost the government billions in lost productivity and demanded that funds be found to make up for the loss. “Before we go around closing offices, we need to cut programs to be sure the taxpayers aren’t left holding the bag,” Cruz told reporters. “And I think we start with Obamacare and immigration reform.”

“This is the sort of thing you would expect from a socialist Muslim,” former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin said on Fox News. “He’s trying to move the most important holiday on the Christian calendar, which is to say the only calendar there is in this Christian nation and around the world, super-specially at this time of year, so he can have another day to face Mecca. He needs to be reminded the White House is the people’s house, Sean. It has an East Room, but it doesn’t have a Mideast Room.” Palin was speaking on the Fox News hastily arranged special program “Escalating the War on Christmas.”

When asked for his view of the executive order and reaction to it, soon to be Majority Leader Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) said, “It is not only illegal, it is immoral and repulsive. And frankly it is totally unnecessary. I’ve been in the Senate since 1985 and have never worked a single Friday.”

People Watching

~ Lee Swanson ~ 2 Comments

Some people do their people watching at the beach, the park or an outdoor café but for me the best spot is still the airport.  Parking costs more but for twenty dollars you can get a solid day’s entertainment.

 I usually position myself outside the baggage claim doorway to see people just after they’ve arrived and stepped out into the fresh air.  People flying out are frenzied, hurried and not nearly as interesting.

The first folks you notice are the ones who fall to their knees and kiss the sidewalk.  They are either natives of San Diego grateful to be home and away from wherever they were, or people who are afraid to fly and just grateful to be anyplace where there is something solid beneath the floor.

The business travelers are the least interesting and only partially because they are in business. They are in too much of a hurry to be bothered by anyone who is less important, and they are convinced that includes everyone. There’s a reason business people have a class all to themselves on airplanes and that custom should be carried out elsewhere as well, without the recliner chairs, special menus and free drinks, but with the exorbitant extra cost. Just cordon them off and make them deal with each other so the rest of us don’t have to.

I like to guess where people are arriving from and over time I’ve gotten to be pretty good at it. The easiest folks to spot are those who come from Minnesota, Wisconsin and other Scandinavian countries. Easiest for me because, whether I want to admit it or not, I was once one of them and I know what to look for.

There is, of course, the very pale skin. A Minnesotan’s blonde hair can bleach two shades just standing at the curb waiting for the rental car shuttle. By the time they get to their hotel they have second degree sunburn and when their week’s vacation is over, if they don’t have skin cancer they just weren’t trying.

As they stand and wait for the shuttle or a cab, you can see the Minnesotans gingerly fingering the zipper of their parkas, wondering if they will be risking frostbite if they open it just a little. After all, back home they wear their parka all year long; their only concession to summer is to replace the hood with a stocking cap. Minnesota has two seasons—nine months of winter and three months of bad sledding.

To be fair, these are generally the Midwesterners making their first trip out of the tundra. Those who have previously been as far south as Chicago or as far west as Omaha have found that temperatures can occasionally be above freezing at some times of the year in other parts of the world.  Those folks arrive shirtless, shoeless and almost pantsless and except for the translucent complexion could easily be mistaken for a typical student in his fifteenth freshman year at San Diego State.  Airport security people love them.  They can just wave them through. The Tourism Board is not as fond of these folks who have read the travel brochures and decided to “go native.”  They typically arrive with a pair of jeans and a twenty dollar bill and over the course of their stay, don’t change either one.

The other oddity one notices if you people-watch astutely and consistently is that Minnesotans don’t travel in December.  As they will tell you repeatedly—should you be unfortunate enough to ask—“it just wouldn’t be Christmas without snow.”

Really?

Anyone who has seen a second grade Sunday School Christmas play knows that those hanging at the manger in Bethlehem were wearing sandals, t-shirts and bathrobes; palm trees (perhaps plastic, but let’s not quibble) adorned the corners of the hay bale constructed crèche and the wise men rolled up atop camels.  Last I knew (and until global warming disproves this) camels don’t do well at the Iditarod. Yes, Virginia, the event that repeatedly spawns the greatest commercial success in world history took place in the desert. If Christ didn’t need snow, neither does anyone else—at Christmas or any other time for that matter.

So I pay the parking attendant and leave after a good day of people watching, content that it was money well-spent and convinced I’m fortunate to consistently be on the outside of the arrival gate at the San Diego airport.

Christmas Traditions

~ Lee Swanson ~ Leave a comment

There are some Christmas traditions I don’t miss.

4)  Flocked Christmas Trees.         My Dad used to buy Norway pine trees covered with “flocking;” white snow-lik-appearing carcinogenic toxic asbestos laden flakes that were supposed to make the tree look like it had been out in the snow, I guess.  But it had “flock” in places it had never had snow; all over the trunk of the tree and every needle covered top and bottom to about pencil width.  Those pencils from first grade width.

We didn’t put lights on the flocked trees.  We put floodlights on the floor that shone up onto the tree.  And we had colored discs in front of the spotlights that rotated and changed colors.  Red and blue and orange and, curiously enough, green.  Yes, because of the floodlights, one fourth of the time our white tree was green.

3)  Fruitcake. Enough said.

2)  Snow.      OK, not truly a tradition, but if you grow up in Minnesota it’s a fact of life. And I hated it. Every flake, collectively and individually. 

    I’ve included it on this list because of the idiots who complain that “it’s just not Christmas without snow.”  Well, the temperature in Bethlehem on December 25 will range from 45 to 48 so it will be Christmas without snow out there in Christmas-land.  Deal with it.

Snow is worthless.  Nothing that you need to shovel out of the way serves a useful purpose.  It’s wet and cold and horrible.  Animals slow their breathing and heart rate almost to the point where they are dead just to avoid going out in the snow.  There will be those who say snow is “wonderful” because you can go skiing.  The only good thing about snow skiing is the fireplace and the brandy in a warmed snifter when you’re done.

You simply must go skiing?  Buy a boat.  You don’t need to wear nine more layers of clothes and be treated for frostbite.

1)    Lutfisk.  This will take a little explaining. No, this will take a lot of explaining.

Lutfisk is Swedish for “inedible glop.” It’s dried cod, soaked in lye and “seasoned” by any animal that happens by the bricks of fish stacked up on the sidewalk outside the grocery store.  In my hometown we bought our Christmas lutfisk I think somewhere around June and then soaked it in water to leech out the—shall we say “impurities”—so that we might be able to eat it without suffering dysentery and ameobic meningoencephalitis.

Since we were destined to have to have the stuff, we were fortunate to have Swedish neighbors with whom we shared Christmas Eve and who would buy and prepare the glop.  She soaked it in water and changed the water every fifteen minutes.  The leeched water was picked up daily by hazmat workers in orange suits who transported it in lead-lined vehicles to dump sites that would later show up on the EPA superfund cleanup list.

It was also fortunate our neighbors prepared the fish because, if we were going to have to have it, we certainly didn’t want it in the house any longer than possible.  The only thing worse than the lye-infested toxicity of the glop, was the smell.

You might be getting the idea by now that this is nasty shit.

Regardless every December 24, our Swedish neighbors would show up with a stoneware pot of lutfisk.  And every year without fail she would say how good the fish was this year.  It was nice and firm, she would say.

Lutfisk is firm in the way grape jelly is firm.

Come dinner time my father, my brother and our neighbors would scoop this “food” onto their plates and hope it wouldn’t slide off onto the floor.  They were so excited about it.  At least my father and the neighbors were.  Genuinely excited.  My brother I think was just trying to fit in and be “a good Swede.”

I figured there hadn’t been a good Swede since Alfred Nobel and fitting in has never been my strong suit, so Mom would make a steak or pork chops or something for me and her.  Mom was German and while Germans aren’t known for culinary delights either – which you would know if you had ever tried what they jokingly call potato salad – she had the good taste to know that lutfisk is not fit for human consumption.

Truth be told, if you can get by the smell and the consistency, lutfisk by itself doesn’t really have any taste.  Most of that has been leeched out and transported across state lines along with the lye and the rest.  The flavor, such as it is, comes from the half pound of melted butter and two cups of “cream sauce” that every diner has to pour over it to mask its smell and enable them to choke it down while pretending to enjoy it.

So lutfisk is a tradition I don’t miss.  It’s not only a horrible dish; it’s a heart attack on a plate, provided you can keep it from sliming off your plate.