Maybe some kind of neckwear? A nice book?

Last Friday, at 5:30 in the morning, Mike flew to Phoenix for a work thing. The thing lasts a week, so he won't be home until this Friday, which means that, for me, this is the longest week in recorded history. I can't even remember how many times yesterday I thought "it's only Wednesday?" It has not been pretty. And to make matters worse, up until Monday, I thought he was coming home on Wednesday. I sent him an e-mail to ask if he wanted me to pick him up from the airport and he said "You think I'm coming home on Wednesday?" Oh man was I bummed. Two whole extra days without him at Christmas(time).

So I've been staying with my parents, who only live about 2 miles away, and with my cousin, because it's just lonely to be alone. And yesterday my sweet friend Laura agreed to take me in for the night. After work I went home to get my things (pillow, firetruck pajamas, monsterberry crunch). And do you know what was waiting for me at home? Presents! Mike had hidden presents in the house for me to open while he was gone, and he left notes for me about where to find them. It was so awesome. He got me jingly Christmas jewelry, and a really marvelous sparkly headband that I plan to take off for showers and haircuts only, and these amazing red-and-white striped candy cane socks that I totally would have worn to work today if they didn't have a furry band around the top that made the calf-area of my pants look weirdly fatter than the rest of my leg. Ordinarily even that wouldn't have been enough to deter me, but we've got a board meeting today and the other girls who come to it are disturbingly glamorous and I totally do not fit in. Maybe I've got frizzy hair and my clothes aren't tailored, but I draw the line at being the frizzy unkempt girl with the lumpy calves.

But the best present was the last one in our guest bedroom. Y'all. I have the best husband in the history of husbands, because that turkey booked an earlier flight home from Phoenix and he was waiting to take me to San Jose for special nachos. Also we watched the SYTYCD finale. Does he get me or what? I don't know what I did to deserve such a supremely awesome man, but yesterday was for sure the best day of 2009.

So now I am finally feeling Christmasy. Mike is home, and I have festive accessories, and tomorrow I'm skipping out early in hopes of finishing my Christmas shopping. All that's left is my dad, Mike's sister and brother-in-law, my aunt and uncle, and one last thing for my sister. Well, and now I have to figure out what I can get Mike that says "Please never leave me because no one else would ever treat me half as good as you do." Any idea what that might look like?

Just say "It's almost 2010, you mean, inelastic tub of lard."

This week I've been thinking about some things I'm not satisfied with in my life and how silly it is to sit around thinking about what I don't like. I'm so lazy. So I'm going to make a list of some things I'm hoping to do differently, and that way I can focus on the good things and be more proactive. Sometimes I am not very good at that, despite having read that Steven Covey book several times.

1. I need to stretch more. It may sound silly, but I am so, so inflexible. You know those sit-and-reach tests where you sit with your feet pressed against that wooden box and lean forward with your arms out and push the metal thing as far as you can? Yeah, it hurts me to just sit on the floor with my feet against the box. I can't even touch my toes when I bend over. It's bad, friends. And how long does it take to STRETCH every day? Not even 5 minutes. So there's no excuse.

2. I need to exercise. I would say exercise more, but that would imply that I exercise. Which I don't. I've been taking for granted the fact that I've lost a little weight this year just by eating less (and maybe drinking more water), but I keep complaining about how clothes don't fit right and how I don't feel pretty and how much happier I'd be if I were just fit and thin, so I'm going to need to get busy. I think my best bet will be getting up earlier to use the treadmill and/or exercise bike (we have both, in our home, and still I don't exercise), since by the time I come home from work all I really want to do is eat ice cream and go to sleep. Probably ought to get rid of the ice cream too. Also, my church's Family Life Center offers several fitness classes, and they are free, and I don't know what brain troubles were keeping me from taking advantage of THAT before now, but I'm going to start going to some or all of those in January. I also have several Jillian Michaels dvds and can go walking over my lunch hour. So really, I ought to be a fitness maven already. I know that the sooner I get into the shape I want to be in, the happier I'll be. And the happier Mike will be, because it's got to be tiring to hear "I'm fat" and "I hate everything" as often as he does and to still see me as an attractive person who splits infinitives.

3. Floss a lot more often. Again, it's small, but it's pretty important. Floss costs way, way less than fillings, which I will have 3 more of soon, and nobody has to stick a needle in my gums every time I floss.

4. Don't be such a downer sometimes. It's far too easy for me to look at the few things that are wrong than everything that's right, and that tends to make me a sad and mopey person nobody wants to be around. It is not hard to be positive and optimistic when you've got as many good things going for you as I do, and I am a true heifer for not always feeling very thankful. And happy. Everybody loves a happy person, and nobody loves a heifer. Words to live by.

There are probably more, but these 4 are what I'm going to work on for now. If you encounter me not doing these things, preferably all at once, slap some sense into me. Tell me I'm not being a highly effective person.

Slow down December it's not a race!

So I've been a little busy putting off my work. I am something else. I complain about not having any work to do, and then when I get some, I procrastinate until I've got a knot in my stomach and I'm racing to get everything ready for our 9:00 meetings. Then, inevitably, I make some stupid mistake on my charts or tables and look like a fool. Luckily somebody's usually quick to point it out. And where are YOUR charts, mister "I'm going to be late today because I'm picking figs."? That axis may be skewed, but at least I didn't skip work because of some fruit. That doesn't even taste good.

Also this week I'm trying to help Mike by proofreading a paper of his that is 50 pages long and full of words like "organizational" and "theory" and "covary," which my document reader wants to change to "ovary." That'd be something new for the information systems journals, babe! But it is taking me an uninspiringly long time to get through it. And not because there are lots of errors. Let's just say we won't be seeing my name on any research publications unless there's a journal that focuses on amateur analysis of tv dance competitions, or maybe how to get through college without ever really learning any time-management techniques, because it's day 3 working on this paper and I'm only on page 7.

So now Christmas is fast approaching and I am trying my best to feel spirity and not let the fact that I only get 5 days off bum me out too much. I almost never miss school, but the holidays really make me sad that I have a real job now. So I'm listening to Christmas cds in the car every day (James Taylor and Mariah Carey are in heavy rotation; N'SYNC's Home for Christmas stays in just long enough to play Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, because the rest is pretty much one long sappy ballad.) And! Last Friday we went and got our Christmas tree, so now it's sitting in the den shining its festive twinkly lights upon all the presents I haven't bought.

Really now. Why are guys so difficult to shop for? Mike's mom and I were discussing how easy it would be to buy dozens of presents for the girls in our families, but those men really throw a kink in the works. Just because you're a dude you think you can't wear make-up? Hello, it's all-in-one face and body shimmer made from REAL BEE HONEY, Daddy! Does every present have to come with an instruction manual?



And this weekend (in a few hours actually), my family and Mike's family are going to Atlanta! We've got tickets to see the Rockettes, who I think are just about the most glamorous, classy ladies going. And we're going to The Cheesecake Factory for lunch before the show. I realize this creates the possibility that we'll be having a delicious lunch followed by a fancy, ticketed nap, but I'm eating cheesecake and I don't care.

Still if that dude eats all the turkey he'll WISH he had a helmet on.

It's almost Thanksgiving?!? It's true what they say, time really does move a lot faster when you're not in school. Well I don't know how many people really say that, but my coworker Lisa said it when I first started here, and she spoke the truth. Now she's on maternity leave. We'll see how THAT makes the time fly. Although if you ask me she really planned it right. Since her baby was born in October, she'll be at home until the holidays are over. Which is not to say that I'd trade places with her. I may have to scrounge for annual leave to get a week at Christmas, but Mike can tell me what he wants, or better yet get it himself, and I get 8 uninterrupted hours of sleep a night. That's what's known as looking on the bright side.


We're doing Thanksgiving at my mama's this year, and Mike's parents will be visiting family in Florida, and my mom's family hasn't been getting together for Thanksgiving lately, so it'll just be the 10 of us on my Dad's side. I'll be making several things, though we haven't divided up the menu yet so I don't know what those things will be. Macaroni and cheese? Broccoli casserole? Mashed potatoes and gravy? Pie? Regardless, it's a safe bet that I'll need seven or eight sticks of butter. And I'm thinking of making this bread because it looks easy and highly delicious. As for dessert, I've never been a pie fan, or cake for that matter, so I think I may also try to do a cheesecake. Caramel apple or this magnificent caramel toffee cheesecake that Mike and I had at our rehearsal dinner. Oh man, that thing was incredible. Mike and I fought over who got the last piece. So if I can manage not to sneak out of bed in the night to eat it all while he's asleep, I know it'll be a hit. Although the lady who made it warned me not to use the heath bar bits in the crust because they tend to burn and stick to the pan, so in case you plan to make one, you've been warned. Not to burn your pan, and also that it's the kind of dessert that causes people to turn on each other.

What's the food that your family fights for the last bite of? For us it's the deep-fried turkey and the cornbread casserole and the macaroni and cheese. And the desserts. This side of my family is definitely the eatin-est. My cousin Hunter plays football and the poor kid actaully struggles to consume ENOUGH calories to gain weight. And I think the rest of us feel so bad for him that we wind up eating more just so he doesn't feel like a pig. Our kindness is our greatest flaw. Or, maybe we hoard extra food because we don't want him to eat all our hard work and not even appreciate the fancy chocolate curls on top and maybe he is only sixteen and he does 'need' the calories, but would it kill him to pitch in and throw together a salad or at least buy some freaking artisan bread, I mean I'm not asking for some culinary masterpiece, since after all this is the same kid who asked his mom "do we have a microwave oven?" when he wanted to heat up his Totino's pizza rolls.

But that would make us rather petty. Probably it's just that we're so compassionate.

Prime Time Entertainment

Do you like playing games? I do, and this weekend at our Halloween party I learned a new one. Well, maybe it's not a game exactly, but it's something fun to do with a group of people to pass the time. It's simple and hilarious, and what more can you really ask for in a sort-of-game? My friend Andrew introduced us to it, and here's how it goes.


It works best with a bigger group, I'd say at least 6 or 8. Everybody gets a sheet of paper and a pen. At the top of your sheet of paper, you write a sentence. Any sentence at all. The boy likes pie. Two monkeys and a clam are speaking Spanish. Just whatever you can think up. Then you passes your paper to the person next to you, and they have to draw a picture to represent the sentence you wrote. After you've drawn your picture for the sentence the person beside you wrote, and this is crucial for the game to work properly, you FOLD OVER the top part of the paper with the sentence written on it, so that when you pass it to the person beside you, all they see is the picture you drew (and they can't read the original sentence.) Then they write a sentence to describe the picture, fold over the picture and pass it on for the next person to write a sentence describing THAT picture, and so forth and so on until you wind up with your original sentence again. The best way to know when you have your original paper back is to write your name on the bottom of the paper when you begin, so thanks again to Mike for writing everyone's names on their papers because we were all too caught up in the frivolity to bother with logistics. But you just wouldn't believe the hysterics this game can render. We were laughing so hard we were crying, reading through all the sheets to see how everyone interpreted what they were given and how different the last sentence was from the original one. Seriously, you will not be sorry about how you spent your time if you do this. My personal favorite started out as "My bird is too big for its cage." and ended as "Rocket lizards conquer Everest." There's no knowing just what kind of winners you'll get. And the best part is that this game works for all ages (so long as the kids can write) and artistic abilities, and at the end you have some wonderful artwork to frame.

What games do you like to play?

It's tricky getting the candles to stay upright in the meatballs though

Today is my Daddy's birthday.

He loves spaghetti, peanut butter milkshakes, ice cream, spaghetti, cheese, haystacks, and spaghetti. He really, really loves spaghetti. He also loves taking pictures. Emily and I have hundreds of pictures for each year of our childhood, and that's no small feat considering he had to go out and buy the film and take it to a drugstore to have all those photos developed. He captured so much of our childhoods on film, which is awesome because my memory is pretty much blank before about age 8. He also loves music. He always played music in the house when we were growing up and he turns up the radio in his truck a couple notches every time a good song comes on. His favorites are 60s and 70s rock, bluegrass, accoustic guitar, folk, blues, southern rock and country (not the junk from the 90s and 2000s, but real music like The Allman Brothers Band and ALABAMA.) He used to play this song a lot, and if you don't have the GLAD acapella Christmas album, your holiday season is seriously lacking.

When he wasn't playing music, he was watching surgery shows, cop shows, crime shows, NASCAR races, baseball and football. My daddy flips channels like no one else I've ever known. Just when you finally start to get interested in that gruesome murder case, he'll switch to a guy with a gunshot wound, and when you beg him to go to ANYTHING else, he'll change to a NASCAR race. Then he falls asleep holding the remote and snores so loud that you can't hear anything anyway.

His favorite place to be is the beach. Well, the Carrabbas at the beach. We go to Myrtle Beach every year and Daddy always sleeps with the sliding doors open to hear the ocean, even when it's 40 degrees out. He is so, so smart and extremely hilarious, which are probably the two best things to be in the world. Everybody comments on his deep, distinctive voice and he always sings or whistles along to every song he recognizes, plus some he doesn't. He has some hilarious live-action dreams and occasionally talks, laughs, and (most often) fights in his sleep. He's been a fire equipment salesman, a 911 dispatcher, a fireman, a paramedic, a saftey coordinator for a chemical company, a fire academy instructor and now he's back to 911 dispatch. He takes great care of all of us and would do anything in the whole world to make us happy. He still takes out my splinters and bandages up my cuts and he teaches me things every day and I love him slap to pieces. Even if I told him so every minute of every day, it wouldn't be enough.

Dads are the best, right?

I'll do some real blogging soon so don't be mad okay

Five YouTube videos I will never ever tire of:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtUI5MC9tVM Electric Feel, a MGMT song. Look at the colors! The clothes. The Country Bears. I freaking love this jungle dance world.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4_4abCWw-w Jose Gonzales covering a song called Heartbeats. So, so beautiful.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HksFcm9wi0 So You Think You Can Dance routine with Kayla and Kupono from Season 5. I'm not sure about much but I can be sure of this: if it doesn't give you goosebumps you're dead inside.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTF8x-2XbWc&feature=channel Louis Armstrong cover. This girl is amazing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wC_kZNYMWg Bon Iver and Sarah Siskind singing a song called Lovin's for Fools. This song is so incredible. Here's a cover of the song done by a different girl with an amazing voice. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJKhR9WiuZg

So what gives you that feeling in your chest like your heart has filled up so full there's not even any more room for love in it?