Welcome to Commaspliceville. Can I get you a drink?
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
Big behind
OH PEOPLE. I have spent the entire day with my parents, running hither and yon helping them pick out and purchase gifts for DH, the girl and the boy because my father refuses to shop online. It was fun and all, and they bought me lunch (Thai food! win!) but OMG I AM SO FAR BEHIND ON HOLIDAY PREP NOW.
Do you know how many batches of cookie dough I could have made in the 7 hours we spent perusing DVDs at Target and ridiculous slippers at Claire's? A LOT, I'll bet.
Not to mention I still haven't finished that super-secret handcrafted holiday gift I'm making for the boy.
Nor sent any Christmas cards (the A list cards are ADDRESSED, however).
As for the fact that 20+ people are descending on my house in LESS THAN TWO WEEKS and I have done NOTHING to prepare for this event, we are not talking about that.
Dudes! It DID snow on Friday! For about 30 minutes. Pretty hard at times, too. It didn't stick to anything but it looked pretty damn cool. Of course, I was trapped upstairs in the bedroom while the carpets were being cleaned and the camera was waaaaaaayyyy downstairs in my office so I failed to get pictures. Heh. I suck.
Also, guess what? DH took the hint and right now I am typing at you on my brand! New! Laptop! YES! It's been a bit of an adjustment, what with its flat keyboard and its Windows 7 and whatnot, but he spent all day yesterday setting it up for me and so far I freaking LURVE it. Oh, and DUDES. It has a WEBCAM! I know! Things might get horrifyingly videotastic up in this mofo! Or maybe not.
All of the trees are up. ALL of them. And hello, you people are bad at math. Four trees plus the two I bought the kids = SIX trees. SIX OF THEM. And some of those are tiny. But still, yeah. Yesterday was a labor-intensive day, I'll tell you what.
Last night for dinner I made the root beer short ribs from the December issue of Everyday Food and OMG, they were AMAZING. I can't find the recipe on the Everyday Food website, but Google led me to the blog of another Austinite who made and loved them and she has typed in the recipe for you here! Isn't that swell?
Two weeks from today is the big family Christmas blowout thing with DH's siblings and their spouses and kids and grandkids, OMG. SEND VALIUM.
Dudes! I more or less exhausted my list of favorite Christmas songs during last December's Song Lyric Saturdays, so I dunno what I'll be able to come up with THIS month, but hey! This song at least MENTIONS Christmas, right? And I like it!
Hello, the carpet cleaners are here and I am trapped in the bedroom.
I am waiting for snow.
There is a 60% chance today but I've seen nary a flake.
Where is the snow?
I WAS TOLD THERE WOULD BE SNOW.
Anyhoo.
I've been making SERIOUS headway on my Christmas shopping.
My step-niece's stepkids and her new baby: DONE.
The sister-in-law (step-niece's mom) I got in the gift exchange: DONE.
The one actual niece who's still young enough to get an automatic gift instead of going into the exchange (sister-in-law's stepdaughter, biological daughter of DH's second-oldest brother)(DH has a large and complicated family, OKAY?): DONE.
The girl child: ALMOST DONE.
Ditto the boy child.
Except he just told me last night that he'd like a foot massager.
(That is one internet shopping search that is FRAUGHT WITH UNEXPECTED PERIL, let me tell you.)
Also nearly done with DH.
Still need to do my parents and get stocking stuffers.
I haven't baked A THING.
Nor put up a single decoration, much less TREE.
(There are FOUR trees this year, not including the trees I bought for the kids to put in their rooms.)
(I KNOW, RIGHT?)
(I am thinking of buying another one! For my office!)
DH's sisters keep emailing, asking what they can bring to the family shindig in two weeks, and I keep trying to tell them nicely that we don't have any room for our OWN crappe, much less THEIRS.
Gah!
Let's see, what else is going on?
The girl child has been invited to join the school band next semester.
Apparently she's making HELLA progress in her private flute lessons.
The boy, meanwhile, will most likely be QUITTING band next year.
He doesn't practice, and therefore does not turn in practice logs, and therefore band is always the lowest grade on his report card.
Considering band is AN ELECTIVE, that's kind of ridonkulous.
Also, next year is HIGH SCHOOL, God help us all, and I don't think marching band would agree with him at all.
We are going to boost up his guitar involvement instead.
I have recently and inadvertently read three books having to do with World War II, all from vastly different perspectives. The first was The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, which had to do with the occupation of the Channel Islands, Guernsey in particular, by German troops during the war. The second was The Reader by Bernhard Schlink, which dealt with the aftermath of the war in Germany, when former Nazis were put on trial for war crimes. The third was The Medusa Tree by Mylene Dressler, which concerned the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies (Java in particular) during the war.
Now, if you attended public school in the United States then you know that everything you learned about WWII can be contained in one paragraph that goes something like this:
Germany went nuts and invaded everything and killed a bunch of people, but then we stormed the beaches at Normandy and kicked their asses. Meanwhile Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, so we bombed Hiroshima. In short, WE WON. The end.
A lot gets left out of the history lesson, is what I'm saying.
My grandfathers both were in the army in WWII. My dad's dad was a medic in the infantry and spent most of his time in France and Germany. My mom's dad was in a field artillery unit in Burma during most of the war. My dad's dad would not talk about the war at all, period, end of story. I don't even want to contemplate the things he saw and did during that time. My mom's dad will talk about it if you ask him. He's the one who volunteered to bury fallen soldiers along the Burma Road. Same war, vastly different experiences.
But holy crap, I had no idea about all these invasions and occupations outside of mainland Europe. Either I was asleep in class that day (likely) or we just didn't learn it. So reading all three of these books right in a row was an absolute revelation. I found fascinating that the stories told by the survivors of the German occupation of Guernsey were so incredibly similar to the stories told by the survivors of the Japanese occupation of Java -- tales of people being sent to camps, of starvation, of the native population losing literally everything but the rags on their backs. (Note: these books were fiction, but they are BASED on stuff that actually happened.) It really kind of blew my mind.
Review-wise, of the three I liked Guernsey best. I loved the letter format and the relationships that developed between all the characters. The Reader was compelling but ultimately unpleasant. The Medusa Tree was just strange and dreamy, but in a good way.
I was desperately in need of Something Completely Different after finishing those, so now I'm reading Joe Hill's Heart-Shaped Box and OMG it is AWESOME.
In other news, we have a 50% chance of snow with some fairly significant accumulation tomorrow, holy crap. My kids will be THRILLED if this happens. DH is having our carpets cleaned tomorrow (assuming it's not canceled due to SNOW) and I plan to camp out in the bedroom with my TiFaux, all the gifts I've purchased so far, and a whole mess of wrapping paper.
And maybe a bottle of whisky. Just to make it a party.
OH PEOPLE. I have a feeling December's posts are going to be kind of BRIEF because it is seriously crunch time over here.
Today the Badger children only had a half-day of school, which left me very little time for running all over town procuring gifts for my step-niece's step-kids (I KNOW, RIGHT?) and also groceries! Then it was pick up the kids, take the boy home, take the girl to get a flu-shot, take the girl to get a post-shot treat, take the girl home, take the boy to get a haircut, reassure the boy that his haircut doesn't suck (it kind of does), bring the boy home, do a massive load of dishes, eat donuts and blog.
Dudes! No time to blog at you today; the weather is filthy and I've been hunched over a sewing machine all day doing top secret Christmassy things. Or trying to, anyway. And incidentally, the next person who interrupts me while I'm busy loses an eye, I'm not kidding.
In other news, it's December! Holy crap! You know what that means: only 31 days left of Blog365. Including today.
We are a family that thrives on routine. For the past few days our lunch and dinner routine has been this: someone gets hungry sometime between 1:00 and 8:00 p.m., pulls out all the leftovers, hollers to the house at large that the leftovers are out, anyone else who is hungry fixes and heats a plate, and the leftovers are (eventually) put away.
That is the ONLY routine we've had -- wake-up times, bedtimes, etc. have been all over the place. Saturday we didn't even eat dinner -- just had a late leftover lunch and then gorged on chips and dip while playing Monopoly and Wii (this was a consolation for the girl child, who wanted to have a birthday sleepover with friends but found that everyone was out of town for the holiday). Yesterday, the girl's ACTUAL birthday, we skipped lunch, went out to eat at around 3:00 p.m., then porked down birthday cake for the rest of the night. Oy.
With an Aspie boy and an OCD mom and a girl who needs artificial structure imposed upon her because she is incapable of creating her own, this is NOT GOOD.
So! Today it's back to work. I was beginning to think it would take a bulldozer to get the kids out of bed and the house this morning (our post-holiday Monday is cold and rainy here, SO NOT FAIR), but eventually they were successfully deposited at school. DH is back working in his home office. I've got a full day of pantry cleaning, tablecloth washing and list making ahead of me. AND I am making spaghetti and meatballs for dinner, which will be served promptly at 6:30 p.m., the TV turned OFF and all family members present and accounted for around the table AT THE SAME TIME. Bedtime will take place at 9:30 p.m. and not a minute later, SO HELP ME GOD.
There are three weeks of school before the insanity starts all over again. Oy.
Twelve things about the girl child on her 12th birthday.
She is HILARIOUS.
She hates pink.
She is Team Edward all the way.
She is extremely affectionate.
She is extremely sneaky.
She's excellent at math but she hates it.
She has recently begun taking flute lessons and has improved DRAMATICALLY in just a few weeks.
She never sits still.
She never stops talking.
Her art is joyful and whimsical.
Her style is 100% completely her own.
When she's away at a friend's house, our house is silent and empty and sad.
I can't believe she's 12 years old. I really can't. Maybe it's because she's the youngest? The baby? MY baby? The one who took 80 hours to be born and who slept in our bed for 14 months and who wouldn't nap AT ALL unless she was being held and nursed for almost 3 years? That baby?
She's close to God, I'm sure of that She sits him down, and they have a chat She asks for sunshine, and he agrees You see, for her, He'd do anything
You watch them grow, then you let 'em go
She is a monkey, and I'm her tree And now she's climbing all over me Swinging on my vines dancing on my limbs Her monkey sounds sound like angel's hymns
You watch them grow, then you let 'em go You watch them grow, then you let 'em go
She is an angel, she is an imp She's got my big toe, and her mother's lips She gives fishy kisses, and great big bear hugs 42 pounds of pure love Then one day she'll be 17, feelin' too big for her home Seems she was just only 3, oh how our children they grow
You watch them grow, then you let 'em go You watch them grow, then you let 'em go You watch them grow, then you let 'em go You watch them grow, then you let 'em go
Then one day she'll be 33, maybe with a child of her own Seems she was just 17, oh how our children they grow He'll ask for sunshine, and she'll agree You see for him, she'd do anything He is her child, the center of her world She is his mother... my little girl
You watch them grow, then you let 'em go You watch them grow, then you let 'em go - Zach Gill, "Watch Them Grow"
Dudes! The girl child turns 12 tomorrow. TWELVE! How did that happen? I have no idea. I just gave birth to her last week, I swear.
I spent all of Wednesday night tossing and turning, plagued with nightmares about the turkey not getting done on time or forgetting to make the mashed potatoes or trying to cook Thanksgiving dinner in a communal kitchen with like 30 people and four stove burners.
Argh.
Fortunately, none of that ACTUALLY happened and my portion of the meal went off without a hitch.
This was my first year cooking the turkey from scratch.
I know, right?
It was SENSATIONAL.
I just stuffed it with apples, onions and fistfuls of fresh rosemary, sage and thyme.
Then I trussed it up, poured melted butter over top, salted and peppered it and roasted it for about 4 hours (it was a 13-lb. bird), basting with butter every 30 minutes or so.
It got done EXACTLY on time and was a thing of beauty.
Even the girl child told me it was really good, and she hates EVERYTHING.
I am SO full of myself over that damn turkey, y'all.
Insufferable, really.
The gravy was also awesome and ordinarily I SUCK at gravy.
I have no idea how I pulled it all off, but I did.
YAY ME.
Today we are eating leftovers.
Tomorrow? More leftovers, probably.
Sunday is the girl's birthday and she has informed me that we're going out to eat.
So. No leftovers Sunday.
They'll probably be gone by then anyway.
Right now DH is out doing the Black Friday thing like a crazy person.
I took part in exactly ONE Black Friday sale, online, and bought exactly ONE item.
I can't even think about Christmas until after the girl's birthday.
Even though I am totally PANICKING over Christmas, and how we will have EIGHT people staying at our house despite having only ONE extra bed that sleeps TWO.
So really, DH being out on Black Friday is my fault, because I got a little shrill about how WE DON'T HAVE ENOUGH TOWELS FOR EIGHT EXTRA PEOPLE.
See also: pillows, blankets, SQUARE FOOTAGE IN OUR HOUSE.
Did I mention there will be two dogs?
Well, we're not talking about the dogs.
I have SUCH a twitch.
All together we will have around 25 people for Christmas dinner and whatnot.
Thank God this is all happening a week BEFORE actual Christmas.
Because maybe I can use that week to CALM THE FUCK DOWN and actually enjoy the actual holiday.
Actually.
What are the odds of that actually happening?
ACTUALLY NOT VERY GOOD.
Do you think the liquor store is running any specials today?
Because for that, I might ACTUALLY agree to leave the house.
I started to compile a list of all the things for which I am grateful on this Thanksgiving Day, but what it boils down to is this: everything. Just everything. Whether you want to use the word "blessed" or "lucky", I am incredibly INCREDIBLY one or both of those. And I am thankful for that, for everything, every single day.
And now if you'll excuse me, I've got a date with a giant bird.
And that's pretty much it. Gosh, I'm glad I signed up to bring all the Thanksgiving food that has to be cooked at the last minute! That way I won't be busy TODAY!
posted by Badger at 3:51 PM
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