Crazy? (Part 2)
Have you ever felt like everyone but you has gone completely insane? It's just been one of those months, I guess. A big thank-you to my sane friends, because without you, I think I would have already checked myself into the funny farm.
It's been a complete whirlwind since I got home. Last night was enjoyable though. I helped Mush with her college essay, while supervising Mom's beading sickness, while looking at yoga/pilates footwear online and chatting with Craig. We had a pretty good conversation yesterday talking about good things to come. We're always so busy!
Don't know if I mentioned this before, but I'm getting sent out to Denver in January to do some testing for work. The whole point of this activity is to be on the receiving end of a brain dump, because one of our experts is leaving at the end of January. He's a year older than me at most, married, had a beautiful house built in Raleigh in a golf course community, and is going to work for a small company as a traveling consultant. Sounds good to me, minus the latter part. To keep his tickets active, he HAS to travel.
Anyhoo, Craig and I are meeting up with Zach who will be hosting us and taking us skiing! It's going to be awesome!!
Crazy?
So V is off to China, and we come home and find this list on the table. Is it just me, or is she a little crazy?? I thought the "wearing on airplane" category was classic. Not only did she create this category, she also bolded the items as they overlapped in their parent categories.
Also, does anybody else define their clothing by brand? I think if I created a list, it would be more like, 3 pairs of jeans, two long sleeve shirts, one short sleeve, one set of pjs, etc. I think I'll put this list aside. Her therapist might need it in years to come. :)
Jeans - 5DKNY darkblue almost black denim
Rampage with no pockets
DKNY dark denim fade
buffalo light
buffalo darktee shirts - 5 gap plum
gap blue
target black
h and m burgundy
tommy pink polo
long sleeve - 8 old navy plum henley
tommy 3/4 magenta polo
old navy white
old navy black
h and m black thin
gap red
gap dark grey
gap light grey
sleepwear - 4old navy blue with white stripes
old navy polar bear
blue PSAL shirt
midwood track shirt
underwearthongs - 21
bikini underwear - 16
socks - 18
shoes saucony
flip flops
boots
carry on pumas
heels
wearing on airplane very sexy dark pink
gap v neck 3/4 sleeve wool
gap pink with lace
buffalo dark
pumas
tank tops old navy pink
old navy white
old navy black
express black
gap black with lace
gap pink with lacesweaters - 6h and m chunky sweater
gap 3/4 black wool
old navy pink v neck
forever 21 black hoodie
forever 21 plum hoodie
gap v neck 3/4 sleeve woolsweatpants - 3 old navy black velour
gap blue velour
gap black sweatpants
dress pantsstyle and co black pants
bras - 6 white
very sexy red
very sexy black
very sexy light pink
very sexy dark pinkpink
miscellaneousblue flat sheet
white towels
green pillow case
winnie the pooh face cloth
knee brace
dressy tops - 6 forever 21 lace tank
target beads
forever 21 v neck
forever 21 red
black tank with silver
target shiny tank
And then, I asked her (to fuel the fire), "What purse are you taking?"
(handwritten)
Blue herve
Orange herve
puma messenger
coach b&w
Little Surprises!
Takk fyrir!!
Home Again.
I wasn't feeling alive with Christmas spirit as I got into my car at 5:50am this morning for a quick pilgrimage home for the holiday. My original plan involved sleeping until 8am, until V pointed out that everyone in the free world would be on the NJ turnpike. If you've ever sat on it in bumper to bumper traffic, getting up after 4.5 hours of sleep to drive 4 hours is no big thing.
I had soccer the night before at 10:45pm where we effectively managed to place ourselves out of the playoffs. I don't recall a whole lot aside from our goalie being all pissed off and grouchy, getting hit square in the face twice in the box by players taking shots at close range, and my ankle hurting again. We had enough players, but it turned out to be an exact repeat of the previous week: no offense, no defense. Craig wasn't there for this one. He was already in Atlanta by then.
The ride home was extremely uneventful and boring. Come to think of it, I can't remember the last time I drove myself home alone because I usually take Greyhound. Everyone on the road had their cars packed with kids, bags, the family dog..you name it. Seems like the yellow lab was the top choice. Despite going south on the beltway and turning around at 50, I still made it home in 3 hours 45 minutes.
After getting everything into the house and walking the dog, there was cleaning to be done to get the house ready for the inevitable bombardment. Mom spent all of yesterday cooking after work into the late night hours. All that cooking, and she still had some food catered in! Yee and the kids arrived at 2:30 and Cow showed up shortly thereafter. Sit-down-at-the-table-time translates into dodging prying questions time. They were pretty good this time. I guess the little ones are a good distraction. I got, "How much did your house cost?" once and "Where's your boyfriend?" about five times. Much better than, "How's your love life?" and "How much money do you make?" Aiee.
We're just about done with dinner, which means that everyone else is finished but Dad is still going. He looked like he was struggling a little so I made the mistake of saying, "You don't have to finish that if you're full!" Yikes. I was already helping clean up the table at that point. Well, in the midst of the clean-up, Mom decides to open a can of worms and ask about Pam. So Come says that she's spending Christmas Eve with her boyfriend's family. Decides to slip in that it's because she feels guilty, and came home crying about it, and oh-by-the-way, the girl who she was working with to process the mortgage got fired.
I'm not stupid. I know what she's trying to do. But I refuse to contribute to this topic because it's not constructive.
Mom calmly says, "It was a business deal. I have no hard feelings toward her as family. She is more than welcome to come to my house."
"Well, you know that. I know that. But it would make the difference if you would CALL her to tell her that."
For the record, I have never fully disclosed all of the details of that botched up deal with my aunt and uncle. Thinking about that whole episode still causes me stress and anxiety. They tried to guilt me into calling when they came to visit during Memorial Day weekend. Oops...it's...December now!
Then Mom says, "I am a very calm and forgiving person. During the course of this business deal, Pam hung up on me several times."
Well, I hope that gave them perspective on their precious little angel. (Psycho.) I wish they would just drop it.
Eight hours later, they finally left. The highlight of the evening was watching the little ones open their presents. Their eyes were so big and bright. I got Andrew a Crayola toy chest full of art supplies, including finger paints. I thought that was pretty good, but then, V goes into her room and comes out with a mini skateboard for him! Dammit. If you haven't figured it out, this is evil gift giving. Of course, she totally forgot to buy him a helmet. He wasn't interested in any item except for a toy train set that his aunt gave him. It was actually pretty cool, and reminded me of those old school Hot Wheels sets whose tracks snap together, and plug into the wall. This Fisher Price version included hilly inclines and a loading station! Later, my quirky metro cousin Jon assembled a perfect 2 foot diameter circle of track, and Andrew sat there for a WHOLE half hour watching the car go round and round. We made bets as to how many revolutions the train would make before he got bored, and we ALL LOST. He's 3.5 years old, so I'm not sure if that's acceptable behavior or not.
I'm not sure if the kids know (or care) that Santa comes tonight. I'm grinning right now remembering past mysterious Christmas Eves. They're going to be one excited bunch tomorrow morning.
Christmas Card
Every year it's a crisis. I get the same predictable call from mom describing the same problem: there is no photo that includes all five of us. It gets worse every year too as we get busier and move farther away. Last year, we took a picture from Smoosh's party in November so that was pretty close. The year before that, we took a picture in June. That's right...June. I was the only person at Costco asking for Christmas cards. It was 98 degrees outside.
This year, we had a nice sorta family photo from Andrew's wedding in August. Unfortunately, V was missing because she was in Vegas. So mom had me put the order in through Costco.com, and two days later, we had a nice (though incomplete) family photo. Then she decides that she can't, *just CAN'T* send the photo. The reason? "Because I am the mother and I say so."
Ri-i-i-ight.
So earlier today, I get a set of scary extended family photos from my aunt's 65th birthday party. Thank goodness for geographic barriers. Anyway, I decided to show Craig the photos but made it clear that I rarely see these people, and they are highly uninvolved in my life. (If you're going to make a run for it, you should go now!) They were a bunch of boring, forced pose shots. It looked like a 40th high school reunion dinner. I liked the photos of my family, especially the one they took with my sisters on the left side of the wreath, parents on the right. I bet mom's thinking she's going to superimpose me in the middle. Ick.
So Craig's tinkering on the computer and I'm braindead watching the jewtastic VH1 special, and he surprises me with this:
I have him email it to mom immediately and call her asking her to check her email. She does, and we're deafened by supersonic happy squealing. She made the new xmas cards on the spot. Mentions that the wreath gap shot was deliberate, and she was setting it aside for next year's photo.
So I asked Craig for a favor, and sent the 2006 xmas card to mom too. Behold!
* V was cut and pasted from xmas card 2004.
** Craig threw these together in two minutes flat.
Hello, hello
Life is different when you have a job in which you are doing real work. Ever since they let half the people on my program go, I've gotten a lot busier. The best part is that I don't clock watch anymore. I barely have time to eat!
So the car I posted about ages ago is actually Craig's very own parts car. He saw it on eBay and didn't end up bidding on it after a lot of debating. Then, he infers that I'm the one who won the auction and it was happily ever after. We drove all the way to Muncy, PA in my car (hooray for towing capabilities!) and back without incident. I had sprained my ankle the night before pretty badly, so it wasn't a small task by any stretch of the imagination. So, here's a thank-you to Smoosh for playing soccer for me!
Then Thanksgiving. You know all about that already.
Then we got a Christmas tree from Home Depot for $25. It was freezing that night and the trees were displayed outside in the seasonal garden section. We could have opened up a bunch of trees, shaken them out and decided which one we wanted. Instead, we grabbed the first one we saw, had the guy wrap it for us, paid, then threw it on top of the Xterra. At this point, it starts to rain. We made it back in one piece and Craig set up the tree. It was my very first real Christmas tree in the new place!
Then it was Craig's birthday. He liked all of the little presents I got him, and I was very glad about that, especially since I've been planning since August! His birthday fell on a Friday, and we had a soccer game later that night at 8:55pm, so we couldn't really celebrate aside from having cake at 11:50pm later that night :) I'll eat ice cream cake anytime!
We went back to NYC to celebrate his birthday. We had a nice dinner out at a well known italian restaurant with the parents and Smoosh. We made a quick trip to Canal Street and returned empty handed. Of course we had to make a drive up and down 5th avenue, to the Lord and Taylor window displays which were beautiful, and to the super-mafioso Dyker Heights Brooklyn Christmas displays. If you want to see these crazy houses, go to 84th street and 14th avenue in Bensonhurst. It's worth the trip.
Craig had a memorable birthday weekend!
We visited Dad while he was working the night shift.
And we're back to the daily grind!
Lesson Learned.
Never underestimate the scope of stupidity.
