It's A Gift

I have always had this really unique gift.
It is the ability to piss off my parents like no one else.

I really don't know how I do it,
I just do.

And now I find that I can do it from 200 miles away without doing absolutely anything.

Am I good or what?

For some reason, I was expected to be out to my parents today.
We never go out on Christmas.
Always a few days after.

But, I get a phone call from my sister at noon to see if I was going out there.
I said no and Mom went ballistic.

Seriously.
I could hear her yelling from across the room.

She fixed all this extra food.
Not my fault.

I called tonight and only talked to Dad.
Apparently she was still mad, because he didn't ask if I wanted to talk to her when I asked how she was.

Dad said they expected me because I have been out there every other year.

What?

We always stay home.
We have not gone out there on Christmas day for several years.

I guess I am going to have to call every year and let them know.

What's Christmas without a little drama?

Overprotection Class 101

I am wondering if there's a class somewhere to teach this or does it just come naturally?

Because if there is such a class, I think Honeyman should be the teacher.

My sister says it's a man thing.
Maybe so.

But, it is still a bit annoying.
OK, if you're my daughter, a lot annoying.

She's 14 and he is worried about letting her shop around a Walmart by herself.
Or in an area by herself.
We'd still be in the store.

But, it was something convincing him that she could even stay home by herself for even a little bit.

I'm not even supposed to answer the door at night.

It could be the boogie man comin' to get me.

It's crazy.

I know he worries, but isn't that just a bit excessive?

I lived alone and took care of myself for how many years before he came along.
I am nearing 40, for the love of God!

Strangely though, he doesn't worry about me going out somewhere though.
He just worries that someone is going to come here and do mean things.

I don't get the man.
I have known him for 15 years and somethings I just don't get.

And I probably never will.

I Have Nothing, Nothing I Tell Ya!

I just realized today I have no wrapping paper.

Ok, I do.

A tiny little bit of birthday wrap.
It has balloons all over it.

I am also almost out of clear tape.

In years past, I'd have everything wrapped.
But, this year I've been putting it off .
And now I realize I have nothing.

I am busy today and tomorrow so I probably can't get anything until Thursday and the weather is supposed to be bad.

I know there is still Friday.
But, if weather is bad, I may be snowed it.

So, I might end up wrapping gifts in newspaper.
And possibly masking tape.

But, I guess they will be covered.
And that is the point of wrapping things.

I also need to start my Christmas baking.
I give out baked goods to friends.

I have one to give out this afternoon and I have no freaking clue what I am going to bake.
I have about 5 hours to get it figured out and baked and over to their place.

I suppose I need to get my butt in gear and see what I can come up with.
Ta!

The Season of Perpetual Hope?

Christmas has never been my greatest time of year.
I've mentioned that before.

And yet, year after year I really try.
I do.

I don't know what it is, but I don't think I am supposed to have a great Christmas.

Thursday is the day my sis and our kids are to get together to make cookies.
We try every year.
Last year the weather was supposed to be bad so it didn't happen.

Now, this year, it is supposed to be bad again.
Hope to hell, it's nice.

Tomorrow Honeyman is finally going to the doctor to address some possibly major medical issues.
I am worried about that.
So far, every thing we worry about with him has turned out to be minor.
But, I know some day it won't turn out that way.

So, I have spent more time worrying about him and less time doing what I need to be doing.

I hate stress.
Sometimes it's all I can do not to curl up into a ball in bed and never get up.

I know no one really wants to read a bunch of whiny shit so I try not to do that.

Maybe I will feel better tomorrow.

I hope so.

But, It's My Penny

Guess what the insurance company sent me?

A check for a penny.

That's right.

Now, I can go out and buy that piece of midget tootsie roll I always wanted.

I knew they'd send it.
It would have made too much sense to add that penny onto the last check I got from them.

On orthodontia, they only pay a maximum of $1500.
Which is crap to begin with.

They pay half the amount, but only to $1500.
So, if your kid has messed up teeth because a tube being shoved down her throat knocked the baby teeth out and in turn caused the adult teeth to come in every which a way, it is just too bad.

But, that's a whole other thing.

They sent checks for half of every appointment up to the maximum.

If they would have given me that extra penny that would be more than 50 %.
OMG!

So, my maximum last month was 1499.99 so they had to send that penny.

Honeyman had other checks so he took it with him to the credit union.
They laughed at him for cashing it.
They had never seen a check for a penny.

Why laugh at him?
That company was dumb enough to print him a check for a penny.

It's my penny.
I'll take it if I want to.

My Fun Filled Errand Day

Nothing is more exciting than Thursdays in my world.
The day of the week when anything and everything has to get done.

Doctors appointments.
Grocery shopping.
Oil changes.

You name it.
It's a job for Thursday.

So, last week it started out simple enough.
Honeyman and I decided to head to Bears in Ankeny for lunch.

Bears is a restaurant that has been around for ever.
We went there when we lived in Ankeny.
In fact, it was our first night out after Kiddo was born.

She was 5 months.

But, we heard it was closing Saturday so this was our last chance to eat there before they were lost to us forever.
But, they were so packed we couldn't get in.

So, we headed to Des Moines so we could hit Costco.

But, first we needed gas and I had to pee.

So, we stopped at a Kum & Go.
Affectionately known to some as ejaculate & evacuate
and to others it is just a gas station/c-store.

So, I went in to do my thing.
Another lady was in the other stall.

All of a sudden I hear this beep, beep, beep like a truck or something is backing up outside or something.
Next thing I know, this lady answers her cell phone.

I know, you are thinking just like that commercial with that guy at the urinal holding his phone.
Well, sort of.
She didn't drop the phone.
But, I am thinking- Really?

I can hear part of the conversation and the lady proceeds to tell the caller she is in Kum & Go going to the bathroom.
Then the caller must have asked if she should call back and the lady says "no, that's OK".

Why would you even answer the phone, when you're on the toilet?

So, anyway Honeyman and I decided to go to Fuddruckers.
He had never been and I had only been 20 years ago.
Plus, I had a coupon!

So, we ordered.

I got an ostrich burger.
Yes, Laura, ostrich is dry. I should have listened.

Honeyman got a buffalo burger with mushrooms and swiss cheese.

We ordered and got these funky coasters that light up when the order is ready to be picked up.

And guess what.

My burger had swiss cheese.
And his burger had mushrooms.

Lovely.

We ate them, just because I didn't want them to throw the food out.
That would have been a waste.
And I hate to waste food.

If it was nasty or undercooked, I would have complained.
But, it was cooked so we just let it go.
Plus, we didn't want to wait another 20 minutes to get our food.

The food was OK.
Nothing to write home about.

After that, to Costco to overspend.
I do that a lot.
But, we did need the groceries.

O Christmas Tree!

I've been giving some thoughts to Christmas trees lately.

And I think about my earliest memories of a tree.

When I grew up, I didn't know anything about having to buy a tree.
I didn't know there were tree farms.

I only knew my dad would bring one home.

As, I got older, I realized it coincided with second season deer hunting.
Usually last day, to be precise.

When Dad was out scouting for deer, he'd scout for trees too.

And when he found one he thought would work, he put that to memory.
On his way home, he'd stop and cut it down.

I never thought it was odd at all.
Until my husband seemed to think it was funny.

Apparently, people just don't go out in the woods and cut down a tree.
Who knew?
Not me.

They all seemed like very nice trees to me.
Honeyman calls them ugly pines.

What I remember is seeing the big tree in the back of the truck.
I remember it almost reaching the ceiling in the living room.
I remember Dad stringing the lights, the rest of us putting on everything else, but the star.
And than Dad putting the star on top.

Not sure if he did it cause it was his job.
Or, he did it because he was the only person in the house tall enough without standing on a ladder.

As Dad got older the trees gradually got smaller and smaller.
Until they got small enough to be set on top of a table.

I remember my childhood cat, Tabby sitting under the tree like she was a present.
She used to drink out of the stand too.

I remember the year she climbed the tree and it fell over.
It was a big tree that year.
Tabby was a bit rotund.

But, luckily Mom was in the room and it fell just so that she caught the tree and the cat.
Tabby never did try to climb another Christmas tree.

These days, Dad doesn't even go out and get a tree.
He gave up hunting and my sister gave them an artificial tree a few years back.

I wish I had pictures of some of our old trees.
Guess it was just something we never thought about taking at the time.

I will just have to picture it in my mind.

Sleepless in Iowa

I am still up and I wish I knew why.
In about 2 hours, when I feel like going to sleep, I will be having to get Kiddo up for school.

Such is life.

And then when she heads off on the bus, I will head to bed and I won't get anything done tomorrow,err today.

All I did in bed was lay there so figured I might as well get up.
So I posted on yummy stuff and now I am posting on here.

I should be cleaning since I will be sleeping later.
But, I am not.

I seem to say that a lot.

I should be___________ but I'm not.

Maybe they should put that on my tombstone.
But, that isn't gonna work.

Cause I want cremated.
No urn.
Just throw me in the dirt and plant flowers on me.

I've had that plan for as long as I can remember.

I just see no sense in having me stay unhealthily preserved for all eternity 6 feet under where no one will see me.
Or, however long the embalming fluid preserves a person for anyway.

OK.
I should go know cause I got nothin'.

They were just EVERYWHERE!

We used to go to a Christmas tree farm every year.
We walked all over til we found
THE ONE.

Than Honeyman cut it down and we brought it home.

It was fun for the whole family and the tree farm sold all trees for $25 a pop.
Can't beat that.
Sadly, the couple got old, retired and that was that for that special tree farm.

There were a couple others we tried.
But, the one was hard to get into unless you went the weekend after Thanksgiving.
We tried, but they seemed to think we were supposed to hunt the owners down just to get in and buy a tree.

Another one we tried was easy enough to get the tree and pay for it.
The problem was the prices.
The cheapest tree was like $40 and it looked horrible.

It will be forever known as the Charlie Brown tree.

Why would anyone pay that much for a shitty looking tree that looked as if trying to add an ornament would cause it to fall over?

How retarded are people?

But, back to the great tree farm. They had lots of good trees to choose from and we all had to agree on it.

One year we picked a nice tree.

Well, duh.
Like we are gonna pick a bad tree.

Decorated it and everything.

Than it happened.
It was warm in our house and apparently a spider had laid her egg in the tree.
Really, no joke.
Seriously, who is going to check for a spider egg in their tree?

Well, now we know.

Anywho,
It was warm enough in our house that the damn thing hatched.

Just so you know that one egg holds a shitload of spiders.
We had baby spiders EVERYWHERE!

I just wanted to cry.

We had to take it down and throw it out.

Another life lesson:
Sometimes spiders come in on the tree.

You should check.

What's So Great About It?

All through our lives we have words that define us.

Some we are born with and have no choice in getting.
Others we pick and choose if we want it and when we want it.

We are sons, daughters, sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, blah, blah, blah.
The list goes on.

You get the gist.

Now, I am soon to be adding another word to describe me.
And I am not ready.

I am going to be a great-aunt.

Who decided to put a great in front of aunt?

Great implies terrific, awesome, totally fantastic.

Unless, you are a great relative.
Than it means you are old.

All my great aunts and uncles were old.
I mean seriously OLD.
They were so old, they were kickin' off throughout my childhood.
Yay!

Nothing like going to funerals all the time for people I didn't even know.
Well, I knew we were related and they were old.
That's all any of us ever need, isn't it?

So, I find out my oldest sister's oldest daughter is preggers.

I am not even 40 so I can't be a great-aunt.
There must be a law about that somewhere.

Maybe I'll just tell them they cannot refer to me as a great-aunt.
But, they can call me awesome-aunt.

That has a nice sound to it.
Don't you think so?