Not a lot of camera pics this month and almost all of them are enhanced to be as BRIGHT! AS! POSSIBLE! I’m a sucker for Christmas lights, you feel me? Anyway, here are some more photos and I’m looking forward to coming back here soon to talk about this past year because it was one of the craziest in recent memory. And maybe talk about what I’m thinking about for 2012. LET’S BE HONEST, both of these conversations are probably about what I’m having for lunch.

Here is December!

When I was little, we had a large loud insane Christmas Eve dinner with my mother’s extended family and though the numbers drop every year for one reason or another, we still do this. We show up and hang out and then my dad says a blessing before the meal, usually adding a silly story or two and then he says some Polish prayers and asks my mom to forgive him for any hurts he has caused her over the past year and then we sort of turn to each other and do the same.

Which, come on! WHO IS BETTER THAN MY DAD? What a tradition!

Anyway. On Christmas Day, we would go to church in the morning and then drive west to spend the day with my grandmother, my father’s mother, in Brooklyn. I have barely any recollection of this and only know it because I asked my sister recently how on earth we spent Christmas Day as small children and she reminded me. My dad’s mother died fourteen years ago which means I have been alive without her for exactly as long as I was alive with her. For many of those years I was a small child so I barely have much of a sense of her at all.

Anyway, this is not about my sweet grandma Agnes. (Though, come on, I kind of totally want to name one of my kids Agnes. POLISH CATHOLICS REPRESENT!) This is more about the fact that the lovely lady died (at almost 90! GET IT!) and it came to be that on Christmas Day, my family just…stayed home.

And it was just us.

And we sort of just sat around. And it was amazing.

So this year we more or less did that and I thought I would describe how it went this year as the years now sort of blend into one another and it’s hard to tell them apart for lo, I am old and also, a child was born in a manger in Bethlehem.

On Christmas morning, I made cinnamon rolls from scratch for the first time ever which took approximately four hours because the dough had to rise for about one thousand years and I did not check that in advance.



We ate breakfast around 11.

We ate cinnamon rolls around 4.

Everyone had one except for my father who apparently hates cinnamon rolls, another thing I didn’t research before making them. I must say this is possibly the one thing that leads me to doubt my father’s perfection. THE MAN HATES CINNAMON ROLLS? Who are you!? What!

Somewhere in between breakfast and cinnamon roll snacking, I went for a run and then we all opened presents which is why in every photo, everyone looks nice and showered except me.

So, there is that.

My family decided to stick to a one-gift-per-person rule this year as we had/have tentative plans to go on vacation together and decided we should save our money for that.

Naturally, my mother blatantly ignored that mandate and so instead of getting a few small gifts, I got a few small gifts and then a ton of gifts from Rita and even though I was like MOM YOU SUCK AND DIDN’T PLAY BY THE RULES, I was simultaneously all THANK GOD MY MOM SUCKS AND PLAYS BY THE RULES!

Also, Rita is adorable. She bought herself this blue lounge outfit or maybe she got it as a gift? It’s VELOUR. I don’t remember but I have NEVER seen my mother wear anything like it so she put it on Christmas morning and my sister and I high fived her and told her she looked like a smokin’ Westchester soccer mom.

At some point, I finally took a shower. (6 pm?!)

Then we decided it was high time to bust out Paul’s scotch for cocktail hour. I like to call it “Just In Case We’re Not WASPY enough!”

Scotch! How quaint! Now let’s put on our sweater vests and head out for some golf!

We…do not play golf.

BACK TO THE ACTION:

How cute is my older brother!? He ran his first marathon this year. No big deal, dudes.

Also: sorry, ladies. He’s taken.

Cheers!

My sister Debbie wears some variation on this outfit every year, pretty much ever since her boyfriend’s parents bought her this ridiculous apron. Which she wears as a dress? To be festive? Regardless, it is the best in the world. I love my brother Jem’s expression in the background like ARE YOU CHECKIN’ THIS OUT?

So, the seven of us sort of just sat around quietly in front of the fireplace and then decided we should order some takeout, as is our custom, Chinese or Indian. This year we chose the latter. Takeout can be tacky but we do eat it on the precious Christmas China which my dad bought while he was in Japan. So yes. On Christmas Day, my family ate Indian food on the Japanese China.

We are a diverse family, you understand.

After dinner, we decided to watch a movie, deciding on Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close which I announced would probably be depressing but not THAT depressing, having been the only one in the family who had read the book.

Welp. I was incorrect. It was actually more depressing than I thought.

My dad fell asleep halfway through and for the rest of Christmas vacation, he thought every movie we sat down to watch was about 9/11. Including Moneyball. And some British detective series on PBS.

My sister bought all of us these crazy flannel hunting hats and I vowed before the day was over, we would stand together in front of the fireplace, STAND UNITED AS A FAMILY OF DLUGS and have our picture taken while wearing them, care of my dad’s camera and its rockin’ automatic timer.

And so it was, that the Dlug family had a blissful Christmas Day.

Cinnamon rolls, a roaring fire, beating my dad on Words with Friends, taking a family portrait in fuzzy hats and watching a movie that may or not be as depressing as I thought it might be.

We wish you a merry Christmas (Rita reminds you that Catholics are very much still in the Christmas season! It lasts through the Epiphany! HEY YOU WHY ARE YOU TAKING DOWN YOUR TREE? GO TO CHURCH! I LEAVE MY LIGHTS UP UNTIL FEBRUARY!)

And a happy new YEAAAAAAR!!!

Hey you guys! What the heck is up!?

I hope your holidays were merry and that you have many exciting plans for New Year’s Eve, hopefully they involve wearing something with sequins and kissing all the boys!

My Christmas was wonderful! There was a fire going in the fireplace every night, lots of generosity all around in terms of gifts and hugs and heartwarming chats and my grandmother only made one or two racist jokes at the dinner table instead of her usual six or seven. SUCCESS, DUDES. I’ll take it where I can get it.

I am flying down to Chapel Hill, North Carolina this morning to spend New Year’s Eve with my favoritest person in the whole world who happens to be my boyfriend which makes me the luckiest.

SPEAKING OF FAVORITE PEOPLE. It’s my other favoritest person in the world’s birthday today.

My father turns 67 years old today which is just too old if you ask me. (GIVE ME A GRANDCHILD, my mother screams at me in the background.)

One year ago, my father finally received his final hip surgery at the Hospital for Special Surgery in NYC. After nine months in a wheelchair, in constant pain and frustration, everything started to turn around. A year ago today, my dad began again. New hip, recovery, re-learning how to walk. He started all over.

A year later, the man has barely a limp. He spends all afternoon raking leaves on the hill in the backyard. He joined a gym for the first time in his life and goes religiously three times a week, still rehabilitating his body with the exercises he learned in months and months of physical therapy. He drives, he can shower and dress himself, he goes up and down stairs, he is the dad we all remember. Taking out the garbage, going for long walks, doing ridiculous dances in the kitchen for no reason.

But he’s different of course.

My dad’s emotions are more raw, I think and the way he views the world will probably never be the same again. He knows how lucky he is. He has been incredibly humbled by his experiences and sees beauty and God in all of it which is absolutely miraculous to me.

The other night before dinner, dad volunteered to say grace. He talked about being sent to South Korea when he was in the army, an engineer in charge of building bridges. He was warned that the river’s current often changed direction and to build accordingly as the last engineer’s work had been washed away as soon as the tide turned the other way. (**By the way, thumbs up for the US Army, right? Some guy built a bridge incorrectly so it just UP AND WASHED AWAY!? I digress.)

Dad recalled laying in his hospital bed last year with a beautiful view of the East River. Every day he spent hours in bed, watching the current and he noted that it too often changed direction.

This is life, he said, close to tears at the dinner table. Things change for us, sometimes overnight and we rarely know why. All we can do is go with it. Follow the current until it turns again.

And all the good people around us?

They are our life rafts for when the water gets too choppy.

So, happy birthday to my sweet, sweet father. I apologize publicly on my blog for making so much fun of your accent over the past week. You have to understand that I imitate it because I love it.

Because I love you.

BECAWSE I LOVE YA, YA CRAZY POLACK.

Here is a picture of my dad from a few months back with my sister, the first time he was able to bend down and put his sock on which ended up being the hardest piece of the puzzle after surgery with a new hip. (WHO KNEW?)

TA DA.

Dr. Dlug is a rockstar.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!

And Happy New Year everyone! I’ll be back in 2012 with a lot to say! YEAH YOU GUYS!

When my parents bought the house I grew up in, when I was four years old, my dad bought some evergreen saplings and planted them all over the property. As a child, we would always drive somewhere to pick out a real Christmas tree, normally enormous, as our family room has incredibly high ceilings and my parents would fight as my dad attempted to wrestle the tree through the door and into the house.

However, seven or eight years ago, my dad realized that the saplings he had planted were now full grown trees and he declared that he would cut down his own tree for Christmas. And thus, when my mother deemed it time to get a tree, he would grab an axe and head out the back door. I can also remind you right now that I grew up on Long Island which often brings to mind lots of traffic and malls and not necessarily some crazy Polish lumberjack going out back to chop down his own tree.

But that’s how it goes on the Dlug cattle ranch.

(We do not live on a cattle ranch.)

Anyway. The first few years, the Christmas trees my dad chopped down were gorgeous. Full and tall and amazing. However, in recent years, the trees have gotten sadder and sadder as all the good ones are gone and my father refuses to be swayed. HE WILL CUT DOWN HIS OWN TREE even though we all kind of quietly are like, “I…think it’s time to give this up, dad…”

A few days ago, I got a text message from my mother that said “Your father will be sending a picture of this year’s Christmas tree IF he can figure out how to send it. It is the most pathetic tree EVER!! The Charlie brown tree is actually better. Unbelievably sad!”

A little while later, the picture showed up in my mailbox and I laughed so hard I stopped breathing for a few seconds.

I texted my mother, “Time to go back to the Christmas tree farm and admit defeat.”

A little while later my mom responded, “Uh. It just fell over because it’s too light to hold the ornaments. We are cleaning up water and broken glass.”

I called my dad the next day and he said YEAH YOUR MOTHA’S NOT TOO HAPPY WIT ME. BUT I TOLD HER, I SAID RITA, CHRISTMAS IS ABOUT BABY JESUS AND NOT ABOUT DA TREE.

Truer words never spoken, you guys.

Behold, the Dlugs, 2011: The True Meaning of Christmas = Jesus/NOT DA TREE

The End.

A brand new box of crayons.

Putting on my choir robe and walking into mass, holding my music folder very carefully, straining to see which pew my dad was sitting in.

Staying home from school even though I was sick and even though I loved school. I never knew the afternoon could be so quiet, laying on my couch when all the other children were in the classroom. My mom’s hand was always so cool when she pressed it to my forehead to check for a fever. Then she would ask if I wanted a piece of buttered cinnamon-sugar toast. And I would say yes.

My California Raisins lunch box.

Roller skating in my neighbor Samantha’s unfinished basement. It was musty and dimly lit and we’d skate around and around being careful not to slam into the metal poles holding the house up. Her older sister had a mixtape that we listened to while we skated. It played “Mony Mony’, ‘Achey-Breaky Heart’ and ‘Kokomo’ on a loop. There must have been other songs but I can’t remember them.

Sitting in the backseat of my Uncle Vinnie’s 15 passenger van driving somewhere for summer vacation. I would cuddle up to my Pillow Person and play my Gameboy. Usually, Tom and I would make up songs and stories. Our favorite being one about our cousin Michael who worked at the Sunoco gas station. I’m sure we were delightful to have in the backseat for seven hours.

When we had spaghetti for dinner with a salad on the side on which I would dump half a bottle of Kraft Zesty Italian dressing.

When the weather turned cold in the fall and my mother would strip our beds and make them up again with flannel sheets. Mine were pink with characters from Beauty & the Beast. I remember falling asleep on those snowy nights all tucked in next to Belle.

The next morning when my dad would peek his head in and say ‘No school, snow day, go back to sleep’ and he would shovel the driveway and head to work because the school he taught at was always open.

Drawing houses made of chalk in the street in front of my house with my sister.

Staying up late with my older brother Paul, laying on our stomachs in my room listening to the radio, trying to fight the tired so we could stay up and hear them count the Top 10 songs of the week backwards. All I remember song-wise from this time is Toni Braxton’s “Another Sad Love Song”. She has a line that sings ‘Be it fast or slow, it doesn’t let go or shake me’ which I always thought was ‘The passports show, it doesn’t let go’ and for some reason this made perfect sense to me.

Watching my little brother Jem learn to walk, his diaper making his little pajama-clad butt look hilarious and all of us laughing so hard as we clapped and cheered.

Getting our Christmas portrait taken at Sears every year. My mother made us all wear various Christmas-embellished ornaments and I have no recollection of feeling anything but excitement because I felt so, so pretty. Plus afterwards we got to go out to eat at a chain restaurant next to the mall.

When my sister and I would whisper ‘Are you awake?’ laying in bed. And then continue to talk until we both drifted to sleep.

When my dad would tell us made up stories about two brothers named Harry and George and the ridiculous antics they would get involved in.

Sleigh riding down the front hill.

My mom helping me take off my snowy boots.

Wrapping my red fingers around a mug of hot chocolate that was waiting for me at the kitchen table.

The love that was given to me every single day by my family.

In so many wonderful amazing ways.

And now as a grown up, sometimes I am so thrilled that I am able to repay even the tiniest bit of it.

I guess I just loved them.

I still do. So much my heart hurts.

That’s all.

My musical improv team is going strong and is one of the best parts of my life right now!

Aren’t we adorable? Come on.

RIGHT?

Anyway. We were featured on this blog last week.

(photos by Keith Huang)

I am having the best time ever, is what I’m saying you guys. (And please note display of ever-present Muppet arm in that last photo. Sigh. IT CANNOT BE ESCAPED.)

We play again next Tuesday the 20th. You should come!

Life is the best.

Fall came late to New York City so my November pictures are of leaves. Trees with leaves. Streets of leaves. LIFE IS SO INTERESTING OVER HERE RIGHT NOW! I also saw a little bit of Occupy Wall Street before they evacuated the park. Crizazy down there. And then I went to LA! Where there were leaves, but they weren’t as nice as the ones in New York. THE END. And thus, children, here are pictures of leaves and of the rest of my November which was lovely. Have an awesome weekend!

Yesterday, the usual calm and quiet on my street were pierced by the sound of gunshots as the man next door, upset about the finalizing of his divorce shot his ex-wife and her daughter inside their apartment.

The Roommate and I were already out of the house when it happened, sometime before 9 am. Our other roommate was home and awoke to the shots firing from the gun. Around 11, I had a voicemail from a reporter from the Post asking about the shooting on my street and a simultaneous text from The Roommate asking to please call him, something had happened on our block.

At noon, I sat and watched footage on my phone of police cars lining my street and bodies being wheeled out on stretchers, miraculously still alive, my apartment in full view.

I was due back in Astoria from Manhattan around 3 pm but couldn’t bring myself to go home, even though the shooter had been taken into custody by then. I wandered around the city in a daze, thinking of all the possibilities. All of the what ifs. Wrong place at the wrong time. My roommate leaving for work, the scent of his cologne trailing behind him. Me heading out of the house, the apartment door shutting with its familiar slam. How close we might have come to running smack into a man with a loaded gun who would soon storm the stairs next door. Their apartment and our apartment share a wall as the buildings on my street are all connected. What if what if what if.

I went to a yoga class and struggled in the first few poses as the instructor asked us to check in with our bodies and I thought, my body. My. Body. I was stunned that it was still breathing. I was overcome by the fact that it might not be. I thought about my neighbor, an older woman I’ve surely seen taking out the trash on occasion. Her daughter, she must be the one who often starts the car in the driveway. She is in her 20′s. I cried through most of the class.

I let myself in to my boyfriend’s apartment. I put on music so I wouldn’t feel alone. I took a shower. He walked in a few hours later with a pizza and open arms and I clung to him, inhaling the smell of his shoulder. I didn’t want to let go.

Astoria, where I live, is an incredibly safe New York City neighborhood. Old Greek and Italian ladies saunter along the sidewalks, on their way to get cheeses and fish and bread for dinner. They’ve been living here since the 50′s. In the summer, their husbands all sit on lawn chairs and smoke cigarettes and drink espresso and eat Greek pastries. There’s a daycare on the corner and the children often walk by my apartment, all in a line on their way to the park, giggling and pointing at squirrels. I go jogging all the time, at all hours of the day and have never felt the slightest bit afraid. The man who owns the bagel store lives a few houses down. I see the Spanish women who work at the laundromat shopping in the supermarket. We are a secure, safe, sweet community.

And yet.

A shooting.

Right next door to me, right through the wall.

It makes me wonder how a man like that can get his hands on a gun.

It makes me wonder how he could feel that he had no alternative but to shoot his ex-wife and daughter in the head on a cloudy Monday morning inside their own home.

It makes me wonder why he felt he had no other choice, why he had no one else to help him, why why why how.

It makes me cry in yoga class to feel my muscles stretching and to connect with my breath because you just never know, do you?

You don’t.

My neighborhood. My home. I’ve been there for over six and a half years.

And there are blood stains next door.

And I just cannot take that.

In a weird instance of ‘global warming is probably definitely a sure thing, there is no way this is not happening’, for the first time ever, New York was as warm as Los Angeles this year. I stepped off the plane expecting my usual relief of warm air and…nope, the same. Except palm trees.

And TOM, of course.

Speaking of plane ride, the woman in front of me on the way to LA was traveling alone with four girls under the age of five. It was interesting to me because most people on the plane just shot her death looks the whole time and also interesting because I volunteered to hold her baby for a second while she helped her other daughters and the baby promptly sneezed all over me. It was rather endearing. (I wiped her nose. BROWNIE POINTS.) The rest of the trip was not at all endearing because every so often, as I was dozing off, I would bolt upright in my seat wide awake as one daughter screamed at the other daughter who would whine to her mother who was trying to nurse a baby to sleep who just said to please stop kicking the seat in front of you and share your crayons and I just thought how lucky I was that we never had the money to travel on an airplane because my mom would’ve arrived at the baggage claim with a head full of gray hair. Or perhaps she would’ve sold a few of us to the highest bidder. I am not quite sure.

ANYWAY.

LA was really super chill. Tom and I had some good quality time! We ran the Santa Monica stairs, went hiking in Griffith Park, ate Thai food every day for dinner and saw three movies.

Come on over here for a second! Let me show you some of my vacation slides! Pull up a chair! It’ll only take a few hours…

See Tom! See Tom run up and down the stairs! The craziest thing I saw this time around was a man who would run up the stairs on his legs and then go back down the stairs ON HIS HANDS. IN A HANDSTAND. ALL THE WAY DOWN THE STAIRS. ON A STEEP MOUNTAIN. WHAT THE ?? I am sad I did not get a picture of him. But there’s a redhead in front of me! WHO COULD IT BE? (Also please note how far behind Tom I am. He ran up and down the stairs eight times this year. Me? Six. And I couldn’t walk the next day so, I’m in great shape is what I’m saying. Tom and I took turns rolling our muscles out on his foam roller in the days that followed and just screaming in sheer agony. So, this is always a good way to spend time, yeah?)

We did not take the dynamite spicy challenge at this Thai place because we didn’t feel like dying and yet…I regret this?

And now it’s time for: LAURA REVIEWS MOVIES:

The Descendants starring George Clooney – A+! Indie and artsy and moving without being too depressing! I cried!

The Muppets – A+! Hilarious and joyful and so nostalgic! I cried a few times!

The Artist – A+! A completely silent film! Incredible plus tap dancing! I am not telling you whether or not I cried!

The End.

The sucky thing about Tom is that he lives so far away. The awesome thing is that I get to go visit him and hang out under the palm trees and such.

Not a bad deal, right?

Tom…why so serious?

Plus for Thanksgiving we made about 27 dishes including a twice-baked butternut squash which I am still dreaming about but sadly did not take a picture of.

And that concludes my trip to Los Angeles 2011. I am sad it is over. I miss Tom. And running various places until my calf muscles are on fire and eating so many Thai noodles that I think NEVER AGAIN WITH THE THAI NOODLES and then eat them again the next evening.

But that’s life, guys. THAT IS JUST LIFE.

I leave you with this awkward picture taken while wondering if my phone was working:

Fake smiles for all! Happy Late Thanksgiving!

Tomorrow at 7 am, my flight takes off from JFK and hours and hours later after I have read 5 magazines, slept for two hours, watched a marathon of really bad reality television, the plane will land safely in LAX and I will be greeted by my nearest dearest Tom!!! and we shall skip around the palm trees for lo, it is Thanksgiving Day once again and I am in Los Angeles!

I am not staying nearly as long as I’d like this time, as flights this year were so expensive that I pondered selling myself on eBay to pay for it but decided against it because who would buy me? And also, who uses eBay anymore? No one, that’s who.

But book that flight I did! Because Tom is precious to me and has promised to freeze me to death once again in a brand new apartment because he has apparently moved out of Freezer of Death and into a brand new one I shall likely name Igloo of Doom.

(For those just catching up, Tom is my cousin/best friend who lives in Los Angeles and likes to keep his apartment as cold as possible so that I come home missing some toes and I hate him for that so much that my teeth are chattering at the mere thought.)

He sent me a text today that said “I asked if/how we could turn the heat on in our new apartment and they said no HA HA SORRY!”

Which I thought was a joke because with Tom it is always a joke and I was like VERY FUNNY, PACKED MY SNOWSUIT DON’T WORRY!

But then he called me.

And said he actually DID call to find out how to turn the heat on.

And they told him there was so much dust in the vents that the heat should not be turned on until they could clean them out.

This would happen at sometime in the future, probably next March.

“Woah,” I said. “I’ll pack sweaters as per usual. But, seriously dude? Thanks for asking.”

“YOU ARE WELCOME!” said Tom.

And then continued:

“You know, I wasn’t actually going to turn the heat on, even if they told me I could. I just thought I would ask.”

“To be nice?”

“Yeah! To be nice! But I’m not turning it on because I like it cold and there’s dust in the vents anyway and I’LL SEE YOU TOMORROW!”

Oh, Tom.

You are so, so lucky I like you.

And I’m off to pack some long underwear.

For my trip to…Los Angeles.

Right.