Annual

As you may recall, I like to name my Christmas trees.  So, without any further fanfare, behold this year's Christmas Tree: CHARLIE SHEEN.

Yes, he looks just fine.  Handsome.  He's not as tall as I'd prefer.  But still.  Seems good looking. Suave. HA! When you get all up in his business you realize he is CRA-ZY.  His branches grow every which way, up down, right, left, hell, some even grow back into the trunk of the tree.  He randomly sprouts HUGE GAPING HOLES.  And ...

And an ENTIRE branch just fell off.  FOR NO REASON.  Like I said, this tree is bonkers.

Happy New Year!

So sometimes when New Year's Day rolls around, I have an overwhelming urge to purge my house of all things Christmas related. This year the urge to purge struck which is why, at nine a.m., with a minor alcohol-induced headache, Jillian and I were removing the ornaments from Tom Cruise. It would have been even earlier but I also had an urge to wax my brows and 'stache (TMI? Perhaps). A great activity to do when you were one with the blender and Kahlua mere hours before. Anyhow, back to the urge to purge Christmas gobbledygook, and taking the decorations down and off of Tom Cruise Tree ... Now I know Jillian is two and a half and not the most delicate flower, but even accounting for her toddler toughness, I have to say, I think Tom was MIGHTY PISSED to be loosing his ornamentation.



Holy friggen needles Batman - and this is only one pile! Tom lost, maybe, fifty needles before today. And those fifty needles, they started dropping AFTER Christmas. Tom had some longevity. He also had a drinking problem as he was consuming ninety-six ounces of water EVERY DAY for TWO AND A HALF weeks. SERIOUSLY? I assume all of that water was what kept him beneedled? In any event, he dropped a few as he aged. Up 'til today when he full on revolted and went from full and beautiful to Charlie Brownesque.

Tom's revenge on his early departure did not end with his massive shed, oh no, it ended on when he sent me careening down my yard on my ass in a bra-less, wife beater, legging and flip-flop wearing state. Yes. That's right. We were taking Tom out to the side of the garage and I thought it would be no big thing so I didn't actually dress accordingly (accordingly to being seen by other humans, like say my neighbors, as I slid past them on my ass). I had on no makeup, in fact, my face probably had that red puffy look of the freshly waxed, my hair was held up with two different hair things, I did not have on a bra, but I did have on a tight white wife beater tank top. With leggings. And flip flops. And after I dropped Tom Cruise on his balding butt, he pushed me, and I slipped on the snow onto my butt, which, in a sign that maybe I need to lay off the cookies acted like a SLED and launched me down the yard along the side of my driveway. Boobs were flopping and GODDAMMITS were flying. Happy New Year's indeed!

Mission Impossible

Continuing my sometimes tactless, yet amusing to me, tradition, I present Tom Cruise:



He is a beautiful full tree who actually looks quite tall ... until you get up close and personal and realize, not so tall after all.

The funny thing about Tree Tom Cruise is that we searched high and low for a ten to twelve foot tree to cut down ourselves. Only when we couldn't find one, did we go to a pre-cut place where they said Tom Cruise was ten feet tall. Ha! We were obviously desensitized by all of the short trees we had previously seen because at the time he seemed quite tall. When the husband and I got him in the stand without arguing, I realize that something was amiss. By the time we had him situated in the living room, I realized we had been had. Tom Cruise is a shorty!

Beholder

Growing up in South Florida, I'd often see houses that had outdoor art. And by art, I mean "real" stuff, commissioned for a good hunk of change, not a cardboard cut out of an old lady's bloomer-clad bottom, though I saw a fair share of those as well. Anyway, half the time the real art would end up being a geometric sculpture plopped down, seemingly carelessly, on an obscenely well manicured carpet of grass. I was reminded of this this morning after I was violently dragged into the world of the waking by an incredibly cute five month old imp. And yes, I realize that my semi-cognizant state may have affected my mental acuities.


Discarded exercise ball or art? You decide. Several years ago I bought an exercise ball so ginormous that Shaq would find it too large for athletic use. After several aborted attempts at exercising with the thing, it was relegated to the basement and has been there ever since, which is actually years and is a nod to my hoarder tendencies. However. HOWEVER. It turns out humungo exercise balls are great toys for toddlers. SO HOARDER TENDENCIES PAY OFF. WOOT! Not the point though. LB was playing with the exercise ball and when she was done, the ball didn't get put away (i.e., wedged back into one of our outdoor chairs) and rolled away during the night. And it was this, the rolled away $10 exercise ball, that made me think of fancy schmancy uber yard art.

I May Have Crossed The Line

In year's past I have given our Christmas trees famous monikers. We've had Gisele Bundchen (tall and skinny), Slim Shady (tallish and thinnish), and Danny DeVito (short and fat), to name a few. So, with that in mind,


Heather "Crazy" Mills McCartney (tall, thin, and missing a leg) wishes you all a merry Merry.

Necrosis

Well, uh, we seem to have resolved our mouse problem. As the mouse crawled into Noah's Ark and died.

The Ark which will my husband will be throwing away tonight.

No Shit.

That there is the mouse, dead, next to the Ark.

I have to say, as an atheist, I am amused that the mouse died in Noah's Ark. As a mom, I am sad since it was a fun toy and now we have to throw it away. And, as a softie, I am a wee bit depressed at the thought of the mouse crawling in the ark with the mini animals thinking he had found kindred souls, only to end up D.E.A.D. dead. I want to yell at him and say, "See, you shouldn't have come to our house! Duh!"

There is a lot more to the story, such as my husband suggesting we throw away the ark (see, us = atheists) mere hours before the mouse was discovered and me saying no because I liked it; me, the wussiest of wusses, then finding the fucking thing dead in the ark, screaming, throwing the ark across the room thus sending the mouse carcass airborne; LB, seeing me freak the hell out, and mimicking me; and, me, calling my husband on his way to work, telling him I could deal with eleven mistresses better than I could with a dead mouse. I'm gonna skip the details though because really, the details can't top the fact that the mouse died in my kid's Noah's Ark toy.

NaBloPoMo, 7

A little over a week ago, I sent my husband the following two pictures:


I explained in my e-mail that I had heard someone banging on the front door and when I opened the door, I was greeted by this guy. I made a snarky comment regarding the recruitment of various organized religions, smirked at my own cleverness, and then went on with my day.

This my friends, is called hubris, or maybe karma. Either way, both hubris and karma always, repeat ALWAYS, bite you in the ass. Especially when Mother Nature is involved.

This afternoon I decided to clean out a space in the basement to make room for some tubs o' yarn. Well one thing led to another and I stumbled across this:


That is where the *&^%!#$ squirrel chewed through our house and into my basement. Yes, that's right. Some freaky religious squirrel managed to break through our formidable (NOT) defenses and chill out in our basement! Hell, we even found a friggen half-eaten acorn on the other side of the basement.

Needless to say, we shop vac'ed the crap out of the hole (and by we, I mean my husband, the whole thing made me squirrelly ... ha, ha, boo). Now we are left with:


The only good thing I can say about this mess is that last weekend, when we blindly sealed up the hole from the outside, not knowing what had happened and just trying to patch the random hole we had found, we did not seal the bastard in the basement.

In light of past experiences, I feel comfortable saying that MOTHER NATURE IS A VENGEFUL BITCH.

NaBloPoMo, 5

There once was a man from Nantucket,
Who's dic....

Oops! Not here to recite dirty nursery rhymes, but instead to educate, enlighten, and broaden your horizons. Okay, who am I kidding? Not that either. I'm here to tell you about the public graft I saw today, IN MY FRONT YARD!

A little background ... Our street successfully petitioned to have a sewer line put in so that we could get rid of our septic systems. You may recall, we had strange happenings in our plumbing and septic lines and so when given the opportunity to give the town a new car's worth of money for the right to send our poop down its pipes, we said HELL YES! The work commenced sometime in September and has been ongoing ever since. Part of the work included replacing the main water line that runs down our street. And somehow that meant that our (the street's, not ours personally as our estate is too modest for its very own) fire hydrant was moved about ten feet over. Not sure why, other than the fact that the town is charging us an arm and leg for this project and so they needed to make it look good?

In any event, that brings us to today, when I found myself coming home from the doctor's and having to wait for a huge wide-load truck to pass before I could continue up my street. I was maybe fifty yards from my driveway, so I pulled over to the side of the road behind a parked silver truck that had an official looking plaque thing attached to the license plate stating "FIRE CHIEF." I assume that the huge wide-load truck was blocking me which is why I was able to see one of the workers hand the Fire Chief a HUGE WAD OF CASH. HUGE. Now, maybe it wasn't some sort of pay off. Maybe there was no corruption and our new fire hydrant will work just fine. Maybe the worker was the Fire Chief's son and he was paying his dad back. Maybe they had a friendly wager on the Yankee game (27 World Series Championships!!). Heck, maybe the Fire Chief is a bookie collecting is illegal gains. Whatever the case, I can say with certainty that I saw a man take a wad of money from another man, fold it in half, put it in his pocket and then walk to his truck. A truck that had a special thing attached to its license plate that stated "FIRE CHIEF." And for the record, if you are going to do suspicious stuff, you shouldn't do it while driving a car that advertises who you are.

Anyway, the whole thing seemed hinky and I did not like it one bit. No siree. I felt a little dirty. Uncomfortable. After the huge wide-load truck passed and I could drive, I pulled up my driveway, into my garage, and intentionally did not make eye contact with the two men. I am pretending like I did not see a thing. Not. A. Thing. Well, unless there is a fire and we don't have sufficient water in our new fire hydrant and someone's house burns down. Then you bet your ass I am SO TELLING.

I said during my last pregnancy that if I was found murdered, it was probably Crazy. All the gift giving insanity and baby lust sending her over the edge. This time, if you find me dead in a pool of my own blood, look to the Fire Chief and his money grubbing self.

Overkill

On Sunday I fractured the fifth metatarsal in my right foot, which is a fancy way of saying I broke my foot. It was rather lame as I slipped on the last step/carpet and careened into a baby gate. Yes, a baby gate which is suppose to protect people (well little people) from injury, was the thing that injured me. Had the gate not been there the only thing hurt would have been my pride. Instead, after several hour at the ER, I ended up with a splint, a walker, and hurt pride.



The ER referred me to an orthopedist who looked exactly like Elvis Costello. Two days after visiting the ER, I saw Elvis and he decided that considering my lifestyle, swinger and celebrity extraordinaire (or pregnant mother of a toddler), and the type and location of the fracture, I could make do with a fracture shoe and stock in Tylenol. I could go on and on about how great the shoe is compared to the walker, which I still use when my monkey, I mean my daughter isn't around. But in reality, the shoe and situation still kind of suck since I can't drive and the monkey and I are trapped in our house, alone together, for hours and hours. We can't even go out in the yard because if she decided to bolt, well, I couldn't catch her. But I am not going to complain about the foot (for now), because this post is not about the injury, it is about adding insult to the injury.



Yes, not only is my foot broken, SO ARE MY PLANTS! We had a few storms over the last two days which seem to have knocked over or broken my poor little plants. And, since I am gimpy, I can't do squat to fix 'em! Okay, maybe it's not because I am gimpy, maybe it is because I am Plant Plague. For whatever reason, the plants are giving up. I tried to prop them back upright but every single last one fell right back over. Not only that, the tomato plant that I cut way back to save is still going belly up, with two unripe tomatoes on the vine no less. I'm not sure what to do now, and even if there was some solution, I actually am somewhat encumbered by the fact that I am gimpy. So instead of doing anything I am throwing my hands in the air and giving Mother Nature the double fisted, digital salute. It's just not right, my foot AND my plants? Really?

Lycopersicon Esculentum L

Sometimes I look out at my "garden" and I feel quite pleased, other times I look out and think that I am an idiot. Most often, if I ignore the prolific plantings of my friends, I feel like a smug idiot, which is a nice blending of the two. Yesterday, I was leaning more towards smugness than idiot when I spied this here tomato.



It is beautiful! Properly tomato shaped. Pretty red color. How could I not feel smug? Now, this isn't exactly something I've grown from scratch. This was the plant I bought that already had one baby tomato on it (which subsequently died) and I figured this would be a good bar ... it had one tomato so if it grew no more, well then it was because I am cursed, not because the plant was defective. So, my point as convoluted as it is, is that I can't really say I grew this tomato (though it wasn't even a flower when I got the plant) since the plant was kind of doing it on its own but even so, I still felt awesome about my tomato growing skills. Well, until I took a step back and looked at the actual plant.


In case you can't tell, 99% of the leaves are brown, yellow and dying. Awesome, eh? Now the plant has been in this sad state for some time now and still managed to make that one beauty, so I am cautiously hopeful that the others will ripen and not wither and die. Otherwise I will have paid $11 for one, albeit pretty, tomato, which is kind of lame.

The tomato plant that I actually did buy as a squirt, and didn't cheat on at all is, well, doing squat. Actually, that is not totally true. The topsy turvy tomato that I have babied and given lots of love is giving me squat, but the one that I had in its original pot for months and months and only a week ago planted in a proper pot, well it is showing potential.



It has one lonely, unripe,cherry tomato on it ... I am keeping my fingers crossed!

Presto! Pesto! Oh Boy!

Four semi-packed cups of home grown basil + one Mark Bittman pesto recipe = A Happy Girl! Actually, I exaggerate, all of the basil didn't go into the pesto, the leftover was for bruschetta, but this t'aint about no bruschetta, it's about the pesto, my very first experience with my homegrown herb. Homegrown herb, heh, wonder how many stray google hits that is gonna bring me.

First I took my freshly plucked basil and hand washed each individual leaf, cleaning all dirt off. Idiotically I am MUCH MORE relaxed when I buy fresh basil at the store; no individual leaf washing, the whole package gets a quick douse under the faucet (I just spelled that Fawcet, as in Farrah, as in I see too much pop culture on tv and the internet and it is rotting my brain). But then again, I know what lurks in my yard (i.e., psycho deer that try to attack my pooch and the turkey mafia) and it ain't pretty. So right, I washed the hell out of the basil and then, and only then did I give it a spin in the salad spinner.




It sure looks pretty! Well maybe it doesn't. Maybe it is some sense of farmer pride that makes me find this to be the most beautiful basil in the whole wide world. Maybe I am deluded. Or, maybe it really is the most beautiful basil ever. Once the basil was clean and drying, I gathered the rest of my pesto making goodies.


Note that neither the coffee maker nor the pink little girl socks are crucial to this recipe.

You may also want to grab slave labor, uh, I mean a sous-chef. The sous-chef, if under-aged, may turn out to be a hindrance as all she will want to do is sit on the floor and play with raw pasta noodles. But if she is cute, she can provide comic relief if your pesto goes to shit.



So I followed Bittman's basic pesto recipe, except that I added a dash of Romano cheese because I have crappy reading comprehension skills and randomly added it in my head. Also, I detoured from the recipe when it came to adding the oil. I like my pesto thick and after adding half the oil I was worried it was going to be a watery mess. Granted, you don't add the cheese (well the Parmesan, a/k/a the cheese called for in the recipe) into the food processor, you mix it in by hand after the oil and other ingredients are processed, but still, I was scared.

                   
This one has no cheese.                                                 This one has lots of cheese.

It turns out that the full amount of oil probably would have been fine (hell, it is a Bittman recipe after all), but I can only say probably because I just started mixing cheese in with no thought or care to measuring. I was just going for what looked right. I may have used less cheese to compensate for less oil, or maybe I am just a cheese loving fool, or maybe both.



It really doesn't matter though because in the end, I had some DELICIOUS pesto!

Farmer

So I mentioned that I harvested some of my basil and first and foremost, I want to share some photographic evidence of the befores and afters so that if my short, but potent, contact with the basil causes instantaneous death, well, there will be photographic evidence of it.

  
Before                                    After

It looks, at least here, like I didn't take much. In fact, it kind of looks like the only difference is in the time of day during which the pictures were taken. But looks, my friends, looks are deceiving. I plucked four semi-packed cups of leaves off of those babies!



A trusted friend, one of two people I know with a decent amount of gardening experience who doesn't laugh at my inept yard questions, well at least to my face, said that I could take about a third of the leaves. The internet said, "it’s important to make your pinch directly above a set of leaves whenever you’re harvesting." It said this a lot. Like every single google article on harvesting basil said this more than once. GEEZ PEOPLE! I GET IT. Ironically, there were a couple of fuck ups where my man-hands snapped all the leaves in their region. Whoops. Guess I shouldn't have gotten feisty with the internets, huh? Karma!

Anyway, I took my harvest (snort, snort) and I made me some pesto and I took pictures of the process because BeFri likes the food shots. Assuming I keep this blogging mojo going, I'll share the pics and tell you all about the yumminess that is giving me the garlic burps, even now, a day later! Maybe I will even photograph and share my bruschetta making experience as I have THAT. MUCH. BASIL. and I plan to make some bruschetta with it.

I also harvested some dill weed, with the approval of my friend. The internet, interestingly, was much less useful on what to actually do here so I kind of winged it. My stuff didn't look like the stuff people were describing so I just plucked the limp bits off. Since most of my dill is limp (think there is any dill Viagra?), I had to restrain myself and not pluck the whole dang thing.

  
Before                                    After

It looks, again, like I didn't take much, and that the only difference is in the time of day during which the pictures were taken. Here, looks are a little less deceiving.



I have a nice pile of dill, but it is not four cups. I am not certain what I want to do with this yet, I can only think of a cucumber sauce (yawn) or salmon (which I love but don't have handy). I'm open to dill suggestions if anyone has some ....

Arboris

So I am posting a plant update. Lame. I know. But. But, dudes, they are STILL ALIVE! The little herbs and tomatoes were all on their deathbeds, but then I went away for Girls Weekend and they made a comeback!





Look at that! They are all perky. Even the dead ass dill weed is somewhat perked up! The topsy turvy tomato doesn't look so hot, but if you look in the background, which you can't since my computer just mysteriously are the picture of the topsy turvy, WTF?, you'd see a turkey feather. A. TURKEY. FEATHER. Enough said. Anyway, I am amazed and awed! I am staying the hell away from them! And yes, I am using a lot of exclamation points, I am trying to convey excitement, and also to make myself feel excitement. You see, one of the other ladies that I bought these with, bought the EXACT SAME plants as me. Identical. In fact, we shared a cart and so it was random on who got what. Nonetheless, her plants? They are like a thousand feet taller. Unbelievable! Yes, I am ignoring the fact that my plants are even alive and instead being a big ole jealous baby.

Capo dei capi

You know, I have complained repeatedly about Mother Nature coming to get me. Of course, part of that is because I like to complain BUT part of it is because she really is out to get me. And, for what it is worth, I really think she is stepped up her game. To wit:



I suppose in the picture it looks some what harmless, that big ole turkey feather strategically placed in front of LB's car door. But it is not. Oh no. This is like a mob warning. From the head of the turkey mafia. Cross us again, and the kid gets it! Seriously. They are letting me know they can get us at anytime ... being that the feather somehow appeared in our locked, with no turkey-sized cracks or holes, garage.

And these aren't any regular turkeys coming after us. No, these are the 'roided up enforcers. That feather is huge. It is a good eight inches. Here it is with my foot, my ten inch foot, for perspective.



I use to semi-joke that Crazy was going to kill me and take my baby. Now, the turkeys are my main threat. If they find my body somewhere, you can bet it was my feathered "friends."

Happy Dance

Praise Zeus! The camera has been found. A tithing was due the finder which I paid gladly because DUDE, MY CAMERA IS BACK (and its anus seems fine, thank you sweet gentle aliens). Before I photograph my two pairs of socks of sparkle, I want to get rid of the stuff already on the camera. In no particular order ...

First, I knit these socks. Rather I started them. Both of them. I got them both to this point:


Then I decided that I didn't like them. Or rather, I found the chart to be a pain in the ass and the socks were a little too big and so I started to rip. But then I remembered how put out I was when I saw that I ditched these guys so close to being done, that I stopped ripping, shoved them in a bag, and tucked them away. There is still a slight chance that I will finish them. Well, smaller than slight. Minuscule. But it is a chance.

*************************************
Lady Bean likes playing under my desk while I am on the computer.


She doesn't seem to mind that she is taller than the space provided. It hurts my back just looking at her. It hurts my pride to see a big wad of dog hair next to her under there. We are dirty, dirty people.

*************************************
We had more turkeys.

I hate turkeys.

*************************************
LB was sick. As in brains (or infection, why must I be so DQ?) leaking out of her ear, only able to sleep sitting up on my chest, miserable sick. So for the twenty-four hours that it took for the miracle drugs to kick in, I was a glorified pillow.


A glorified pillow that knit (and had some massively frizzy hair, though that could be from the fact that I went from the shower to the Emergency Pediatrician's office in like two minutes and used not one single iota of hair product. Or make-up. Apparently I had a back up plan of scaring the doctor into treating her immediately).

*************************************
Last, I planted herbs. This is from the day they were planted.


Proof that they were in fact alive at the outset, even if they aren't anymore.

Posh

When we bought our house we knew it was a fixer. We also knew that the kitchen was one of the top five worst kitchens in the state and in the top twenty-five for the country. Nevertheless, we loved the neighborhood and so we bought the ugly duckling with grand plans of a new kitchen, new bathrooms and an addition. Unfortunately, it turns out that the ugly duckling isn't just ugly, but she also has osteoporosis. Which is my flowery way of saying that she doesn't have good bones. Every single project we have taken on from changing the mirror in the bathroom (and finding a John Malkovich hole behind the old mirror) to swapping out an outdoor light fixture (and learning that none of the wiring was up to current code, or even the 1960's code from when the house was built) has cost us 1000% more than we thought it would, or had budgeted for, and means that we that we won't be redoing our kitchen anytime soon. But is also makes us pragmatic. Not a dime is going into a kitchen that one day (oh please one day) is getting the ole heave ho. For example, when the shelves inside a cabinet came crashing down (bam, bam, bam), did I decide to get new cabinets? Nope, I just stacked my pans in higher stacks and called it a day (well a mutherfuking shitty day, but a day nonetheless). That being said, I believe my pragmatism has rounded the corner and landed squarely in the middle of white-trashville. To wit:


When a drawer pull fell the hell off for no apparent reason, and then wouldn't screw back on because it is apparently stripped (which, seriously, what the fuk? How often was this thing screwed and unscrewed so that it could even have gotten stripped in the first place??), I found a hook in our workbench and voila! Drawer pull. The sad part is, no matter how trashy the hook is, it is almost more attractive than our original drawer pull.

Enough

Apparently mother nature, or is it Mother Nature, is not through with me yet. This morning I was awoken by the most horrible noise. A kind of gargling, waddling, whiny, yodel. I also had a cat sitting above my head on the windowsill beating me in the face with his furiously twitching tail. Further inspection revealed what had cause the noise and riled Cat.



I WON'T PEE IN THE WOODS ANYMORE! JUST MAKE IT STOP!

Duet

My MiL is here for a visit with her favorite (and obviously best) granddaughter which is quite nice. Said granddaughter is turning one this Friday and having a party to celebrate same on Saturday. Also, quite nice. The house (mine, as in where the party is being held, not say, the house that Ruth built) is not ready for a party, and this, this is not quite nice. In other words, Holy Shit my house is a mess and twenty-five people are going to come over for LB's birthday and find out we live like pigs. Instead of bitching about our sty-like conditions, I should be cleaning them. After all, my child has a playmate which relieves me of that duty (duty ... doodie ... heh, I am seven) and I have time to remove the hairballs gathering under the buffet. Instead of doing this, I am hiding in the office, checking my e-mail (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) and doing everything possible BUT clean. Which is not to say I have not cleaned. For I have. A lot. For example, I removed the nobs from the stove and cleaned underneath them. Now that, THAT is cleaning. Which, I guess is not "a lot" of cleaning. But still. It doesn't explain why I am sitting here, overwhelmed by the wafting stench of the stinkiest cat poop ever (which was really mean of the cat - he saw me in here and was like, Sooooo what? I gotta pooh and this is where my box is suckah). Nothing could explain it. Sheer laziness? I know not. What I do know is that I have killed five whole minutes with this drivel despite the need for gas mask. Go me. And, so as to kill five more minutes, let me tell you about my BRILLIANT anniversary gifts.

As I have mentioned before, we try to do the gift thing in accordance with official guidelines. Which, yah, not so official. But whatever. So this year the things were wood and silverware. In case you were wondering, these things SUCK. I've been married five years and THIS is what the universe deems appropriate. Suck it universe! But, being a sheep, and incapable of developing a thought of my own, I went with the guidelines. Wood? Easy. Toothpicks and matches. Done. Silverware? Now that is hard. Well, I suppose if we didn't have twelve place settings of perfectly fine silverware, then it would not have been hard as I would have just bought silverware. But we do have silverware, fancy and plain, and the last time I checked my husband was a "man's man" and had absolutely no interest in acquiring a new silver pattern, which meant that silverware was hard. I say was because, DUDES, I rock. Drum roll please ... For our fifth wedding anniversary gift, I got Boo some silverunderware. I KNOW. Brilliant. So long as you whisper "under" it is all good! In case you are curious, Boo was much more 'in the box' getting me a nice wooden picture frame and a cheese knife set. He did get creative and gave me a cheap wooden picture frame, with a picture of his friend in it, a friend who's last name is Wood. But I have to say if you put his Wood against my silverunderware, I get the vote for most creative. Granted silverunderware was his "real" gift, so I also get the vote for "cheap ass" and "least exciting anniversary gift ever." But hey, you win some and you lose some. And on that note, I shall shimmy out of here and clean because HOLY FUCK, WHAT DID THE CAT EAT?

Joyous Festivus For the Rest of Us

The Danny DeVito of Christmas trees wishes you a happy holiday ...



And notes that even the dimmest, most flattering lighting can't make one look all that much taller and thinner ...



For those that are extremely observant, you might notice that LB's stocking is hung by the chimney with care. It was done in time and will get it's own   rant   blog post soon!

Oh and in case you doubt the Danny Devitoness of our tree, I refer you to Slim Shady of 2006.