1.  Some of the doors on my minivan are frozen shut.

2.  The Spouse actually complained about going to the Golf Dome (although I note that it did not actually keep him from going).

3.  The Preschooler put on her hat AND her gloves without a fight when going to dance class.

4.  The cat refuses to get off the fleece blanket on my bed.

When it gets into the subzero temps like this, I am always reminded of a similar night in high school when some of my girlfriends and I decided to go see "Night of the Comet" at Westown Theater.  It was a bad decision all around.  I don't know what our parents were thinking, letting us go out on a night when it was about -20 or so.

There were about six of us crammed into Grace's little blue Nova.  What I mainly remember from that night was being trapped inside the car because all the doors were frozen shut. We tried to open the windows. They were frozen too.  And because we were teenage girls in an age without cell phones, panic ensued.  Thoughts of our frozen bodies being found in the Nova raced through our heads half-seriously.

Finally, I think two of us were able to force open one of the passenger doors.

Had the movie been good, the evening might have been worth it.  But "Night of the Comet" was bad, really bad... like "no discernible plot" bad. 

But the night in general made for a good story, one we occasionally still recount when we get together on cold nights like this. I heard on the news that, with the windchill factor, it could feel like -30 tonight. 

I'm staying in and fighting the cat for the blanket.

 

The holiday season is filled with traditions.  I'd like to share with you a favorite tradition of mine.  (If you'd like to share one of your holiday traditions, feel free to use the comment feature.)

When I was in high school at Brookfield East many moons ago (or perhaps even earlier at Burleigh Junior High -- we're not quite sure), a group of us decided to throw a holiday progressive party.   More than twenty years later, although the character of the party has changed and the number of attendees has dropped, we are still going strong.  I hosted it this past weekend.

A progressive party is a dinner party in which each course of the dinner is hosted by a different person.  When we first started, it made for quite the production considering (a) that parents had to be somewhat involved given that we were invading their homes and (b) that we had a limited amount of drivers since the majority of us did not have our licenses yet.  Dressed in our holiday best, we drove all over Brookfield in all kinds of weather for years. 

Over the years, we developed certain traditions.  We had traditional appetizers -- spinach balls from Mike, egg rolls from me, and "shrimp aujourd' ***" from Liz. The traditional game held at the after-party was charades.  (I think I've mentioned before that a lot of my friends were drama geeks.)

The traditional team match ups for charades were the Catholics against the Protestants (not sure how that got started), with one or two of the Catholics having to be re-baptized Protestant in order to have fair team sizes.  One memorable moment was when someone was able to get his/her team to correctly say "Sussudio" a song by Phil Collins.  (I told you we were geeky.)

Even when people went off to college, we all managed to reunite at Progressive time, sometimes even bringing boyfriends/girlfriends, and yes, we forced them to to play charades.  Remarkably, one or two of them forgave us and married our friends anyway.

When we got tired of actually progressing, friends hosted the entire party at their homes, or we all decided on a restaurant in the area.  As people began lives out-of-state and parents' sold the family homes, the number of attendees gathering in Brookfield dropped.  Several of my friends moved to the MInneapolis area, and they have their own version of Progressive in Minnesota.  I had Progressive at my house for the few remaining in the Milwaukee area.

The party was off to a shaky start when the spouse and I discovered that our corkscrew had gone missing.  This necessitated a quick call to the neighbors who, god bless 'em, lent us theirs.

As we sat at dinner, we reminisced about old times, lamented our "old age," and exclaimed over the fact that our friends have a daughter who is now in high school.  Kudos go to my spouse who cooked a great meal and to my friend Kathy who made the traditional spinach ball appetizers.

Good food.  Good friends.  Good times.

On the Thursday night news, I saw aerial footage of the damage done by vandals to East's football field.  (It reminded me of pictures of those farm fields where the corn is flattened out into strange, circular patterns.)  Someone drove a car onto the field and performed spinouts on the grass turf. It was an intentional act of vandalism; the perpetrator(s) cut through a chain in order to get access to the field.  As a result some of East's home football games will now have to be played at... Central! For the story, click here.

In the global scheme of things, high school football probably doesn't amount to much.  But when it comes to the world of East v. Central, it is a big deal.

When it came to extracurricular activities, athletics was the top dog when it came to the allocation of funds, even when I was at East  As a drama nerd in high school, I can personally attest to the fact that many drama/musical productions, instead of being held in an appropriate venue, were staged in the "cafetorium"  (the cafeteria that doubled as the auditorium).  But even us drama/yearbook/newspaper geeks loved going to football and basketball games, especially the East-Central matchups. 

There was always a mounting sense of excitement in the days before any of the East-Central football and basketball games.  With the basketball games, you had to come early; it was standing room only by game time.  School spirit was at a fever pitch.  Jocks and band nerds alike cheered with every cheer (remember "Boom, chic-a-boom" ? what did that mean anyway?), applauded wildly when the Spartanettes performed, danced in the bleachers in time to the pep band, and, of course, hurled insults at the Central side of the gym, mostly consisting of "Central sucks!" which the teachers dutifully tried to quash each and every time.  (Yes, it was poor sportsmanship, but it was a heckuva lot of fun.)

When I was a junior, because our homecoming football game was a night game, it had to be held at Central because that was the school with the football field lights (and yes, there was controversy about that). 

That game just didn't feel right. It was "homecoming" after all.  (I remember this game specifically because one of my good friends was elected to court that year, and we had to hustle her into a car after the traditional parade because she was shivering to death in her peach ball gown.)

So, I sympathize with all who are disappointed over this turn of events.

Is the rivalry between East and Central a "manufactured rivalry," as posited by Cindy Kilkenny in a recent blog?  Well, the school board may add fuel to the fire, but rivalry is inherent in competition.  Should "rivalry" escalate to the point where harm is done, whether to persons or property, then it is no longer rivalry but a crime.

Even after all these years, my husband, a Lancer, and I, a Spartan, occasionally rib each other about our respective allegiances.  I also admit to having an occasional immature urge to yell "Go East!" whenever I drive-by a Lancerette car wash.

It might be interesting to attend an East-Central game now, just to see if it is the same.

 We would of course need to sit on the East side.