Bless Your Heart

All the visits have been made, the pie is consumed, the presents are opened. Whew. Let the recap begin. Friday Mom, Hale, Sara, Jake, Joey and I all went down to my Grandmommy’s for an early Christmas. My aunt, uncle and 2 cousins met us there. We had fun visiting and we brought Christmas dinner with us. Well, Jake is really talking up a storm now. But he can’t pronounce everything exactly right yet. Case in point- the work fork comes out: F@#$. Yep, the f word. And he doesn’t know he’s saying anything bad. He’s not even three yet. It’s a riot though. So we’re all sitting down for dinner and Hale (Papa) and Jake are sitting at the kids’ table. We’re all catching up on family news and what not when Jake drops his fork. Oh no. Next thing you hear is “Papa! F@#$! My F@#$! F@#$! Papa! F@#$! on floor!”. OMG. It was the classiest of Christmas dinners.

The next few days will be crazy busy so I just want to take a moment and wish all you fabulous bloggy people the most wonderful winter holiday of your choice! Enjoy every moment as you gather round your nondenominational shrub or light candles representing an ancient miracle or a newfound holiday. I for one am looking forward to spending Christmas holed up with my family playing with the babies and eating pie. And don’t forget we’re going old school this year and celebrating every single one of the 12 days of Christmas so the party won’t be over til January!
xoxo

So a few years ago, maybe 10, a friend of mine- we’ll call her Betty- and I decided that we were too poor to buy Christmas presents so we’d make them. We hand stamped our wrapping paper and it was good. We made our own cards, and they were good. So on to presents. We decided to make candles. At this time I lived in a 2nd story condo. This is important. We bought all the supllies and figured out that we could make each gift for only $5. We were stoked. We started by filling the jars with wax beads and the wick and then we’d top off the candle with a half inch of melted wax. We melted the first batch of wax like the instructions said- in a ziploc bag in water on the stove. Dammit- water in the bag. Threw the whole concoction over the balcony. 2nd attempt, same thing. Must have cheap bags. Switched bags for 3rd attempt, but when we pulled the bag out of the water all we saw was clear liquid. Dammit- foiled again. Over the balcony with the whole pot. Then it hit me. OMG. When you melt white wax beads the whole substance turns clear. O. M. G. We looked at each other and ran to the balcony and looked down. We had spent the evening tossing our dud candle makings over the balcony thinking it had all magically turned to water (did I mention we were having holiday cocktails?). The scene below was horrifying. We had successfully coated all of my downstairs neighbor’s shrubs, hanging baskets, balcony, grass, the works, with wax. Since it was winter and cool out the wax had cooled and hardened instantly. We petrified my neighbor’s house and landscape. Our candles turned out nice though. Heh.

Kanye West reminds me of a ventriloquist’s dummy. I love his music, the way he dresses, he’s as cute as can be, but his little face doesn’t move except his mouth. He has stationary cheeks.
My dogs eat dust bunnies so cleaning ceiling fans is a hassle.
My biggest fears: being buried alive, becoming a tortured hostage, going blind, being burned alive, drowning.
I have so much to do.
I suck at time management.
Although I can use these things, I have no idea how they work: fax machines, the internet, tv, cell phones. Boggles my mind.
I don’t like pasta salad (pasta should be hot in my book) or large doses of chocolate (cake, candy bars, solid chunks, ew).
I hate having to wear socks.
America’s Funniest Videos is one of the best shows on tv. It never fails to crack me up.
Before I die I want to tour the inside of an 18 wheeler’s truck cab.
Naps should be mandated by the government.
Also, before I die, I want to be a contestant on the Price is Right and Family Feud.
As I’ve gotten older I’ve lost my desire to go to: night clubs, loud concerts, the mall.
I’ve never been able to grow long fingernails. Or a garden.
I adore staying in hotels, traveling, going on cruises. Mainly for the fresh sheets and towels daily and the tiny toiletries.
I wonder if I’m stunting the growth of my eyelashes by wearing an eye mask to bed at night. (the picture is me trying to photograph my eyelashes but I can’t seem to have one eye open and one closed at the same time. I know it is a terribly sexy picture. Try and control yourselves.)
My almost 3 year old nephew has the cutest voice- he could read the phonebook and I’d hang on every word. Except he can’t read yet. One day.

Ok, so for Christmas I don’t get those big photo cards. I stocked up on Christmas cards already and I add a wallet sized pug snapshot to each card. This year’s picture came out great. I photo shopped a message to the top of it and uploaded the pic to order prints. My pictures came in the mail and the print company, their name rhymes with CRAPDISH, had totally cropped my photo and the prints were nothing like last years. Last year there was a nice white border around each photo which made cutting them into 4s easy. This year, no border and they butchered my little message. You could only see the bottom parts of each letter. So I had to trim off the half message (which looked like a bunch of sticks) and send the pictures that way. Crapfish woudn’t send me new prints in time. To their credit they did credit my account, but that doesn’t help me this season. So now all our loved ones will be receiving teeny tiny ghetto postage stamp sized pug photos. You’re lucky bloggy people, you’ll get the full photo come Christmas. Count your blessings. Here’s a little teaser for you: Ike in his holiday finery. Click to enlarge. He looks like Mufasa.

My mom’s dog Sam is staying with us for a few days while Mom, Morgan, and Hale are in Florida for a mini vacation. Sam is older than the pugs by at least 10 years (he was a rescue so no one knows exactly how old he is but he’s been in the family for 11 years), and waaaaay more laid back. I’m proud of the pugs though. They haven’t barked at him at all. Ike’s spent a fair amount of time up in Sam’s grill, you know, sniffing him out. They won’t let Sam get any lap time with Dad though!

We really need to get Kea a matching stocking. They are hard to find in dark blue though. We’re not doing the whole tree thing this year. We won’t be home for any of the festivities, and Ike would eat or pee on any presents left under the tree without his name on them. But I couldn’t let the house go bare. So I gussied up the mantle a bit.

This scarf is only halfway finished. The big ball of yarn on the right must magically knit itself into the rest of the scarf by Christmas day. The really bad part about all this is that the original intent was to give this scarf as a gift last Christmas.

There are some things about Christmas I don’t understand. I am of a very curious nature and I have questions. I’m not judging, I just want to understand. First of all, why do we stop celebrating at midnight on the 25th? We spend all this time preparing then let it die off after just a day. If we’re celebrating Christ’s birth wouldn’t the real party start on the 25th? If it were happening all over again people would be dropping by to see the baby right? Aren’t there supposed to be 12 days of Christmas? There even used to be a big feast back in the day on Twelfth night. I say let’s keep the party going right through January 6th.
Also, what’s with the deer? Those light up deer in people’s yards? I love Christmas lights, and decorating for Christmas and I love it when it’s all Griswalded up. But I don’t understand the symbolism of the deer. I understand reindeer, but these are just Bambi deer. And I like deer, don’t get me wrong. But why pick some random woodland creature, light it up and throw a bow round its neck? What says Happy Birthday Jesus about that? Why not a raccoon? or a badger? What does a deer say about Christmas that a beaver can’t?

I’ve been sick the last week with a nasty cold, chest, coughing, thingy. I lost my voice, and apparently my mind. At work yesterday I was wearing pants with a side zip and zippy pockets. I unzipped my pocket and put my lip gloss in my pocket before our meeting. As I was walking into the conference room I felt something funny then saw that my lip gloss had slid down my leg and was on the floor. Oh great- a hole in my pocket. So a couple hours later I was getting ready to leave work and I reached into my “pocket” and realized I had actually unzipped my pants and had been showing all my coworkers my bright blue panties with white stars all afternoon.
Then today I went to leave the house and could not find my keys anywhere. Inside my head I was cussing Jon for taking them to work by mistake. I found the spare car key and house key and was going out through the garage when I saw my keys hanging in the front door lock, burglar side, for the whole world to see. Thank goodness we live in a small town in a safe neighborhood cause anyone could have walked up and grabbed my keys, stolen my car (poor Jorge!) then come back to clean us out later! They’d been hanging there since I’d gotten home from work the night before!
I need to get over this cold before I try and go shopping naked or something!