It's always been one of the saddest days of the year for me. Probably I just need to grow up, and learn how to enjoy a Christmas of my own making as much I used to enjoy it with my home-family. Turns out it takes quite a lot to make Christmas.
I did make a gingerbread house from scratch with the family gingerbread house cutting set my mom passed along to me. Pre-made gingerbread house parts are now available from Trader Joe's, and I totally get why mom now goes with those. I wish I'd taken a picture of my gingerbread house when I first built it, because it was like a Dr. Seuss gecekondu. Then I frosted it and LE decorated it and it looked okay. Then I today I realized it's a metaphorical gingerbread house, reminiscent of the building boom in Istanbul: build a crappy structure, slap a nice-looking veneer on it, and call it good. The gingerbread house is starting to sag as the walls soften in the damp sea air, and the metaphor continues.
I think LE had a good Christmas. The toys are still hurricaned around the house and if he didn't enjoy it, then bless the little fellow for trying so hard to make me happy. For all his almost-4 repetitiveness, I don't think I'll ever get tired of hearing him strolling around the house belting out Christmas songs in almost-4 Turklish.
I sometimes have the feeling we're both doing our best to put on a brave face for each other.
5 comments:
It's just not the same here is it? I couldn't even attempt the brave face...well done you for at least trying!
Happy New Year xx
Along with the veneer call it a crappy English name like uphill court or city towers and use over inflated adjectives like super luxs and of course masrafsiz while as soon as you move in it becomes very masfafli
Thanks Ayak, you too!
Toasty, I think I shall call the gingerbread house Candy Palas. All it's missing is plugs that fall out of the wall the first time you use them, and a kitchen sink with a fixed faucet that leaks with a 2-inch deep basin that holds nothing larger than a salad plate.
One of LE's favorite things to do on the way to school (after he got tired of the farm animals in the road) is spot the broken down houses. There are a lot, some of which are broken down enough to just be part of the eroding landscape. He can't quite differentiate the broken ones from the ones that were halfway built, then abandoned.
Given the development out that way, this pretty little area will soon be filled with gleaming high-rises and McVillas, situated safely on prime farmland that was once terraced to keep it all from sliding down the hills...
Well done on the gingerbread house. I made one for the first time this year and I can't eat it because my cats kept eating bits of it that I had to replace! Yours is more colourful than mine because my husband ate all the candies I bought to decorate it with:)
Mine is indeed like a gecekondu but a Turkish friend asked if she could buy it nevertheless. She said if I had time I should make them and sell them. Perhaps you and I should set up a cottage industry (pun intended). Happy New Year to you!
I think it's a lovely gingerbread house and if it were here in Portland, I would list it for sale on www.terradigmrealestate.com. It would sell very quickly.
That's because if the buyer couldn't live init, he/she could just eat it, or give it to their homeless pit bull.
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