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 |  Where am I going, and why am I in this handbasket? |
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Fair Warning: I've upped the rating on this blog. It is now set at GC. |
| Well, Christmas is almost over. I realize Christmas day has come and gone, but we still haven't made it through all the family get togethers, and Christmas isn't really over until all the presents are gone from underneath my tree. Tomorrow we will go down to Tony's Mom's house, for Christmas with his family. I've got to admit that I'm about Christmas-ed out for the year. Not that it hasn't been fun. It has been. Good times, good food, and gifts. I know that with gifts, it is supposed to be the thought that counts, but what is the thought when my mother gives me a CD of Oprah's favorite Christmas music. Seriously! I draw the line at reading the occasional pick from her book club, and wearing her favorite bra. I refuse to listen to her choice of Christmas music too.  Since one of my brothers was heading home tonight, and the other is leaving tomorrow, my mother decided to take us all out to dinner this evening. We went to a Japanese hibachi grill restaurant. It was great. The food was wonderful, and the chef hammed it up for the kids making and onion ring volcano on the grill and such. They loved it. He almost even succeeded in getting Zack to eat a vegetable. Tony had to take Zack to the bathroom during dinner, and when he came back he told us he'd just seen Billy Baldwin in the men's room. Nearly everyone at the table asked "Who's that?" so I guess it doesn't count much as a celebrity siting.  Tony was pretty excited though. He said he would have talked to him more but the only thing he could remember seeing him in recently was a reality show, and he didn't want to lead off with "Hey I know you! You were on Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew." While no one in my family knew who Billy Baldwin was, I know Tony's family will be very impressed when he sees them tomorrow. Since his brother-in-law is a fire fighter, they've all seen Back Draft a zillion times. Tony pointed Billy out to me as we were leaving the restaurant, he was easy to spot since he was the one wearing a dopey ski hat at the table. Whatever happened to manners? Life continues to race right along, but for today anyway, I decided to downshift and putter along in the slow lane. I started reading the books I got for Christmas. Unfortunately, I started reading four of them because I couldn't decide which to read first. I think I finally have gotten far enough into one that I'll be able to set the others aside until I finish it. I don't do well reading multiple books simultaneously. Did you get any good books for Christmas? |
| The weather took a nasty turn last night, and we woke up to a slushy, nasty mess. It is a blessing in disguise because it made me quickly discard any ideas I had about last minute running around. I'm snug at home relaxing with my family and all is well. There's a woman who calls herself Kay watching a cold rain fall in P-A. The weather is dreary, but her thoughts are cheery with warm wishes for your Christmas Day. Sorry, it's that third person thing again. Kay has a annoying tendency to randomly shift point-of-view, but she is working on it.  And for those of you who are disappointed that she didn't write a dirty Christmas limerick . . . well . . . shame on you! but I'll be back if I can think of one. |
| and the temperatures have dropped to the hateful single digits. So it is dark and cold, but at least we have a fresh mantle of snow. Tonight I wanted to curl up and take a nap after work (winter brings out some very strong hibernation instincts in me) instead I managed to stay awake long enough to cook dinner. Over dinner, the kids and I decided that Zack really needed to send his letter off to Santa. How else was Santa going to know about the squeaky cheese wheel that Zack wants so desperately that he hasn't even mentioned it since writing the letter.  Like I said, we were talking, and in this little Burg, there is one can't miss place for sending mail to Santa. After dinner we bundled up against the cold and drove down to the local fire company's holiday display so we could visit Santa's Post Office. ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** The holiday display features many animated pieces, and the couple in the foreground are animated skaters. While we were dropping off the letter at Santa's Post Office, guess who we ran into... ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** Pardon the crappy picture, but I didn't have my camera set properly for a night portrait. I might be able to make my son stand out there freezing his butt off while I force him to pose for just one more picture, but I couldn't do that to Santa! It's best not to annoy him at this time of year. My son pointed out that this was not the real Santa though. He knows this for a fact because no one has ever seen the real Santa except for maybe God. Anyway, we had fun looking at the lights and touring the display, but we were glad to get back home where it was nice and warm. ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** |
| Re-gifting isn't such a bad thing. This year I will be regifting my niece a doll bed that was passed down from my mother to me, and from me to my daughter. The bed has been in storage for quite awhile. It seems like both a long time, and yet such a very short time ago that Katie played with the doll bed. I cleaned the bed and oiled the wood. I bought a new piece of foam for the mattress, and had loads of fun making it a new sheet, blanket and pillow out of lavender printed fleece. I was given the doll bed for my second Christmas. It had been made for and shared by my mother and her sisters. She found it on her mother's porch years later, neglected and battered. She rescued it, refurbished it, and gave it to me for Christmas. ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** Me with the doll bed on Christmas morning 1973. She held on to that doll bed through all the years, and all the moves of a military family. My Katie was the first grandchild, and for her second Christmas, she received the much loved doll bed. ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** Katie with the doll bed on Christmas morning 1996 I'm looking forward to giving the bed to my niece, Ally, for her second Christmas, and I hope that I will eventually see the doll bed pass on to yet another generation of little girls. It seems like a possibility so far off in the distant future, but I know it will be here in the blink of an eye. *** Addendum *** Ally loved the doll bed, and true to form, had to try it out for herself. ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** Ally with the doll bed on Christmas morning 2008 |
| My son is weird. Okay, he's autistic and that accounts for a lot of the weirdness, but I think their are other factors involved. Christmas shopping for the child has always been an adventure. Every year he wants a couple items that are off the beaten track. Last Christmas was the year of the rubber chicken and the tea set. That's right, my eight year old son wanted a RUBBER CHICKEN and a TEA SET. Whatever . . . He's hosted a lot of tea parties in the past year, so I guess that was kind of a practical gift, but there is still no accounting for the damn' rubber chicken. I thought I was getting off easy this year. His list seemed to consist mostly of video games and Star Wars Legos. Then out of the blue, Zack sat down to right a letter to Santa. This was THE letter! I could tell because he asked for a stamp and an envelope. And what did he ask for in the letter you ask? He wants a wooden back-scratcher and a squeaky cheese wheel. Me: "What does this say? I don't think I'm reading it right?" Zack: "I want a squeaky cheese wheel." Me: "What is that? Is it something you saw somewhere?" Zack: "Nope, it's just something I imagined in my own head." Me: "You want cheese for Christmas?" Zack: "Squeaky cheese wheels aren't made out of cheese. They're made out of plastic! That's how they squeak." Me: "Why do you want one?" Zack: "I just thought it'd be cool, and I bet Santa can make one." The child still seems to believe in Santa, but I think this might be a test. |
| It is cookie baking night at the Kay family homestead. Well, it was last night too. I have chocolate chip, oatmeal chocolate chip, peanut butter blossoms, Amish sugar cookies, and chip-n-dip cookies. I'm tired, but the house smells wonderful! Katie and her boyfriend Max both helped out with the cookies, and that is my excuse for why some of them look the way they do. I wanted small uniform cookies so they would cook right, but they felt I was stifling their creativity with my narrow-minded insistence on round cookies. We had fun. We baked. We laughed. We listened to Christmas tunes.  I'm just hoping it lasts. Yesterday evening started off very much the same, and yet at some point I kind of lost the happy. Maybe it was the stress of the day. Things aren't going well for the organization Tony works for. Early this year they cut his schedule by four hours per week. Later they suspended all employer contributions to their retirement plan. Then there were the layoffs. On the bright side, Tony still has a job. On the incredibly sucktacular side, they are now giving him a 4% pay cut in an effort to cut expenses so that they can continue to meet payroll.  So, maybe I was feeling some stress yesterday, but by 10 in the evening, I started to unravel at the seams. It was a bit unnerving, but I went from happy to miserable in minutes, and I hate to admit it, but I was having some strange kinds of thoughts. I tried to blog it out, but I couldn't write, and now I'm glad I didn't. By 11:00 I had a raging headache. It was like a wave of toxicity had hit me . . . and leveled me! I woke up this morning still suffering from this hellish headache, but since it had snowed and mostly sleeted during the night, school and work were both delayed. I took some painkillers and went back to sleep. When I woke up again, my world seemed to be restored. My head was much better, and Tony was just finishing up a letter of inquiry. Turns out the local community college - where Tony has taught as an adjunct faculty member on and off for about 5 years - is looking for two full time, tenure track psych professors. They are looking for one at the main campus which is about a 40 minute drive, and one at the satellite campus which is only about 7 miles up the road. The best part is that they are looking for someone who is specialized in child and developmental psych, and that is Tony exactly. So, as they say, one door closes and another opens, and I will leave it at that because I still have one more batch of cookies I'd like to make tonight. Coconut, oatmeal chewies. Mmmmmmm!  |
Okay, for those of you who are interested, I finished my naughty little Christmas Parody and posted it as a static item in my port.
You really can't blame me for the end result though because, you see, I am suffering from a head injury! I went out shopping with my mother on Friday, and after meeting up for lunch, we decided to take her car and leave mine. This was all well and good except that hers isn't a car. It is an SUV. And I wasn't paying attention. So . . . When I did the whole pull the door open as I'm leaning down to get in the car thing, I brained myself with the door. Seriously, I hit myself hard enough that it rattled my teeth. My first coherent thought was "What the fuck just hit me?" It is a beautiful thing having a GC blog now because I don't have to censor, and believe me when I tell you I was thinking in expletives! My second thought, of course, "I'm a fucking idiot!" I dropped into the car seat and gripping my head I tried to explain that I'd hurt myself, and then I had to explain how. Anyway, after her initial fear that I was concussed, she set me up with some painkillers and we went to on to Kohl's. Brave little soldier that I am, I shopped even while I could feel the goose egg swelling up on my forehead. I got a few strange looks, but no one mentioned the huge purple lump. I forgot where I was going with this, but then again, that's been happening a lot since the head injury too. Three days later, and the headache is almost gone and the bruise has faded to a greenish grey. But my shopping is nearly done! |
| When my children were younger, we had a wonderful Christmas tradition. I had a basket of 24 Christmas Books, and after Thanksgiving, I would wrap each book in the basket. Each night in December, the kids would take turns picking a book to unwrap, and that would be their story for the night. It wasn't perfect. I have a girl and a boy, and they are nearly four years apart in age. While A Beauty and the Beast Christmas might be great for my daughter, my son was not impressed. Also, the favorites ran the risk of not being unwrapped until near the end of the month, and only getting read a couple of times. All the same, it gave the kids a sort of countdown to Christmas, and more importantly to them, they got to unwrap stuff. I stacked the deck so that A Visit from St. Nicholas was always the last book to be opened on Christmas Eve (though I may never be able to read it again without giggling and possibly blushing). As the kids got a bit older, the thrill of unwrapping the same books year after year began to fade. How could it not? So, I just left the books unwrapped in the basket. The day we decorated the tree, My daughter pulled the basket out of the box of Christmas stuff. She immediately sat down to look through for her favorites, and the next thing I knew her brother was snuggled up next to her on the sofa while she read aloud to him. Tonight my son asked me if I would read him a bedtime story. Since he's been an independent reader for sometime now, bedtime stories have kind of fallen by the wayside. He doesn't ask me to read to him often, and on the one hand, I'll be eternally grateful if I never have to read the Berenstain Bears again, but on the other hand . . . they just grow up too fast! So tonight I was going to read to my son. I went back to his room and got us settled comfortably on his bed. I smiled when I saw his first pick was The Snowy Day. As I started to read it, my daughter slipped quietly into the room and curled up on the foot of the bed. When I paused in reading and looked up at her she shrugged and said "I love this story." So we shifted around to make room for Kate so she could see the pictures too. And we'll probably read the same three books again tomorrow night. |
| Today I stayed home from work. I have a cold and needed the rest. While I was home I amused myself by writing a parody of the Christmas classic "A Visit from Saint Nicholas." Except in my version the hero doesn't meet Santa, but gets swept away in a porn fueled fantasy. Well . . . I started a parody anyway, and I've already changed my blog rating so that I can post it here. Feel free to add a verse or two. Those that dare will be rewarded with gps as usual. Anyway, here's what I've got so far . . . T'was the night before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even my spouse. While I tossed and I turned, my wife slept like the dead so I threw back the covers, and rolled out of bed. Restless and horny, I wandered downstairs, it's the season of giving, but the bitch hardly cares. She said she was tired form the wrapping and baking. She claimed she was spent and her poor head was aching. As I sat by the tree feeling hotly forlorn I grabbed the remote and I cued up some porn. I got myself off and must have been sleeping, when I awoke to the sounds of someone softly creeping. I zapped the TV and quickly covered my dick thinking it was the kids, come to spy on Saint Nick. I ducked and I covered as quick as I could, but there in the doorway, like a vision, she stood. And the moon on the breast of that well endowed ho sent a fresh wave of lust to my boys down below. And what to my wondering eyes should appear? That perky young vixen had brought me a beer! She sidled up to me so sultry and slow, that I knew in a moment she must be a pro. Then into the living room she boldly came as she stroked me, and coaxed me, and called me some names, "Hey Studly, hey Beefcake, my number one John, Hey Big Boy, Adonis, now let's get it on. Take me right by the tree and we'll polish the floor. We'll do whatever you want 'cause I'm your Christmas whore. She wore very little, her smooth skin she revealed, from the top of her head to her five inch spiked heels. A bundle of toys hung down by her side, and I knew I was in for a hell of a ride. Her breast were like roses, her nipples were hard It must have been cold out there in the yard. Her glossy red lips were curled up in a grin and her eyes were a-twinkle with the promise of sin. ~*~ Well yes, hmmmm . . . in other news . . . Since I was home today, I was exposed to the dreaded daytime television. Since Tony was also home, that meant the History Channel. He was watching a show called "Monster Quest" and they were in Texas search for evidence of giant wild hogs reportedly weighing as much as 1500 lbs. Anyway, I was trying to ignore it, and was working on my poem when I heard the lead Yahoo make this statement. I even stopped to write it down because I believe it is one of the greatest statements ever uttered by man . . . "We believe this is the first time anyone has tried to attach a camera to a wild hog." It would have made a very funny famous last line. If only. Is it wrong of me to root for the hog? |
| For homework, my son was supposed to measure the height, width, and length of our bathtub with a wooden twelve inch ruler. "Why the tub?" I asked. "Because it's on the test." "Test?" "It's on the PSSA." The PSSA is the standardized test that Pennsylvania tortures students, teachers and parents with in order to answer the all-important question of "Is any child being left behind?" Hmmm . . . YES! - probably the one who sustained a traumatic head injury when he fell off the side of the bathtub where he'd been balancing on his tippy-toes trying to measure all the way up to the top of the tub enclosure with a wooden ruler. "I think it's enough to measure how high just the side of the tub is." "Oh! Okay!" Yeah . . . crisis averted. But, I still doubt whether there is a question on the test about the height, length and width of our tub. Next up, he was supposed to measure his room . . . with the same wooden ruler! HA! I think that if they don't want kids to be "left behind," the first thing they should teach them about measurement is that you don't use a ruler to measure a room. You use a tape measure. Sheesh! |
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