I Need Advice!

I'm in a wedding. I managed to get through 40 years of my life without ever doing the whole matching bridesmaid David's Bridal thing, but here I am. I've been a bridesmaid twice but both times escaped the classic dress horror.

I picked up my bridesmaid's dress last week and tried it on for my husband yesterday. The color is "Atlantis" which I discovered today that David's Bridal seems to have discontinued. It is kind of a mermaid-meets-green horror; the picture doesn't do it justice.


In person it is more green, and my husband looked at it and said "you look like a giant Christmas tree ornament."

I spluttered with laughter.

And I mean spluttered.

I spit on the bridesmaid's dress.

So now it is mermaid green with a nice spit water stain on the top and the skirt. Does anyone know how to remove spit stains from satin? Anyone?

Christmas Meme

I like memes, 'cause my brain is very associative, and I can riff on them or on other people's blog posts much faster than I can come up with my own material. So in the spirit of easy blogging, this meme comes from Sex Ed in Higher Ed. Tag, you are it! Everybody nees a little Christmas meme!

1. Eggnog or hot chocolate? Both. To me hot chocolate is an all-winter thing, while egg nog is a fun treat only in stores briefly, so if I had to pick just one then egg nog is the truly "Christmas" drink. Cooking Light also has a fine fine recipe for Egg Nog Pie. Gotta make me some of that.

2. Does Santa wrap presents or just put them under the tree? Both. It depends on the size of the gift. At my sister's house Santa uses specially purchased wrap that he is certain the kids have never seen.

3. Colored lights on tree/house or white? I like white, but the kids like colors, so now we have colors.

4. Do you hang mistletoe? No. I grew up in the middle of the woods, and mistletoe hung high in the trees. I associate mistletoe with strangers trespassing on our property to shoot mistletoe, and the fear of a stray gunshot. Festive, yes?

5. When do you put your decorations up? We put the outside lights up around Thanksgiving. But we've varied the day we put the tree up. My older daughter's birthday is December 13, so we're still struggling with how to give full attention to her birthday and not have it compete with Christmas. Last year we didn't put the tree up until after her birthday; this year we put up after her birthday party but before her actual birthday.

6. What is your favorite holiday dish (excluding dessert)? It isn't really a holiday dish, but I always make spanikopita for family get-togethers around Thankgiving and Christmas. I like that.

7. Favorite holiday memory as a child? The Christmas morning when the three of us came downstairs and found three piles of 30 or so books each. My dad had gone on a spree at the used bookstore. For me that much reading material was like a big pile of chocolate.

8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa? My parents did not believe in having their children believe in Santa. We always found this a little sad. My siblings and I all have told our kids that Santa comes.

9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve? We did not as kids, but our parents divorced rather acrimoniously about 15 years ago, so we now have a gift exchange with my dad on Christmas Eve and with my mom on Christmas day.

10. How do you decorate your Christmas tree? We invested in a number of ornaments that do not break! We also have colored lights and a few ornaments we've owned for years. In previous years we've put the tree on a table so kids and pets can't get to it, but this year it is on the floor so we could set up a wonderful train track my brother-in-law helped make.

11. Snow! Love it or dread it? Miss it. I lived in Minnesota for almost 10 years, and I learned to deal with it though I wasn't fond of the length of the winter. Here in North Carolina it never snows for Christmas (BigSister keeps asking where the snow is this year) but it sometimes does for my birthday (in January).

12. Can you ice skate? Hahahaha. No. I've tried. It is humiliating.

13. Do you remember your favorite gift? See "favorite memory." And it wasn't really a gift, but I really appreciate my husband taking a job in North Carolina three years ago just before Christmas so I could be close to family and so I could get out of Idaho.

14. What's the most important thing about the holidays for you? Time with family, and watching my daughters enjoy it.

15. What is your favorite holiday dessert? My mother used to make these cream cheese pastry cookies called something like "kalashkas." The pastry was cream cheese and butter, and the filling was made with nuts and evaporated milk. I've been scouring the internet trying to figure out what exactly these were.

16. What is your favorite holiday tradition? We're working on new traditions. Last year my husband asked that I make crepes and apples for Christmas morning. It is something we associate with our dating years, when we went to Vegas and would have crepes and apples in the Paris resort. I like that, because it seems like a link with my pre-mommy life.

17. What tops your tree? A gold star ornament

18. Which do you prefer, giving or receiving? Giving. I like trying to find gifts that people will really like. I like feeling I got it right.

19. What is your favorite Christmas song? Santa Baby by Eartha Kitt

20. Candy canes? For looking, not for eating.

21. Favorite Christmas movie? The Grinch. And now it is my daughter's favorite too. In fact, I think she is going to be a little disappointed if we don't gather around the tree and sing "Welcome Christmas", so I went looking for the lyrics. My family doesn't know it yet, but we're going to be singing at the Christmas Eve get-together.

Enjoy the holidays.

I'm not a chef. But I know that.

I'm kind of touched that my site meter tells me that a few folks still stop by, even though I haven't really been posting. Thanks!

I don't have a good excuse for not posting, just a little overwhelmed by the holidays and houseguests (I am NOT doing another mother-in-law post, but yeah, she was here). Do you ever feel like you have this big checklist and the whole race to Christmas is kind of like a bad scavenger hunt where you have to find everything on the checklist before Christmas comes or else your head blows up?

That's where I am.

In other news, I got sucked in to a Usborne Book party a couple weeks ago. In general, my husband and I are firmly against home sale pyramid schemes of any sort. My husband is still bitter about a zester I bought at a Pampered Chef party some years back that didn't last more than two days. But my kids lovelovelove the Usborne "That's Not My Puppy" type books, so I thought I'd give it a try.

Now, I remember my first Pampered Chef party. I was living in St. Paul, in a wonderful kind of midwestern version of the urban single girl. I could walk to bars and stagger home, and I did. But a co-worker invited me to this party in the 'burbs and I went for the cultural experience. It was a cultural experience; I was the only single guest and I think the only childless one. But the thing that struck me the most was that despite the name "Pampered Chef," no real cooking was involved. They were not selling the best in cooking products, they were selling the best in convenience products for creating the illusion of cooking. Every recipe they presented started with "first you open this Pillsbury product." I grew up in an anti-convenience food household. I've learned to appreciate some convenience foods; they're not all bad. But when I use them I don't call it being a "chef."

I was reminded of that at the Usborne book party, when the presenter gaily told us that Usborne sold books all the way up to the adult level. "I've never read the classics," she chirped, "and they have all these great abridged versions of the classics [here she waved around a copy of Jane Eyre] so I'm learning all about them." I loved how she just slid past the word abridged really fast. From a pure marketing MBA level I loved the business model too. Take a book that it is so old that it is in the public domain, one anyone can download from Project Gutenberg, trim a few thousand words, call it literature, and charge $14.99 for it. Pure profit, baby.

I admit I'm a bit of a snob, but it saddens me that the "be a model or look just like one" business model can be so effective in so many other areas. A nice multi-size measuring spoon and I'm a chef, a couple of abridged classics and I'm an English major. Is this really what everyone wants, the quick way to everything? More than "you should have a party too, you get free stuff!" it is the "you can be an expert in something with minimal effort" that gets to me at these events.

Or maybe the holidays just have me grouchy.

Meme

A Meme from Sex Ed in Higher Ed. Tag, you are it!

You are supposed to use only one word, with no explanation. You can use more words if you type them together and are a big cheater like me.

Yourself: Tired

Your partner: Sweet

Your hair: Cut

Your Mother: Reliable

Your Father: Variable

Your Favorite Item: Kids

Your dream last night: Interrupted

Your Favorite Drink: Pimms

Your Dream Car: 65Vette

Your Dream Home: Beach

The Room You Are In: Living

Your Ex: Drunk

Your fear: EarlyDeparture

Where you Want to be in Ten Years? NewCareer

Who you hung out with last night: Family

What You're Not: Organized

Muffins: Yes

One of Your Wish List Items: InstantThermometer

Time: Limited

The Last Thing You Did: Nursed

What You Are Wearing: ColdFeet

Your favorite weather: Spring

Your Favorite Book: One?

Last thing you ate: Cheerios

Your Life: Blessed

Your mood: Irritable

Your Best Friends: Distance

What are you thinking about right now: Sleep

Your car: Dented

What are you doing at the moment: Resting

Your summer: Busy

Relationship status: Married

What is on your tv: PBS

What is the weather like: Cloudy

When is the last time you laughed: Today

Appreciating the finer things

When my niece was about three, her dad was gone one evening and my sister said to her "what do you want to do while Daddy is gone? Sit around and watch TV and eat chocolate?"

"YEAAAAHHH," said my niece, her eyes wide and her voice full of wonder, as if to say "I did not even know that was an option!! Wow!!!!"

My niece is 11 now, and about a year ago she said to me "when are you going to start BigSister on chocolate?" as if it was a food group, part of the progression. You know, first you start on vegetables, then fruits, then meats, then chocolate. And at some point, BigSister had chocolate.

I have a confession here. I'm not a chocolate addict. I have respect for chocolate; I like it. But if I'm looking at a dessert menu and there is a chocolate torte or a carrot cake, or lemon sorbet, or pumpkin pie, I might go for any of them.

In my family, though, I'm alone. My husband loves chocolate. My sister loves chocolate. Even my mother, the queen of Scandinavian self-deprivation, loves chocolate.

And I know my children are bitten with the bug now, because last night when my husband started rustling in the Halloween candy my kids came running faster than a cat that hears a can opener.

I guess they've started on chocolate.

Slowly Emerging From Chaos

Our floors are done. Our stove is back in place. We still have a lot of boxes. Here are a few thoughts from our travels.

• One of the relatives we visited had in the basement guest room (among other trash, boxes of textbooks, and non-functional appliances): a can of black pepper, a jar of Folger's decaf, and a container of brewers yeast. Should I therefore not be worried that in the computer room there was a tube of KY jelly?

• At King's Dominion there was an attraction labelled "Witche's Cave." Apparently lack of grammar isn't limited to college students. Why wouldn't you proofread, or at least spell-check, before paying a sign painter?
  

• In the metro, we saw a sign for a local university offering you the chance to "Get your dipoma or MBA." Back when I hired people, if their resume said they had a dipoma I would not have offered them empoyment.

Must unpack boxes now.....

Dig

Downstairs the house is empty. Well, mostly. We left a few things on the existing hardwood floors, chairs and a small table; things for eating.

I've found that the process of moving out of a section of your house is very much like an archeological dig. I'm finding layers, previous versions of my house that I didn't know were there, or things I knew were there but I forgot.

Among my discoveries:

• The original color of the cabinets in our kitchen is a very strange pseudo-wood taupe. I'm kind of relieved they were painted aggressive white, even if it is a pain to clean.

• I haven't splashed as much down the side of the range as I thought.

• When the previous owners re-did the kitchen they didn't replace the wallpaper under the cabinets. OK, I knew this. But until we moved the fridge and the stove I didn't realize how bad it really looks. Each wallpaper seam is separating, like continents that want to get away from each other. I see wallpaper removal in my future.

• The "Warning I'm 2" t-shirt of BigSister's that I lost six months ago was in the rag pile. And it probably should have been, as it had a massive stain that now won't come out.

• That the first mouse we had, the one my husband called "George" and thought was cute, left little piles of mouse poo behind the bar and under BigSister's bed.

• That re-training the cat to a new litter box location is a bigger pain than I remembered.

New floors tomorrow! Sleep at a time yet to be determined....

Why one shouldn't let a one-year-old keep holding Daddy's toothbrush during a diaper change

Yeah. Uhh, I'll just let you use your imagination.

If I used tags, this one would go under "errors in Mommy Judgement."

What Would You Do If You Had To Evacuate?

The phone rang at 7 this morning. It was the mover. "I'm sorry I'm late," he said "Traffic is really heavy because they are evacuating Apex."

A cold chill came over me. "They are evacuating Apex?" I had only one thought. Because down there in Apex, see, we got us a new-clee-ar power plant.

"You should turn on the TV," he said. "The Environmental Quality Plant blew up and they are evacuating." All I could think is "what is an Environmental Quality Plant? Is it part of Shearon Harris?"

So I hurried up to my computer. As it turns out, Environmental Quality is a private hazardous waste company. I was downright relieved to learn it was "just" a chemical fire. Even though I'm not in the "evacuation area" for the nuclear power plant, if it was that I'd be scurrying for the hills.

Then I got to thinking. What would I have done if I'd had to evacuate? I mean, my house is not a monument to organization right now. If pressed, I could find a file that has the kids' birth certificates and my marriage certificate and a few other vital papers. I was talking to my mother-in-law and she said "I'd take pictures and videos." I thought "most of ours are on the computer. We couldn't pull the hard drive in time. Would we just toss the CPU in the trunk?" And what about kid clothes? What if we have to evacuate when I need to do laundry? Would I just throw a bunch of dirty laundry on top of the dog in the trunk and run? And there is that diabetic cat, I better bring her stuff too. Or should I leave her here with a pile of food and a prayer?

Maybe we should have gotten that mini-van; I don't know how we'd fit all this in the car. Clearly, I'm going to have to give "evacuation plan" some thought.

Stress Stress Stress

Monday we get new hardwood floors. As I've said in the past, we have very good reasons for getting hardwoods.

But that doesn't make this time any easier.

We have to move out of the downstairs. We have to haul our refrigerator and our stove into the garage. We have to live in the upstairs of our house, without a stove, for the better part of three weeks. We have to actually move out of the house when the floors are refinished.

Tomorrow a mover comes. I think. When he called he said "did I wake you?" and I lied and said "no" but he did wake me and now I'm thinking "did he say he was coming on Friday or on the 7th? Because I'm thinking he said the 7th and I thought 'Friday' but now I realize Friday isn't the 7th." So I'm going to have to call him. Among my other questions:

• I hope we don't have to turn off the refrigerator for very long before we move it. Because I have stuff in that refrigerator, stuff I want. And I was thinking we'd just unload it into grocery bags, move it, plug it in, and load it back up. I'm assuming that will work. Will that work?
• Should we get rid of our evil dishwasher as long as we're getting rid of stuff? It doesn't wash a blessed thing. Can the mover move a dishwasher?
• Will the movers do packing, or do I have to get all items of furniture cleared of stuff today? And is it today?

Stay tuned.