Incoherent Scribblings

As you know, Valentine’s Day is coming up. Well, let me tell you how I feel about it:

Your Candy Heart Says “Get Real”

You’re a bit of a cynic when it comes to love. You don’t lose your head, and hardly anyone penetrates your heart. Your ideal Valentine’s Day date: is all about the person you’re seeing (with no mentions of v-day!) Your flirting style: honest and even slightly sarcastic What turns you off: romantic expectations and “greeting card” holidays Why you’re hot: you don’t just play hard to get - you are hard to get

Today’s story actually started a couple of weeks ago when I found out that we would be going to my cousin’s on Saturday, December 23.

My cousin’s oldest daughter’s birthday is on that day, so along with Christmas, she was going to have a birthday party this year. A person with a birthday so close to Christmas is likely to cause confusion for any family, but in my family it causes extra headaches because not only is my aunt divorced from my cousin’s father, my cousin is no longer with her oldest daughter’s father. As a result, there are always two extra families involved with this particular birthday.

Most of the time my cousin separates the birthday party from the Christmas party for her daughter, but for whatever reason that was not the case this year. It was therefore decided that my family wouldn’t do the Christmas part of the party until after the other two families left the birthday party since neither my aunt nor my cousin are on the best of terms with their respective exes.

This was all well and good, but for some reason unbeknownst to me, it was then decided that we would only unwrap presents to and from my cousin’s family and the presents to and from my aunt, uncle, and youngest cousin would wait until Sunday when they were coming to my mom’s house. Silly and confusing I know, but no one asked my opinion!

So then on Sunday, my aunt, uncle, youngest cousin, sister, niece, and nephew arrived at Mom’s house to unwrap presents. Mom and I thought that my sister was going to bring all the presents for everyone but my dad’s family to Mom’s house, but somewhere along the way our wires got crossed and my sister was under the impression that Mom, Stepdad, and I were coming to her house Christmas morning and exchanging our presents there.

Granted, my sister only lives two blocks down from Mom so we could have gone down and got the presents, but then Mom decided it sounded like a good idea to go to Sis’s on Christmas morning because she wanted to see what Santa brought the grandkids anyway. So once again we decided to only unwrap part of the presents.

The present confusion finally got sorted out last evening with Mom, Stepdad, and I planning to go down to my sister’s this morning to have a little Christmas with the kids and with me staying at my sister’s house until Dad, Stepmom, and Stepsister came for lunch and more presents.

I went to bed last night not with visions of sugar plums in my head, but thoughts of my tasty cream of broccoli soup since I had been “volunteered” to make it for lunch.

I was even awake this morning when the phone rang: It was my sister informing me that Christmas at her house had been canceled… Due to the fact that my niece had gotten sick in the night.

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope yours was less confusing than mine!

Cat-O-Lantern
Originally uploaded by blondelibrarian.

Halloween has always been my favorite holiday and this year I got to do something that I have wanted to do ever since she was a baby: This year I celebrated Halloween with my niece. Of course, by waiting until this year I got a bonus: Now that my nephew is here I got to celebrate his first Halloween with him too.

Once upon a time, a young, hip mom found a cowardly lion baby costume that was just the perfect size for her baby. He looked so adorable when he tried it on that the mom was conned in to declaring that Baby would celebrate his first Halloween as the Cowardly Lion from The Wizard of Oz.

The young, hip mom also had a daughter and it just so happened that the little girl’s current favorite movie was The Wizard of Oz. With charm (and a little bribery) the mom convinced her daughter that she should be Dorothy for Halloween. The little girl (who, from now on will be referred to “Dorothy”) was very excited to be Dorothy and her enthusiasm was so contagious that her aunt nominated herself to be the Scarecrow. Because Dorothy and the Scarecrow were teasing the mom about how wicked she was, the mom decided then and there to be the Wicked Witch of the West. And true to her wicked ways, a few days later she drafted the dad into being the Tin Man.

And so it was done: On All Hallows Eve, Dorothy (and Toto too!), the Scarecrow, the Cowardly Lion, the Tin Man, and the Wicked Witch of the West started out from Munchkinland and worked their way up the yellow brick road to the Land of Oz.

The entourage stopped along the way to gather chocolate nourishment and was requested several times to sing for its supper. Dorothy and the Scarecrow sang and danced their way up the road while the Witch and Tin Man pushed the Cowardly Lion in a cart. The ordeal was so frightening that the Cowardly Lion fell asleep half-way through the journey.

After Dorothy clicked her heels for the Fairy GrandGodmother the little group ended up back at Dorothy’s house in Kansas Iowa. The Cowardly Lion was asleep by this time so the Tin Man stayed with him while Dorothy and the Scarecrow hopped in on to the Witch’s car broomstick and drove flew off into the night to finish celebrating Halloween.

The End.

It is already approximately an hour into 2006 on this side of the Atlantic, and after thinking about how miserably I failed at achieving my 2005 resolutions, I have decided that the only resolution I am making for 2006 is not to make any resolutions!

I made the following ten simple, and what I thought should be attainable, resolutions for 2005 and here is how successfully they were (or were not) realized:

1.) Go the gym twice a week until my membership expires in April.

I know that by January of 2005 I was really sick of going to the gym and pretending to exercise. I did go to the gym once a week from January until April, but the only thing I did was lounge in the tanning bed.

2.) Try more new foods.

This is a standard resolution and normally I do pretty good with it. However, this year I must confess that the only new cuisine I tried was Bulgarian. I liked Bulgarian food. With its meat-heavy dishes and herb/spice combinations I found it very similar to Greek food. (Which I love!)

3.) Read Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in German.

I still haven’t done this. However, I did complete my first full-length novel in German written by a native German speaker this year. In some ways I consider this a bigger success than reading Harry Potter in German. Even so, I still want to read the whole Harry Potter series in German someday!

4.) Be nice to A.

I try to be nice to A., but I’ll admit that sometimes I can just be so grumpy!

5.) Learn PHP (.php)

I made some progress understanding .php and I can alter some code, but I still can’t write my own.

6.) Get my immunizations updated.

Ha! We were going to do this before we went to Bulgaria, but never got around to it. I am sure one of these days when I catch some completely preventable disease the only sympathy I will get from A. is “I told you so.”

7.) Drive more often in Germany.

I didn’t even get behind the wheel this year. Why should I when public transportation will take me wherever I want to go?

8.) Drink more water.

This is another one of my standard resolutions. Unlike #2 though, I seldom achieve this one. I can’t help it. I just don’t like water!

9.) Write more letters (and send them!)

As usual, this just didn’t happen. (I did join some cross stitch exchanges that require regular mailing and managed to get my stuff to the post office on time though.)

10.) Keep a tidier home.

All I have to say about this is…

I will admit that even though I haven’t so much as glanced at this list since last January I actually didn’t do as badly as I thought. But since I only look at them twice a year anyway, I still don’t think I will make any resolutions for 2006. Why waste my time and, more importantly, my blog space?

Happy New Year everyone!

Merry Christmas!

Your Christmas is Most Like: How the Grinch Stole Christmas

You can’t really get into the Christmas spirit… But it usually gets to you by the end of the holiday anyway.