the christmas fiasco of '87

i was thinking about writing a christmas story to help out tracy at "it's an average life" while she takes some time off from writing, but doesn't want her blog to go silent. i was digging through my brain bank of christmases past & there's one that stands out from my typical childhood holidays.

all through our growing up years, my brother & i almost always knew where our parents stashed our christmas presents. they'd told us the real deal on santa when we were only 3 and 4, so it only went to reason that if there was no santa, then the gifts must be stashed somewhere nearby. it wasn't long before our parents wised up to our snooping & put a padlock on the basement cupboard where the goodies were being stored. that shut us down for a few years... until we moved into a new house that didn't come equipped with such a conveniently lockable storage space.

it didn't take us long to start up our snooping ways afresh when we moved & realized that the hiding options were limited. we figured that the most secure location in the house was probably our parents' bedroom, so we took a divide & conquer approach & it wasn't long before we hit pay dirt. we found stuff in the dresser drawers & a bonus batch of loot in the bottom of their closet.

we kept up the digging & sneaking each time my parents were expected to be out of the house for at least half an hour. it seemed like that left us enough of a buffer to check for any newly acquired goodies & still get out without being caught. we'd keep each other informed if we found things for each other so that there would be no surprises come christmas morning. if we only had limited time, we'd hit the closet first because that's where mom kept the good stuff. the dresser was mostly the piddly stocking stuff like gum, cheapie toys and maybe some bags of rubber bands (we loved to shoot each other with them).

by this time we were probably 10 and 11 & we did the naughty spying for at least 2 years, undiscovered. our parents had laid down the law at some point & made it perfectly clear that if they ever found out we'd been peeking at our presents, those very presents would be returned to the store & we would not get them.

we thought we were master spies. we thought we'd never get caught. we thought wrong.

i clearly remember being deep into the pile on mom's side of the closet, admiring the cute new clothes i'd be getting in just a few days. chris was digging through his own future belongings...when we heard a noise. we both froze for a moment before starting to frantically stuff things back into the spaces where we'd found them. we usually tried to be precise about putting them away, but this time it was more about speed so we wouldn't get caught with our heads tangled in mom's dresses & our fingers in the cookie jar.

we weren't fast enough. in less time than we'd have dreamed possible, mom had made it up the stairs & into her bedroom & caught us in the act of spying. there was no way to deny it. the evidence was plain as day for all of us to see. and i've got to give my mom credit for thinking on her feet because she separated us right away & gave us paper & pens & told us to write down everything we'd found. since we'd made sure to keep each other informed about every scrap we came across, we couldn't plead ignorance about anything even if we hadn't laid eyes on it ourselves. and since we were separated & didn't know what the other would write, we had to put it all down there, on paper, to damn ourselves or risk even further punishment for trying to lie by omission. HO-LY CRAP!

she compared our lists & consulted with dad; all the while we tried to hide away where we wouldn't be seen & might possibly be forgotten about altogether rather than face the consequences that we knew were coming our way. i don't remember any yelling, just that eery silence that should never exist in a happy home with 4 lively kids. silence...

it seemed like it would never end. we whispered together about whether or not they'd actually go through with their threats. they were usually pretty solid about sticking to what they'd said, but in this case, surely they wouldn't take away our whole christmas! surely they loved us enough to have pity on our souls. if there was any love in the world, they would have to change their minds & let us have all those beautiful presents in their stash.

a couple days later, it was christmas eve. it was a saturday. dad didn't have to go to work that day, so it was decided that it was time for the presents to all be returned. my dad & brother drove around town & took back all the gifts that we'd thought we would be getting. i stayed home & helped mom cook & bake the festive food. i wasn't mad at my parents because in my heart, i knew that i'd broken the rules. i knew that i wasn't exempt from the rules & that there were repercussions for my actions. i was sad, but i'd learned a valuable lesson that i knew would stick with me for my whole life. if mom & dad said it, i could be darn sure they meant it. they meant business even in the things that hurt them too.

the next day, the space under the tree was pretty sparse. mostly just gifts for my little sisters & the ones that chris & i were giving to the family. we didn't wake up at 3am ready to pounce on our stockings. we actually got some sleep for a change and we woke up calm rather than hyper. we actually remembered the true meaning of christmas for once because we weren't distracted by all the presents we hoped for or got.

as it turned out, we got a few little stocking things each. they must have been hidden somewhere else where we hadn't discovered them. i got the fake nails that i'd been dreaming of. i'd always had crappy nails & wanted to have long, luxurious nails to tap constantly on any hard surface, but my parents had never thought i was old enough for them. this was my lucky fingernail year. and i also got the jean jacket from the gap that i'd been coveting for so many months. it was one of the things that i'd been so excited to find in the closet & was heart sick knowing it was going back to the gap to be owned by some other girl who'd be cooler than me.

i was shocked & amazed to find this most precious item wrapped up under the tree because i was sure it went back to the mall with everything else. my brother also got his most desired item. my parents told us that even though we'd broken the rules & we didn't deserve to receive these gifts, they were having mercy on us. like Jesus had mercy on the world by dying on the cross for all of us who didn't deserve his love & forgiveness.

that's a lesson that i'll never forget.

mini bible reader

in the midst of all of the stresses of life and anxiety we have to face, brooke has discovered how good it makes her heart feel to read her bible. every night she takes her pretty purple bible up to her top bunk, burrows under the covers, clicks on the book light i loaned her & buries herself in God's words. she especially likes the parts in the new testament that are written in red because those are the words of Jesus & she feels like he's speaking directly to her when she reads them.

i got this picture last night & it makes my heart feel all warm & snuggly.

princess sabrina's artistic debut

once upon a time, in the early 1980's, there lived a young princess named sabrina. she lived in a small kingdom & was betrothed to her faithful sheltie dog, dana. she dreamed of growing up to be a dallas cowboy cheerleader & wearing sexy white boots.

until such time as she could grow up & make all her dreams come true, she filled her days with drawing. she had a giant green book with nothing but blank pages that represented possibilities for endless fashion creations. she would draw herself as she dreamed she could be... when her boobs grew in.











this book was recently unearthed in the childhood home of sabrina's parents where it was picked over by an unkind & disenchanted art critic. because you see, sabrina didn't grow up to be the ruler of a kingdom or even to marry her sweet pooch. nor did she get to be a dallas cowboy cheerleader, but she has been known on occasion to wear sexy white boots & her boobs did grow in. boy, did they ever grow in. sabrina actually lived a life that was like the reverse of cinderella - she went from princess to scullery maid. maybe that's why she now views the early drawings as something to be mocked rather than celebrated.

let me share them with you now & allow you to judge for yourself. (click pictures if you'd care to see them more closely.)

almost every page has some form of dialog, or at least the names of the characters represented.
here we have sharon and johnny. she comes across as a flirt & he stands out primarily for his thick, lumpy neck & oddly shaped legs. i do, however, i do like sharon's boots. but her sleeves are too short & her boobs look very unrealistic for a girl with her waist size.

next we have a mermaid on a tiny island with a death grip on a coconut. that is some impressive hair she's got there & i like the way her arm bends like it's made from a pipe cleaner rather than bones.

here we have carrie and lorie. carrie is apparently anorexic, but is wearing a very full skirt to camouflage the bones protruding from her hips. and lori... i'm not even sure what to say about her. she appears not to be of the standard human variety, but rather something of the 4 fingered, mutant somewhat smurfy variety. but of course, she wouldn't be a female as drawn by sabrina if she didn't have at least teeny tiny titties on her chest.

meet bobby. there are so many things wrong with this picture that i'm not even sure where to start. first of all, what's with the massively rosie cheeks? does he live outside in a frigid land? and the wink... it's downright strange. he's got dainty little girl lips that actually, if you look closely aren't even 2 lips, but rather one uni-lip. also, there seems to be a heavy earwax situation going on. and i haven't even mentioned his hair! why are his bangs so thick & dark? and the way it falls in front of his ears all the way to his rounded chin is troubling me.







 here we have another lori with much better hair than the last one. she's got a smattering of freckles that probably were meant to represent sabrina who was frequently called "freckle face" by the peasants in her kingdom. her lips are skinny, but shapely and i think i see something wistful & happy in her eyes like she's thinking of a happy time, frolicking in the woods, picking flowers for her grandma.

the final offering i've got for you tonight is one sabrina did that shows her love of dance, however oddly. this is julie, and she is doing the jig. there's some serious rigidity going on in julie's movements. i think johnny #5 from the movie "short circuit" probably had better moves than julie, but she gets credit for trying. her legs seem to be rather shapely & once again we see the representation of the boots that sabrina loves and the boobs that she craves.

i think i'll conclude this story of princess sabrina's artwork for tonight, but if you're interested, there's plenty more where that came from. and feel free to add your own critique to that of the later-in-life, snarky non-princess sabrina.

nunya

last night it was late when i was getting brooke to bed & i was so tired after lying on my bed, reading books to her that when she stretched herself along the length of my back, i decided to just wear her like a blanket and go to sleep. in our house, bedtime has a routine. there's an order & a pattern & we never ever let brooke sleep in our bed or tuck her in her own bed without prayers & songs. but i was too tired to move. eventually, when she was convinced that i was serious, she ran into her room for her pillow & a stack of stuffed animals. she built the great wall of china with stuffies serving as stones right down the center of my bed. i had to decree that only 3 could stay since i didn't want it to be a big deal when we moved her back to her own bed later, so she hemmed & hawed before picking the top three furry friends of the day.

then i realized that i had to pee and take some decongestant. and remove my jeans. and wash both our hands. and turn on a noisemaker with waves to make us sleep well. by the time all of this was done, i was pretty much wide awake again & wished i'd never started this whole thing to begin with. but it was too late to back out without drama, so we both crawled between the snuggly, flannel sheets. it only took her a few moments to start talking. "mom, what's your favorite color? what's your favorite food? what was your favorite part of our new mexico trip?"

i was fading quickly, but trying to keep answering her questions. then i cracked open an eye & realized that she was still wearing a headband with big, tall ears. we had a good laugh about wearing her ears in bed & then she reached over & patted me & said, "am i your friend or your daughter right now? because this feels like a sleepover to me."

my heart smiled & i realized that since she doesn't have a lot of contact with other kids & she's got no siblings, she needs more stuff like this. more times when i get onto her level & stop trying to make her behave or teach her things, but rather, just hang out.

last night we went to a friends house for post-meal visiting. i saw her playing with a box that their cat loves & reminded her not to break it. as i walked away, she told the other people in the room that her mom doesn't like the things she does. that makes me sad. it's hard to juggle being fun-mom with being business-mom. it's my job to teach & advise her, but she also needs me to be fun.

today we were chatting with some friends & she was asked, by an adult, what she likes to do in the morning before mom & dad wake up. her reply? "nunya." by which she meant none-ya-business. oh my gosh! gulping down my embarrassment at even remembering that rudeness, however funny it sounds when she says it back & forth with daddy.

i still feel like i've got a lot to learn about being a parent & to brooke in particular. but she just informed me that she's cleared the space beneath her bunk bed out & changed it from cave mode to tent mode & it's ready for her little pink christmas tree to be set up & decorated. so i suppose it's time to get off here & go be mom to my little dumpling of wackiness.

but before i go, i'd like to thank tracy over at it's an average life for a blog award of... well... it's called "the tanned hide blog award." i'm not entirely clear on what that means, but here it is & thanks, trace!













and now it's time to get out the first of the christmas stash.

thanksgiving men of genius

we celebrate our thanksgiving the day before the official holiday every year because due to the retail world of wonder that is chris' life, he always has to work on thanksgiving. that means that today was the big day for us, just the three of us, and i think for the first time, i did every scrap of cooking myself.  i'm a vegetarian, so in the past i've skipped cooking the turkey legs for chris that he likes & he did them himself. i've also neglected to make the pumpkin pie since i don't like it & won't eat it. but i've realized that maybe it's a wee bit selfish of me to only cook the foods that i like, so today i did it all, including turkey & pies (on a little side note, i'm kinda proud that i didn't even use the microwave at all for the whole meal except as a timer or storage receptical. i felt so old fashioned!). he did all the grocery shopping (which included 4 trips to the store, 2 of which were done today) and the clean up which was wonderfully helpful to me.

i've had a thought about thanksgiving - you know how you always see people on tv & in movies dressing up for the big meal? do any of you do that? because i'm thinking we should veer in the opposite direction. i think we should declare thanksgiving to be "pajama day" and everyone just stays in their jammies all day. that way, everyone's comfortable (unless aunt martha wears her 30 yr old honeymoon nightie), it doesn't matter if we spill on ourselves while cooking or eating. we'd be all set for our post-gobbling nap, and best of all, ELASTIC WAISTBANDS!

last thanksgiving i was at my parents' house for the big meal & was affectionately greeted by their st bernard, anna, who proceeded to rub her face all over my shirt when i sat down. so i ate dinner with slimy streaks of what looked like slug trails & boogers all over my chest. pajamas would have made it all just a little more tolerable.

i'm guessing a lot of you have heard the budweiser commercials where they salute "real men of genius" with very amusing lyrics & not particularly good song quality. those commercials never fail to make me giggle when they come on & i was delighted to discover today that some of them were made into tv commercials too, available for our viewing pleasure & not just our auditory pleasure. and now i'll share a couple of them with you.








on this thanksgiving, i'd like to thank budweiser for their real men of genius series.

this will make you feel better about yourself

ever since i was a kid, i've had a tendency to take some seriously hideous pictures. my brother seemed to have a knack for catching my face in it's worst possible shape whenever he took a picture of me & the trend continues. it makes me wonder if i spend a lot of my time with my face screwed up into grotesque shapes in order for it be captured on film so very many times. i try to delete the ugliest of the ugly before they get loaded onto the computer, but sometimes, they sneak through like little wastards.

and since i'm not too proud to put my shame out there into bloggy land, here are few of the gems that i currently have in my photo repertoire. just gaze upon these & feel better about yourself.

i love a good cat butt in my face

rodent mouth?

why yes, that's a kitten in my pocket. and no, i have no eyebrows.

there are no words...

i'm blending into the corn stalks!

taking pictures in the bathroom is always advisable.

wow. looks like i spent a long night drinking. it's an illusion.

brooke did my makeup so i'd look like a rockstar. the attitude was all me though. rock on, dudes!

barf

you're welcome.

new mexico trip

we spent a week out in the high desert of santa fe, new mexico, and brooke flew like a champ! we breezed through security the first time with no hitches & the second time only lost a tube of kids toothpaste (you know how bombers love to use kids crest to blow stuff up). brooke insisted that she needed to wear the coyote ears that i made for her & she mostly enjoyed the comments from strangers, but was slightly pissed off when they asked her if she was a reindeer or a cat or a horse or some other foolish animal. funny how personally she takes it when someone guesses wrong.

as we boarded the first plane, she told the flight attendant that it was her first time flying & that earned her a trip straight into the cockpit where she got to sit in the pilot's seat & have a little photo shoot with the pilot & co-pilot. it cracked me up as i peered around the doorway to see her posing with her new found buddies like she's a flying pro & does this every day.

we had a hard time putting our cameras down for most of the whole week we were gone & came home with tons of great pics that i won't force you to endure. what's that? you want to see them? ok, you talked me into it, so maybe i'll just share a few.

my friend, cristi, who we stayed with has a huge great dane named moses & brooke spent a large portion of her trip caressing him. she was mesmerized by his sheer magnitude and his mouth. she loves dog jowls & teeth & likes to poke into there for a peek at the goods whenever a dog will allow it. i think mo had more attention lavished on him over the 5 days we were there than he even knew what to do with.

it was great to stay up late & talk to one of my childhood friends. we hadn't seen each other in 5 years, but we jumped right back in like no time had passed at all. it just took some time to catch each other up on all the things that we've missed. the good, the bad & the ugly.

brooke & i took ourselves out for a walk in the freezing, windy, beautiful air a couple times while cristi was working and one of those times i managed to get us just a smidge lost. we actually walked straight across the road where we were supposed to turn & kept right on trekking along until brooke started crying that we were lost & would never get back. we sat down on the sidewalk for a few minutes to recover and then kept going - in the wrong direction. my cell phone had died while we were out because i was chatting up my mom while my service was roaming. oops. but eventually we found our way back & didn't get eaten by any of the wildlife that roams freely in that area. and we got some great pictures while we were on our never-ending walk, so it was worth it!

i also wanted to tell you guys that i missed you. i feel like i left my blogging buddies behind while i was away & i'm trying to get caught up on all the happenings in the blogosphere.

worry wart

tomorrow we leave & brooke's starting to get nervous. she's worried about going through security & having to put her stuffed animals & backpack through the scanner & walk through the archway without them. i'm just glad i thought to tell her about it ahead of time so that i could walk her through the process ahead of time. she can usually deal with stuff that's new as long as she knows what to expect. she's planning to put a tiny stuffed animal into her pocket so that she can feel its fur in her hand while walking through the metal detector. here's hoping neither of us sets off any alarms & has to get wanded or they might have a loudly freaking out kid on their hands!

takeoff is troubling her too, but we've been practicing in the kitchen. i've been setting up chairs together & walking her through the steps, including me tipping her chair back slightly & jiggling it just a smidge to imitate what it'll feel like.

we're praying for calmness & humor everywhere we look. oh yeah, and no terrorists please.

i'll be really glad when this first part of the trip is over so that we can both stop fretting and get to the fun part!
now if i can just remember to pack the dramamine & a pack of gum...

photo freak contest

there's a "best photo you've ever taken" contest going on over at photo freak's blog & i thought i'd toss my own favorite into the mix. it's nowhere near a professional level of photography, there's something about it that just pulls me into the eyes every time i look at it.

laundry fairy

i'm going through my mental list of all the things that need to be done between now & friday morning when we head for the airport -
print out directions to the airport
febreeze the suitcases
check the weather forecast
dig out cold weather clothing & make sure it fits
do the laundry...

and that's where i land and stick. right smack on the laundry. in order to wash the clothes, i need to FIND the clothes & i realize that none of brooke's favorite clothes are in her basket. they're not lying around her room in plain view either. i know she's going to be one ticked off camper if her favorites (meaning clothing in natural animal colors because she can't stand to dress like a girl, but only wants to dress like an animal almost every day) don't make it to new mexico with us. i started digging around in various hidey holes around her room - here's a brown shirt under her top bunk. there's a pair of gray leggings on a shelf under a table. there's a pair of gray camo shorts with real fox tail still attached under an upside down rubbermaid tub. when i got to the dress up box i hit the mother load. there were articles of clothing in there that went missing many months ago and here they were, covered with stains & probably outgrown by now. i plundered through there & dug out many valuable items of booty.

i was feeling vaguely irritated that i had to go looking for her clothes (i'd make her do it herself or too bad for her, but she's out of the house with daddy so that i can have some quiet time to get things done around here) until i started hauling the baskets toward the laundry room. that's when i realized that most of my bras & socks were missing. and my pajamas. i had to go on a hunt to find the places where i'd shucked my bras off when i declared myself to be "boobies free!" then i had to dig around in the vicinity of the couch because i have chronically cold feet, but then periodically my feet become suddenly claustrophobic & must be ripped out of my socks in a rapid & frequently spastic fashion. i even found a pair of socks stuffed into my purse from when i was out wearing my new furry boots & had to peel my socks off right in target or i would have spontaneously combusted, feet first. i found my jammies in the bathroom & also stuffed into a corner beside my bed & another article of sleepwear draped over a kitchen chair.

and that's when i realized that maybe it's not just brooke who needs to be reprimanded by the laundry fairy. she's shaking her judgemental stick at me too.

linky loo

today marks yet another first in this here blogging experience for me. i was the guest author on laffy lady's blog laugh out loud. i ran across this blog last week & was definitely entertained by her line up of funny people & now, here i am, joining in their ranks. i shared with them the story i told here recently about my last flying escapade that involved me, a flight attendant, an empty airplane & a naughty proposition.

thanks, miss laffy for the chance to hang out with your readers! i love your blog. the rest of you, go visit her if you're looking for some giggles today!

maybe a loin cloth...

we've developed some problems with pants around here. brooke's got my body type which means that she has short legs & tends to get thick around the middle. and from her daddy she was given the gift of a super long torso. for a while i thought she just had a long butt crack since it was always showing out of the back of her pants, but i think now that it's the whole torso that's long, not just the crack.

so almost all pants are too long. no problem, i can hem. sometimes the waist bands are oddly shaped - no big deal, i can add elastic which solves many problems. but lately, even the shortening & elastic aren't enough. every pair of non leggings (and even some leggings are guilty) either scratches her, squeezes her, gives her wedgies or causes some other form of pain & suffering. today, she went through 5 pairs of pants before we could leave the house. her bedroom floor was like a cemetery for pants. we went to a store & tried on 14 pairs of jeans & sweats to leave with only one pair that's hopefully going to work for more than a minute before causing the twitching & shrieking to begin again. we're about to take a trip to a place that's cold & this child needs to wear something warmer than leggings whether she likes it or not. it's a frustrating situation we find ourselves in here & it's annoying both of us.

after we got home from shopping, brooke went up to her room & came down a few minutes later with several drawings that she wanted to put on her blog showing how she feels about pants. please, click over to her page & have a look at things from her perspective.

amusing vs easy

a decade ago (damn, that makes me feel ridiculously old) i worked at a retail store that sold kids clothes. one of my co-workers was a woman who thought that having a kid who was amusing was more valuable than having a kid who was well behaved or easy. at the time, i was struggling angrily with infertility (i wrote about that here) and i would have been thrilled to have even the most boring of babies. as a matter of fact, it almost seemed to me that boring might just be better because that kid would be less likely to do things like projectile vomit across rooms, cram food items up their nose, start fires or mouth off to authority figures.

we spent a lot of time at the store talking to little kids, trying to engage them in conversation while we helped their parents to purchase clothing. and i have to admit, the amusing ones were way more interesting to have around. there were little girls who would monkey climb up onto the sales counter, chattering to us all the while. "my sistoo tooked my bawbee, but dats okay cuz dat was duh bawbee wif duh fingoors dat my dog chews on. ben said dat i can pway wif duh twain twack when we get home cuz den it's gonna be my tun cuz it was his tun befowe. and i wants to be a tow twuck dwivoo when i gwow up cuz them's weawy coow."
that's the same little girl who's likely to, while still standing on the counter, whip her pants down & show you her new little mermaid panties and then sing a couple verses of  "a whole new world" complete with arm motions & hair tosses. she wants to kiss you on the lips before her mom can snatch her down off the counter stage where she was performing for her many new fans.

over time i did learn to appreciate that those kids were definitely preferable to the ones who sat there like lumps no matter what we said or did. you know the ones, you say hello & they stare blankly at you. you smile & cross your eyes & still the blank stare. you offer them a sticker & they can't even bother to reach toward you or acknowledge that you're speaking to them. maybe they suck their sippy cup before turning away disdainfully, but they don't engage at all. even the cutest kid in the world loses its charm if it has no personality.

my own child, as it turns out, is one of those amusing types who, as a toddler was often found standing on a counter telling some unsuspecting cashier way too much about her day and toys & food preferences.

she's developed quite a vocabulary & she uses it perfectly in casual conversation. a few days ago she wrote a number backwards & when i asked her why, she shrugged & said, "i guess i had a glitch." she calls her stuffed cat the "duplicate" of her kitten & yesterday she put on a blue leopard print jacket & some wacky leggings & pronounced herself to be the "elusive blue snow leopard." she told me that someone milked the magic from her leopard fangs -actually, she said from her canine teeth- like she was a venomous reptile and it was causing her to lose her fabulous blue coloring & she'd have to go back & drink from the magical fountain so that she could regain her blue. she said she was excessively thirsty for some magical water.

she tells me often that my style is "understated & tacky". she has declared the cats to be "frenemies." she roars at strangers & draws bizarre pictures to express her feelings. she rarely wears normal clothes & spends her days living in her imagination, where she can be anything she wants to be with no regard for reality.

 during prayers at bedtime tonight she told God, "uno momento, por favor" and then she rapidly climbed down from her bed to rush into the bathroom & wash her hands twice because when she'd reached to pet her kitten, she's accidentally touched her butt instead. i'd never thought to put God on hold while praying before, let alone in spanish!

here's a video from today when we were making banana bread for "culinary" class (brooke doesn't really like cooking, but it beats doing history when it's school time). please note the fork i provided that she was NOT using to mash those bananas. gosh, i love this kid.


in conclusion, maybe i would prefer that amusing kid after all. it certainly keeps things interesting.

photos of my happy

sometimes, it's the little things in life that make my heart happy. i like to take pictures of the random beautiful or amusing things that i see & today i'd like to share a couple of those with you.

check out this cool leaf that i found on my car today.

we were making avocado scones & it was all just too pretty not to take pics of it.

and then there's the list that i found hanging from the wall yesterday. i'll do my best to follow the rules.

and of course, i can't help but to include a shot of my fabulously amusing little person, getting kisses from a new doggy friend.