Why IS the Grass Greener on the Other Side?

When I was little, I would be fascinated by the toys that weren't mine.

Like the ones at the dentist, or Nana's.

In retrospect, they weren't the greatest toys. Nope, in fact, they were usually much older than I was or were some strange collection that adults had held on to in the hopes of keeping elementary school-aged kids occupied while the adults chatted or a sibling was taking their turn under the white hot lights of the dental hygenist.

But precisely because they weren't my usual toys, they held an alluring but elusive appeal.

By far my favorite was a stuffed rabbit I named Shy Rabbit, for reasons that are lost to the mists of time.

Now Shy Rabbit is another little girl's favorite toy. My own collection of toys I keep in the house consists of some stuffed animals that I can't part with and my huge sack of My Little Ponies. When I babysit these two sisters, I set up the ponies in the spare bedroom and let them go to town. But the littlest girl inevitably seeks out Shy Rabbit, wherever he may be.

Even if he's in the forbidden zone upstairs. Once, their parents came over to hang out and the girls were playing in the other room. They asked what was upstairs and I told them our bedroom but it was off limits.

Never tell a kid something is off limits. It will only guarantee they go there.

The adults had stepped outside for a minute and when I opened the door to go inside, I heard a veritable stampede and suddenly both girls were there with their best innocent faces on. But Shy Rabbit clutched in the youngest's hand gave them away.

"Did you girls go upstairs?"

She shakes her head and makes denials while her older sister tries to change the subject.

"Are you sure?"

Vigorous head-nodding is the response.

"How did you get Shy Rabbit? Did he hop downstairs on his own?"

I could see the gears turning in her head as she swiftly contemplated the chances of succeeding at a denial at this stage and was rewarded when she discarded it and in a tiny voice admitted she had gone upstairs.

"But it's so cool up there! Can we play up there?" and Bam! she was off on a tangent, but she couldn't fool me, precocious child! She knew what she was doing, every minute of it.

I can understand the appeal, however.

I wanted so badly, as a kid, the play room the dentist office had.

First of all, the place had a kick ass aquarium in the adult portion of the waiting room. But if you were under 4' feet tall, you could climb up a ladder into a special cubby-like room that was filled with crazy neat old toys. Weird fiber-plastic faded colored blocks that were maybe the forefathers to Legos/Duplos. Random stuffed animals & kids meal toys from fast food restaurants.

Better yet, inside this cubby room in the middle of the wall, was yet another ladder leading to another room above that one, even smaller. They were their own secret worlds that just screamed "No adults allowed!" Plus they had a treasure chest full of goodies and after your visit, if you were good, you got to choose a treasure from the chest.

That dentist really knew how to cater to kids. Even though I dreaded the icky flouride rinses or whatever the hell they were, going to the dentist was exciting because while my sister took her turn under the white hot lights of the hygenist, I got to play in the indoor play house.

And it's strange collection of haphazard but wonderfully strange toys.

Silly Sunday

One picture story is true, the other is false.


Before:

After vigorous ruffling:

Either way, he's a puffball. Just how disorganized depends on how dry & staticky the air is, and whether his human feels like torture that day.


Before: The Big B giving the puppy-eyes look for something he wants.

After: Gloating when I fall for it.

And running away in fear of my righteous wrath.

Chrismas Eve Success!

I woke up a nervous wreck Christmas eve morning.

"Where's that recipe? I NEED that recipe!"

The Big B is watching me dash around the house, opening drawers and rifling through papers like some sort of espionage expert.

My dad's side of the family was coming for Christmas Eve.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!

Despite having hosted Thanksgiving earlier this year with my immediate family, I was still nervous about hosting for the extended family. My family at Thanksgiving are non-judgemental and easy going...but on my dad's side, we were always the black sheep, and the judgement is subtle but there.

Friday before the fateful day we went to Momma's to celebrate and my mom and sister did their best to assure me I'd do fine.

It wasn't convincing me (nothing could), but as long as my mom was willing to take my frantic calls for help that day, I was stopping short of pulling out all my hair in nervous anticipation. Knowing my sister would be there to help in the kitchen was also a boon that kept me from the edge of insanity.

My mom passed along some uneaten veggies to me when I left Friday night and borrowed me a platter for the ham since I don't own one.

But by the time all the relatives arrived, I was ready.

Actually, I was ready before they started arriving, and that made me start fretting that they werent't here yet, and where The Hell Were They? I had tried to time the meal just right so that it would be nice and hot for everyone and now that I was ready, no one was here!

Oi Vey! (as Momma would say).

Finally everyone arrived and I started anxiously making the raisin gravy for the ham, stirring vigorously away with my whisk. I shooed non-essential people out of the tiny kitchen (thus ensuring that my uncle couldn't trap me in the kitchen like he had done to my mom for so many holidays before) and called the Big B to come carve the ham.

"I don't know how to carve ham!" he says to me, blinking expectantly.

"I don't care! It can't be that hard."

"Can't you just do it?"

"Ask my dad to help you, then."

"YOU ask him, he's your dad!"

I turned to him and gave him my best glare/exasperated/desperate look. "Listen here! I have other stuff I need to do right now! I don't have time to do this; this is YOUR job, figure it out!"

For a second it looked as if he were going to argue with me some more, but my look must have been a good one because he just grinned and went to find my dad. Soon he was busily instructing my perfectionist hubby on how to carve the ham properly.

My sweetie; he genuinely always wants to do everything 100% right, and even if this is sometimes used as an excuse ("I don't know how to cook!") I have to love him for his anal-ness.




Things went well. The gravy turned out superbly (thank you Momma!) and somehow all 17 of us fit into our tiny space for dinner. Then it was time to do some quick clean up and then present time.

The Big B had a funny idea to play a trick on the relatives. I was freaking out because I couldn't find our Yahtzee game, and we needed dice for the White Elephant/Dice game present exchange for the adults. When he heard me freaking out about not being able to find the dice, he gives me a level look.

"You DO realize we're D&D'ers, right? That means we have a shitload of 6-sided dice."

Duh! I laughed and sent him to the office to grab 3 sets of 6-siders. When he returned with them he gives a mischievious smile and says, "Let's play a trick on the relatives! Tell 'em we're gonna use 20-sided dice this year; that'll keep the dice game going on a loooooooong time!"

We giggled together and when it came time for the dice game, he was taking out the garbage and I run up to him asking, "Are you going to do your announcement?"

Little did I realize at the time, but my dad and his fiance heard this comment, and got entirely the wrong idea from it.

B told me to do it myself and he'd be right there, but I was so excited I rushed my words and got only blank looks from everyone when I told them "we want to spend much more time with you this year, and as you know we're D&D geeks, so rather than regular dice, we'll be using 20-sided dice instead! Good luck getting doubles this century!" and I laughed, a bit maniacally, I'll admit.

Dice jokes just aren't as funny to non-gamers, I guess!

After the game was over, my dad and fiance pounced on me.

"What's the big announcement?" and their faces were a bit nervously concerned and exuberant between my dad and fiance, respectively.

"Oh, nothing, we just wanted to play a trick with the dice since we're D&D nerds." Right after I said it, it dawns on me that perhaps they thought we might be announcing that we're pregnant.

"I'm not pregnant, don't worry!" I rush to assure them. My dad's face instantly clears with relief. He really wants me to finish school before kids.

Eventually, all the relatives were gone and it was just my sister, her boy-toy (who's an excellent potato peeler, and received praise for this all night, so much so that it has become a running joke now), the Big B, my dad and fiance.

We celebrated our own little immediate family celebration, wished my dad Happy Birthday (he shares his day of birth with Jesus. I always figured he got screwed as a kid, with cheap relatives telling him 'Here's your Christmas/birthday gift' so we always make sure to celebrate his birthday as well as Christmas) and enjoyed some coffee and conversation.

Then the day was over, and I could finally sit down.

Thinking on it afterwards, I don't know why I was so anxious. It went fine, all the aunts, uncles, cousins and Grandma were proud and happy and everyone brought something to share so in reality I didn't have that much cooking to do at all. My Grandma was so proud, when I asked her to say Grace before eating she told me she couldn't, or she would start crying! which almost made ME cry, because she's a tough lady with all her wits about her still at 89 years old (hooray genetics!).

My aunt gave me a hostess present and she and Grandma both gave me some Christmas-themed platters and bowls so that I would have more for the next time. One of the platters from my aunt were still filled with yummy dessert bars. Nom nom nom....

The next morning we went back to Mom's for a nice brunch before going over to my mother-in-laws.

And I brought my veggie tray from Christmas eve and the dessert tray. The Big B's mom hosts every holiday and doesn't even ask anyone to bring anything, and having just gone through the nerve-wracking experience myself, I figured she'd appreciate the gesture.

Plus I don't need those sinful dessert bars staring at me every day for the next week, tempting me with their sugary goodness.

This got me thinking about what the holidays actually mean, after you scrape off all the commercialization and greed.

Most especially the past few years, when the non-wealthy (read: most of us) are stretching each and every dollar as far as it can possibly go, an economical Christmas could end up being sad or pitiful.

Instead, that holiday magic seems to wrap itself around your soul and people who love each other pull together, doing little things to help each other.

It may just be something as small (yet incredibly important) as a mother soothing a nervous child on taking over adult responsibilities, quietly answering questions, providing recipes, lending various kitchen implements and giving her some veggies to use for her own hosted holiday.

It might be something as thoughtful as giving a hostess gift to a young adult, so her Christmas decoration collection grows that much bigger.

It might be that same young adult becoming wiser and more appreciative of what the mother adults in her life have done to put together a holiday feast for numerous relatives each year. Taking that warmth she felt from all the help given and paying it back to another hosting mom.

No matter how tight the wallets have become, hearts don't have to be.

I'm proud of our economical Christmas. We may have felt that we weren't spending enough on the food or gifts, but when it's all over, the true present is the love you feel, no matter how large or small your holiday was.

This is that elusive spirit they talk about, and I can see why it infects so many people.

I know this is a bit tardy, but after the holiday season is over and the long months of winter loom before us, no holiday in sight until the leaves unfurl again, I feel it's more important than ever to have some warmth to sustain us.

Happy Holidays and New Year, everyone. May the year 2012 bring you all the laughter, love, warmth, hope and happiness you desire.

Honey! Why Don't You Put On the Eulogy Log?

So you're all probably sick of the holiday posts and whatnot, now that the new year has started already.

Well, too bad!

I'm a procrastinator, which means you're just getting my Christmas-related posts now.

Maybe you can't see it, but I'm sticking my tongue out and giving you a great big raspberry.

*thbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb*

 No, my tongue is not normally that color! I just finished eating a candy cane, if you must know, and apparently some color transference occurred.

Like many people around the world, as December approaches it means digging out all the red, green, silver, gold and white colored decorations and dumping them all about the house. It means untangling all those christmas lights and praying that they still work. It means that your January credit card statements will be horrifying when they arrive.

That's a bit melancholy...I'm sure you're all great budgeters and diligently save up every year well ahead of the holidays in order to buy all your presents in cash. For those who forgo present-buying for whatever reason....you suck. Only because I'm jealous, not because you don't buy into a religious holiday that's been hijacked by the retail industry (or whatever reason you don't do gifting in December).

Personally, my favorite part about this (past) time of year all comes down to trees and lights. I wish we were the kind of family that put up amazing displays of electricity-guzzling lights, but we aren't. Mostly because that would require 1) owning said lights to put up and 2) going outside in Minnesota in the winter on an aluminum ladder to put up the damn things. Luckily for us, we have a great excuse: we only own enough strands to light up our Christmas tree. Being broke is great!

However, there is one thing I don't want to go without, lights or no lights. Christmas requires a tree. A REAL tree! One that will fill the house with the lovely scent of sap and pine, one that requires daily stooping to fill the tree stand which inevitably gets sap in your hair, one that must eventually be placed outside for the garbage man to pick up (or placed ever-so-carefully in the firepit, whereupon it will sit until it turns entirely brown and uber-dry, where it will sit until I get the itch to light it up in one big, brief bonfire).

As a family unit, the Big B and I are small potatoes. Just us two and our two furry four-legged feline children (I don't count the albino, blond and regular ordinary gray squirrels Ghost Face, Blondie or the Godfather as part of our "family" although they do freeload off our property). As such, we don't have much in the way of holiday decorations or traditions yet.

We're slowly accumulating them, however. It's a weird transition to go from the traditions of your parents as you were growing up to meshing them with someone else's traditions. Candy canes on the tree? Not done in my childhood home, but the Big B will steal several from his mom's house to put on our tree (I think he does this more to satisfy his sweet tooth than for the tradition). Candy in the stockings come Christmas morning? Again, something new but not unwelcome, oh no! Not at all.

One of the first traditions we started since moving into the more spacious upstairs of our current home was to get a bona-fide tree from a lot nearby each year. We go with my mom and Bonus Dad each time which has become a new tradition of it's own (plus, they own a nice big Jeep on which to cart our tree safely home).

My mom and I run around the lot, looking for the scraggliest of trees possible. I was taught that short-needled and hole-y trees are the best for ornaments, because the holes in the foliage allow you to place those pesky heavy ones on a stronger part of the bough, ensuring that ornament loss does not occur.

The plus side is that the uglier the tree is, the cheaper! A win-win situation.

This year we ended up going with an F-Fur, and no, I can't remember what the "F" stood for. I want to say Ferngus Fur, but that can't be right...

It doesn't look that Charlie Brown-esque, but this little tree was a great bargain.

Of course, the cats love the tree too. Thank goodness neither tries to climb it, they being primarily indoor cats for most of their lives.

Alabama is a connoisseur of sap-water and will be drinking from the tree stand until this baby comes down. She's got a junk-food disposition, being a lover of popcorn, flaming hot Cheetos and Ritz crackers, so it's excusable that she finds the sweet sap water to her taste.

Gizmo, unfortunately, is, to put it frankly, a little shit. Everything about the tree is tantalizing to him, from the tree-stand water delicacy, to the new ornamental "toys" and finally the fact that he can sharpen his non-existent claws on the corner of the tree stand. He was instantly curious as we set it up and hung around watching intently as we put the lights and ornaments on.

Sharpen those imaginary claws!

I had an adorable picture from last year where he tangled himself up in the lights and just gave up and laid down, but in my impatience I didn't want to hunt for it.

The Big B moans and groans when it comes time to decorate the tree. The first year he got out of having to do anything but get the tree stand up from the basement. Last year he had to put the lights on (something that was traditionally done by my dad growing up) but got out of putting on the ornaments. This year I was resolute; we would be decorating that tree together, dammit!

After grabbing our little ferngus tree it was still daylight and the Big B convinced me to wait until dark to start decorating. I warned him that I would be finding the Yule Log burning show on cable and we would have it on in the background as we hung the ornaments.

(The yule log fireplace TV program is something of an inside joke in my family, made even funnier by the fact that our TV hangs over an actual fireplace).




The Big B...I love him (duh) but his grasp of language has a few holes in it (who doesn't know the word "posh"? Honestly!). As I started to carefully unpack my box of ornaments he says to me:

"Honey, didn't you want to put the eulogy log show on while we decorate?"

Ah, my sweetie! I knew he wasn't kidding by the straight face he maintained while he said it. Of course, this became a running joke for the rest of the night, as he continued to refer to it as the "eulogy log".

When I found a "psychedelic yule log" On Demand through my cable box I just had to play it because it was so bizarre.

Too bad the picture was blurry, but at least you can see the pretty rainbow colors!



The weird techno/electronica/bad 80's synth music accompanying it wasn't the least bit Christmas-y but it was good for a hoot, leading to some more silliness as we put the lights on.

Sorry some of these are blurry...stupid camera!

 

Ah, doesn't he look (fuzzily) proud?

Eventually the lights were wound exactly right around our little ferngus tree and the ornaments were all placed evenly about the tree, with the favorite ones front and center.

My family was all about the unique ornaments, never the generic-looking Christmas balls, bows or tinsel.

Plus Gizmo would almost certainly eat the tinsel if we had it, and then I'd be cleaning a litterbox full of glittery poop.

There are some ornaments I especially love, and I was willing to fight my mom and sister in a death match to get them when we split up the ornaments between us (not that they fought me over them, me being the one with the weird rainbow/mushroom obsession).

Not a very good picture, but you can see why this is my

absolute FAVORITE ornament, can't you?

The clown ornament on the right is a genuine antique. We had many of these antique ornaments, but lost many when our lopsidedly decorated tree fell over one year. Luckily, the fantastic clown ornament was spared destruction.


Finally I placed the stumps from each of our trees from years past on the tree skirt. Another tradition I had completely good intentions about doing but somehow never got around to actually completing, the plan was to engrave in some fashion the years on each of the stumps to chronicle each new Christmas. I can still tell them apart by their size and shape, but if I don't get to putting the years on soon, that knowledge will eventually be lost.

All of this excitement had gotten to the Gizzy, who retreated to his "safety zone".

Personally, I think it was to disarm us about his closeness to the tree. At the time of this picture, ornaments were spaced evenly around the tree, top to bottom, front to back. As the weeks have passed, the ornaments have slowly been moved higher and higher, in an effort to keep Gizmo from accessing them and using them as new toys.

He's a beast and has broken several ornaments and a musical statue of Tiny Tim and his father, but he gets away with it cuz he's so darn cute and because he has his momma's eyes.

Anniversary: Yay Me!

I thought I'd celebrate my one year blogging anniversary with a story that showcases how influential friends can be.

My BFF + ∞ is a tiny beautiful creature that is as tough as she is sweet. Inches shy of 5 feet she is the epitome of the saying "Big things come in small packages".

My Nana told me once that you are lucky in life if you find one true friend. I'm not sure how I won the cosmic lottery, because not only is she that one true friend, we met before starting preschool, and although I lived in a rural area where neighbors are distant and neighbors with kids your age are almost unheard of, she & I lived on the same road.

We're physical opposites in many ways--I'm average height and dark haired while she's short, blond & blue-eyed. She's gymnast-flexible while I can't touch my toes without bending my knees. She can sing, I cannot hold a tune in a bucket. As we grew up and started school we bemoaned the fact that we never had classes together and as a result we ended up running in different social circles. Her beauty and bubbly efervescence destined her to be part of the "in" crowd while my bookwormish tendancies and overactive imagination lead me to geekdom. People on the outside sometimes had a hard time understanding why we were friends, but we would only smile mysteriously and enjoy their confusion.

Perhaps it was part of the reason that we fell into believing that I was the smart one and she the pretty one. Stupid, really, because we were both smart and beautiful, but that was how it was. A gamer goddess I might be, but one look at this girl and my nerd-harem were drooling and falling over themselves every time they learned she was single (however, my hubby has gratifying told me recently that I'm "way hotter" and he's all that matters).

Less easy to convince my BFF that she was smart...although she IS incredibly intelligent. Several years with the wrong man had almost convinced her that she wasn't, but luckily she's done with him now and recognizes her own worth.

But back when we were younger? Because I was the "smart one", if I said something, it had to be true.

We had a long bus ride to school and we spent a lot of time playing pretend and giggling. We used to share the little tupperware container of applesauce my mom would diligently pack for my lunch on the ride home, dipping our fingers in and eating it sans spoon. In one particular bout of youthful silliness and defacement, we smeared some on the bus seat in front of us.

And were horrified but fascinated with the fact that it was still there, hard and crustified, the following day. This naturally led to a discussion on boogers, as this hardened dab of applesauce now appeared distantly related to said bodily mucus.

"Where do boogers come from?" she wonders aloud idly.
"Oh easy! They're you're brain shedding," I respond matter-of-factly.

I will point out that at this point I believed it myself; after all, it made a strange sort of sense to me. We hadn't gotten to the mucus membrane part of health yet, but somewhere I had picked up the bit of trivia on exactly how mummy's brains are removed via the nose and extrapolated a theory that to me was definitely plausible.

We both pondered this for a minute, myself proudly at the wonders of my logic. I mean, c'mon! Boogers are a strange color (don't tell me you've never seen one) that could vaguely be related to brain matter color. Why else would your nose fill up with snot? Obviously little kids are often snotty because they're growing & learning so much, so the brain has to shed more often to keep up.

Duh!

Eventually I learned about mucus membranes and the function they provide for the body.

She, however, came to me incensed one day years later.

"You know what? I told someone that boogers are your brain shedding, and they laughed at me! They told me they weren't and I argued with them, telling them how my super smart friend had told me so it had to be true. You lied to me!"

She tried to hold the indignant look but as always, failed to hold it under the barrage of giggles from my direction. Soon we were collapsed in hopeless puddles of laughter, clutching our stomachs at the pleasant hurt this episode was causing in our midsections.

Happy Anniversary, self.

I love you BFF + ∞

Thanks for believing in me, understanding without words, and all the things a true friend does for another over the years.

I still think brain shedding is a WAY better explanation than mucus.

It Just Makes You Want to Fist Pump

I love music.

No, I LOVE music. I must have it on at work and in the car, and prefer to have it on whenever I am not reading or watching something.

My immediate family are all big music lovers. From an early age I can recall my mom dancing and singing in the kitchen and in the car, pounding on the steering wheel in time with the beat. My dad had a very nice receiver with a couple of sets of large, furntiture-in-its-own-right speakers to go with it. Weekends were cleaning days and many a Saturday was spent doing chores while Madonna's Immaculate collection blared throughout the house, each of the women in my family bellering along to "Like A Prayer", "Vogue" or "Holiday". We may not have always agreed on what to listen to as time went on, but we always agreed that music was magic.

I've met some people who aren't that passionate about music (once I even met someone who professed to not like music at all, which I found incomprehensible) but could never understand it. When the melody is beautiful, the beat is moving, the lyrics are touching, the singing exquisite, how can you not be moved in turn?

I like that music is shared between people, and how much you want to share it when you find a song you really like. Learning about new music from other people is my primary way of finding new artists to add to my playlist. The biggest contributors are, strangely enough, the Big B's best man and my sister. Despite their outward differences, I've found that my sister and B's best friend share a very similar musical taste.

Each week I go grocery shopping with my sister and I can picture many a night where she plugs in her iPod to my car stereo to have me listen to a new artist.

"Just listen! You'll love this song, I know it!" Her face lights up in earnestness and she closes her eyes and wiggles around in the car seat, arms and hands gesticulating gracefully in time with the music.

Maybe it's just me, but if someone introduces me to a new song/artist, I will forever associate them with that piece of music.

The guy in IT who I became friends with during a project for my department that introduced me to Hinder and Lacuna Coil? When I try to imagine the lead singer of Hinder, I picture his face instead.

I will forevermore see my high school boyfriend's face who bade me listen to Tool's "Aenima" in his black Dodge Neon one night, his long hair swinging around his ears as he banged his head in time to the ocean wave-like rhythms of that incredible song.

I cannot listen to Pearl Jam's "This Is Not for You" without seeing my mother's hands banging the steering wheel of her green Jeep Wrangler (and this is most certainly where I learned to "car dance").

Whenever I hear Atmosphere on the Current (yay MN public radio!) I inevitably hear the clinking of poker chips and see the face of B's best man, since his poker playlist is something I steal from regularily and was where I first heard "You" by Atmosphere and decided I must have it.

Isn't that the beauty of music? Feeling something inside yourself touched by a particular lyric or rhythm and it mutiplies inside somehow until it cannot be contained anymore and you burst into movement and you want to throw your arms wide and share this wonderfulness with someone, anyone, the world at large?

This must be how dancing starts. Even my rhythmically-challenged hubby taps his feet and moves his head when "Eye of the Tiger" is played.

Once on a long car trip to the family reunion in Iowa, my sister played LCD Soundsystems's "Dance Yourself Clean" in the car and admonished me to "just listen, just listen, it gets better, I promise!"

Boy can Miss Piggy headbang!

And it did. Once the beat kicked in she squealed, "Doesn't it just make you want to fist pump?!?" which she promptly began doing.

And we fist-pumped our way down the lonely highway, enjoying every second. And now I can't imagine listening to this song without a little fist-pumping.

The Women in My Family Are Comfortable With Touching

This is something I've discovered when comparing my immediate family with others. Everyone has boundaries to some extent, with the only difference being in size and application.

For the most part, we have no issue touching other people in social settings. Just met you? No problem, we'll be back-patting, arm squeezing and shoulder-punching you like we were lifelong friends quicker than you can say "bad touch".

Like the time my mom chest-patted my high school boyfriend Parrot Boy (so named for his blue hair, prominent nose, and various pierced body parts. What? I fancied myself a rebel youth). He looked so startled we both laughed about it later on when my mom apologized to me for doing it. Hilarious, because despite Parrot Boy's best efforts to be angst-y and scary, very little deters the women in my family from being touchy-feely.

This sometimes creates problems, like when you marry someone who isn't touchy-feely. Or someone who avoids unnecessary tactile contact like the plague, as the Big B does. I try to be good about not touching him too much, but every once in awhile I can't hold it back any more and I go into "leech mode", whereupon I latch onto him like he's the last floating piece of debris in the ocean after a shipwreck and squeeze with all my might. If he struggles, I've been known to wrap a leg around his hip and be dragged around the house until I've had my fill of hugging.

Coupled with this, I was raised to be comfortable in my own skin and to have no problems discussing bodies and natural functions.

So it was no surprise when my mom, sister and I found ourselves in a compromising situation on a road trip to see Dave Matthews Band one summer.

As a present for my mom, we bought tickets to one of her favorite musical artists and decided to make a girl's trip out of it since the concert was in Wisconsin. We loaded up in the car, booked a hotel room at the Rainbow Inn (eh? eh!) and proceeded to drive across Wisconsin.

We pulled off at a trucker stop/gas station/middle-of-nowhere place to stretch our legs and walk around a bit midway through our drive. We parked in a non-busy part of the large lot and somehow, the conversation turned to our breasts and went something like this:

Me: Your girls look HUGE! (staring at my sister)
Sister: What? Yours are just as big!
Mom: (laughing) 
Me: Yours are way bigger! Mom's don't look exactly small, either.
Sister: I think Mom's are bigger.
Mom: (Surprised) Really? I think Sarah's are the biggest.
Me: No way. (Feeling my breasts and looking at the others) Yours are definitely the largest.
Sister: C'mon! We're all pretty similar in size, I think. (Feeling herself up at this point)
Mom: (Feels her own and reaches out to feel ours) I think she's right, Sarah.
Me: (Reaching out to feel my mom's, then my sister's, then my own again) I think you both are crazy!
Mom & Sister: (Feels their own and then everyone else's)

Meanwhile, I happened to look around and realize we had an audience...

Me: *hissing* Omigod don't look now, but I think we just gave that trucker over there something to put in the spank bank...
Sister & Mom: Ewwwww! (All breast fondling stops and we start giggling)
*Disclaimer

And with that, we decided we'd stretched our legs enough and hopped back in the car and speedily made our exit from the scene of our unintentional lewdness.

In honor of that trip, I made us take this photo together on my wedding day.

We're crazy, and neither of them could refuse me on that day.

HA!


*This conversation is not accurate as far as who started touching who first, what exactly was said, or who even brought up the subject of breast size, although I have a strong suspicion it was me. But it is accurate as far as the tone and such. Plus there really was a trucker leaning on his vehicle watching us.

My Little Thanksgiving

My first Thanksgiving as hostess very nearly could have been a turkey-less disaster, but instead was probably the best holiday I could ever wish for.


We had turkey, mashed potatoes, green bean hotdish, stuffing, corn pudding, cranberries from the can, rolls, pumpkin & lemon meringue pie.

Oh, and homemade, delicious, made-from-all-the-drippings gravy (see them whisking away using Momma's guaranteed-yummy technique?).

It wouldn't seem right to have a Thanksgiving at my place without playing with our food a little.

Who would have ever suspected that at 10:00 am that morning, this turkey was frozen solid? Between that and the temperature fork/Celsius-Fahrenheit conversion argument of 2011, Wii Jeopardy, and platefuls of excellent food, we all had a great time.

I'm thankful for my family, who can have a frozen turkey on Thanksgiving morning and panic in a bubbling laughter kind of way instead of psycho freaking, who turns taking the bird's temp into an argumentative giggle-fest.