Well, we’re a day late with the tree lights. I felt under the weather yesterday – a reaction, I’m sure, to searching for trees on a very windy day. So I asked if we could delay until today and Don, who was tired, thought that was the perfect idea. Today, we’ll put on the lights. Tomorrow, we’ll hang the ornaments.
It’s going to rain a lot today. The temp will reach 54 degrees, which is warm for this time of year. It’s so dark out there right now, you’d think the sun had just come up! Sort of the perfect day to put on some Christmas music and light the tree. We always like to wait a day or two and enjoy the tree with the lights before we add the ornaments.
Still on a high from Tuesday. As is Don. I’m so, so grateful for this entire experience, from the initial coaching with Ben, to filming in the NYC area and living in Brooklyn, and then to a year later and the premiere. I am a theater animal and though I tried to get into movies many years ago, the woman I spoke to had an immediate opening for a Nicole Kidman movie that she wanted me to drop everything for, but I was coaching the Summer Shakespeare Festival at the Globe and I refused to quit my job and leave them in the lurch. So those dreams quickly vanished. Having the opportunity to do it 15 years later, is a nice little ‘coda.’
And I’ll say one thing more. I’m sure working on any movie is exciting, but the thing that made this such a powerful, one-of-a-kind experience was Jim. The young man we auditioned for the program 24 years ago, the guy who suddenly had unexpected and enormous stardom come into his life and who handled it with great integrity, the guy I had so many laughs with over the years, the guy who is true blue – well, it made the whole thing so personal and intimate. And I have to add Ben, as well, whom I got to know very well when we worked on his dialect during pre-production. Add to that the gift of properly getting to know Todd, Jim’s husband? Icing on the cake. It could never be duplicated and I am profoundly grateful.
I felt the need to dress a girl yesterday:
Darling little Pippa.
Okay, my friends.
Stay safe.
Happy Saturday.
Lovely tree
I remember the first year we had to stop real trees
My little kids had such allergies
My inlaws refused to give it up at first and those little ones got sick when we went home for Christmas
Finally, they bought gorgeous artificial one like ours and were happy. Back in the day, our elders didn’t realize how bad allergies could be. Called it hay fever lol…I have gone from huge one to small one but that is okay. Yours will look lovely of course. Enjoy decorating with your adorable husband.
Thank you, Brenda!
Stay safe.
I hope the girls will be decked out for the holidays! (Any and all holidays they celebrate.) Little girls in pretty dresses are lovely.
They don’t have specific holiday dresses, but we’ll see what we can do.
Stay safe, Martha.
My Edinburgh son is here for a short visit…yay. We’ve been watching a few soccer matches, and getting a tutorial on the sport from him…lol. Tomorrow we’re having a family dinner…excited to have all my boys under the same roof once again!
We finally got our outdoor lights up, and some decor in the house, but not the tree yet. Maybe on Monday…not much ambition this year. Just trying to enjoy the season one day at a time.
Breathe in your tree smells, and enjoy. Lights and ornaments can wait. Enjoy your day! ;)
So happy your family is all together for the holidays!
Stay safe, Donnamae.
happy for you to have had all those experiences of making and acting in a movie, going to the premiere with don, loving that movie and seeing your name twice in the credits and (the best part of) spending time with long-time and new friends!
hope you are physically feeling better by now.
know you will enjoy decorating the tree and being there with don. happy saturday!
stay safe.
kathy
Thanks so much, Kathy.
Stay safe.
Claudia, you have such a lovely relationship with Jim. I watched him faithfully in The Big Bang Theory and was disappointed when that series ended. Your tree with just the lights on will be pretty until you can get to the decorating. I went to a church bake sale this morning. They were selling beautifully decorated Christmas cookies. I bought 3 dozen of the more intricate ones and they are safely stowed in the freezer until closer to Christmas. It put me in the Christmas mood. Little Pippa is ever so charming in her cute sweater and dungarees all nice and cozy. You and Don enjoy the rest of your weekend. Hugs, Elaine
Thanks so much, Elaine.
Stay safe!
Our tree-lot guy set up Weds, got the load of gorgeous holiday trees from Oregon on Thurs (unloaded the big truck in the rain; yep, Southern California is getting a little bit of rain) and ready for ‘the Christmas tree business’ yesterday/Fri although I’m sure he has more customers today (Saturday) as the rain has momentarily stopped since daybreak and we’ve briefly had some sun (although not now, after lunch). Light rain, just enough to keep the trees clean (and freshened) since being cut.
I can drive by this new, cheery space in town; the colorful, loop-y light strings rimming its borders, or even get out of the car and walk the rows, listening to the carols playing, warm my hands with the portable heaters and grab a free hot cocoa, just look and look at my heart’s content (tree guy doesn’t mind; I know him), sniff the heavenly aroma of ‘Christmas’ in the clean, rain-washed, open air; but that’s all, can’t actually take a tree home, yet I’m grateful for the experience (of this seasonal joy!) of a Christmas tree lot!
(For me, inside the house, it wouldn’t just be the prohibitive expense, but my asthma/allergies would get ‘way too flared up in these days if I were to be shut up indoors with the ‘live’ tree. It’s fun, though, to recall all the times when I was younger, when we’d cut our own, or search for the perfect tree in the lot as a family; bring in the tree, get the wood going in the fireplace for a cozy atmosphere on a Saturday night. I’m lucky that with childhood asthma/allergies, I could still do that back then, both with woodsmoke AND ‘live’ tree ‘smells’; thing is, now, at this age, I’ve got a lot of road miles on these poor ‘ol lungs that I didn’t in childhood.)
I watched a TV piece on Los Angeles local news yesterday and a ‘tree-lot man’ being interviewed by the reporter was trying to defend the price of his cut trees, lowest price being $100, with the general/average price range for his inventory at $100-$200 per tree. (Gosh, the tree guy in our own small town has one tree which must be 12-ft, I guess for those big McMansions with the soaring ceilings; what on earth must ITS price likely be? Whew. I forgot to look at the tag. Can’t imagine, or even think about the amount of time it takes to also decorate a tree of that size [I’d be exhausted!], but how lovely it must be when complete [maybe well-off people just hire somebody to come in and decorate a big tree for them]!)
This tree guy in the L.A. story said that tree-lot people aren’t expecting a lot of profit this year. The economy/inflation of course. But their various ‘wholesale’ costs were high, what with Pacific West drought (the crop of trees meant for this season didn’t grow enough due to lack of rain, so they had to leave them growing [I found this interesting!]; thus, there just aren’t as many trees to offer to people, and they’re consequently at a premium [and clearly, too, there has been fire loss, with many of the evergreen-tree acreages succumbing to wildfire]); also, increased transportation expenses (something about a shortage of drivers AND trucks but also cost of fuel [we’re still barely below five dollars per gallon of ‘regular’ gasoline here in SoCalif; the price wants to hover between $4.93 and $5.13, fluctuating {consistently!} anywhere in between, and that’s all over my own county, not just my small town; as for diesel fuel, have no idea of its cost]).
I didn’t catch the other reasons (seemed like a long list, as this particular tree-lot guy in L.A. endeavored to justify/explain to the reporter as to the WHY of the high cost of his trees this year; you could see he wished it otherwise, and one of his partners agreed, saying, “All we want to do is make people happy at Christmas!”).
But, gosh, his trees and my hometown guy’s trees are REALLY pretty to gaze upon (in childlike wonder; is good for the soul! [I’m living just under two miles from our tree lot; wish its enticing pine/fir/spruce ‘forest’ scent could reach to me this far! {Am on sensory/olfactory overload, what with the rare ‘smell’ of rain, too!}]). What a treat.
Have a wonderful rest of the day and weekend enjoying YOUR tree, Claudia; you and Don always pick out a great tree; it looked perfect in the photo. Can’t wait to see it fully decorated with your pretty ornaments. Time to get out the precious putz houses and sheep, too. Looks like you’ve got chilly nights in the 20s, if I interpreted the weather-service reports correctly when they flashed them up on the nightly news. Just the right kind of feel for enhancing the holiday mood!
One of the tree guys around here explained it all to us last year, but I can’t remember it all. Prices are prohibitive around here, but since we don’t buy a lot of presents, we’re okay with it. But only to a point. We also had a drought this year, which has made an impact on availability and price.
Stay safe, Vicki!
Sally Field was a guest on Andy Cohen’s show last night, promoting your film. They showed a clip which looked wonderful and Andy said it was great and everyone should go see it. Idina Manzel was also a guest and it was one of his better shoes, l think. Sally Field revealed that her worst onscreen kiss was with Burt Reynolds! Who knew? LOL.
Andy stopped by our set one day when we were filming in Greenwich Village. Both he and Sally have apartments near that location.
Stay safe, Suzanne.
Special experiences must be savored. Yes, in time the energy fades a bit but the memory of the experience and the people — especially the people — stays. I’m so glad that this was even beyond your wildest expectations. Biggest smiles.
Definitely one of the highlights of my career, that’s for sure.
Stay safe, Jeanie.