Happy Belated Easter!

Happy Spring Holiday of Choice, Peeps!

My dad sent my sisturds and me this email about Easters past in the Lindahl family and I thought it was pretty sweet.

Happy Easter Girls:

I was thinking of past Easters when I was a teen this morning. Mom would get us up and ready for church. We would all troop to the little Church of the Redeemer a block away (in my tweed sport jacket and buzz cut haircut-I was so cool then) . I was an acolyte so I carried the cross at the beginning and end of the service and sat in the choir seats during the (I thought overly long) service. After the service we would go home to a meal of elephant ears (pastries) oranges, coffee, and other snacks. Later on we would either go to Gunnie and Louellas or Sarah and Toddy's for Easter dinner or they would come to our house depending on the rotation I suppose. Big meal of ham, potatoes, salads, pies, etc. etc. Then it was just an afternoon of visiting. Easter evening meal was leftovers and that finished the holiday. Seems like a million years ago. I kind of miss some of it but not all of it. Hope you three had a pleasant day. Love you! Dad

My Pops doing his church duty.

My sisters and me with Grandma Lindahl.  

Summer Vacation!

I have been having a lot of fun lately, and I know when I tell you about it you are going to be jealous and then probably write me off and not pay any attention to me anymore, but I'm going to risk it.  You'll get over it.

On the 4th of July Mitch and the kids and I went out on Mitch's brother's Mat's boat to watch the fireworks. It was glorious!

The Coast Guard stopped us because the four kids and I were sitting on the bow.  The kids were all wearing life-jackets so they gave us five Dairy Queen coupons for "all the kids on the bow wearing life-jackets."  Hey!  They thought I was a kid!  And they also thought I was wearing a life jacket.  Time to lose some weight!

On the morning of the fourth, my friend Shelly and I went to the Duluth Rowing Club for a rowing lesson with our gym trainer, Jeff.  He is a rowing coach.  He took Shelly, another teacher named Jane, and me out on a four person boat.  It was so much fun!  The weather was perfect and the water was like glass.  Apparently over the last hundred years or so the boats used for the sport of rowing have been designed and improved and engineered to be perfect rowing machines, but that didn't stop us from giving Jeff suggestions on how the boat could be better.  You are supposed to cross your hands left over right in the middle of the stroke.  Shelly suggested that right over left would be better and I suggested that maybe they should just make the oars shorter so no crossing was necessary in the first place.  Jeff explained that the boat is designed to be perfectly balanced when the rowers put their left hand over their right hand, and that the oars needed to be the length they are for the optimal amount of leverage in the row.  We are still skeptical.  

He has a lot of patience.  

A few days later I went to see Brandi Carlile in concert.  She was FABULOUS!  She has so much talent packed into a tiny, adorable little package.  What a voice!  It was an outdoor concert along a river in Des Moines.  Gorgeous night!

A few days after that my sister Beth and Mitch and I went to the Richard Thompson/My Morning Jacket/Wilco/Bob Dylan concert here in Duluth.  It was a lot of fun.  My sister Amy was heading to Duluth that evening and said, "I'd really love to go to the concert with you guys if it wasn't Bob Dylan."  Apparently she's not a fan.  Amy and Beth went to a Dylan concert many years ago when they were teenagers and apparently he just stood in a dark corner and sang unintelligibly.  He was pretty good this time but he didn't say one word to the audience and at one point when he was singing Beth said, "I wish there were subtitles."

Later that night my sisters and I came back to my house and celebrated Amy being back from Afghanistan by eating Doritos and Top The Tater, drinking Miller Light, and learning how to twerk from instructional videos on the internet.  Oh, you don't know what twerking is?  It is the latest gross dance kids are doing to horrify their parents.  Basically you squat down and shake your undercarriage.

Beth got pretty good at it with some practice but Amy is hopeless.  Her twerk was mostly arms with not much going on below the waist.  We kept yelling, "Less arms!"  but that just made her shake her arms more.  I don't know why that happened because arms aren't even a small part of a good twerk.  When I do it I feel like I'm really moving, but apparently I'm just sort of standing still making pigeon movements with my head.  SEXY SEXY SEXY!  

Memorial Day

Some of my favorite people in the world are American veterans from past, present, (and future).  Both of my grandfather's served in WWII.

That's my grandpa on the right.  He served in the infantry in Italy and Algeria.  He was a company clerk.

My other grandpa was a cook for his company.  He loved to cook.  He always made us big pancake breakfasts.

That's both my grandpas on the left and both my grandma's on the right.  I know you always wondered how I got so good looking.  Now you know.

My dad was in the navy during the Vietnam war, but thankfully he never had to go overseas.  He was a welder and said that he made a number of bbq grills out of airplane parts for the officers.

I couldn't find a picture of my dad from the navy, but I did find this one from when he was an acolyte in the Episcopal church.  He looked almost the same when he was in the navy.

There. But instead of the cross I wanted to put a gun or a welder thingy but they didn't have those stickers on Photobucket.

My sister Beth was in the navy too but I also don't have a picture of her in her uniform.  She looked pretty cute in it.  Instead I'll post this cute picture of her:

My sister Amy is currently serving in Afghanistan.  She comes home next month.

And of course, my favorite non-relative veteran is George Washington.

He is the original American veteran.

Thank you for your service, Veterans!

Happy April Fools Day, Fools!

Happy April Fool's Day!  I unwittingly pranked myself good by not doing any housework all weekend so this morning I didn't have clean underwear or a clean towel.  HILARIOUS.  I don't usually play April Fool's pranks on purpose because they always backfire.  Here's a post from two years ago:

I STILL don't have internet at home. You know what? Not having internet at home is exactly like being blind. I want to know what a frog eats but can I just google it and find out? NOOOO.... no internet. So I just have to assume that they eat flies and that it doesn't matter if they are dead or not. I want to know if centipedes bite people on the feet when they are sleeping, but can I find out? No, not unless I get up at five o'clock in the morning and drive down the road and steal wifi from a neighbor, but my foot hurts from what I strongly suspect is a centipede bite, and I'm tired from a fitful night of almost no sleep because of bad dreams about shooting off into space, and guess what else is going on? I HAVE ANOTHER TOOTH ACHE. I have the worst teeth in the world. I think they must be only slightly more durable than the peppermints my grandma used to keep in her car, which were hard as rocks, but dissolved with the tiniest bit of saliva (much like my teeth).

On April Fool's day I really wanted to get Kira with some kind of practical joke because she is constantly torturing me. Lately her favorite method is to sneak up on me and pinch the skinny fat on the back of my arms or on my sides or on my thighs (anywhere, really) and say, "I'M PINCHING YOUR TENDERS!" and then laugh maniacally while I try to wriggle out of her iron-like grip. She's going to be stronger than me soon and I am very very worried about that day. So I took this plastic spider:

And taped it to the under-side of the toilet seat so when she lifted it she would get startled and scream. Well, it turns out my girl has a bladder the size of a hot air balloon and only goes to the bathroom about twice a day so she never saw it on the toilet because she used the downstairs bathroom (note to self: next year, booby trap all toilets). I did manage to forget about it and scared myself almost out of my wits when I lifted the toilet seat right before bed, and I slammed the lid back down and the spider broke free of the tape and fell in the toilet. I disgustedly threw it in to the tub, with the idea that I'd disinfect it the next day (by throwing it in the garbage), but I forgot about it again and startled myself when I pulled the shower curtain back to take a shower. That joke totally backfired.

I also put a little rubber snake in Kira's bed. She didn't even notice. The next morning I went in the bathroom to take a shower and saw a little plastic frog on the rug. I thought Kira was trying to get me back for leaving the snake or the spider, so I was just going to pick it up and throw it out of the bathroom, but when I went to pick it up, IT HOPPED AWAY. It is a real live frog! It came to live with me! I have no idea where it came from or how it got in the house, but I love him like a child now. We made him a habitat in a big tupperware tub with a plant, a bunch of leaves, some sticks and a saucer of water. I cover it with a damp towel and I set the whole thing on a heating pad. The problem is what to feed the little guy because he's looking a little thin to me.

Don't you think his hips look a little bony?

All I could think of was flies so Kira trapped some live ones that are still buzzing around between the windows and I threw in some dead ones too for good measure, you know, in case he doesn't feel like hunting. Mitch says he doesn't want to eat dead flies but how does he know? See how important google is? Yesterday morning I spotted a disgusting little centipede walking across the livingroom carpet so Mitch said to put it in with the frog because that would be a good meal. I don't know if frogs like centipedes or if they think they are disgusting, and that is one of the things on my list to find out while I sit here in Mitch's office looking like a professional, and soak up a weekend's worth of wifi. (I just looked up pictures of centipedes and I had to stop because they are so gross. The one in my house was only about an inch long, not the size of an adult human hand, like the ones I just saw. Oh Christ, what if it's just a baby and doubles it's size every day? Shit shit shit!)

I made Kira put the centipede in the habitat because I find centipedes to be one of nature's most horrible jokes, and now I can't stop thinking about it. I keep checking to make sure it is still in the habitat, and didn't somehow get out, but half the time I can't see it because it's hiding, and the other half the time, when I do spot it, it just grosses me out even more. And do they bite? Is it going to hurt my frog? I have to find that out too. I have tiny sore spot on my foot that I noticed at about three in the morning and in my sleep-deprived stupor I convinced myself that the centipede got out of the habitat and came into my bed and bit me. My foot still hurts, so something definitely happened, and if it wasn't a centipede bite then what was it? There is no other explanation, so now, when I go home I'm going to have to search through the habitat and find the centipede and kill it so it doesn't hurt my frog.

I know I'm rambling but I don't know when I will get a chance to blog again without making an effort to haul my computer out of the house. This post is too long but I don't want to stop because I have so much more to tell you! I'm afraid of space! I ate six cupcakes on Saturday! I think I might need another root canal! I only slept 2 hours last night! More later....

Update: HOLY SHIT! I just looked up centipedes and they DO bite, and their bites are venomous! What evil have I brought on my little frog. I better go home. Centipedes have fangs on the underside of their heads much like spider fangs! Gross! I vaguely remember that they are poisonous because once Magnum got bit by a centipede when he was trapped under an airplane fuselage in the jungle and he was majorly tripping.

UPDATE #2: Frogs eat bugs. Captive frogs are supposed to eat meal worms or crickets. There is no way in hell I'm buying crickets because they are only slightly less disgusting than centipedes, and I can just imagine how the car ride home would go with them in their little box and me gagging and writhing just thinking about them. And meal worms, please, like I'm going to pay money for something about as appealing as vomit. Sorry frog! I'll try to attract some moths at night, but until I find something that's not totally gross or poisonous, he'll have to settle for dead flies.

Update #3: I'm now pretty sure I have had a centipede bite. I can feel the poison coursing through my veins.

Seafood and Computer Magic

Okay, I've really sucked at blogging lately.   I have to get back on the ball.  First of all, I want to tell you about the high points of Christmas.  I told you before about the presents my sister Beth has gotten me over the years: the appliance box of old rated R VHS tapes for my kids; the case of dollar store fish-n-crackers; the receipt for a case of Diet coke she bought me the previous summer that I forgot to pay her back for, wrapped nicely in a box with a bow.

Well, this year I was looking for something for her.  I got her some nice(ish) things but I wanted to get her one more thing.  I shopped around and couldn't decide on anything.  So I went to the dollar store to get some wrap and tape and stuff.  I looked through the food aisle to see if they still had the same fish-n-crackers.  They did, along with a surprisingly wide variety of canned fish.  I know, I thought, I'll get her a seafood extravaganza!  Who doesn't love sea food?  I got her a box of the fish-n-crackers she loves so much, a can of tuna, a tin of kipper snacks, a tin of anchovies, and best of all a dented, dusty can of clams.  I got a cute basket and a teeny bottle of Asti Spumanti (to class it up) and wrapped it up beautifully.  She loved it.  Who wouldn't?

Over Christmas I also learned that my dad is a gifted computer whiz.  We were going to Skype with my sister Amy who is in Afghanistan right now (she's in the service, not on vacation) and my dad couldn't remember his Skype password.  We told him to reset it.  So he clicked the "I forgot my password" button and Skype sent him a link to make up a new password.  He couldn't get it to work so he handed me the computer in frustration and told me to do it.  I said, "What password did you choose?"  He couldn't remember the password he made up two minutes before.  No, I shouldn't say that, he couldn't remember if it was the dog's name, or the dog's name1.  It was either/or.  I figured it out by typing one, then typing the other to see which one would work.  He was amazed.

While I was there I used his computer to go on Facebook and I forgot to log myself out.  Then I got this email:

UMmmmmmmmmmmm, Sarah you turd! You dicked around with my Facebook setting so when I click on it, your page comes up, not mine. How do I get it back to mine. Next time you come up I get to spend an hour using your computer and we'll see how you like it. Why has my typeface changed? NOW What did you do to this computer? Dad

Yeah, that's right, I can now make his computer switch to italics anytime I want.  Don't mess with me or I'll do it to you too.

Awkward Family Photo

This might be my new favorite Christmas picture.  These are my sister's daughters, in their pjs, in front of their Charlie Brown Christmas tree middle (their dad had to cut the top off to make it fit in the house), they are holding hands, and Millie (the little one) looks to be choking to death.

Here's another picture of their tree middle:

The sparse branches seem to grow right into the ceiling.  Christmas magic!

Merry Merry

Wow, what a week.  These really are the darkest days of the year aren't they?  Did you know there was a school shooting in Connecticut?  There was.  It was awful and now thanks to a 24 hour news cycle everyone can relive it every moment of every day.  In the little bit of TV news I have watched since last Friday I heard one political type on Fox news say that if the principal of that school had a similar semi-automatic, loaded and ready in her office, maybe this could have been avoided.  If this wasn't so grim and depressing and horrible that would make me laugh and laugh.  An elementary school principal with a loaded military rifle in her office.  That would be like Santa having a sleigh full of mustard gas "just in case." Oh. My. God.  I also heard a guy interviewed on NPR who has a mentally ill son and he said that it's easier in this country to get a semi-automatic weapon and  hundreds of rounds of ammo than it is to get mental health care.  Again, Oh. My. God.

Winter solstice is on Friday and after that the sun will shine longer and the days will get brighter and better. 

Unless the Mayans were right.  Then we're all fucked. 

Merry Christmas!

Fond Christmas Memories

Having-a-job is really cutting in to my blogging time and you know who suffers for that.  Nobody You do. And I'm sorry about that. Also we are having a feud with our Internet provider so wifi at home is sporadic and slow. It's not that I have nothing to write about, I do, I just can't get myself organized enough to do it properly. For instance right now I'm writing this on my iPad at a coffee shop which seems so lame-o, but that is what's happening. Its really hard to type on an iPad.

I've been getting ready for Christmas, decorating and shopping and stuff, and that got me to thinking about Christmases past and my funny sister Beth.  She usually gets me a passive-aggressive, and hilarious gift. Last year she gave my kids every single VHS tape she has ever bought, and she put them in one giant box. I think it must have been the box her washing machine or dryer came in. It was enormous. The kids, of course were thrilled with it. As I was sitting there thinking about how I was going to get her back for that she said to me, "You better go through those before the kids do. Some of them are extremely inappropriate for kids."  Nicely done, Beth.

The year before she gave my kids about thirty packages of "tuna snacks" she had gotten at the dollar store. My gift was the story of what happened when she bought them, and it's still to this day one of the best gifts ever.

She bought a package of the tuna/cracker combo one time just to try it, and she liked it. The next time she went to the dollar store she saw them again and had fond memories of them so she decided to buy all of Dollar Tree's stock. She got one of their teeny carts and cleared the shelf of all their tuna snacks and, feeling proud of herself, headed for the checkout. That's when she ran in to one of her old boyfriends. They said hi and he looked in her cart, and then looked her up and down and said, with sincerity in his voice, "How are you?" which I choose to translate as, "How long have you been homeless?"

Anyway, after that she lost her taste for dollar store tuna so she gave it all to my kids for Christmas. But the joke is on her because they really liked it, ha ha, Beth!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Here's something from the past to get us in the mood for the big day tomorrow.  Happy Thanksgiving!

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Happy Thanksgiving! I'm sitting here with my sisters and dad talking about Dolph Lundgren and his relative hotness (I think he's not, my sisters think he is, my dad says "he doesn't really think about that.") and discussing whether my dad has ADHD. (We all think he does) I don't really know where my kids are. I think they are outside somewhere probably buried in 40 feet of snow. I hope they are okay. I will be very thankful if they are okay. We are having a late dinner because of work schedules and I haven't eaten anything all day long (except for a giant breakfast) and I am getting HUNGRY. I also think I might be having a heart attack. Or heart burn. But how could I have heart burn if I haven't even eaten anything? (except a giant breakfast) I bet beer will help. Also, my foot is asleep and it's annoying me. It's my left foot. Isn't that a sign of a heart attack? Uh oh. I have to go to Webmd.com. BRB.

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Good news, according to Webmd, a sleeping left foot is not a sign of a heart attack, so I am free to sit around and eat my weight in stuffing with no life-threatening consequences! Yay! Kira just asked me, "Do you think if I threw Amy's dog in the fire, it would stink?" I think maybe I have to look into some counseling for my sweet little angel. Between her potential horrifying animal abuse and her milk farts ("Oh my god! I farted and smells just like milk!") she's both getting on my nerves, and causing some serious worry. Be back after dinner.

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Okay, dinner is over. Everything was delicious, as usual; and the company was great. We had champagne and Beth (who is six months pregnant) wanted a glass and wavered on whether to have a small one or not. My mom and her friend said, "No! You can't! What about FAS?" and were indignant until they were reminded about how much they smoked and drank during pregnancy in the 60s and 70s. They said, "Well, we didn't know about it back then!" and then looked at all of us like they were seeing us for the first time, inspecting us for small head size and short attention spans. To their relief we all have enormous heads so whew, that's one bullet dodged! Score one for drinking during pregnancy! Beth decided that a few sips of wine would be okay considering all the mouthwash she "accidentally" ingests.

Then we got in an argument about why the Kardashian's are famous. Amy said it's because their father was one of O.J. Simpson's lawyers and the rest of us were all, "Yeah, right! Bruce Jenner was not O.J. Simpson's lawyer!" and she tried to tell us that he's not really their father, but please, we've seen the show! How dumb does she think we are? Whether Bruce Jenner is a world-class athlete as well as a cracker-jack defense lawyer still does not answer the question about why the Kardashian's are so famous.

And then Beth told us a delightful story about how she had to go to the bathroom really bad while she was on the road with her toddler and she couldn't hold it so she had to stop at a gas station. She, of course, had to bring the baby in the bathroom stall with her because leaving toddlers in running vehicles right next to the highway is a no-no (apparently). She tried her best not to let the baby touch anything because gas station bathrooms = blech. She was pretty successful until she flushed and it was one of those super loud powerful flushers and it scared the crap out of the baby who jumped, screamed, and fell; smearing herself against every gas-station-bathroom surface she could on her way down and the whole catastrophe culminated with the poor scared baby spitting her binky out and it skittered across the disgusting floor, and then she screamed even more when Beth wouldn't let her put the gross binky back in her mouth. Fun times! I also watched Beth change a diaper that made her gag THREE TIMES. I thought she was going to puke on her baby. Oh my god! I want to get pregnant again RIGHT NOW!

But seriously, I'm thankful I'm not pregnant, and that my kids are old enough to leave alone while I use the bathroom by myself. Really, super thankful.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone! I'm going into a tryptophan/wine coma now for the next 24 hours or so!

Labor Day Deals

Happy last day of summer!  What are you going to do today?  I got this flyer in the mail so I think I am going to take advantage of some of these Super Saver(!) deals.

Specifically I am going to save 37% on an 18 inch machete (with nylon sheath).  I had no idea machetes were so cheap.  

Happy Mother's Day! Poems!

Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there!  I got some homemade cards from my kids with poems in them. I love kid poems.  This is Kira's:

Roses are Red

Violets are Blue

I really love you

And the rest of the family does too.

And here is Sam's:

Roses are Red

Violets are unicorn,

This poem makes no sense

Refrigerator

I sent my mom a lamo store-bought card.  I should probably write her a poem myself but I don't like writing poems even though I wrote her one for Mother's Day a few years ago.  Oh well, I'll try out a limerick this year:

There once was a woman named Nancy

Who liked to dress up really fancy (no she didn't)

She went to a ball

and felt really tall

And then realized she forgot to wear pants(y).

Happy Mother's Day!

 

 

Happy Easter

Happy Easter.  

When Sam was about three...

I brought him to see a freaky-ass Easter bunny like the ones in these pictures...

That particular bunny had a big, gaping, freaky smile made of black mesh so the person inside could see out.

Sam was very excited and sat on the bunny's lap...

And stared at his face...

Then he ran back to me where I was...

Far, FAR away from the scary bunny, and he said,

"Mom, that bunny ate a kid!  I could see it in his mouth!"

Now we're both afraid of the Easter Bunny.

(thanks to Awkward Family Photos for all the scary pictures)

Have Your Cake

I got a cake mix to make for Mitch for his birthday and when I wasn't looking he went ahead and made it himself.  (I would have made it bundt style because he is always saying "let a bundt cake do the talking" and I would have used chocolate frosting, but you know, whatev.)  He made a jello cake with plain whip cream for frosting.  The whole thing was so sad - the man making his own cake from a mix, using plain whip cream for frosting instead of mixing it up with some cream cheese - that I thought I would pretty it up a bit for him before I took it over to his parents for his birthday party.  I was planning on it saying, "Happy Birthday Mitch!  I ♥ you!" and that would be happy surprise when he took the foil off to cut it.  (And also, of course, everyone would then think I am the one who made the cake instead of letting the birthday boy make it.)


I took out my professional cake-decorating tools (some old tubes of frosting and the tips that came with them) and got to work.  These are the results:

You see, I discovered after writing the "happy" that the tip I was using was too small.  The letters were too thin and looked like they were written by someone with Parkinson's disease so I switched to the tip with a bigger hole.  It was a really big hole.  And in my defense, it's really hard to get cheap tube-frosting to stick to whip cream.  The letters were too big and I was not going to be able to fit "birthday" on the cake much less "I ♥ you Mitch".  At most I would be able to fit "birthda" but that would be so lame so I just left it at "Happy Birth" and added some flowers to try to distract from the abbreviated message. I posted it on Facebook and got a comment from one of the best amateur cake makers I know, Carrie, who makes cakes that look like this:

A campfire, a sparkly river and life-like trees and rocks.
Somebody is a bit of a showoff.

  
Carrie said it is the best "Happy Birth" cake she has ever seen!  So now I'm feeling pretty confident.  Change the category from "Happy Birthday" to "Happy Birth" and suddenly I'm Number One! 


I guess I was feeling too big for my britches after my wild cake success last year for Mitch's birthday:

It's a heart-shaped cake!  Awwww cute! The picture is supposed to be a rabbit but unfortunately looks more like a pear with boobs.  Again, I couldn't fit Happy Birthday on so I just wrote H.B.  He knew what it meant.  


Maybe I'll just ask Carrie to make Mitch's birthday cakes from now on.

Happy 2012!

Happy New Year!  I hope you had a fun New Year's Eve.  Mitch and the kids and I went to Kira's hockey game, then went out to dinner at the Duluth Grill which was featured on that show Diners, Drive-ins and Dives and I had a sandwich that was featured on the show - the wild rice patty melt.  It was okay if you are in love with Italian sausage.  I'm not really in love with Italian sausage.  But it was fun to be out with the fam.  We talked about how we used to fool the kids and tell them it was midnight at about 9:00 every NYE, and they never figured it out.  Even if they were in a room made of clocks they would still believe it was midnight.  "Wow!  It's so late and I'm not even tired!"

Then we got home around 9:30 and watched a bit of Dick Clark's Rockin' New Year's Eve.  We all shuddered at the thought of being in Time's Square on NYE.  We're not crowd people.  Then Mitch fell asleep in his chair and I fell asleep on the couch and the kids watched TV and played on their iPods.  WILD!
We went to bed at about 12:03.

So how was your 2011?  Mine had its highlights and its lowlights.  I got to go to Washington DC two times.  Once with my kids and once with my sisters.  That, of course, meant two trips to Mount Vernon which was awesome.  I said something to Mitch about feeling like a time traveler when I go there and under his breath he said, "More like a time stalker."  Jealous much?  I also got to see New York City.  That was pretty cool.  Unfortunately 2011 was also the year I lost my last grandparent and had a pretty serious bout of depression.  Neither one of those things was very fun at all.

Revisiting last year's Resolutions almost brought on a new bout of depression, but mostly just made me laugh at myself (not with myself).  Did I lose 26 pounds?  No, but I did lose and keep off about 10 pounds (until December.)  Did I work out 350 times?  HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!  No.  I stopped keeping track around April and was not anywhere on track for the 350 workout goal.  Did I stop picking my split ends?  No.  Did I save 10% of our income into an IRA?  No.  Did I travel somewhere cool?  YES!  Mount Vernon!  New York City!  Washington D.C!  So 1 out of 5.  Not too impressive.

This year I'm not making resolutions that can be quantified.  I'm going to be more positive.  I'm going to be more thankful.  That's it.  How about you?  How was your year?  What are your resolutions?

Baking LIVE!

Today Kira and I are making apple pie cookies.

It's an idea I had because one problem I have with all apple pies is too much fruit/not enough crust.  So now I've cut the fruit to crust ratio by an alarming rate so they are basically crust cookies with a tiny taste of apple. Like I said, it was my idea, but when I googled it I see someone else has already done it. That's where I got the picture.  Mine aren't done yet but I thought you should see a "this is how they should look" picture before you see mine.  I don't know how they are going to turn out.  I'm not following a recipe which would be fine if I understood baking at all, but come on, it was a pre-made crust and I just doused the apples with sugar and cinnamon.  It's not brain surgery.  Then I egg-washed the cookies after they were assembled and sprinkled them with more sugar.  The first pan is cooking right now and then we will test them to see what they need.  I'm thinking maybe on the next batch we will coat the crust with cinnamon/sugar before we put the tiny bit of apple in the middle. I'm baking them at 350 but they are smelling kind of burny.  I'll turn it down a bit.

So, while we're waiting what should we talk about?  

My tree is still up.  I hope Sam realizes that my leaving it up just because he wants it up for his birthday is an enormous gesture of love.

Kira is turning nocturnal.  She cannot get up in the morning and she cannot fall asleep at night.  Last night she was up until midnight and didn't get out of bed today until 10:30.

I think this might be my favorite week of the year.  It's a grown up year, no more surprises.  I like all the year-end wrap-ups except for the list of people who died.  I don't like January because it's starting all over again with a raw, unseasoned year. Ugh.  Didn't we just do this?  And then everyone is compelled to make it a great year with resolutions and empty promises about making so many self-improvements.  The last week of December you know how unrealistic those resolutions were and you are comfortable with the person you really are- the person who is okay with eating half a box of Cheez-its for lunch, or buying pants that actually fit instead of pants that you wish you fit into- and that is alright!   Come January first you will become delusional again and set some unreachable goals with ideas about being in the "best shape of your life" next December!  It's not going to happen.  Last year I told myself I was going to work out 350 times in 2011.  That leaves fourteen days of NOT working out.  That was CRAZY.  It's like I didn't even know myself, and after living with me for forty years I should have known myself better.  I was totally on track for about two weeks, but then I saw how stupid it was and didn't want to give up completely so I changed it to 300 workouts in 2011.  I stayed on track for about two months.  Then I stopped keeping track.  I don't know how much I worked out but I would guess it was about 150 to 175 times for the whole year.  Disappointing when you consider the goal, but not too shabby if I would have not made such a ridiculous resolution.  This year my resolutions are to like myself and be happy and live in the moment blah blah blah.  A bunch of stuff that can't be quantified so there will be no failure.

Oh, the timer went off!  I better check my cookies... Okay, I set the oven for 15 minutes and I just checked them and they don't look quite golden brown on the top yet so I'll leave them in for 5 more minutes.

Okay, I left them in for a total of 25 minutes.  This is what they look like:

Not bad.  Not quite as flaky as the picture from the website,  but they look good and they smell amazing.  Okay, now I'll try one.  Delicious.  VERY crusty without the overwhelming fruitiness of a pie.  I love them!

Let's see how Kira likes them:

She likes them.

We have another crust so she is going to make turnovers.  We'll have the turnovers for dessert tonight.  Sam and Mitch don't have to know about the six cookies Kira and I just inhaled.

Some post-holiday questions:

How is it that a Christmas tree that I put up in early December and think is beautiful and majestic, magically turns into a tacky-piece-of-plastic-that's-dropping-an-impossible-amount-of-fake-needles-and-taking-up-a-lot-of-room sometime in the wee hours of Christmas morning?  Does that make me a Boxing Day Grinch?  Probably.  But how efficient would it be to just put all that crap away when your are throwing out all the wrapping paper?  I usually take it down on December 26 but yesterday Sam said he wanted it up for his birthday (Charlie Brown's birthday is five days after Christmas).  I don't know if I can wait that long.  How long does your tree stay up?

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!  Here's a post from Christmas past:


It's been so great this month to get all the cards and letters from people I generally don't stay in touch with well enough. But I'm sad to say I only got a few Christmas Letters, the ones where people summarize the entire year in a one page letter. I love those letters, but one time I got one from a friend I have since lost touch with, in which she confessed to an "almost" affair she had with a co-worker.

Awkward!

But the more I thought about it the more I like the idea of an annual Christmas confessional/too-much-information letter. I think I could easily tell enough about myself and my family to keep people from looking me in the eye until at least Thanksgiving, the hard part is paring it down to a single page. I'd have to pick a theme like "lies I've told this year" or "bathroom incidents." But even that might be a little long considering the millions of lies I've told, and that 2009 is the year I learned that it's very important to take bathroom breaks at work when I can, and not to try to hold it too long. (lesson learned the hard way)

That all sounds too hard when I really just want to wish you all a fantastic Christmas and New Year. I'm happy to say that my biggest problem these days is the ever-present Chex Mix crumbs in my bra (itchy). I hope Chex Mix in your bra (or something of equal seriousness) is the biggest problem you encounter in 2010. I'll work on my theme for next year's letter. You work on yours too.

The Krampus

I just heard a story on the radio about a mythical Christmas creature called the Krampus.  Why didn't anyone ever tell me about this???  I LOVE IT!  The Krampus is a demon-like creature who plays the yin to Santa's yang and while Santa is giving presents to the kids on the nice list, "when the Krampus finds a particularly naughty child, it stuffs the child in its sack and carries the frightened thing away to its lair, presumably to devour for its Christmas dinner." (from Wikipedia)

Merry Christmas!

Do you know how much I would have loved to tell my kids that they better be good or the Krampus would come and kidnap them via giant sac and then take them to his stinky cave and eat them alive?  That is what Christmas is all about!  All I had in my parenting tool-belt was "Be good!  Santa is watching!  You might not get a present if you're naughty!"  Kira was so naughty when she was little,

that the "Santa's-watching!" threat never worked on her. She didn't care.  If Santa stiffed her, she would make Santa sorry he was ever born.  If the Krampus was in the picture, I might have gotten better results.  Oh well.  It's too late for my kids.  They would laugh if I told them about it now.  But it's not too late for my nieces!

And the best part about telling them in disturbing detail about the Krampus is that in their waking hours they will be scared to death to be naughty, and because I'm not their mother, I won't have to deal with the inevitable night-terrors!  Win-win!  I can't wait to see their big eyes when I tell them all about listening carefully in the dead of night for the clip-clop of cloven hooves on Mom's new hardwood floors,  

and that the only way to avoid being stolen and eaten by the Krampus is to sleep IN BETWEEN Mom and Dad every single night of the year.  


Wow, this is so great that I might have to start teaching kindergarten again!  I'll get this book for story time!

Sleep well, kids!

Nutcracker

The other day when we were putting up the Christmas decorations, Kira opened a bag and after a sharp, startled intake of breath she said, "Oh my god, that scared me."  She was talking about the nutcracker she made in second grade.

"Cracking nuts with my mouth is my job. Do you find that disturbing?"

The thing is, I am positive I threw this in the garbage last year.  How did it get into its own bag and get tucked away with all the decorations?  I thought it was scary before, but now that I know it's haunted and has a mind of it's own, I'm terrified of it.  Especially since Kira gave me a tour of what she was thinking when she created it.

Brace yourself.....

Here's a close up of his face.  His mouth is off center and and his teeth are clenched because she says he's grunting.  Some of his teeth are black because she says they are rotten.  She tells me his skin is gray because "he's molting."

 I asked her to tell me about his clothes, thinking she would tell me about his buttons, but she tells me that originally his shirt was yellow, like his sleeves, but is now mostly red because of "all the blood."

 Here's a close-up of his dirty, gray, cottonball dreadlock.

Kira (at least I think it's Kira) has started moving him around and putting him places to startle me, like on my pillow,

or in the shower.  When a girl is naked and vulnerable the last thing she wants to see when she opens the shower curtain is this:

Sweet Jesus!

I want to throw it away again, but I'm afraid it will come back and then I will go out of my mind with terror.

Here it is telling me that it will leave me alone if I give him my first born son.  NOOOOOOOO!!!!!