1. Hallowe'en. This year wasn't a typical trick-or-treating Hallowe'en for us, because we attended the wedding of our dear friends Heather and Ian. It was amazing, it was beautiful, it was exhausting. I was Heather's Maid of Honour, so Cliff got the boychild dumped on him for almost the entire wedding and did fabulously. Cliff was Danny Zuko, Jake was Kinickey, and I was a Pink Lady after I removed myself from the gorgeous but exceedingly movement limiting scarlet dress I was wearing as Maid Of Honour. I'd managed to lose approximately 25 pounds since September, (My "diet" was No pop, No processed flour products, only whole grain foods, lots of walking and lots of water, and criminally, Skinny Vanilla Lattes from starbucks instead of Mocha frapps) and even after ALL of that work, I still felt like a sausage in it's casing.Here's a pic of Jake and Cliff, they look adorable, no? FYI. Yes I handpainted his "cigarette" package of Marlboros and they are era appropriate for the 50's. God bless Google for it's image search capabilities.
2. Christmas. I'd reentered the work force from mid-November to approximately the 10th of December, when I was informed by my employers that I wouldn't be covered for breaks, and told them to go fuck themselves. I'm sure it wasn't the smartest thing to do considering our financial situation despite Cliff not working for 4 months prior. (and honestly, who really isn't suffering during these economic times?) Cliff supported me 100% during my decision, and though I felt horribly guilty not sticking to my job and something I'd promised I'd do for someone, I felt like being treated like a human being more.
But in all actuality Christmas was wicked cool, I baked and baked and baked, I found a fabulous recipe for Sugar cookies by Alton Brown on the food network site. Quite honestly, if I wasn't worried about my ass exploding out of my pants I'd be making them every week because they were freaking awesome with a cuppa Earl Grey... Sadly, I have no impulse control with them. Reality (that bitch!) interferes, and it doesn't help my "diet" one bit. But they are SO. GOOD.
Jake got spoiled to hell and back, with almost all of our friends and family sending him at least 2 or three things each. It was crazy.We decided to put our tree up on Christmas Eve, after he'd gone to bed, and the look on his little face was priceless when there was another "Kissmas! ho ho ho!" thing up in the house. He, of course, promptly decided to denude our poor Charlie Brown tree of 4 ornaments within the first 5 minutes of him seeing it, so maybe "training" him to not touch the tree during the week prior might have been a better decision, overall. Whoops, there's always next year.
Jake's visit with Santa went well, If by well you mean "At least he's not screaming his little brains out!" as quite a large number of toddlers do when they meet Santa. Out of the 6 pictures we got of him on the old man's lap, this is the only one that I really liked, because I think he was in a Christmas coma at that point, completely overwhelmed by the number of decorations and activities going on in the mall and then we put him in the lap of some hairy dude wearing a red velvet suit. I mean, come on, if you were one and a half, you'd be pretty overwhelmed too! Every other photo of him on Santa had him looking like he'd been beaned on the head by a frying pan and he was completely expressionless. The poor kid. Cliff had picked up a book earlier that horror of all parental horrors, plays the song "frosty the snowman"at supersonic tinny volume repeatedly, and Jake being our child, has a strong affinity for being read to and reading books himself. I think it's a cute and very apt picture of him.Christmas dinner was hosted at my house with my parents and cousin and his girlfriend Amy attending, and for the very first time I can say that I achieved true adult-hood by violating and roasting my first turkey. So can my friend Amy, who helped roast the SECOND turkey that we made. Yes. I said it. Two 15 lb birds. It was chaos! Amy and I were putting on this big show of 'no big deal, we're women we can do this no problem!' bravado, and then... And then... *shudders* And then we had to slather herbed butter underneath the skin of the turkey breasts and we turned into total freaking wimps. We had to reach into turkey body cavities and remove giblets!!! We had to PIN THE WINGS to the birds' body!! We had to rinse and pat dry the INSIDES of a turkey ribcage and then shove bread and sausage into the holes we had just cleaned out. Eeeeeeewwwww!!!
But the taste was phenomenal. I mean, coming in your pants and your mouth at the same time tasty-ness. I had enough turkey left over to feed an army sandwiches for a week. I made mashed potatoes with herbs and what my family calls "hossenpheppher" which is lightly mashed carrots and rutabega/turnips, stuffing made from Authentic San Francisco sourdough bread that my Aunt had picked up for us when she went in November with bratwurst sausage with whole and half fresh cranberries, Celery and red onions, gravy and buns and two types of cranberry sauce. My table spread was freaking amazing. I was so proud of us for all the work we did. My best memory of Christmas 2009? My three very sweet goodnight kisses from my completely exhausted and very happy son.
And then we all got the flu for the next week. Yuck. Sleeping a lot, fevers, snot. Sinus headaches and crankiness. (But at least we had turkey sandwiches!)
3. New Years. consisted of Cliff and I reading our books in bed and then when I looked at the clock when the hullabaloo started in the neighborhood and went "Holy shit! Happy New Year, Babe!" a smooch and back to our books. Yes, darlings, we lead a life of excitement and vigor. *sighs*
4. Our Leaky bedroom. Oh yes, I said it. We had/have a massive leak in our Master suite. I can't tell you how happy I was to discover that it had been oozing water slowly throughout the week and during our most recent monsoon ALL down the side of the window which is of course right behind my head. Happy happy! Of course the Land/slum lords that we love dearly but don't do anything for our house didn't bother to actually do anything to fix it until approximately a week after our first phone call. This meant a week of dumping 4 litre pails of water into a 10 litre pail, at a rate of about 8 to 10 litres a day during the heavy rain we've been suffering here. Yeah. Linds is NOT pleased.
They've since come and slathered roof repair tar over every nook and cranny of the bedroom addition, our porch roof and the conjoined corrugated plastic cover that is half of our porch area. This was today, I've no idea if it will actually fucking DO anything yet, as it hasn't really rained enough for it to drip drip drip. I hope it does something.
I'm sure that I've entertained you enough for the evening, but let me say, Happy New Year! Welcome to a new decade, and let's hope that the next 10 years are far more successful than the last 10!
Love ya!
