Inspirations from cheese in a can. joey, kelly and danny.

maglite124:

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2009-01-05/
this is you

With the new baby on the way Danny will be taking over my office and I get to move into the guest bedroom closet. No, seriously. This weekend has given Danny and I plenty of time to visit home improvement stores and do manly things together.

Here is a picture from the orange home improvement store. He enjoyed riding in the storage bins.

Happy New Year.

Here’s a pic taken from our slumbering New Years Day. Eventually we had to leave the house as people were ready to claw others faces off. Lots of pics from the holidays but still in vacation mode.

As I believe I’ve mentioned to my friends on Twitter and Facebook, I have recently found a fondness for older ladies in Christmas sweaters.  I’m ashamed to admit that for many years, it has been my holiday tradition to make fun of this particular style choice.  I once worked with this lady (not old, but middle-aged) in the radiology department of a hospital who had a unique Christmas sweater for each day in December.  Which I thought was outrageous.  Now, don’t get me wrong….I’m not saying that I’ve been scouring Kohl’s for Christmas sweaters of my own, I’m just saying that this year, now I think they’re really cute on old ladies, and, I suppose, not horribly offensive on anyone else.  Here’s why:

Meet Mrs. Gail and Mrs. Winnie.  Every Tuesday and Thursday morning for four hours, they pretend like they are Danny’s grandmothers.  (Also, nine of his closest friends’ grandmothers.  But still.)  Since Danny doesn’t have a grandmother within an hour’s drive, and we don’t get to see any of them as much as we’d like to, I think Danny and I also a little bit pretend like Mrs. Gail and Mrs. Winnie are his surrogate grandmothers.  So when, in the first week of December, I walked up to the door to drop Danny off and saw Mrs. Gail and Mrs. Winnie proudly wearing their Christmas sweaters, I had a change of heart.  I decided that there was nowhere I would rather leave Danny than with ladies like Mrs. Gail and Mrs. Winnie, who are so excited about Christmas and overflowing with love generally that they can’t resist the opportunity to display their excitement with their clothing.  That morning, my opinion of Christmas sweaters changed dramatically for the better.  [Please note that it is 70 degrees on this December 18th in Georgia, and so Mrs. Gail and Mrs. Winnie had the good sense to pull out their Christmas t-shirts instead of chasing ten toddlers with Christmas cupcakes in sweaters.  But you get what I'm saying.]

Some of you have requested details of that one trip we just took.  Not naming any names.  You want details?   I bet you’re thinking of  vivid descriptions of Danny’s delighted face as he enjoyed the heaven on earth that is hanging out with his cousins.  Or the wonder and awe he felt when he was finally in the large and fuzzy presence of his beloved, George.  I’ll get to that post really really soon.  You could even hold your breath, in fact.  Ready?  GO!

But for now, some other details.  One night, when we were all twelve of us hanging out in our three-bedroom condo (okay, five of us were asleep), Dad thought it would be a lot of fun if we played a game.  We didn’t have any, of course, other than the tiny card game we brought because Dad said Joey and I had to bring a game.  Alas, it had no instructions with it by the time we got to it, so Dad thought he’d invent a game or two.  The first:  Bible Charades.  I am not even kidding.  After a day of manic sightseeing, toddler-chasing, and fetus-gestating, it was time to play Bible Charades.  The rules of Bible Charades apparently allow for the person doing the miming to talk, if they want to.  Also, in this version, you can do the same Bible verse three times in a row.  Fortunately (?), after only half an hour of that, we moved on to another game he made up which was called “Everyone Share an Embarrassing Moment in Your Life” (or, “Let Me Tell You About This One Thing That Happened at Work That Pissed Me Off Real Bad.  For Half an Hour.”).  This game featured a heaping helping of awkward silences and a side of a certain person getting mad at his spouse for alluding to embarrassing moments in the certain person’s life instead of her own (Did I just do it again?  See, this is not a great game for me).  However.  There WAS pie, so that was good.

That’s all for now.  I just didn’t want to withhold those details from you guys any longer.

So, hi.  Sorry I was gone for a while.  I have a long list of excuses, all of which are very convincing and unarguable.  I’ll keep them to myself, but trust me, it wasn’t lack of affection for my little blog and its devoted audience that kept me away.  Posting every day in November trained my brain to talk to you guys throughout the days when something interesting happens, but my brain just hasn’t been given access to the interwebs to get the message through.  Anyway, here I am, in all my magnificent, pregnant, toddler-rearing, 8 kinds of sick, just back from “vacation” in December glory.  Oh man, I squoze the excuses in after all, didn’t I?  Since I opened that can of worms, let me just say that if you are looking for the best way to obliterate your festive Martha Stewart-esque holiday preparation plans, what you want to do is take a 9-day family vacation between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  Also, you might want to be sure and lick your toddler, who is licking every ball in every ball pit from here to Orlando.  Just a thought, I’m here to help you out.

Anyway, thanks to my mom’s Christmas gift to her grandchildren, we went to Orlando last week.  Or the week before, I don’t know.  I have no concept of time anymore.  (Except the 24-theme clock ticking down the seconds until Christmas…..THAT I hear loud and clear.)  And when I say Orlando, clearly what I mean is NOT DISNEYWORLD.  Which I thought would bother me a little, and so I planned to excuse ourselves from the rest of the group (Mom, Dad, two sisters, a brother-in-law, and four nephews) and take a day off to go visit Mickey.  But eh.  While he recognizes Mickey, Danny doesn’t really know from Mickey Mouse.  And Universal has Curious George Land, or whatever they call it.  For which he went NUTS.  As did his nine-year-old cousin, and his father.  Clearly balls and shooting were involved.  The moral of the story:  if you’re on a budget and planning a Florida vacation, and you don’t have a princess-obsessed female amongst you, feel free to take the cheap (WAY WAY CHEAPER) way out, and go the Universal route.

Here is the 47th excuse as to why I haven’t posted in two weeks.  Way too much to say.  It’s overwhelming.  And this from someone who is often overwhelmed at the prospect of having to unload AND load the dishwasher all in one day.  All that has occurred in the last few weeks is much, much more than I even know what to do with, much less upload all the pictures, sort through them, and provide a pictorial, grammatically correct, and interesting travelogue.  I will get some pictures up sometime, probably March, when you could give a rip about someone else’s December NOT DISNEYWORLD vacation.  Or maybe tomorrow.  You just never know.  For now, though, I will leave you with a few uncaptioned pictures for which you will have to provide your own thoughts.

Nothing in particular, I guess I just missed my little blob.  Ain’t they sweet, though?  This is probably moments before one of Danny’s numerous attempts to banish me from the ‘awfiss,’ which apparently is now a NO GURLZ ALLOWED zone.  The first time I stepped in there and Danny stuck his arm out and said “GOWAY!” I’ll admit that I backed away stunned, trudged off and had myself a good cry.  Ah, such is life, I guess.  Boys will be boys, which evidently means mean as hell.  What’re you gonna do.  Shopping comes to mind.

Coming soon, we will be leaving for a trip to Orlando with my mom and dad, these ones, and this one and her three boys.  Mostly we’ll be going to Universal, but we might swing by Mickey Mouse’s house one day.  (Somehow Danny knows who he is and prefers his cheese be in the shape of his head.  Don’t ask me how.  Maybe he’s handier with the remote than I know, and secretly watches that Disney Playhouse show when I leave the room for two minutes at a time.)  Even mostlier than Universal, though, we’ll be hanging out with Danny’s cousins, which is like heaven on earth for him.  It’s good that he has a little sister on the way, because he just was not made for an only-child scenario.  He is happiest in a big pile of children.  Also, please have snacks, and then he can call it a party.  (We’ve got that covered, too.  We’re a family of eaters…..it’s our thing, it’s what we do, as my friend Janelle says.)

So I’m laundering and packing and baking and grocery shopping and all that jazz.  And Christmas decorating(ish)….we have the tree up, and it’s pre-lit.  So if worst comes to worst, we’ve got that going for us.  Somehow Danny knows that it’s depressing to have a tree up with no ornaments, so he keeps sticking his toys in the branches.  Maybe he’s onto something…..the bowling pins and the airplane look pretty good, maybe we’ll just leave the ornaments in the attic and empty his toybox onto the Christmas tree.  And if you believe there’s a good chance I might just do that, that’s how you can tell that you really know me.

It’s November 30, and this post marks the end of my month of daily blogging.  Like my brother-in-law, who joined in this foolishness with me (thanks, Greg!), I did not falter.  We will be buying each other beer, pizza, coffee, and Mickey Mouse ears all next week.  It was nice to have company.

I suppose since it’s a gray and dreary day *and* the end of an era, I am morally obligated to become all reflective and melancholy.  I hate to leave you this way, interwebs, but it’s just the vibe around here, it can’t be helped.  So here goes.  I am a little surprised at how addicting I found reading and commenting on other blogs, eagerly anticipating and replying to comments here, and refreshing ad infinitum my Twitter and Facebook pages (yeah okay, not that surprised.  I’ve always checked my email 50 times a day, which is pretty much the same concept).  I felt crazy more than once, and I welcome the fact that in theory, it is now possible for me to step away from the computer for long stretches (like even up to three hours or so) at a time.  I probably won’t, but I could.

This month has worked out to be somewhat of a lonely one for me, surprisingly.  I guess between birthdays and holidays and Danny’s contagious condition and whatnot, I just haven’t gotten out much.  That’s when it’s especially nice to have you, interwebs.  So thanks to those of you who dropped by for a day, a few days, most of the days, or all of the days.  Thanks to those who commented and to those who lurked (I know I browbeat you a little, but I’m glad you’re here just the same).  It was nice to have you.  Thanks for stopping by.

You may or may not remember some donut muffins I mentioned a while back.  Tonight I made them.  Well, really, I made a hybrid between those and these.  I won’t bore you with all the nuances.  Anyway, as expected of anything called a donut muffin, they are good.  They didn’t look quite festive enough by themselves, so I fancied them up a little with props and trick photography.

Also today, we went to Whole Foods.  They have a spectacular buffet of hot food there, for $7.99/lb.  Being a cheap bastard, I am an expert at balancing how much something weighs versus how good it tastes and how much it costs to make.  This all happens automatically in my brainhole without me even having to consciously think.  It’s like driving.  Some other people’s [read: Joey's] brainholes do not work that way.  I won’t tell you how much his plate weighed, but I wish I had had my camera ready to take a picture of his face when he saw the total for it.  He has very large (and beautiful, I might add) eyes anyway, but I thought they were going to completely take over his face and then fall out of his head, right onto the friendly cashier’s conveyer belt.  Terrific appetizer for a third (and most delicious) Thanksgiving feast.  The second Thanksgiving feast was at Sweet Tomatoes last night.  Wow, we’re on a buffet roll, innit?

As we left Whole Foods and were on our way home, I failed to be gracious about some little thing or other, and couldn’t resist letting fly some zinger.  I can’t even remember what it was (I feel like it was a good one, though.  Maybe a 7.5 out of 10).  Joey turned to me and said:  “You know….you’re kind of an a-hole normally.  But when you’re pregnant, you are a definitive a-hole.”   Just in case you’re thinking about flipping the a-hole card back onto Joey for saying such a wretched thing to his lovely wife, let me say this:  I imagine he’s right.  Well, actually, I know his observation about my default state is correct.  I am a little a-holish.  All those zingers that I can’t resist are generally at someone’s expense.  It’s a character flaw, what can I say.  But the fact that my a-holishness escalates to a definitive state when I am pregnant, I guess that was news to me.  Don’t worry, though, it doesn’t bother me much.  Direct your pity toward the man who drives my minivan.  And you may want to watch out for those zingers if you should happen by me in the real world or on the interwebs.  Amen and pass the donut muffins.