Well, it’s a ridiculously beautiful day here in So. Cal, and I’m sitting here watching the Rose Parade on TV, even though it’s only about 50 miles away from us. You’d think I’d manage to get there one of these years. In years past, I’ve actually collected my family into the car and forced them to drive up to Pasadena after the Rose Parade, when all the floats are on display on Colorado Boulevard. They line them up in rows, and you pay a little admission fee (I think it’s $7 per adult nowadays) and you can wander the aisles and look at the floats up close. I used to go when I was a child, with Ann Marie and her family (when admission was probably a quarter). And even though we were just two giggly 11-year-olds, I recall being truly flabbergasted at seeing the floats up that close: The painstaking work involved at lining little fennel seeds up in 48 rows just to make an eyeball iris is absolutely stunning.

Anyway, I keep dragging my family up there, not to see the actual parade but to see the floats afterward – I don’t know if I just want to recreate the wonder I experienced as a child, or (like Ann Marie’s mom) do my kids the favor of introducing them to amazing work of people with flowers. But the point is, we never quite make it. One year, we got there when the gates had just closed. Another year, we got there and walked up to the gate to pay our little admission fee, only to find that it was “full.” And still another year, we didn’t make it all the way there because the freeway near Colorado Blvd. had turned into a temporary parking lot. All three times my husband (Superman) appeased me by taking me to Boston Market and not saying a word when I ordered a super-size, super-calorie slab of sweet potatoes. (Thank you, honey, for not saying a word!) In fact, in subsequent years, my kids would tease me and ask me if we were going to do our annual 2-hour New Year’s trek to Pasadena to go to Boston Market (as if there weren’t one down the street).

 

I think I’ve given up. Or maybe I just need a better plan. Maybe that should have been one of my New Year’s resolutions. … hmmm … but who wants to get turned away at the gate and have your very first resolution failed just hours into the new year, right? So no. That one’s not going on my list. I’ll just have to have a quiet little success with that one, one of these years. …

 

Anyway, do you have one of those holiday-related traditions you wish you could do? You know, the ones that seem so simple, but you can’t seem to incorporate them into your life? I think I’d also have to add “making a gingerbread house” to that list. …