one way in which i suck is that i hate decorating the family house for christmas.
hate. it.
don't get me wrong - i love christmas, i love seeing people's decorated houses, i love listening to new age christmas music (wait... really?), i love singing, i love the anticipation, the making of cookies, the drinking of the only food item* which causes more polarized responses than starbucks' green tea latte... but i hate decorating my family's house for christmas.
mostly i have a lot of bitterness wrapped up in decorating this house by myself 2 days before christmas so that everyone else can feel christmassy and i just feel like the decorator.
there were several years when i got home literally on the 23rd, and no one had decorated because everyone was too busy, but since i was there, i could decorate for the family.
there were several more years where everyone came down with bronchitis around the 18th and when i came home around the 22nd, no one had decorated, but since i was there, i could decorate for the family.
we've been in this house for 10 years. i've lived in this house full-time since the end of july, or 4.5 months out of those 10 years.
last year, my sister decorated the house before i came home for christmas.
i've done it by myself for about 6 of the past 10 years (including this year).
2 of those years we had no decorations, not because everyone else was sick or too busy, or got around to decorating more than 4 days before christmas, but because i was flat-on-my-back sick with the flu one year, and in and out of the emergency room with a 5 day migraine for the other.
out of those other 6 years, i've grown to hate and resent decorating the house for christmas. it was different when i lived on my own and i decorated my tiny christmas tree, but that was because it was mine, and i could decorate it on my own time because i wanted to decorate for christmas.
i think the difference is i grew to resent being the one whose priorities, limited time at home, and health was sacrficed so that everyone who wanted christmas decorations but didn't want the hassle of doing it themselves could have the decorations.
today, my sister and i hung christmas lights on the house. she was too sick to get up on the ladder, but not too sick to tell me that any idea i had wasn't a good one, and basically steamrolled every opinion i had.
today, we hung christmas lights, and now i'm in a pissy mood.
*click on that link and you'll learn that the "name is a concatenation of egg and nog" much like mankind is a combination of mank and ind which doesn't make sense, but neither does mankind.
scroogey mcgrincherson
i am nimrod, hear me gurgle
how do i do this so often?
so, friday night i'm at the batting cages with the pants, the pants' BFF (avocados still intact), the pants' BFF's fiancee, and i take another ball to the hand.
[cough]
a softball.
anyhow, the thing is, i've taken a 50 mph and a 60 mph baseball to the hand, and still have no fear of being hit by the ball. but why does the slow pitch softball draw blood?
now, i have a swollen, bloody thumb and, it turns out, a propensity for standing in front of the ball.
Um, ew
Um, ew
Originally uploaded by swandive00.
because who wouldn't like imitation "abalone style" strips?
twice the fake, twice the tasty.
for those of you not quick on the sidebar button
winter knitty is up!
the good:
- um, hello, it's called monkey.
- heavens help me - i like a wide headscarf.
- i know too many nerds not to like it.
- purty with some mods.
- it's okay, but now i have mr. jones stuck in my head. sadly, i still love that song.
- i still want to make the big one, too. but with a totally different cable pattern. that lines up with the ribbing.
- baby sweaters are so small.
- dragons!
- TURTLE!!
the not so much my favorite:
- i like its construction, but wouldn't wear it. of course, this probably means i'll wind up in love with it and make it anyway.
- unlikely to need it with the 80-degrees-at-christmas weather we have here.
- too much obsessed with eunny's anemoi mittens to want to make these.
- ditto.
- not so much, thanks.
- funny, but no.
- i don't want coffee on my handknits.
- same thing with tapioca.
- the lace thing is cute, but not as cute as jenn's hair turtlenecks.
- file under no-way-would-i-ever-knit-mini-versions-of-patterns- i-haven't-knitted-full-versions-of-much-less-put-them-in-a-book.
i need your help
ladies and gentlemen, vic wants to cry.
i'm taking suggestions for how to achieve this.
feel free to exhale
my lifetime undefeated at trivial pursuit title remains intact.
the winning question?
"what purina chow uses the slogan 'tastes so good, cats ask for it by name'?"
i knew you were on the edge of your seat.
please, please don't eat the daisies
i am an unusual girl. i don't like getting flowers. there's something intrinsically sad to me about receiving dead flowers that you have to watch die and then throw away. i'd rather see flowers growing in the ground, watch them bloom, grow, wither away, and bloom and grow another day.
i also don't want to receive flowering plants because i can't take care of plants because of my refusal to touch dirt.
except... for daisies. i have a very soft place in my heart for daisies. i always have - even before meg ryan proclaimed daisies to be so friendly in you've got mail.
so today, the pants sent me some daisies in honor of our little milestone.
what a good man.
