On Knowing Your Spouse

Zack stared at me with one eyebrow raised so high I thought it was going to get altitude sickness.

Once his quizzical look became so perplexed that I was unable to ignore it, I finally answered: “It was Dad’s.”
“OOOH.” He said, giving me the most emotive response I’d heard from him in weeks.  “I was so confused.”

The item that was causing all the ruckus was an empty Starbucks cup in my car’s cup holder.  Zack was right to raise an eyebrow at it for more than a few reasons. 1.) I don’t usually allow trash to stay in my car.  I take it in the house and throw it away when I get home.  2.) I’m not really a Starbucks person. 3.) When I do go to Starbucks I get herbal tea because I don’t drink caffeine.  4.) The cup in my cup holder had a spot of dried coffee on the lid.

When he first noticed the cup, he did a double take.  Then, looking closer, he saw the dried spot of coffee and looked at me as if I was an alien from an unknown planet.  He picked up the cup, smelled the lid, determined it to have been filled with coffee, and that brings us right back to the beginning of this post.  Zack’s right eyebrow trying to jump out of the Jetta’s sun-roof because of the internal trauma that ensues when you’re pretty sure you know every single thing about a person, and then you find out that you might be wrong.

He wasn’t wrong, though.  He just forgot that my dad likes lattes.

Twin Chrismtas. And I Spelled It Wrong On Purpose.

I have spelled Chrimstas wrong every time I have written it this holiday season.  I know how to spell it correctly.  C-H-R-I-S-T-M-A-S.  See?  Christmas.  But whenever I’m not paying attention, the letters all jumble and come out weird.  Zack has kind of latched on to the idea of Chrism-tas (chriz-mmm-taas) and so now we’re just going with it.  It’ll be like our very own Festivus.

Zack just said, “It would be. Except I’m a Verdukian.”

Anyway, a couple days after the December 25th holiday, Jamie drove through town and granted my parents’ Christmas Wish: To See Those Babies.  I was, admittedly, also very happy about the situation. Boo, SisterKaty, Mema and Aunt Karen (of Grammar Argument Fame) all got to meet Aydan (in orange) and Brendan (in white) for the first time.  I’m not sure what kind of happy-juice Jamie is feeding these kids, but I’ve seriously never seen either one of them cry about anything.  Once Aydan cried because of physical pain, but I’m not even counting that.  They arrived at the house after 4 hours of car-travel and look at them! With the smiles and the what not!

Granted, they have something to be happy about that the rest of us don’t have.  They can lead lives without pants.

I uploaded more pictures at My Flickr.  Love.

Hard Night

Tonight the mattress is my emotional bathroom floor.  To lift my head from it and move to the pillow is to move a drunk person from the cold hard tile and place them in bed before ready.

There’s just something about the bathroom floor that steadies the equilibrium, erases nausea.  And so it is with this mattress and these tears, which so readily return as soon as I fool myself into thinking that I’m all better, that all of the poison is out of my blood.

7 Items Does Not a Real Simple To Do List Make

I read in Real Simple magazine the other day that any given To Do List shouldn’t have more than seven items on it.  Seven items, they said, is the most that any human can finish in one day.  Don’t put any more than that on your list or you’ll feel the perpetual feeling of failure.

What they didn’t specify in that particular article is that the items on your To Do List shouldn’t be so massive that one item can, in itself, be broken down into three or four thousand steps.

Here’s a sample of what my To Do List for the day looked like:

Reorganize closet
Reorganize all craft supplies
Move furniture from bedroom to office and vice versa
Clean the whole house from top to bottom, including dusting and baseboards
Relocate Mt. Rushmore to Texas
Climb K2
End racisim, bringing about world peace

As I am not posting this post from the top of K2 while singing We Are The World with a sprinkling of representatives from Every Nation On Earth, you can see that I didn’t quite get to the bottom of my list.  I cleaned out the fridge.  I went to Wal-Mart and got toilet paper and bread.  I got a few containers which I will theoretically use to do some of the reorganization that I didn’t even start today.

To say that I’m still suffering from Christmas Madness would be a slight understatement.

So here’s my promise to you: tomorrow, my seven items are going to be much more reasonable.  Move the spare mattress out of the kitchen to the garage.  Pull items that I’m going to donate out of the closet and put them in a Goodwill pile.  Make dinner.  See?  See how those items just scream, “I am of a sound mind!”?

All that to say, one of my very, very digestible items on tomorrow’s To Do List is, “upload pictures from hanging out with the twin nephews and write a post about it.”  So, Aunt Karen, I swear, you can quit freaking out now.  It’ll just be a little bit longer.

In the mean time, I’m going to see if I can sleep off this insanity.  Wish me luck.

An Elephantine Christmas

I’ve been in love with Rachel’s blog, elephantine, for years now.  When she filled her etsy shop with her own handmade jewelry, I sent Zack an email entitled HINTS FOR CHRISTMAS with a link to some of my favorite things she’d made.

Luckily, Zack knows how to take a hint.  He flipped through the site until he found his favorite two pieces.  Then he bought them for me.  And that was in October.  I married a man with patience the likes of which I will never understand.  And I love him for it.  He picked out Eastern Holiday and Bellisima earrings for me.

Eastern Holiday

Bellisima Earrings

And because I’m not nearly as patient as my husband, I couldn’t wait until after Christmas to order the necklace below, Indian Summer, for myself.  I also ordered 3 others, one for Sarah1, Jenn and Katy.  All my sisters (biological and otherwise) now have their very own elephantine necklaces.  Having these three bits of lovely jewelry in my collection has had me walking on clouds since yesterday morning.

Indian Summer

I tossed Katy’s necklace into a box with her Home Sweet Effing Home embroidery piece that stirred up so much controversy.  She decided that she’d like the embroidery worked into a quilt, so I didn’t even have to frame it.  I gave Jenn and Sarah1 their necklaces in old Reader’s Digest books that I hollowed with an X-acto knife and turned into hide-a-books.  And since the necklaces were handmade by Rachel they fit perfectly into my Handmade Christmas theme.  Aaaah.  Sweet Victory.

All photos borrowed from Rachel’s Etsy Shop.

Old Wisdom

I think Mema said it best tonight; nothing is ever quite as over as Christmas is when it’s over.

Don’t get me wrong — Christmas was great.  I love Christmas time and the presents and the fun and the family and the! But man.  When it’s over?  Oh, God, is this part wonderful, too.

On Christmas Miracles

Santa dumped 2 inches of snow on North Texas today, and we’re all in agreement that this is, in fact, a Christmas Miracle.

Zack and I spent the whole day down in Midlothian hanging out with the family.  Jenn and Jared showed up with their latest Wii purchase: a game called “Just Dance” that would be more accurately titled “Just Sweat Your Ass Off.”  Jenn and I played the game until we were pretty sure our arms were going to fall out of their very sockets, then we purposefully switched to the much more sedentary Super Mario Bros. Wii.  All the while, we’d sent the boys out with an errand list on a quazi-suicidal Christmas Eve Wal-Mart run.  When Zack and Jared arrived back at the house, Jenn and I were stripped down to our camisoles, still sweating, playing Mario Brothers on the couch.  Zack walked in and said, “JARED. OUR WIVES ARE PLAYING VIDEO GAMES AND STRIPPING. IT’S A CHRISTMAS MIRACLE.”

And that’s when I realized, Christmas Miracle is a really versatile term.

Hope your Christmas Eve was full of your very own Christmas Miracles.

Tia Does Love Her Enchiladas

Today we saw the official start to the holiday season here in North Texas, and in keeping with true SarahThe style, we did it with mexican food.

Sarah1 asked me if we could come down a bit early today because she had an appointment to get her hair did and she wanted to know if I could, and I quote, watch the hellions.  Of course I said yes–I never pass up an opportunity to babysit the nieces.

After the girls woke up from their naps, their parents returned home from work and gettin’ their hair done, and The In-Laws showed up over at Matt and Sarah1′s house, we all took off for our favorite local Mexican food joint.

We ordered Abbie and Kate (er, Hellion1 and Hellion2) a couple of chicken enchiladas, which is their usual meal at that particular restaurant.  As soon as Abbie got done eating her enchilada, she looked up and said to her mom, “LOOK MOM, I ATE MY WHOLE ENCHILADA! I’M JUST LIKE TIA*.”

And my heart melted.  Aunt-dom totally rulz.

Merry Christmas.

*The girls call me Tia, per the instruction of Sarah1, who came up with the nickname.  Tia is Spanish for “aunt.”

Gettin’ My Craft On

If you are under the age of 3 and/or one of my nieces or nephews, don’t look too hard at this photo.  It will ruin your Christmas and, um, kill Santa.  Or something like that.

I guess the same goes for you, Sarah1 and Jamie.  Cause when you’re giving gifts to kids >3 years of age, you’re really giving gifts to the parents, right?  You girls can’t study this picture or you’ll ruin Christmas.

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Y’all.  I’ve been real busy today.

Busy and Successful.  SERIOUSLY.  I’ll give you guys a full tour through my craft-o-rama after Christmas.  Cause I’m no fool, and I know Sarah1 and Jamie are still totally reading.  But I will say that when I started the day’s crafting I had zero projects started, and as of this very moment, I have 4 completed.  FOUR!  That’s a miracle!  Tomorrow I’m going to get my wrap on, and then I’ll be officially ready for Christmas.