jennanddave.com

I vowed to go to bed at a reasonable hour and look, I'm still up. I blame History Detectives on PBS. What a great show. If it was Thursday I'd blame Men in Trees. Also a good show. Who'd have thought Anne Heche could've pulled her career up by the bootstraps after the whole "Celestia" thing. I didn't, and yet there she is on tv, all cute and chipper and ogling good-looking guys using tools. And she's getting paid to do it, like you really have to stretch you're acting chops to be convincing at that. I do it everytime Dave's standing at his workbench in the garage. Somebody give me an Emmy.

Moving on, when I was but a wee little girl, every December 1st my mom would put an advent candle on display. It was the kind that had the numbers 1-24 painted on it and you'd burn down one number for each day leading up to Christmas. She expressed great love for that tradition, particularly once we couldn't buy them anymore. I don't remember where we used to get them, but the source dried up. Fast forward to 1993: I was walking down Decatur in the French Quarter one fine Fall day and noticed a store that dealt solely in all thing Christmassy. I went in and inquired after advent candles and lo and behold, they had them. I bought a few and sent them to my mom. I was very proud of myself for being able to bring this particular Christmas joy back into the family's holiday tradition. After I left New Orleans, I would call the same store up and order two or three more candles to carry us through the next few years.

This past November, the route my dad and I took out to my grandma's house when we picked her up for Thanksgiving took us right by the Yankee Candle Factory store. It's now a knee-jerk reaction whenever I see either a Christmas store or a candle store to wonder if maybe they sell advent candles, so I careened off the road, slammed on the brakes, and after a tire-screeching 180 degree turn, stopped in a parking space between a Hummer and a tour bus. It was very Dukes of Hazzard.

I've never experienced anything quite like the Yankee Candle Factory store before in my life. It smells...ummm... I'll leave it at that: it smells. Also, it's confusing; approximately two seconds after walking through the main entrance, my dad and I were officially lost. The place is a maze of rooms. We found the candles, did a dance of glee (I did anyway), and then commenced wandering around looking for the exit until my dad (with a glimmer of desperation in his eyes) grabbed the nearest employee and begged to know how the hell people were supposed to get out of that place. The guy chuckled, said that was a good question, and then pointed. We paid. We left. We breathed a sigh of relief.

Last weekend while my mom and I were working on the advent calendar, my dad asked what day it was. My mom told him and he started talking about how they would have to burn the candle down a few days because they were slightly behind and when did she think they should do that? He sounded what can only be described as anxious. Way back in the day we were notorious for lighting the candle then forgetting about it only to discover we had burned down four days instead of one. Apparently my dad has some bad memories of this and it now manifests itself as "concern" about the current candle.

To put a merciful end to a long story, this one's for you dad: