So They Say It's Your Birthday!

Snap shots of Tootsie-pop's 9th Birthday:

.....

:::phone vibrating in my pocket:::

I pull the phone out, see it is Ken calling and flip open the phone.

Me: "Hello?"

Ken: "Hello! Wife of mine!"

:::me giggling:::

Me: "Hello! Husband of mine!"

.....

:::Up at Pizza Fino sitting in the window seat eating pizza, spaghetti and meatballs and a pitcher of beer:::

Ken: "Locus. Locii."

Me: "You know, I read this grammar book earlier this year and it was saying it is completely acceptable to just add 's' to the end of those words. Octopuses, and whatnot."

Ken: "Locuses."

Me: "Penis. Penises.....Although I don't know in what situation you'd need to use that in the plural."

Ken: "Lindsey Lohan."

:::me giggling:::

.....

:::Back at home, we have constructed an ice cream sundae for Tootsie-pop complete with flaming candle for her to blow out:::

Me: "Alrighty! A-one, A-two, A-three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine!"

Ken: "Wait! Wait! I have to get the song!"

:::waiting:::

:::The Beatles Birthday song starts up:::

You say it's your birthday
It's my birthday too, yeah
They say it's your birthday
We're gonna have a good time
I'm glad it's your birthday
Happy birthday to you.

:::we all start crazy dancing around the kitchen to the Birthday song:::

.....

Tootsie-pop: "Next year, I want that birthday song instead of the regular birthday song."

HAPPY 9th BIRTHDAY KIDDO!!!

You Can Lead Them to Water....

So, this weekend my family was celebrating the college graduation of my aunt from George Fox University. She has spent the past 35 years taking college credits here and there and has finally worked her way through the remaining slog of credits for her bachelor's degree.

It is a really big deal and a large group of the family showed up at her ceremony to celebrate this amazing achievement.

:::cheering for Teresa!!!:::

Of course, like any small university, the graduation ceremony consisted of the every graduate's name being read out. Bachelors, Masters and Doctoral. When we got to the doctoral graduates they of course take a little longer because of the hooding ceremony.

Now, I remembered when my sister got her Masters hood and I leaned over and whispered to my mom.

Me: "So, what happens to the Masters hood when you get a PhD hood?

Mom: "I don't know..."

Me: "What, the Masters hood is just useless now?"

Mom: :::shrug:::

Mom: "What is the difference between the Masters hood and the PhD hood anyway?"

Me: :::flipping through program:::

Me: (reading directly from the program): "This says the Masters hood is three and a half feet long, and that the PhD hood is four feet long."

:::pause:::

Me: "I guess six inches does make a difference..."

:::my mom dissolving into a fit of hysterics that resulted in both of us needing Kleenx:::

One of Those Days

So, the other day I was just having one of THOSE days.

It started off with my H1N1 vaccination shot, which lead to me feeling sort of crappy towards the end of the work day so I took off a little early and promptly fell asleep on the bus ride home. I didn't even THINK about picking up the gift card I was supposed to buy that evening on my way home from work (I remembered in an "OH CRAP" moment about four hours later.

:::aaahhhh!:::

I finally got home, I cleaned the house up and then went up to the store to buy ingredients for scones that I was going to make for a birthday party at work the next day. I proceeded to make the scone recipe TWICE and both times they didn't rise and were doughy disgusting messes (I'm blaming out of date cream of tartar on this one). Of course, two batches of baking requires two batches of kitchen clean up, which....yay! And somehow one of the dishes slipped out of my hand and shattered in the sink.

:::sigh:::

In the mean time we were trying to get our family photo taken for our Christmas card. We set up the self-timer on the camera, we smiled and squished together, and in the end.....we had no really good photo to show for it. Tootsie-pop thought it was HYSTERICAL this year to make faces and ruin the photos, or to smile manically which also ruined the photo.

:::grrrr:::

Fuck it. I thought, I 'll see if I can crop out the flowers that magically appeared in the corner of the first photo we took. Except Ritz Camera's website was not jiving with iPhoto and wouldn't search the photo library.

:::unbelievable:::

I was hoping that going to bed would put an end to my bad day run, but it turns out I was in the midst of a bad day hangover. Tootsie-pop was running late, although it turns out it was ACTUALLY a late start day for school that morning and we were actually supposed to be dropping her off with her mom....in downtown. Not North Portland where we were actually at.

:::aaaaahhhhh!:::

So, I call Ken, and we coordinate for me to pick him up, get him and Tootsie-pop together and I'll drive them into work. So, I turn the car around and start heading to the bus stop Ken got off at.

And this is when the dog ran across the street.

It ran in front of the car in front of me and we both slammed on our brakes and didn't hit the dog, but it then turned around and ran back into traffic where it was hit by a car in the other lane going awfully fast.

I closed my eyes.

Tires squealing, dog yelping, and everyone just froze.

Two women across the street (the owners?) are crying in each others arms, the dog appears from under the car, ALIVE and bewildered, but clearly with a hurt leg. Another woman is gently trying to coax the dog out of the street.

The car in front of me slowly drives off and I follow. We see Ken about a half mile up the road, and pull over to pick him up.

I promptly burst into tears.

The whole thing has been weighing really heavily on my mind the last couple of days.

We all have those days where things just aren't clicking, everything is slowly grating on your last nerve, and you just can't seem to sigh deeply or enough to get that weight off of your chest. The To-Do list keeps growing even as you are working your ass off, trying to get everything done, and then...POW...you get a knocked right in the face with the REAL things to worry about.

All those things don't matter. The ruined scones? I bought some pastries and they were delicious. The forgotten gift card? Turns out you can buy virtual gift cards online and have them emailed out. The broken dish? The garbage can is right under the sink. The piles of dishes? That is what the "Kitchen Cleaning Music" play list is for. The late start day at school? We all got downtown in time.

The looking out for your loved ones, two or four legged?

Give them all a hug right now, because that one isn't always so easy to fix.

The Christmas Spirit: Part 2

So, I was out Christmas shopping today.

I had meant to meet up with my sister and things sort of went awry and I figured, since I was ALREADY downtown, I might as well knock out as much gift shopping as I could.

The problem was....it was horrible.

Ken and I have spent the last couple of years getting rid of as much STUFF as we can manage, and the last thing I wanted to do this Christmas was to buy my family more STUFF. Yet there I was today, buying STUFF.

And I remember, walking through Pioneer Square Mall, and looking over at the glitzy, pretty window display at the Bebe store and admiring the cute, sassy outfits they had put together with well coordinated accessories and thinking to myself, "I am seduced by that window display." I know how smart marketing campaigns are, and I know that I am susceptible to them. Seriously, left to my own devices (aka Ken didn't choose our wine) we would be drinking butt-loads of crappy wine with beautiful labels. I know that I don't want to partake in the buying-stuff-for-the-sake-of-having-stuff lifestyle, yet I didn't manage to dig myself out of that mindset this Christmas season.

I love Christmas time. I love decorating my house with Christmas decorations. I love driving around and seeing the Christmas lights my neighbors have hung up. I love getting together with my family. I love cooking for Christmas (I just made this and it is EVERY SORT of amazing). I love Christmas lights and Christmas music. I love it all.

I have just grown sick of the STUFF.

As Ken and I sat at one of our favorite NoPo pubs tonight we were discussing this very thing, and trying to come up with a plan for freeing ourselves from THE STUFF in the future.

Life, and our life together is such a good thing. Why is it so hard to get out of THE STUFF mindset?

The Christmas Spirit

So, I like Christmas and I like to decorate my house for Christmas. I'm also a rather crafty person. And that being gluing-popsicle-sticks-together crafty, not plotting-devious-schemes crafty. So I have made a lot of my own Christmas decorations, including the Christmas wreath that I hang on the front door.

So it was particularly upsetting when the fucking wreath got stolen off of the front door the other morning while we were getting ready for work. What KILLS me is that I HEARD it happen, a sort of scratching noise at the door and the cats were peeking at something through their crack in the curtain and I didn't go out and look out the door because I just thought it was someone putting a flier on the door knob, not someone stealing my HAND MADE Christmas wreath.

So this morning I was all Merry Fucking Christmas, stupid trash fucking North Portland. Where you can't throw a Christmas wreath without hitting some sort of ignorant, loud-mouthed, poorly raised, shit for brains, punk-assed kid running around. And all these kids are running around because their ignorant, loud-mouthed, poorly raised, shit for brains, punk-assed parents are just as bad if not worse. Yay, North Portland you rock! And by rock I mean completely suck ass!

Anyway, I digress.

So, I went in for a hair appointment that same morning near Pioneer Square and I'm doing the snippy, blow drying, hair goo styling thing and whining about my wreath a little bit, but am starting to feel a little better about it, but still completely Bah Humbug about people in general. I mean, HELLO! The Christmas Spirit people! Does not include stealing wreathes!

Anyway, so the thing about my hair appointment is that I chopped off all my hair, probably a good nine inches and I decided to save the pony tail and donate it to Lock of Love.

So, I walk out of the salon with this little paper bag full of hair and I run into the "Macy's Crew" across the street. I had seen them before the cross walk light had changed and they were all dressed up like elves and handing fliers out

:::sigh:::

but I have to walk by them to get to my bus stop, so I just decide to deal with it and be nice to them, so when they solicit me I smile and stop to talk to them.

"Have you ever done a good deed?" the elf girl asks me, "Ever given blood?"

"Oh, yeah, of course," I tell her, "I actually have a bag full of hair right here I am going to donate," I add opening up my paper bag.

"That is great! Have a $25 gift certificate to Macy's for your good deed!" she exclaims handing me a gift card.

:::sort of shocked by this:::

"She is donating hair!" the elf girl says to the rest of her crew.

The photographer requests that I hold up my gift certificate and smile for the camera, and then asks my name and where I am from.

"North Portland" I hear myself say. See that NoPo? Even though you totally suck ass, I am trying to shine up your image.

But truth be told, the whole rewarding of the good deeds thing at Macy's did make me feel a lot better about my stolen wreath. I mean, these are essentially the two opposite sides of humanity. The ugly side and the optimistic side.

And even though I totally fantasized all day about what if I had opened the front door when I heard the noise that morning and saw the wreath being stolen, and then chased down the culprit and proceeded to beat the shit out of him with the empty wreath hanger, at least I can feel good about the fact that I am still a decent person who does try to make the world a little bit better.

Although later the only thing I could think about was...

:::oh, please Photoshop out the big zit on my chin for whatever advertising campaign this photo is going to end up in:::

The Real Fant-assy Football

A conversation with my husband this morning (concerning his Fantasy Football league)

Ken: "One more and I'll have it clinched"

Me: ?

Ken: "A spot in the play-offs"

Me: "Oh. I thought maybe you were talking about your ass."