I am now Lee Ann Thill, MA, ATR-BC, registered board certified art therapist! Happy New Year to me

Tuesday night, after Jason asked me what I felt like watching, and I told him I didn’t care, he opted to put on the most recent Rambo movie that TiVo had captured for him to watch at his leisure. For future reference, “I don’t care” will not be my response next time. While I was barely watching, I managed to catch heads rolling, blood pouring, and dead bodies hanging, but even with my eyes purposely averted, just the screams of horror, and the swish-swish of long scary knives decapitating and otherwise killing people had me squirming and hoping I wouldn’t be the star in my own Southeast Asian guerilla warfare nightmare later that night.

Coincidentally, a little later, AMC was showing the original Rambo movie, First Blood, which I had never seen. I only half watched, mostly to comment on the bad acting and absurd plot premise. It was not anywhere near as gruesome as its more recent version, so at least I was spared additional cinematic gore. We were not however spared the agony of a crazy amount of commercial breaks. Sometimes we’ll watch a movie on AMC, and it’s hard to overlook that they have more commercial breaks than you can imagine, but Tuesday night, it seemed worse than ever. I didn’t actually time it, but I’d be surprised if more than 10 minutes of the movie played at any given time before there was a commercial interruption. What made it even more annoying was that it was the same commercials over and over again, one of which was for Nutrisystem D.

I’ve already grown weary of weight loss program commercials appealing to those who resolve to lose weight once and for all in 2010, but if I have to see this Nutisystem D commercial one more time, I’ll scream. Initially, the commercial didn’t register with me, even though the onslaught of commercial breaks are also twice as loud as the movie (I kid you not, watch AMC and see for yourself), but by the 4th or 5th time it aired, I started to take notice. A diet plan for people with T2 diabetes that will supposedly help them lose weight and lower their A1c?

I looked on the website. From the Nutrisystem homepage: “Lose weight & help manage the ABCs of diabetes – A1C/Blood Sugar levels, Blood Pressure, and Cholesterol.” I clicked to get more details, and on the next page, the claims were as follows:

• Lost up to 16x more weight
• Lowered blood sugar levels 5x more
• Lowered A1C by 0.9%
• Lowered total cholesterol level by 20.9 mg
• Lowered triglycerides level by 42.7 mg

I imagine anyone with T2 who is overweight and loses a significant amount of weight would have comparable results. The obvious hurdle is, of course, losing the weight, but Nutrisystem purports to facilitate overcoming that obstacle.

Then I went digging for a little more information in the form of reviews and opinions. First I found the Diet Blog, a site to which I’ve never been before so I can’t speak to its credibility. My anti-diet philosophy aside, it seemed OK overall though. They seemed to make some valid points worth noting. The Nutisystem D diet is based on a study at Temple University (my alma mater, it should be noted) School of Medicine. The sample size was small with only 68 obese participants, so no definitive conclusions should really be drawn, let alone an entire diet program developed based on them. Furthermore, and even more troubling, “The lead figure on the study, Dr Gary Foster, wrote the NutriSystem Diet’s ‘Mindset Makeover’ behavioral guide. Also, NutriSystem provided an ‘educational grant’ for the Obesity Management In Patients With Type 2 Diabetes dinner meeting at Temple University’s School of Medicine.” Can we say, “conflict of interest”, boys and girls?

My next stop was our very own Diabetes Daily where Elizabeth Edelman did an impressive and comprehensive review which you should totally check out to get more details and insight into this diet. One thing she noted was the obscene amount of sodium in the packaged meals. Sodium is bad for diabetics, and while it’s especially dangerous and needs to be watched by those of us with blood pressure, heart and/or kidney-related problems, if you want to take steps towards avoiding those health issues, you’d likely be doing yourself a favor to keep an eye on your sodium intake. What struck me was the first quote I lifted from the Nutrisystem homepage that the diet would help with the ABC’s of diabetes including blood pressure – yet the food is loaded with sodium? I guess what they strategically omitted was that their packaged meals are more likely to raise your blood pressure, not lower it.

Elizabeth also noted that the diet doesn’t teach participants how to eat once their supply of packaged meals is depleted. This is the problem with just about every diet that exists though, and that brings me to the true take-away message I want to impart.

I don’t believe in weight loss diets, so my bias in that respect should be noted. I believe in eating a wide range of foods, heavy on whole grains, produce and low-fat protein, light on processed foods, all in moderation – well, except for diet soda (it’s my vice, so sue me). It’s vague I guess, but after spending half my life in a tete-a-tete with food, I made peace with food and this works beautifully for me. I’m sure there are a few sporadic souls out there somewhere for whom a weight loss diet has worked to the point that they were able to reach their goal weight and maintain their weight loss, but for the vast majority of people, that isn’t what happens. So what good are weight loss diets? Well, they might help you lose weight for a time, but they are by their very nature nearly impossible to maintain forever so the weight inevitably returns. Weight loss diets make the people who write the books about them, and the people who run the weight loss program companies fat… in the pocketbook sense, of course. It’s a billion dollar industry because people keep feeding it, pun intended.

I know, I know, if you’ve met me or seen enough photos of me, you’re asking who the heck am I to talk about weight loss diets? I’m not fat. I’ve never been fat. I was slightly overweight when I was 14 after eating myself into oblivion one summer to alleviate what I now recognize as depression. My obsession to lose those 20 or so pounds resulted in an 18-year eating disorder, diabetes complications, and all the accompanied fallout. So my food and body issues aren’t the same as someone who’s obese, but if I hadn’t hobbled along with my compensatory behaviors – insulin omission and self-induced vomiting – for the better part of two decades, I can assure you, I’d be as big as a house with an attached 3 car garage and an in-law suite. I’ve despised my body. I’ve been engaged in obsessive power struggles with myself about whether or not to eat something. I’ve felt deprived. I’ve felt completely out of control with my eating. My end result was different from someone who’s overweight, but I think my struggle was comparably miserable, and achieving balance and making peace with food and my body, no less monumental.

My weight is now healthy and stable. Thus, I have no reason to consider weight loss as a New Year’s resolution. There are plenty of things I should consider – exercising and cleaning my house would be good starts – but in the end, I don’t do New Year’s resolutions. The very concept of getting motivated to do something that’s likely been an ongoing problem for an extended amount of time, in January of all the cold, dark, depressing months of the year, just because you have to get used to writing a new number on your checks seems inately ludicrous to me.

Yesterday I saw this post, “New Year’s resolutions – no more!”, written by Doris Smeltzer on Eating Disorders Blogs: Advice for Parents, and tweeted by @gurzebooks, a publisher of books about eating disorders. I encourage you to read the post, but in brief, Ms. Smeltzer spent years making resolutions to lose weight. The time came when she found the key to achieving the number on the scale she had so longed to see – chemo to treat breast cancer. She swore off diets after that, but whatever messages had been conveyed to her daughters about loving – or in this case, hating – one’s body were learned. One of her daughters eventually died from an eating disorder. I’m sure that isn’t the sole reason her daughter developed an eating disorder because an eating disorder is a very complex mental illness. However, I suspect, just as Ms. Smeltzer does, that her daughter garnered some very negative messages about her body by watching what many would say is typical behavior – a New Year’s resolution to lose weight. You want to lose a few pounds, maybe you ate too many Christmas cookies, maybe you haven’t lost the baby weight, maybe your genes just don’t agree with you being a size 6 or wearing a size 34 waist, so New Years rolls around, and you decide you’re finally going to lose those pesky pounds by going on a diet.

Ms. Smeltzer, who no longer diets and whose daughter is dead, quoted the spring 1991 issue of Radiance Magazine:

In 1990 Congress investigated hazards and misrepresentations of the diet industry. C. Wayne Calloway, M.D. practices endocrinology in Washington, DC and has held prominent positions with the Mayo Clinic, university medical centers, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the National Institutes of Health. He testified, “The great mythology is that the diet works and that you have failed. Most likely, the act of dieting itself leads to the compulsion to eat. Bingeing is a normal consequence of starving.” (p. 15)

So should you just say screw it? Well, no, not if it’s in the interest of your health to lose weight. I don’t claim to have the secrets to weight loss, and I do think that achieving weight loss is a very individual thing – much like diabetes management. I’ve never had to lose a lot of weight and then maintain it, but if you think I don’t know about learning how to eat like a normal person so that I could maintain weight without slowly – or quickly – killing myself, then hello, I’m Lee Ann, nice to meet you, so glad you popped by today.

Luckily, as people with diabetes, it’s generally easy for us to justify meeting with a registered dietitian, and that’s what I think anyone who wants to change their eating habits should do. The people at Nutrisystem or Jenny Craig are sales people before all else, and they want to sell you the dream that you can be whatever your magic scale number is. I know some people swear by Weight Watcher’s, but if you have to keep going back and paying over and over again, I can’t help but think that they just want to make a profit off you and your desire to lose weight too. Your diabetes team, your healthcare providers are the ones who are better situated and better qualified to help you devise a plan to lose any weight that might be compromising your health. Sales people are not.

So this year, instead of deciding you need to lose 20 pounds, and then beating your poor psyche to a pulp in 6 weeks when you haven’t made whatever progress you envisioned on a diet that you know you can’t indefinitely sustain, decide you’re going to get a kitchen scale and start weighing your portions. Make a new rule that you aren’t going to eat straight from the box, bag or container. Trade your half-gallon of ice cream for single serve bars or cups. Are you going to lose that 20 pounds by doing any one of those things by itself? No, but any one of those things are good steps to take towards learning to eat a healthy, varied diet of the foods you actually like in moderation. Then, if you must make one, spend your New Year’s resolution on something fulfilling, like remembering all the things that make you awesome, no matter what the number on the tag in your pants is.

I meant to post a Merry Christmas post on Christmas, but somehow it didn’t happen. I hope you enjoyed your Christmas though. I thought I’d share a few of our highlights from Christmas morning…

This morning, as I do most mornings, I uncovered Darwin, the iguana, put my hot cereal in the microwave, and fired up the laptop. I checked my email, and saw something unusual amidst you-can-still-order-our-wonderful-products-and-have-them-delivered-in-time-for-Christmas emails. A name I recognized from middle school and high school with a subject line of “just saying hi”. I dismissed the name as pure coincidence because it’s not an especially unusual name, nor was it someone with whom I ever exchanged more than a few words, words that I admit weren’t so nice because I was a jerk to him. However, when I opened it I discovered it was in fact the person I knew from school.

He said he’d been searching for people whose names he could remember, purely out of curiosity and interest, like “Hey, whatever happened to so-and-so from way back when?” It seems, Lee Ann Pitts is a name that sticks in people’s minds because whenever someone tracks me down from days of yore, that’s more or less what they tell me. While it’s far easier to find information about Lee Ann Thill than Lee Ann Pitts, apparently it doesn’t take much effort to determine that we are one and the same person.

It’s weird for me to consider anyone I know outside of the DOC being privy to what I still consider my personal business despite the fact that it’s publicly available to anyone who might go looking for it. It still makes me feel peculiar that my non-D friends have all this knowledge about me, the kind of factoids that I would never share between sips of Diet Coke while lounging at the annual pool party or spill while savoring entry #4 at the chili cook-off. “You mean I never told you about the wacky psychoanalyst who asked me about my dreams, and who I’m pretty sure was old enough to have shared beers with Freud??” As I’ve discussed a few times over the last several months and as recently as last week, I’m definitely uncomfortable that people who might have some professional connection to me know way more about me than I would ever disclose to them otherwise, be it clients, potential clients, past clients, or other professionals. It’s flat-out surreal to think about people who witnessed my psychological implosion, unbeknownst to them, discovering what became of me, and learning exactly how untogether I was once upon a time.

I don’t talk about the psychological implosion much, mostly because shedding light on it makes me cringe something fierce. However, call it a cosmic coincidence, but this guy from my homeroom emailed me on a rather poignant day. I probably never would have mentioned it had I not received this email, but reading it, thinking back to what he might have observed versus what was really happening with me, I remembered that today is the 20th anniversary of my suicide attempt.

I can remember being overwhelmed with sadness and despair starting when I was maybe 13 or 14, but depression is so insidious that it wasn’t until it was 16 and it was really bad that it seemed something was truly wrong beyond just a normal moody teenager. In the couple of years between 8th or 9th grade and 11th grade, the crying increased, and eventually, so did the wishes that I would die. I had always been a good student, but during the first half of my junior year in high school, I had started to skip school. I had no motivation to do the work, and at first a day here and a day there turned into several days a week for weeks on end of being absent. I’d get up and pretend to get ready for school, but then my mom would leave for work, and I’d settle onto the sofa in my sweatpants. When I did show up, my friends greeted me with surprise because it became normal for me to not be there. The same kid who had felt tortured over getting her first C on a report card only a year earlier was now failing almost all of her classes, and couldn’t think herself out of her front door, let alone muster the optimism and motivation to give a crap about school.

On the day I tried to kill myself, I had stayed home from school. Back during the days before caller ID, if the phone rang, you had no real way of knowing who was at the other end. The school often called to verify I was home, if I recall correctly, so when the phone rang, I answered, but it was my mom calling because she suspected I hadn’t gone to school. She was pissed, and I’m sure she was also unsure of what to do with a teenage kid who had gone from academically successful with lofty goals to a kid who didn’t leave the house or even care enough to shower. She’d been trying to convince me to see a psychologist for a couple of months. Initially, I’d refused, insisting that was only for crazy people, and I wasn’t crazy – or at least I didn’t think I was. Eventually, I’d relented to the idea though because the time came when admitting I might be crazy seemed more tolerable than the depression that was choking the life out of me. She had made an appointment, but the appointment hadn’t occurred yet.

She was on her way home, and I was frantic. I was already so miserable I wanted to die, and she was surely going to punish me, compounding the already unbearable misery of my existence. I had been thinking about trying to kill myself for a while, and it seemed like as good a time to do it as any because I couldn’t imagine feeling any worse. More significantly, I couldn’t imagine feeling any better. I looked though the cleaning supplies. Once I found something that seemed toxic enough, I mixed it with the Crystal Lite iced tea. It smelled… chemically. I took a sip, and it tasted awful. I tried to drink some more, and eventually, realized it tasted too awful to actually consume. No surprise.

By the time I realized the cleaner wasn’t the answer, my mom was home. She was livid, and I felt like the world was collapsing, so I reconsidered my options, and headed to the medicine cabinet. We didn’t have much in the way of medications in our house – other than insulin of course. I don’t know if it occurred to me to overdose on insulin, but that scares me now so I have to guess it scared me then. I looked through the OTC medications that we had, and there was a pretty full bottle of Tylenol. I took it into my room, and sat on the pink quilt my great-grandma had made for me. I took out the pills, putting them in little piles of 5. I made 8 piles before deciding that would be enough. 40. I couldn’t begin to tell you why I decided on 40. Maybe 40 looked like enough, whereas 30 didn’t seem like it would do the trick. Maybe I didn’t take the entire bottle because I didn’t want her to wonder what had happened to the Tylenol after I was dead. Regardless, of what my reasoning was, and I use that term very loosely, I swallowed them. Then I waited for something to happen.

I was supposed to babysit that afternoon, so I went. Do I know how irresponsible and stupid that was? Twenty years later, uh, yes. I felt OK, and I was trying to behave as if everything was normal, so it seemed like the obvious thing to do. Shortly before the kid’s dad arrived home, I started to feel sick. He’d barely walked in the door when I rushed to the bathroom and threw up. There was some short conversation about a stomach flu I think, and then I walked home. I was feeling pretty sick by then as it had been 3 or 4 hours since I’d taken the pills. I don’t remember who called who, but I remember lying on my mom’s bed with only the light from the hall shining into her room, talking to my best friend. I don’t remember anything much about our conversation other than I was crying, I told her I had taken the pills, and she begged me to tell my mom.

My mom had gone out for some reason that now escapes me, but she arrived back home soon thereafter, and I told her what I had done. My best friend called again to make sure my mom knew. Somehow we ended up at the office of the psychologist with whom we had an appointment. I’m not sure if that was the scheduled appointment or maybe my mom had moved the appointment to that evening after finding I had skipped school yet again. He advised us to go to the emergency room.

Needless to say, it was horrible. I felt about as sick as I’ve probably ever felt, like I was going to die, as fortune would have it. They made me drink charcoal mix that is designed to absorb ingested poison before you regurgitate it. However, I think that was a lot of too little too late as the Tylenol was in my system by then. I remember lots of doctors and nurses. I remember crying. I remember my mom looking scared, angry, disappointed… and devastated. I remember wanting to live but wanting to die all at the same time. I remember the light box used to view x-rays and the little square hospital-green tiles on the wall. I remember tubes. I remember being scared because they said the Tylenol might have permanently damaged my liver. I remember being transferred from the ER to the ICU. I remember having to lay on my right side, I think to help keep me from throwing up. I remember facing the glass separating me from the nurses’ station, and I remember my mom trying to sleep but not really sleeping in a chair in-between me and the glass. I remember the nurse coming in every hour or so. I remember apologizing over and over and over and over again.

Physically, I felt better in the morning, and I was transferred to a regular hospital room. Then I heard a voice I recognized. This was the first day of Christmas vacation, and in the bed next to me was one of my classmates, one of the popular girls, getting a nose job so she could heal in time to return to school after the break. I was mortified. This was before HIPAA, so I never really knew if she figured out why I was there, and if so, what kind of rumors, or worse yet, what kind of truths were spread about me because of that unfortunate encounter.

The psychiatrist came to talk to me, and I was admitted to the hospital’s psych unit later that day. I stayed one night. That next day, Christmas Eve, my mom and my two best friends came to see me. I don’t know what I would have done without my friends, and thankfully, my mom knew that, and despite hospital policy, my mom advocated for them to get permission to see me. I begged the psychiatrist to let me go home for Christmas, and after some negotiating and promises I wouldn’t try to hurt myself, I was released. I don’t even really remember Christmas that much. I got a gift certificate to a ski shop, so on the 26th, we went to the store, and I picked out a ski jacket before heading to the psychiatric hospital where I stayed for 6 weeks.

It should really go without saying, don’t try to kill yourself. However, as obvious as it sounds, some people try, and some of those people succeed. If you’ve never been that depressed, it’s hard to understand what would make a person want to do that. As someone who’s been there, it’s hard to explain. Depression doesn’t make sense though, not to the person with it, and certainly not to the people who care about anyone with it.

I had to be monitored for several days after the overdose to make sure my skin didn’t turn yellow, a sign that my liver was damaged and I might have needed a transplant, but I was lucky there was no permanent physical damage from the Tylenol. The only real scars are the ones I feel when I think about it, maybe ones my mom feels, or maybe even ones my best friend who convinced me to tell my mom what I had done that day feels – I don’t know because we never discuss it. Whether you know it or not, every time you see me or talk to me or read this blog, the evidence is here. Much about who I am today can be traced back to that day so it will forever linger with me. If nothing else, the six weeks I spent in the hospital following my suicide attempt was when I first encountered art therapy. That made an obvious impression on me. So it’s evident in the big things, but it’s in the little things too. When I have a headache, get the economy-sized bottle of acetaminophen from the bathroom cabinet, and read that more than 8 500mg caplets in a 24 hour period can cause liver damage. When I hear about a client who’s attempted suicide with some otherwise innocuous OTC pain reliever, and then raise an eyebrow and snort at the term, “pain reliever”. When it’s a few days before Christmas, and I remember ruining Christmas for everyone close to me, and I wonder if they think about it too, and if they do, whether they feel anger or sadness or contempt – or forgiveness. Or when I get an email out of the clear blue from someone who saw me unravel without even realizing what they were seeing until 20 years to the day after the fact.

I stole this from Karen, so thanks, Karen!

1. What is your Favorite Christmas Movie?
We watch Love Actually every year while we put the tree up. I think it’s cute. Hugh Grant is Christmas eye-candy too.

2. What is your Least favorite Christmas Movie?
The ones that would qualify are movies I haven’t seen, primarily ones from recent years like Elf, which I’m sure I would find particularly annoying because I don’t care for Will Ferrell.

3. What is your favorite Christmas song?
I like a lot of Christmas songs, but I’m especially fond of Blue Christmas by Elvis. Don’t make fun of me, but I’m also partial to Last Christmas by Wham, although the Jimmy Eat World version is good. I’ve never cared for Mariah Carey, but I also like All I Want for Christmas. There’s a certain South Park Christmas song I enjoy too, but I’ll just leave it at that.

4. What Christmas song(s) drives you crazy?
I really haven’t listened to much Christmas music so far this year, so I can’t think of the ones that “drive me crazy”. If I happen to catch any that I find especially annoying, maybe I’ll come back and edit this.

5. What is your favorite Christmas Drink? (ie. egg nog, hot chocolate)
Diet Coke. That counts, right??

6. What is your favorite Christmas Memory?
When I was a kid, my great-grandma had a huge family party every Christmas Eve, and that was the absolute highlight up until I was maybe 13 or so. After that, she got too old to host such a big shin-dig, and fewer people started coming because people were more dispersed, had other obligations, etc. In my tweens and early teens, my cousins and I would sleep over at my Granny’s house, and my cousin, Desiree, and I would sleep on the sleeper sofa in the living room, staying up way too late.

7. What is the best toy/gift you’ve received on Christmas?
I got an awesome pink tricycle when I was 5, which I think was partly a sympathy gift since I’d been diagnosed 2 months earlier. When I was 15, instead of having presents, we had a family ski trip to Killington, VT, and I got to bring one of my girlfriends, so that was a lot of fun. During our first Christmas together, which was not quite 2 months after we had started dating, Jason got me a Patsy Cline CD box set, which is kind of a sentimental favorite because on our second date I sang “Walking After Midnight” to him.

8. What is the worst toy/gift you’ve received on Christmas?
I remember being really disappointed in getting knee socks when I was like 11 years old, give or take. As it turns out, I still have those socks, and I still wear them, so they turned out to be a pretty good gift. I honestly don’t remember getting any gifts that I thought were terrible though. It can be hard to pick out the right thing for some people, and it might be a cliche, but it is the thought that counts.

9. What do you LOVE about the holidays?
I adore and collect Christmas ornaments. At some point within the next couple of weeks, hopefully, I’ll get to share some with you. It’s kind of silly, but I think they’re beautiful, and the important ones tend to have stories attached to them too.

10. What annoys you about the holidays?
It concerns me to see parents going to extreme lengths to get “must-have” toys. When I see news stories about parents paying out the wazoo to get certain gifts for their kids, or worse, stories about people assaulting or treating others disrespectfully in an effort to attain a certain toy, it just makes me shake my head in disgust. No kid needs any toy that much. The worst part, in my humble opinion, is the lesson that type of behavior imparts to children.

11. Do you prefer star or angel on top of a Christmas tree? Or something else?
We have an angel. I like angels because they’re often made with beautiful fabrics, and generally, I think they’re more aesthetically pleasing. It really depends on the particular tree-topper though.

12. What is your family favorite recipe at Christmas?
My Nan’s cornbread dressing. Technically, I guess that’s a Thanksgiving recipe, but I’m not too big on ham, so if we make Christmas dinner, we make turkey, dressing, and sugar-free cranberry sauce.

13. Are you a Grinch or a Who at Christmastime?
I think I’m a Who, but I’m human, so I certainly can have Grinchy moments.

14. Christmas light displays – Love them or Hate them?
OK, I admit, I’m kind of particular about lights, so much so that some people might think I’m a light-snob. Jason even teases me that I’m racist when it comes to lights because I only like white lights.

I do kind of enjoy the all-out crazy displays that make you wonder what kind of enormous electric bills people are accruing. It has to be a pretty extreme display to fall into the so-tacky-it-works category though. If nothing else, those people get mad points for effort because it takes a lot of time to put that degree of display together.

Despite of all that, driving through the neighborhood, seeing the lights is much more interesting when all the houses do it differently, so while they may not be done the same way I would do it, I like to see them, and I would be very disappointed if people stopped decorating.

Rocking the Pink Tricycle, 1978

15. Santa’s at the mall – Fun times or Creepy?
I reckon it depends on the Santa. Mostly, I thought getting pictures made with Santa was fun though once I outgrew my strange-person-in-a-costume anxiety I had when I was like 3 and 4.

16. Christmas cards – do you send them, yes or no?
Every year, I want to send them, but it pretty much never happens… until this year! If you read regularly, you likely know that I begged for addresses from all who might like a handmade card from me. I’ve sent a few out already, but I’m still making them. I’m hoping to get them finished and mailed by Monday. I hear it might snow or something, so I should have time to finish this weekend.

17. What is the best thing about Christmas, in your opinion?
I like that it can bring out the best in people, but being with Jason is what’s most important to me.

18. What is the worst thing about Christmas?
I don’t like to see it bring out the worst in some people – greed and selfishness.

19. When do you put the tree up and take it down?
Normally, the first or second weekend of December, although we’ve yet to do it this year. Dexter’s tank is in the spot where we’ve put the tree in years past, and we’re space-challenged, so we haven’t figured out where to put it that won’t involve putting furniture in other rooms or the basement. I hate the thought of waking up to open presents on Christmas morning and not having a tree though, so I guess we’d better figure something out soon.

20. Out of the 12 days of Christmas, which day and item would you want your truelove to give to you?
Really? Who would want any of that crap except for the golden rings? So, yes, I’d take the golden rings. White gold only though, please. Shiny yellow gold isn’t my style.

21. Why do you think that Grandma got run over by a reindeer?
Maybe she got confused, wandered outside, and just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Also, her white hair and big flannel gown blended with the snow.

22. Who is your favorite reindeer?
I like Comet. I’ve had an interest in geoscience and astronomy since I was a kid. I vaguely remember when Haley’s Comet made its orbit towards the earth back when I was maybe 12 or 13, and how cool and interesting I thought that was.

23. Do you believe in Santa Claus?
Of course! Unless you just don’t celebrate Christmas, why wouldn’t you??

24. What is your favorite smell at Christmas time?
I do love the scent of a fresh Christmas tree, although we have a fake tree. Since we’ve been married, one of top 3 worst arguments Jason and I have had was about a fresh versus fake tree during our first married Christmas together. We got the fake one though. If we ever have a house big enough to accommodate 2 trees – which we’ll need to accommodate our ornaments – one will be fresh.

25. What would make you happy at Christmas this year?
We have tentative plans to spend Christmas Eve with friends since we’ll be family-less, but they are like family to us, so we’re looking forward to that. Christmas day, we’ll just hang out at home. I might cook something, maybe we’ll watch some movies. Nothing fancy, but it will make me happy.