What time is "Closing"?

Guests expect innkeepers to stay on top of the local restaurants: what's good, what's not, and when they're open.

I try, but the restaurants don't make it easy. They switch their hours and their days off. And they send helpful emails like this one:

New Winter hours
Thursday – Monday
5PM- Closing

I don't know about you, but my clock never says "Closing." Since, with a job and an inn and kids, I don't hang around restaurants late into the evening, I have no idea what time they close. Why not just post the hours "Opening-Closing"?

Christmas theology from my four-year-old

This morning, while the kids were waiting to go see what Santa brought, LW and I were discussing baby Jesus.

LW: Mary was Jesus' mommy but then she grew up into a man and became God.

In the middle of trying to sort that out, he surprised me yet again: Mommy, is Jesus a boy or a girl?

I wonder what else he thinks that I don't know?

What the grocery store checker said to me today

"And your total is . . . wow! I didn't think you had enough groceries to cost that much!"

Not what the store manager wishes she'd said, I'm sure.

It's better than my French, but . . .

Michael and I are tossing around ideas for our family vacation in April. Michael is leaning heavily toward a return to France, so I'm perusing rental listings in Burgundy.

I found this charming description:
An ideal of holidays and romanticism for the amateurs of forests, of lake and waterfalls. Our asses and horses shall welcome you as a friend.

Caroling

The twins, LW, and I went caroling in the village with a group from church this evening.

As we were pulling away from the first house and the farewells had died down, LW called out into the silence, "Merry Christmas! Ho! Ho! Ho!"

Christmas Pageant

The book I'm currently reading emphasizes Christmas as the "expected in the unexpected" and that's a pretty good description of our pageant most years. This year, the pageant featured a shepherd-versus-cow wrestling match. Here they are before they started wrestling.

Due to H1N1 concerns and the lack of a baby of the appropriate age, we used a doll as the baby Jesus. Which was a good call, as the cow turned around and punched the baby Jesus halfway through the pageant. (In the cow's defence, his baby sister is one week old today and I don't think anyone is sleeping much.) LW announced that the baby Jesus was "a fake," but since he was whispering I think only the first row heard him.

NB and IM were the world's most morose magi. (They were trying to look solemn.)

EM was the narrator. Numerous people commented on how deep his voice is.

Fourth grade philosophy

Picking up LW at school today, I noticed a bulletin board with bits of wisdom various students had shared as part of a recent writing project.

What gems came from my children?

NB: In my life, I have learned that every mountain you climb has the best view.

IM: In my life, I have learned that if you ask for extra computer time, you will get zero computer time the next day.

Attention Gap Kids

If my daughter talked like the girls in your commercial, she wouldn't be getting any Christmas presents, let alone clothes from your store.

For those of you who haven't seen the snottiest kids currently starring in a commercial, you can check them out here.

Good thing I still have the award

Remember the Worst Mom in the World Award? The one I was going to keep for awhile?

I solidified my claim last week.

Driving home from the Christmas play on Saturday, NB said, "Mom, you never took treats to school for our birthday."

Ooops.

The twins turned 10 the day after Thanksgiving. I usually take treats to school on the Monday following. This year, that Monday was my monthly slot to teach the environmental science unit in their class, and I was also helping to pack up the Scholastic book fair.

Cupcakes completely slipped my mind.

And since their teacher was out with back problems for two days last week, she didn't remember to do their birthday circle last week either.

*sigh*

I made arrangments with the teacher to bring in treats on Friday. I've already purchased the cake mix and frosting. Now all I need to do is remember to actually make them.

I wonder if the grocery store would let me put up cans to collect change to pay for their therapy bills.

The Ethics of Innkeeping

One aspect of innkeeping that I didn't anticipate is the ethical questions that come with the job.

Some things of course are cut and dried. Yes, I pay taxes on all payments I receive, even if you pay me in cash. No, I won't let you put six people in a standard room even if that's the only way you can afford a ski vacation.

Other situations linger in my mind and leave me second-guessing myself.

Should I discount a room for the local family staying at the inn because their pipes burst? How much? What about the woman and children staying at the inn because they are avoiding violence at home?

Do I have to rent a room to the couple having the extra-marital affair?

Should I bend the no-personal-checks rule for the young couple with the hard-luck story? Even if the last such person's check bounced, leaving me with a $60 bank fee on top of providing a heated room, hot shower, and breakfast for free?

Should I let the young family sleep in the breakfast room if I'm full and they will otherwise have to sleep in their car? Even if the door separating the breakfast room from our living space has a very inadequate lock? What if it's winter and their car is out of gas?

Should I make a room available for the local church to house a homeless family because the shelter is full? Does the answer change if one of the parents has a criminal record?

When mercy and common-sense disagree, how do I choose between them? It's one thing to sit in church and agree that Jesus calls us to radical hospitality. It's another entirely to realize how radical that hospitality can be.

Skiing Term of the Day

There's a skiing term Michael shared with me that describes the current skiing conditions on the mountain.

WROD: White Ribbon of Death

It's what you get when the resort has concentrated its snow-making efforts on one trail, and it's the only trail that's open.

The Birth of Venus

I read this book because I ran into a friend at the library and she pulled it off the shelf, handed it to me, and said, "Read this."

The Birth of Venus belongs to the "historical fiction with an anachronistically feminist heroine" genre. I tend to like these books, despite the anachronism, and this one was no exception.

It's set in Florence at the end of the fifteenth century. Don't know who Savonarola is? Neither did I until I started this book.

That said, there are a couple of scenes that are a little graphic, so I wouldn't recommend it for everyone.

scroogenomics

Want to freak out your kids? Check this book out from the library: scroogenomics: Why You Shouldn't Buy Presents for the Holidays. Bonus points if you do so in November or December.

The author doesn't actually suggest you make any changes in the gifts you give your young kids, but the kids don't know that. The title of the book and the picture of the crying child on the cover are enough to strike fear into children's hearts.

That was an unintended consequence of checking out the book. I saw it sitting with the new books in the library and thought it looked interesting. It wasn't until I saw the look of horror on IM's face when she skimmed over my books that I realized how it must look from her perspective.

In any case, this book looks at gift-giving from an economic perspective. The author's main point is that since gifts usually provide less satisfaction dollar-for-dollar than money we spend on ourselves, holiday gift-giving provides a net economic loss. I'm not entirely convinced, but it was interesting to see him lay out the argument.

What I did find fascinating was the comparison in holiday shopping between the United States and other countries and between the present and the recent past.

When comparing the bump in spending attributable to the December holidays (as a percentage of sales), the United States is lower than the median. Not only that, the bump's percentage has not grown since 1935. And in fact, holiday spending is a smaller share of the economy now than it was then.