How are you today? I'm superfantastic.

One Little Pumpkin

I apologize for the darkness of the video. My parents' house is the Batcave.

Owen Dances from Lori Graham on Vimeo.

Smooth Criminal

This is a stick up!

Hand over your wallet and nobody gets hurt!

Credit card, schmedit card! WHERE IS THE CHANGE FOR MY PIGGY BANK?

Actually, Owen knows exactly where I keep my change. As soon as I set my purse down, he pulls out my wallet and begins making the sign for pig. Then I go and get his piggy bank so he can put my change in it. It plays music when he puts a coin in and he dances, which is why I started giving him my change in the first place. It didn't take him long to realize that I am a sucker.

This time, not only did I get to watch him dance, the sixty cents I had in my wallet also got me a hairdo.

Not able to achieve the look he wanted using only his hands, he brought in the dinglehopper.

After that, we played a game where he'd pull back the curtain of my hair from across my face, kiss me, and let the hair fall in my face again. Over and over. Then I died of how cute it was.

Yeah, yeah, you're charming. But if I find my credit card missing and a huge bill run up for Rice Krispie Treats and Signing Time DVDs, I'll know exactly where to look.

Maybe I'm Just Like My Father

Ok, not just like my father. He, for instance, has athletic ability, mechanical intelligence, and is extremely outgoing. You know how people say, "he's never met a stranger"? Well, that's my dad. I, on the other hand, not only meet strangers but am capable of remaining strangers with people for quite a long time after we've met.

But there is also no maybe about whether I'm like my father. I can't tell you how many times my mom has told me that I am my father's daughter. Usually in reference to my unwillingness to worry about something or total willingness to procrastinate something. My dad and I are Winnie the Pooh. "Oh bother" is about as worked up as we can get about most things. (We also enjoy a smackerel.) My mother is Rabbit. She wants things done correctly and immediately. My dad and I will do a good enough job at things when we get around to them.

While I get my love of reading and affinity for special kids from my mom (also my eyes), I think a good deal of my intellectual curiosity comes from my dad. I remember as a kid asking a lot of questions like kids do and my dad, instead of bullshitting an answer or saying he didn't know, would go to one of the two sets of encyclopedias* in our living room and look it up. This is how he became The Answer Man and undisputed champion of Trivial Pursuit. I'm pretty good, but know exactly nil about baseball or most other sports that aren't football, so he'll always have an edge.

*Thank goodness we're no longer confined to a set of books for answers to things. I, for one, am deeply grateful to live in the age of the internet, when nobody is ever forced to wonder about anything for longer than it takes to Google it.

One specific oddity of his that I'm realizing I've inherited is related to leaving someplace. When anybody hints about leaving, my dad is ready to go right then. The time to leave has arrived and there will be no dilly dallying. He becomes increasingly impatient with stragglers. As do I.

Say, for instance, you're at a restaurant. You've eaten and paid and you're sitting around chatting. Someone mentions that they best be going. If you're with multiple people, somebody else will invariably start the conversation again and nobody will make a move for the door. This makes me crazy. No matter how nice a time I'd been having up until that point, once leaving is mentioned, I've mentally checked out of the situation and being dragged back into it causes me to become increasingly crabby.

I know it's ridiculous. If I'm out with people, it's because I enjoy their company. Why should one "well, I suppose..." cause me to suddenly despise being forced to sit with them any longer? I don't know.

In one group of friends, I was branded a Bad Leaver for my tendency to leave parties by just slipping out without saying goodbye to everyone. Not only do I not enjoy a lot of attention, but I was also, the moment I decided to leave, quite simply done. Walking around to say goodbye to everyone meant talking to a bunch of people, which meant not actually leaving for an indeterminate amount of time, which was not ok with me.

Nature or nurture, I don't know. But my dad and I will be in the car, so finish saying your goodbyes and wrap it up. We've been ready to leave for ages and we're not standing around by the door any longer.

Fine, get yourselves home.

Typical

I was at my brother's house yesterday. We were watching baseball (my favorite!) and waiting for Dawn to come home with Owen. When they came in, the following scene ensued.

Dan: Owen, give Aunt Lori kisses.

Owen: Looks up at me, stares for a moment, loses interest and walks away.

Me: I get that from a lot of boys.

Those of you who played along at home in the Should Owen Get His Adorable Curls Cut Off debate: yes, the haircut happened. Turns out, he's still pretty cute.

For the record, I did get both hugs and kisses just after that conversation above. The boy is a really exceptional hugger.

That shirt is correct.

One quick photo before I go:

Sure, the boy has more than one aunt, but I think we all know which one he means.

Baby or Middle Schooler?

Here's a new game: I'll list some things I said last week and you guess whether I said them to a middle schooler or my nine month-old niece, Allie. They are surprisingly similar.

1. Don't kick him!

2. What do you have in your mouth?

3. Are you pouting?

4. (Sung) All my aunts call me low-rider

Answers:

1. I said this to Allie. She was locked in a low speed chase with the cats, who would walk a few feet away and then lay down until she got to them again. Since Allie requires fingers to hold in order to walk, I told Calvin, the cat who is afraid of everything, that he had nothing to fear from Allie. "I've got her hands," I said. "You're safe." Then she kicked him.

2. Sixth grader! I had been playing fractions bingo with my seventh graders that morning. In my last hour, I saw a girl tear a piece of paper off and put it in her mouth. I told her to spit it out and she very unsneakily removed it from her mouth and tried to convince me that she wasn't chewing on paper. This involved opening her mouth to show me that there was (now) no paper in it. I could clearly see something red in her mouth though. It was a plastic bingo chip which she had found on a table and PUT IN HER MOUTH. Despite the fact that she didn't know where it had been, which was most likely on the floor and certainly in the hands of several middle schoolers, who clearly are not known for their adherence to basic standards of personal hygiene.

3. Again, this was a middle schooler. He was talking to the girl next to him and neither was getting any work done. I gave them a warning and the next time, I told him to move to a different seat. This made him very angry and he retaliated by closing his book and glowering at me for several minutes until I walked over to him and could not stop myself from asking whether he was really going to just sit there and pout. Answer: yes. Grade: F.

4. Well, ok, this was an easy one. Walking is Allie's very favorite thing to do, but since she needs to hold onto someone's hands, it can get hard on a person's back after a while. I just need her to grow another inch or two before I can walk her around without hunching over. On the plus side, she does often provide traveling music in the form of songs of her own composition. When I made her stop for a minute so I could pull her sock up, she sang me what can only be described as a lament.

That's it for today's installment of Baby or Middle Schooler? Thanks for playing!

Halloween Photo Extravaganza!

My Halloween weekend (Halloweekend, if you will) began on Halloween morning with a stop at the library near my brother's house so we could vote. Then we went to Sea World for a little while. My brother and sister-in-law live very close to Sea World, so they have season passes and they bought me a pass as an early Christmas present, on the understanding that I would also use it to occasionally take my nephew there in the form of free babysitting.

It is thus now free for me to get in to Sea World, so Dan and I stopped by while Dawn and Owen were at a little Halloween party. We rode the rollercoaster, saw the seal show, drank the free beer (Yay, theme parks sponsored by beer companies!) and had lunch. At Sea World, a slice of pizza comes with a side of fries, which is just everything that is right about America.

Later that evening, Dan and Dawn took Owen trick or treating while I stayed at their house and gave out candy. Owen wore this:

Photo copyright The Picture People

But it got EVEN MORE ADORABLE because the way he waddled in it made the tail wag and he sort of trundled around, all skunk-like in the cutest possible way.

Then on Sunday night, Lisa, Gary, Allie, and I went to the Halloween party at our church. Lisa had the idea that we could wear matchy clothes and one of us wear devil horns and the other one a halo and we could go as the good twin and the evil twin.

We both have the same dress from Amy's wedding, although we hadn't worn them together before because Lisa didn't make the plane to Amy's wedding because of all the vomiting. (Parents! If your child has been throwing up all night, DO NOT SEND HIM TO SCHOOL YOU GIANT IDIOTS.) In fact, I don't think we've dressed alike since we wore marching band uniforms our freshman year of high school.

I found devil horns on sale at Walgreens but no halo. We figured it would still make the point though.

Ok, so we had to explain the costume to pretty much everybody, but hey, we got to wear pretty dresses and our total costume cost was the $1.35 I spent on the devil horn headband.

Gary went as an England soccer (excuse me, football) fan, but he didn't start any riots or trample anybody or anything. Allie went as one adorable baby all decked out for her first Halloween and generally pretty pleased about it.

While all of these festivities were a lot of fun, I still consider the biggest success of the weekend to be the way that I did not buy any deeply discounted post-Halloween sale Halloween candy. Putting on a dress that fit a whole lot better when you last wore it a year ago: the anti-drug.

On this I will not stand for disagreement.

We are rather adorable, no?

One of us is clearly more adorable than the other, but there is just no competing with that boy. I mean, it is hardly my fault that I am grown-up-sized and that my hair won't even curl like that.

Which actually is a source of controversy. Except I'm sure you'll all agree with me and Dawn and everybody else except two people in my family who are obviously wrong. Dan (my brother and Owen's father) says that Owen needs a haircut. My dad agrees. Owen's mother and all of the rest of us reasonable and correct people are horrified at the idea of cutting off his curls. He doesn't NEED a haircut yet. Tell them, Internet.

Frankly, Allie cannot see why you even need to think about it. Just look at those beautiful curls behind us. This is a no-brainer. Just agree now before you further disgust her with your inability to see what is perfectly obvious. Sheesh.

You take the good, you take the bad...

Like that song I've just implanted in your head (and mine - GAH), which is certainly The Bad.  As is a lot of the stuff I've been posting about recently.  In an effort to combat my Debbie Downer-ness, here are some good things:

Katie sent me these flowers yesterday.  Well, not these particular flowers since this photo comes from the 1-800-Flowers website.  Mine are actually much prettier since they're almost entirely bright yellow and deep purple. 

A couple of years ago, I sent Katie some flowers when she got some bad news, prompting her to call me, on her blog, "The best boyfriend I never had."  Back at you, Katie.

Also among the good: this photo of my now-six-month-old niece, who can sit up on her own, thankyouverymuch, which I have titled Cutest Photo Ever:

Another good thing?  Really well-written and intriguing fiction.  Tony Delgrosso (Tony_D to you Twitterers) is making his novel Mr. Abernathy available for download for free (FREE!) one chapter at a time.  As of today, Chapters One and Two are online.  I highly recommend that you get over there and start reading.  Trust me, you'll be hooked.

And finally, we have the weather, which is approaching Pleasant.  Which works out well since I need to step away from the cover letters and go out among the people to do some errands.  And tomorrow, I'll be outside helping to stain the fence at my sister and brother-in-law's house.  Provided I am able to tear myself away from the chubby baby cheeks long enough to pick up a brush.  If you'll take another look at that photo, I think you'll find that the likelihood of that comes in somewhere around Not Very.

Happy Happy Birthday, Baby

Today, Owen is one. On Saturday, he'll have his party which will include what I assume will be a dream come true for him: his very own cake, plopped down in front of him and the freedom to go at it. The boy likes sweets and the boy loves making a mess.

I thought we'd celebrate here with a trip down Owen and Roary memory lane. If you've been around here for a little over a year, you know that Roary is the lion-headed blanket I bought for Owen before he was born. Dawn was kind enough to take a photo of Owen with Roary every month, so I could see how much bigger he was getting, particularly since I was a long distance aunt for the first nine months of his life.

Happy birthday, little one.

And many, many more.

Believe me, I have some stern words for Target, regarding their sale to me of a rapidly-shrinking Roary.

Yeah, yeah, it's a cheater photo post

All those who want to complain are welcome to come over here and pack my every worldly possession.  No takers?  Alright then.  Photos.

Just in case it wasn't clear, I think we all see who is in charge around my family these days.  Although he may not rule uncontested for long.

There's a new baby in town and she does NOT appreciate your boy hands on her pink throne of power.  Crawl away, giant baby, crawl away.

God help us all if they ever figure out how to team up.  It's only a matter of time, isn't it?

It's possible that this may only be hysterically funny to two other people.

I seem to have had a bit of a nostalgia theme going lately and in keeping with that, I am going to tell you something from my childhood that makes me laugh every single time I think of it.

First, some background. This would have been the early 80s.  If you keep in mind that Solid Gold was a big hit on TV at the time, that might help you.  For your picturing purposes, I'll tell you that we're talking about the three whitest children in America, two with long pigtails and one with the fashionable Luke Skywalker hairdo of the day.

I have no clue whose idea this was or how it ever got started, but here's what would happen:

Once we were finished with dinner, all three of us kids would run out of the kitchen, tear into the living room, one of us would turn out the lights, one of us would turn on the stereo, and then we would dance our fool heads off, but not until we had all yelled...wait for it...

DISCO IN THE DARK!

Babies R Cute and Fun For a While and Then You Give Them Back to Their Parents

Did I mention that I was going to be seeing some babies over the weekend?

Baby #1: My new niece, Allie

See how excited she clearly is to be meeting her Aunt Lori?  It only goes downhill from there.  See, in the course of people discussing Allie's skinny legs, it came up about how I was once even smaller than she is.  "Enjoy the skinny legs while they last," I told her, "If I'm any indication, you've got a couple of months, tops."

Baby #2: My slightly older nephew, Owen

Here we are at Christmas.  This is my favorite photo, thanks to the clearly panicked expression on his face, silently pleading with my brother (taking the photo) to please rescue him from the grips of the crazy lady.

And here we are, as of Sunday night.  One of us has put on quite a bit of weight.  For once, that's not me.

That same one of us also got two new teeth and learned to sit up unassisted.  He's working on crawling too, but so far it's pretty much just rocking back and forth while getting increasingly frustrated about not getting where it is he wants to go.  I'm familiar with the feeling.

Here we see Owen and Allie meeting for the first time.  Allie slept through the brief encounter and Owen was thoroughly unimpressed.

You may notice that I am holding onto Owen's right arm there.  That's because his right hand is his dominant smacking hand.  Owen's primary pastime these days: smacking.  His leg, the couch, his toys, even Glow Worm got a good smacking around.  Not his tiny cousin though. 

I did let him go to town on this toy.

He would smack the little doors repeatedly until they all stayed down and I'd pop them all open again.  Then he would turn and look at me with a face that clearly said I just got all of those closed, woman, KNOCK IT OFF.  Oh, what a time we had.  I even got him to sit still in my lap for a few minutes while I read him some books.  What?  It's not like I was teaching him phonics or anything.  We'll get going on that as soon as he turns one.

Yes, I think I like being an aunt.  All of the fun stuff with none of that pesky round-the-clock child-rearing responsibility.  And so far, not a single diaper changed.  That's what grandmas are for.

I Always Feel Like Somebody's Watching Me (You're welcome for that song.)

In case you hadn't noticed, I've had a bit of a month.  There's the stuff you know about, plus some that you don't.

Question: But Lori, isn't the stuff we know about more than enough to deal with?

Answer: YES.

The fact that Tattletale Coworker has now escalated to full-on spying is pretty much the living end.  I noticed her standing watching me today and then another temp came over to ask whether TC had needed anything from me since she saw her peeking over a cubicle wall at me.  (I wanted to give TC a nastier nickname, but if you think about it, how sad must her life already be if she makes it her personal mission to bust a temp for intermittent internet use?) 

Nevermind that I finished my entire assigned workload for the day by 12:30 and went back three times to get additional work.  No, the important thing is that TC most likely witnessed me printing off a copy of my Federal tax return from the H&R Block website since I forgot to bring it and didn't want to go home before the post office to mail my state return. 

(Yes, ok, I completed my state taxes in January, but I had to call to ask a question and I never, ever remember to make phone calls at appropriate times, which is one of the many reasons I vastly prefer email.  So I called last week and then mailed it today, complete with Ziggy return address label from the ones sent to me by The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.  Really brightened up the taxes, I thought.)

Fortunately, I will only be available for TC's surveillance for two more days this week.  On Friday, I fly to Texas.  I'm going all the way to Dallas on a teeny tiny plane, which is not the model that has been grounded, so I'm hoping that means I'll actually get there.  I'm pretty sure it's another little guy for the rest of the trip.  If my large plane back on Monday got grounded, well it sure would be tragic if I wasn't able to return to the watchful eye of my favorite coworker on time Tuesday morning, wouldn't it?

In the intervening days, there will be babies to snuggle and margaritas to drink, although I will not do both concurrently.  My brother told me that he probably has to work all weekend, but he knows he's not the important one anyway.  That's right, you're not.  It sounds like Owen will be able to catch a ride to me with his mom.  And I am assured that Allie's schedule is wide open for this weekend.

I also see that the pollen forecast jumps from HIGH on Thursday to VERY HIGH in time for my arrival on Friday.  Awesome.  I guess we'll find out whether my new friend Zyrtec is up to the challenge.

In the meantime, I better try to get my internet fix tonight, lest I make TC's awkward attempts at espionage fruitful again tomorrow.  I mean to stymie that woman, if for no other reason than it will provide me another opportunity to say stymie.

In which Allie demonstrates for you exactly how I feel today

Thank you, Allie, for that dramatic representation.  I bet you had no idea that you had the power to make the internet yawn.  Ah, the things your Aunt Lori will teach you!

We interrupt my pity party to bring you some HAPPY NEWS FINALLY THANK GOD

It's a niece!  My sister and brother-in-law (although mostly my sister, effort-wise) had a daughter, Allie Charlotte today at 12:28.  She is healthy and, I assume, beautiful. 

Update: She was 6 pounds, 4 ounces and 19 inches.  And here she is:

(I'm going to go ahead and let my sister decide whether she'd like to post photos involving herself just post-giving birth.  You're welcome, Lisa.)

Please hold for the next available post

I've been working on a post this week, actually for longer than that, but it's not the usual just get something written and slap it up on the blog before the Internet gives up because you assume they have the attention span of a goldfish and will desert you if you don't post three times a week kind of post.  Plus, thanks to THE CURSE, I've spent this week either half asleep or madly shoving food in my face, neither of which is conducive to typing.

So while you wait, please enjoy these photos of the giant baby who ate my little nephew.

Is it just me or does this look like some kind of paparazzi photo catching him drinking fresh out of rehab?  He is underage for that Sprite.

And finally, remember that tiny baby who was about the same size as Roary?

Well.

This concludes the HUMOR ME - I'M HIS AUNT portion of the program.  For now.

What I Did on my Christmas Vacation

by Lori Graham, age...whatever.

I went to Sea World.  Dawn and I rode in the very front of a fun roller coaster.

Owen and I spent some time chilling in our cool shades.  The chicks, they dig him.

Since it is my job to spoil Owen with sugary treats, I thought three months was totally not too early early to start him on funnel cakes.  Poor kid had been deprived of fried dough with powdered sugar for his entire life.

We went on the roller coaster again and saw Shamu.  It was a fun day.

The End

Merry Christmas, everybody!

Plus I got to wear flip flops today.

Yesterday, my day began at 4:45.  I am a firm believer that times beginning in 4 do not constitute Early Morning so much as Still Night.  But that's when I got up so I could be dressed, finished packing, and at Alan's by 5:45 for my ride to the airport.  Amazingly, we actually managed to have a conversation in the car at that unreasonable hour.  I think it might have even made sense.

Soon after, I boarded the tiniest plane I have ever personally seen.  We made it safely to St. Louis and were thanked for flying on American Connection, which we were reminded is part of the One World Alliance.  That name always sounds frighteningly Orwellian to me.  As if the One World Alliance, before too long, will be dictating our every thought and action.  The One World Alliance does serve Diet Dr Pepper on its flights though, making it the sort of totalitarian regime that I might be able to get behind.

In St. Louis, I had time to get an eggnog latte (see above re: getting up at 4:45) before boarding a normal-sized plane that would take me to San Antonio.  Oh look, I thought, I am in the window seat of the side with only two seats!  My favorite!  Except my row was full.  Full of a couple who gave me the puppy dog eyes about wouldn't I please trade seats so they could sit together.  Naturally, they decided to grab the aisle seat that one of them had and beg for my lovely window seat.  What they offered in return turned out to be a middle seat.  Directly in front of one screaming baby and one crying toddler.  And three rows back, which did not seem like a big deal until I was waiting for all eternity to get off the plane while needing desperately to pee.  At that point I began directing invisible hate rays toward the heads of the seat-stealing couple who were a good ten people ahead of me in line.  If you must sit together, couples of the world, you keep the crappier of your two seats and swap the better one.  Or you pull one over on a sleep-deprived sucker and just hope that karma isn't real.

As for me, I may not have gotten to look out the window or have access to either armrest for two hours, but I did get more than enough reward in the end.

T-Minus

45 hours until I leave for Texas to visit Owen.  I believe other members of my immediate family may be there as well, but I'm not really sure.

Things I am looking forward to about my trip:

-Owen, obviously.  He came topside three months ago yesterday and I still haven't met him.  This is clearly unacceptable.  Fortunately, my brother and sister-in-law did not send me the most adorable picture ever of all time until this week.  Seriously, it's so cute it hurts a little, like the way that really good frosting sort of makes your teeth ache with its sugary goodness.  Yeah, that cute.

-Warm weather.  DO YOU HEAR ME, TEXAS?  WARM WEATHER.

-Three of my very favorite things in the world: friends, margaritas, and queso.  In that order, I think, although it's a tough call with the last two.

-Not doing any data entry for seven whole days.

-Antagonizing my mother.  It's one of my special gifts (just ask anyone in my family) which has been squandered in the past few months.  I mean, I do my best over the phone, but it's not the same when I don't get to see the face she always makes in response.

-My mother's cookies.  Fortunately, she's not petty and won't withhold cookies no matter how much I pick on her.

-My dad's stuffing.  Not that the Stove Top Stuffing I "made" for Thanksgiving wasn't delightful.  I guess I just don't really compare the two since I sort of consider boxed stuffing an entirely different group of food than real Dad-made stuffing.  You'd have to try it to really understand, except you can't have any since I am going eat it all.

-Conversations with my sister which would appear to the casual observer to be serious, but are instead entirely sarcastic.  You know, like this one.  While that one didn't last long due to its exceptional hilarity, we can normally keep these things going for a really impressive amount of time without cracking.

-The Trivial Pursuit Battle of the Sexes Grudge Match.  Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without heated geeky competition.  Just as the baby Jesus intended.  I meant to brush up on my baseball knowledge in preparation for this year's game, but unfortunately every time I begin to think about baseball I immediately fall asleep due to overpowering boredom.

-The Christmas Eve church giggles.  This is yet another tradition, normally involving my brother and me.  Last year, Dan couldn't be there, but Dawn made a good substitute for cracking ourselves up with inappropriate for church comments.  One of these years, my parents are going to stop allowing me to come along.

Things I am not looking forward to about my trip:

-Being up early enough to get to the airport before my 7 am flight.  (Also not looking forward to this: my ride to the airport, a.k.a. Alan.)

-The Texas allergy crud.  I predict I'll spend the bulk of my trip slightly high on Alavert.

-Having to reacclimate to the cold when I get back.  Boo, cold.

-The inevitable five pound (let's hope that's all it is) weight gain.  Notice how about half of the stuff in the Looking Forward To list involves fattening food.

Probably at some point I should begin packing.  And by "packing" I mean "throwing a bunch of dirty laundry in a suitcase along with some flip flops".  Did I not mention free laundry in the list?

For the moment though, back to data entry.  T-Minus 13 1/2 hours of that to go.

Lives in Infamy

Happy Birthday to my big brother, Dan!

Sure, Owen, you think he's funny now.

But give it thirteen years and you'll be asking him to drop you off three blocks away from school and to walk at least twenty yards behind you in the mall.  I guarantee it.

You wouldn't like him when he's angry

Informed that babies can't have stuffing, Owen becomes enraged.

Other People's Children

Hello, Internet!  Thanks for all of the questions and topics!  And if you haven't left me a question or topic yet, there is still time.  Head on down to yesterday's post and ask away.  I will get to all of those next week.

Because today there is actually something exciting to tell you.  Now that my sister has announced it on her own blog, I am free to tell you that I'm going to be an aunt!  Again!

I tell you, when it rains nieces and/or nephews, it pours nieces and/or nephews.  This baby is going to be Future Niece or Nephew all the way until he or she is born in May because Lisa and Gary aren't going to find out ahead of time.  Which is fine, since Packers and Badgers onesies are unisex anyway.

It has been suggested to me that now that my brother has a baby and my sister is having a baby, it is my turn to have a baby.  To which I respond THAT IS NOT EVEN A LITTLE BIT FUNNY.

Besides, I don't know why anyone would go to all of the trouble of giving birth to a baby when you can just pick one up at Target.

Look at that - Owen is already taking an interest in his Aunt Lori's hobbies.  Clearly he will be an excellent role model for his Future Cousin.

About the twin thing

I have a twin sister.  I know I've mentioned that here before, but I don't generally make a big deal of it.  This is because a lot of people will make a VERY BIG DEAL about it if you tell them, and I'm not into that.

They think it's so neat.  They wish they had a twin.  They hope they have twins.  Do I like being a twin?  Are we identical?  Are we superclose?  Are we exactly alike in every way?  Do we play tricks on people?  Did we have a secret language?  Do we read each other's thoughts/feel each other's pain?  So my sister could come in to work for me some day and no one would even know?

Allow me to address these in order:

The Beaver called - he wants his word back. 
How would you know? 
I believe you'd have to be insane to want to have two infants at once. 
I've never not been a twin, so I have no basis for comparison. 
We look alike, but we haven't had any DNA testing done, so I can't say for sure.   (Allow me to clear up here that boy-girl twins are never identical.  One would think this would be really obvious, but I had a co-worker who got asked about her and her twin brother.  I never met Leslie's brother, but I feel confident assuming that there are some major anatomical differences between them.)
Not freaky twin close, but we like each other ok. 
Ha! 
Just once in second grade. 
No. 
You are an idiot.
Seeing as how I don't live in a sitcom, no.

I'd like to quote an eight year-old here who gave an excellent response to a teacher who was going into full on THAT'S SO NEAT mode about him being a twin.  "I'm not a twin, I'm a brother."  Preach it, eight year-old.

Why bring this up now?  Well, I learned courtesy of Holly and her Secret Bachelor Tuesday Lite that this season's Bachelor has a twin brother, who (completely predictably) impersonated him at a party with the bachelorettes to see if any of them were bright enough to notice.  Which was enough to elicit my ire on the subject.  Because another inane twin question I have repeatedly gotten concerned my ability to send my sister out with a guy I was dating.  I have never understood why anyone would think that a person would ever do that.  If I like a guy, I want to go out with him myself.  If I don't like him, why would I foist him on my sister?  It makes no sense.  Except now The Bachelor has given people a reason to believe that someone would do such a thing.  So allow me to clarify for the Internet that no person who would not pimp himself out on ABC would ever do such a thing.

Have we gotten that cleared up?  Let us continue on to more pet peeves, as long as I've got you here.

#1. Announcing to me that you have no intention of attempting to learn my name and/or tell me apart from my sister.  This takes many forms.  Guessing a name and then telling me "hey, I had a 50/50 chance!"  Using some combination of our names.  Saying "hey, twin!"  Etcetera, etcetera.  You have no idea how insulting that is.  I have yet to meet the twins who can't be told apart given a little bit of mental effort.  If you're not willing to expend that small amount of effort, please keep your mouth shut.

#2. Assuming that I have no identity of my own, separate from my sister and being a twin.  I'll grant you, some twins are like that.  Some twins dress alike all their lives and live next door to each other and marry other freaky twins.  For the record, we are not like that.  I am a person.  She is a totally separate person.  We're crazy like that.  You might think that would be obvious, but you haven't been asked, in reference to your sister, where your other half is.  You didn't have to explain to people in high school that no, you didn't play soccer even though your sister did, because you were uncoordinated and not capable of running and kicking a ball at the same time.  Plus you don't like soccer.  Mindblowing, I know.

#3. Thinking that I find twin jokes funny.  I don't.  They piss me off.  I'm serious.

I think it has something to do with my lifelong aversion to cuteness.  People think that being a twin is just so damn cute.  God forbid my sister and I do anything alike such as, I don't know, breathe oxygen, someone will say "Awwww...that's so cute!  They both like air!"  And then I will punch that person in the throat.

I could go on and on, but I'll stop here.  Except to say that I know, despite everything that I have written here, that some of you are formulating cutesy twin jokes for the comments section (I'm looking at you, Gary.)  Please know that if you're not within throat-punching distance, deleting you is a close second.

Breaking News

The nephew of the future is here today! Owen Wayne Graham was born at 7:56 p.m. He’s healthy and, I’m told, completely adorable. I have long suspected this.

I’ll post a photo as soon as someone emails me one of the billions of pictures my mother will have taken by the time the hospital forcibly removes her from the premises. I know, all of you males out there are already rolling your eyes and mentally going into your “all babies look alike and resemble old men/gerbils” litany, but I DON’T CARE.  All of you girls want to see pictures, don’t you? That’s what I thought.

Welcome to the world, little one.  I can't wait to meet you.

So...my sister got married...a couple of weeks ago

Well, about a week and a half ago now, I suppose.  That's why I went to San Antonio, although the next time I go it might be in large part so I can get another one of those mile high ice cream pie things.

Fortunately, the day of the wedding, people stopped confusing me with the bride.

I did get "When will it be your day?" from several of my relatives.  Always phrased that way. 

There was also the couples table next to me, which consisted of the entire rest of my immediate family.  Mom and Dad.  Dan and Dawn.  Lisa and Gary.  No room for a seventh wheel.  Come Christmas I'm sure I'll be at the kids' table with Future Nephew.

I got through it somehow...

I also made it through my toast, and everyone watching said they couldn't even see how badly the piece of paper I had it written on was shaking in my hand while I was speaking. I had a short and nice toast written and memorized, but then Lisa said she expected me to be witty, which was a whole new ballgame.  So I wrote a new toast while dinner was going on.  I told a bunch of friends that they were responsible for laughing loudly whether it was actually funny or not.  But everyone seemed to like it.  Except, perhaps, my sister who may or may not have been humiliated.

But really, I did not even make fun of her.  All of the jokes were at the expense of my family.  There are many things that could be said about my family, but an inability to laugh at ourselves is not one of them.

During that most magical time of the reception, Lisa attempted to throw the bouquet to Holly and me.  It hit the floor closer to Holly, so she had pick it up.  Yep, we are nothing if not itching to get down that aisle.  I am guessing that she didn't bring the whole caught-the-bouquet thing up with the guy she is fairly newly dating.  Unless maybe she decided she didn't so much want to date him anymore.  Because that could be a rather effective way to run a guy off, I would think.

As maid of honor, it was my duty to take money during the dollar dance.  I may have voluntarily staged a photo with the Official Professional Photographer of me putting dollar dance money down my top (see the above photo featuring lots of red cups).  Really though, I did get to pocket $20 out of the take.  Because Lisa and I had a deal that whoever got married first owed the other one $20. 

As it turned out, getting out of that skirt after the reception was reward enough.  I don't remember it being quite so binding when I wore it in January.  I blame the mile high ice cream pie.  Also probably the week-long queso orgy that was my trip to San Antonio.  And the gnocci and cannoli.  Well, damn, let's just blame me and my total lack of self-control.  The dress and its nasty accusations have been left in Texas though, so let's not dwell on it.

I should mention that all photos are courtesy of Holly

We loves us some self-portraits.

And Amy

Nice bra strap, Lori.  Klassy.  And yet, I picked this photo over the one of us standing together since in this one, I don't appear to be a midget.  (In case you haven't been playing along at home, Amy is 6'2 and I...am not.)

I don't have any photos of my own since my camera chose the night before the wedding to completely stop taking them.  Which means that for the foreseeable future, I'll have to rely entirely on writing with the words and no pictures in updating this site.  Yikes.

Things That Do Not Mix Well

PMS

Being damn near 30

Getting mistaken repeatedly for your sister, the bride, and having to tell person after person NO, I AM NOT GETTING MARRIED.

Just so we're clear here, I am not hankering for some big-time scarypants commitment.  My irritation had much more to do with the Look of Pity that followed the realization that I'm the spinster sister.  The "poor dear, maybe someday" look.  Don't think I don't know it by now.

Tantrum Over

I realize that I sound like a jackass whining about having SO MUCH TO DO before I go on vacation.  Poor me.  Yeah, I know.  I said I know, Internet!  Drop it already!

Moving right along. 

These are the three books that were left over after the last full box of books was packed.  I'm pretty sure there's some key to my psyche here, but I'm not about to go putting a lot of thought into that just now.

Amateur psychoanalysis will be accepted in comment form, so long as it is flattering to me.

Look what Target made me buy for Future Nephew.  At the rate his parents are going, after his birth we'll be calling him The Infant Formerly Known as Future Nephew (Yes, Internet, I know we could just call him Nephew, but that is not only boring but also completely lacking in pop culture references.  Stay with me here, people.)

It is a wee fuzzy blanket with a lion head in the middle.  And in case you couldn't read its name:

 

I have officially become THAT cheesy.  The lion's name rhymes with mine.  Send help.

This item not only inspired a fantasy wherein it became Future Nephew's favorite thing in the world, from which he refused to be parted, but also a peek into the future.   Future Nephew is a teenager (any teen age will do) and I am making him sigh deeply and roll his eyes by habitually bringing up Roary and how he was your favorite thing in the whole wide world and the two of you were so cute together and I GAVE HIM TO YOU BEFORE YOU WERE BORN. 

Future Nephew's internal monologue is going something like this: Good lord, woman, let it go already.  It was #teen years ago.  Why do you have to be so embarrassing?  Not only am I embarrassed to be seen with you, I am embarrassed by your very existence on the same planet with me.  Crazy old bat.

Then I will smack him upside the head.  Yes, it was his internal monologue, but by then I'm pretty sure I'll be able to detect even mental use of the word "old" in reference to me.  Young whippersnapper will have it coming.  Back in my day, we let our aunts prattle on and on at us uphill both ways and we liked it.

Remember in that last post how I was all "What if I pack the tequila?  Ha!"  Well, tonight I have been packing both tequila and margarita mix, along with roughly half of my worldly possessions, so blame for this post and any inanity and/or typos therein should be assigned to one Mr. Jose Cuervo. 

Buenos noches!

I can name that baby in two notes.

My sister-in-law Dawn called last night to give me the update.  They moved her tests up to yesterday and everything looks fine.  The baby's heart rate is normal now and movement is good.    Whew.  Dawn says to tell you thanks for the prayers.  I said yes, the Internet are sweet people, aren't they?

She also told me (as did my brother this morning) that Future Niece or Nephew is...drumroll please...Future Nephew!  It's a boy!  I could not be happier. 

(In all honesty, if she had told me it was a girl, I could not be happier with that either.  In this instance, I am remarkably easy to please.) 

I have been good so far on the aunt spending front and have only purchased one set of bibs that were just far too cute to pass up.  But have a feeling that Target will now be getting even more of my money in the form of something boy-centric.  I could use the $25 gift card that I received Saturday for working 8 hours at scoring, except that I already spent it on my lunch break on Monday.  I needed bread, ok?  And shoes.  Neeeeeeded.

But back to Future Nephew.  He won't need shoes for a while (although, maybe these?) but he does need a name.  This does not look likely to happen anytime in the near future seeing as how Dan and Dawn are at an impasse.  They are Indigo Montoya.  They will not be moved.  (Did I already use that line?)  He does have a middle name, which is Wayne.  This is Dan's middle name as well as our dad's.  This middle name has effectively removed Bruce and Shane from the list of first name contenders.  As well, I assume, as John.

I had a suggestion, which I feel has been unjustifiably dismissed.  I had an essay the other night where the student wrote about his cousin.  Dickey Wayne.  Future Nephew already has the Wayne part! 

(Future Nephew, if you are reading this at a future point after I have taught you to read, say age three, know that I am not serious here.  I would never do such a thing to you.  Although if it were somehow possible for me to legally change your father's first name to Dickey, I would absolutely do that.)

Anyway, we're open to suggestions.  Suggestions that don't involve naming the baby after imitation turtlenecks, that is.

Little help here?

The doctor is concerned with Future Niece or Nephew's heartbeat.  I don't really know the details.  Dawn will be getting monitored weekly and will have more tests on May 9, but that is a long damn time to worry about what's going on with your baby.  So if you're the praying kind, we'd appreciate a good word on their behalf.

Thanks,

Lori

I can call you Betty, and Betty when you call me you can call me Aunt Lori

So, exciting news from last night!  I paid $1.98 for gas!  Yes, less than $2/gallon!  Oh, and also I am going to be an aunt!

My sister-in-law is pregnant, due somewhere in the neighborhood of October.  They announced this last night by giving my parents the Valentine present of a sonogram picture.  (My parents were also pleased with my Valentine present, the announcement that I am not pregnant.  This is a gift that I intend to keep on giving for years to come.)  Far short of agreeing on any actual names for the baby, my brother and sister-in-law cannot even agree on a novelty nickname for their baby-to-be.  Dawn has decided on Dot, since this is basically what the sonogram picture currently shows (although my dad thought it looked like a picture of Mars) while Dan has chosen to christen his unborn child Spanky Flatbottom.  He has also threatened to whisper to the baby, grow a penis, grow a penis...  We assured him that it was already too late.

But on to more important things: what sort of aunt do I intend to be?  Well.  I plan to be the cool aunt who my niece or nephew eventually wants to run away and live with.  (Not that I will permit this to actually happen.  And should it, Dan and Dawn, know that your child will be returned to you posthaste.)  Think Auntie Mame for the new millennium.  Except without the part where my brother and sister-in-law die, leaving me with custody.  No, just the part where I am fun and worldly and possibly have a butler.

And now, a note to Target: yes, you will now be receiving the .01% of my income that had previously eluded you, thanks to your right-there-in-the-aisle-that-I-have-to-walk-past adorable baby products.  Remember the part where Auntie Mame got really poor because of the Depression?  I have a feeling that you, Target, will be my Great Depression.  But at least Dot Flatbottom Graham will never want for fashionable bibs.

Also, Baby, I won't really call you Betty.  Or any of the names on your dad's list, but I'm pretty sure your mom will see to that.

No Mo WriMo

I have had things to tell you, Internet, but no time or energy to write them. 

Things like my dad's response to having the concept of text messages explained to him.  Namely "what do they say, 'howdy y'all'?"  (Get it?  Tex messages?  What, not even a pity laugh?  Whatever.  Maybe THIS is why I don't write to you more often!  Did you ever think of that?) 

Or that this occurred while my sister and I were trying to cram all forty million of my mother's ornaments on her tree due to my dad's What Doesn't Go on the Tree Goes to Goodwill edict.  Score: Mom 1, Dad and Goodwill 0.

Or that I was only decorating my mother's tree because I was tricked into it with the offer of free lunch, which was hamburger casserole, which if you are turning your nose up at, it is clearly because you have never had my mother's.  Then I arrived for my lunch to find the tree assembled and sixty bins full of ornaments on the floor.  She is a sneaky one, my mother.

Or that we had to explain the concept of text messages to my dad because he knew that it was my sister's man on the other end of the phone and he kept offering to answer it.  Because since we both lived so far away, he has not gotten to do his scary dad routine since we were in college.  Which, come to think of it, doesn't really involve him doing anything scary except, I suppose, just generally being a large man.  I mean, come on, he doesn't even own a gun.  In Texas!  He does have a pretty intimidating phone voice though.  His phone messages always start with "Hello, Lori.  This is your dad."  Well yeah, I pretty much figured it was you.  Or Johnny Cash, but he hardly ever calls anymore.

But I could not tell you any of that because I had to finish my novel by midnight yesterday.  Except I, in an uncharacteristically overachieving move, finished at noon!  Twelve entire hours early!  Meaning that I could have written a post last night, but I didn't want to.  For the first time in a month, I didn't have to go and sit in front of my computer all evening.  I was not entirely sure what to do with myself but I knew that it was not going to involve writing anything.  It did, however, involve a bottle of champagne that I bought, as per NaNo suggestion, last weekend.  This way if I hadn't finished, every time I opened the fridge I would have had to face down the $11 champagne of my shame.  Instead, Amy and I got to drink it out of free Lutheran wine glasses.

Amy asked whether it felt like a big accomplishment, having finished an entire novel in less than a month.  But it doesn't feel that way to me.  It feels like I had been writing it for all eternity.  I actually finished the story with about 4,000 words to go so I wound up just going back through it repeatedly adding paragraphs, sentences, phrases, or even words where I could.  I discovered that I use A LOT of contractions, even apparently when I mean not to.  So a lot of sentences that would have started out like, "I don't think I saw her in there." became something like, "No, I do not think that I saw her in that room."  Four thousand words later, I was done. 

And now I have no intention of even looking at that thing again until probably January, so many times did I reread it this week.  I do think that there may be potential there, but it will require a lot of editing before I can even think about doing anything else with it.

But either way, I am still glad that I did this, despite how much, at times, it sucked.  The major accomplishment for me here is completing an entire plot.  A plot where things happen!  See, my writing professors in college were always giving me notes like "I like your characters.  Maybe they should do something."  So I tend to get stuck on the plot and then quit, but this month I couldn't!  I had to just keep making stuff up and hope that somehow it worked out.  And you know what?  It did!

And I cannot tell you how glad I am that it is over.

A little perspective: This entire ridiculously long post?  Only 746 words.

My Big Fat Texas Thanksgiving

One thing I forgot to mention that I am thankful for: my crazy insane extended family.  (Repetition intentionally used for emphasis.)

See, my dad's side of the family is huge and also crazy.  We always lived in Wisconsin and would have Thanksgiving with just the five of us and also my Grandpa (my mom's dad) for most of my life.  There was parade watching, eating, and football watching all carried out in a mostly orderly manner.  Now that we live in Texas, we were invited to family Thanksgiving at my aunt Nancy and uncle David's house.  We were told that, including us, there would be twelve people.  Which, if we had been thinking, we would have rounded up since obviously there were actually nearly twice that many people coming.  Twenty-three Grahams crowded into my aunt and uncle's house and let me tell you, Grahams are not small people. 

This is due, in large part, to the official Graham family pastime, eating.  When we have a reunion, we plan a few years in advance and after the date and place are chosen, meal planning begins.  Years in advance.  We take it seriously.  So just imagine how an eating-intensive holiday went.  We are fortunate to have several talented cooks in the family, among them three generations of school lunch ladies who know how to cook in large portions.  (My cousin Linda, last in the lunch lady line, has two teenage sons, neither of whom were amused when my sister asked them which of them was going to carry on the family tradition and don the hairnet.)  Probably I did not need the second helping of stuffing and mashed potatoes with gravy, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.  And if you think that in addition to turkey, ham, and miles of side dishes, there were not also five different desserts, then you have clearly not met my family.

The other thing that we take seriously is the art of scaring each other.  The origin of this tradition, as near as we can tell, was when my dad as a kid would catch june bugs and throw them at my aunt Jody.  So now there is pretty much always a fake roach and/or rubber snake around at every family gathering and it never ceases to fool people.  The high point of the rubber snake joke came when my cousins put a huge one in their parents' bed that was apparently so convincing that my uncle Bo SHOT IT WITH A SHOTGUN  (this is Texas, folks) leaving of course a rather large hole in their mattress.  Then there was the time we roasted a pig on a spit when we rented a ranch for a reunion and the head and legs were arranged to look like the pig were sleeping in the bed of one of my female cousins.  The screaming could be heard all the way to Oklahoma and parts of Kansas.  Which sort of makes the little lizard that my cousin's son Kyle threw on my cousin/his aunt Laura on Thanksgiving look pretty tame by comparison, but it was still enjoyable for all of us.  Well, except Laura.

Then once the dishes were done and all reptiles had been taken back outside, there was a white elephant exchange with gifts that Linda and Laura had bought.  Of course there was lots of stealing other people's gifts, in many cases things that the stealer did not even want, but just took to be obnoxious.  (Mostly this was my Dad and his protege in obnoxiousness, my cousin Brent.  Who, coincidentally, is Kyle's father.  We assume he is quite proud.)  After the white elephant gifts were gone, there was Pictionary and the men loudly and repeatedly complaining about getting all of the hard words, right up until one of my cousins got "heart" and my brother got "Wisconsin".  Bunch of whiners.  And then people started leaving and, in what may be a first for us, we concluded an entire family event without one single person getting thrown in the pool.  Mostly, I believe, because the nearest pool was several blocks away. 

And there you have a peek inside the wild world that is a day with my family.  Or one-third of my family, anyway.  Tip of the iceberg, people.

Aw, slattocks!

Did you know that teaching children to read is not only pointless, but also unnecessarily mean?  Apparently it is.  I'm glad I got out of that unimportant field and stopped torturing children needlessly with phonics and reading comprehension!  What a waste!  And if someone happens to beat Michael Rogers senseless with a hardcover copy of Jane Eyre, I will certainly not be responsible.  Mine is a paperback.

But enough of my pre-coffee ranting!  That is not what I came here for today!  I came here today to tell you, Internet, about two very cool people that I met this weekend.  They are Paul and Jobie of Manchester, England (Hi, Paul and Jobie!)  Paul, according to his fancy schmancy genealogy program, is my third cousin, once removed.  He discovered in his research that he had quite a few distant relatives living in Texas, so he and Jobie came on over to visit. 

And have we showed them the place?  Why yes, we have.  (And by "we", I mean "other people" since I really just met them at my parents' house for dinner.)  All of the splendor that is East and Central Texas!  Particularly Wurstfest, which is, as you may imagine, rather beer-intensive.  Why, they even got to go to Sea World!  Where Jobie and Dawn rode the roller coasters without Paul and Dan.  Apparently being chicken about roller coasters exists on the Y chromosome throughout my extended family.

Also strong in my family is the force of Attention Deficit Disorder.  My father has it, I have it, and my third cousin, once removed has it.  We attribute to the ADD our widely varied interests and our shared inability to finish things.  Ah, family.  Who understands you better than distant relatives you've never met who live on a different continent?

And who better to use for free lodging and tour-guiding in a couple of countries you have always wanted to visit?  Because we've been invited to visit and see England and Ireland, an invitation which I fully intend to accept! 

And where will I be staying when I get there?  Slattocks!  This is where Paul and Jobie live, chosen partially for the extra fun name.  (Totally sound decision-making logic, if you ask me.)  Say it, Internet: Slattocks!  Ok, but now say it with an English accent.  Way more fun, right?

In addition to their generous hosting offer, Paul and Jobie have further given me (and by extension, you) permission to use this word any way we want!  Because they don't know what it means, so we might as well make it up, right?  So I have decided that slattocks will make an excellent all-purpose swear word.  What about you?  How will you use it?  And will you maybe water my plants and collect my mail for a while?  I have a trip to take.

Big Brother is Reading

No, not the Federal Government!  My literal big brother, Dan.  And he left me this comment:

I realize that getting a comment from your brother, even if it is your favorite one, is considerably less exciting than one from just about anyone else.  That being said, after reading your blogs for some time now (what else do I have to do - look for a job?) I find the complete lack of any mention of me startling.  I'm sure people would rather hear about me than skorts or your lack of swimming caps.  You did, after all, inherit your sense of humor from me.  You should appreciate this  because you know it took me well over two hours to type this much.  Now give me my props.

Let's set aside the fact that he was previously mentioned here, here, here, here, and here.  I will write an entire post about my brother!  That thing about the typing is true.  Fact #1 about my brother: he types with two fingers.  It takes FOREVER.  Other random facts: he is 32 years old, actually likes to watch baseball, has a baseball card-related website, has really terrible taste in movies, and enjoys many processed snack food items.  What's that?  You want to see a photo of the three of us with funny hair?

At the risk of making this post-about-my-brother once again all about myself, check out my bangs!  The height!  What you can't see is my pony tail o' spiral-permed locks.  While Lisa is doing an early 90's bob with side bangs.  And Dan still had all his hair!  We Graham kids rocked Parker High School's 1992 graduation!

See how it looked there as if we actually liked each other?  Well, we didn't.  By high school it wasn't too bad, but the early years were mostly rough.  Sure, we played a lot of Star Wars and G.I. Joe together, but there was even more time spent playing "Dan practices WWF wrestling moves on his little sisters."  Or "you stand in the driveway while I ride my bike up the hill and then back down, achieving breakneck speed before riding dangerously close to you."  Or "I'm going to sit on you until you give me this chair so you might as well just give it up now."  It's thanks to Dan that I learned how to get out of a half-nelson and stopped biting my nails just to have some sort of weapon for my defense.

As Amy suggested in her comment on Dan's comment, no discussion of the Graham childhood/sibling relationship would be complete without a mention of the Tessmer kids.  Our lifelong friendship was forged on the playground of Washington Elementary School when a group of boys playing Star Wars found themselves in need of a Chewbacca.  Jim Tessmer, being the tallest kid on the playground, became Chewy to my blonde brother's Luke Skywalker.  (One thing Tessmers have on us Grahams: height.  Our average height of 5'9 pales by comparison to their collective 6'1.  Also, Tessmers are much craftier.  In the sense that they make things, not in the sense that they are in any way diabolical.  Although if they were truly crafty, in the wily sense of the word, I suppose we'd have no idea.) 

We girls probably met around the age of 5 at one of our brothers' Cub Scout softball games.  Our parents became friends, and the five of us sort of wound up de facto siblings.  Which meant that we were not only able to play together, but also felt comfortable being total jerks during games of Encore (Dan) to the extent that a child from the other family (Amy) felt comfortable throwing a timer at us.  Here's a picture from a few years ago featuring Dan, Jim, Amy, and Lisa in a heartwarming display of pseudo-sibling affection:

I'm not pictured, having already left the Frozen Tundra for DC.  Anyway, two and a half years ago, my brother got married, bringing a stranger into our little gang.  Fortunately, we discovered that her own skill at and enjoyment of mocking Dan matched our own.  So we liked her immediately.  Welcome, Dawn!  Perhaps we girls could get together to play Cabbage Patch Kids or Barbies, just so you won't feel that you missed anything.  Then we will throw things at Dan!

Of course, the picture of me with good Sarah Jessica Parker photo-inspired hair (far left) would turn out extra-blurry.  Anyway, back to Dan, who now lives about 10 minutes away and sometimes makes me dinner.  I hope you've enjoyed your very own post/photo montage!  So...when are you cooking again?

The Christmas Roundup

So how was your Christmas?  Mine?  Oh, pretty good, thanks for asking.

It was my first Christmas not in the frozen tundra.  Sure, there was that one year when we went to Florida but we didn't leave until Christmas day so we did the freezing cold/snow thing for the whole run-up to Christmas, allowing me to get in the proper holiday spirit.  And yet, this year on Christmas Eve it was in the 70s here.  How is a girl supposed to dress for Christmas Eve church under those sort of conditions? 

(This girl decided to wear a suit, of all things, because she owns three and has had no occasion to wear one since leaving DC.  Which is just a waste of decent clothes and pretty, pretty Italian shoes gotten for free from a co-worker whose aunt brought them back for her and whom they didn't fit.)

Anyway, my sister Lisa and I did the Christmas Eve thing at her church, followed by Chinese delivery with Lisa's roommate Jenny.  Who opened a gift comprised of whole box of baking utensils, about which she was actually excited.  I, for obvious reasons, received no baking utensils this year.  For which we can all be thankful.

Then on Christmas morning, Lisa and I went to my church and then on to our parents' new house here in balmy South Texas.  Of course, it is NEVER balmy in my parents' house, so I packed a fleece and warm socks to ward off the "Mom's having hot flashes" chill.  We sat down to dinner and I, apparently having narrowly edged out my sister for the "most religious person at the table" title, was chosen to say the blessing.  I was hungry, and thus it was brief.  The real highlight of the meal was a pumpkin dessert made by my brother, which was apparently one part pumpkin goo, nineteen parts butter.

Then on to the gifts.  The role of present-hander-outer was played by my brother whose lust for gifts and impatience for opening them rivals that of any kindergartener you know.  We are required to make at least one guess before opening anything, with my sister and I always using "diamond tennis bracelet" as a standard fall-back answer. 

So there we were, my brother dividing gifts into piles for evenness of distribution, my dad loudly and regularly reminding everyone that the largest gift was for him (it was a grill, which he knew full well) and two of us repeating the phrase "diamond tennis bracelet" every time another box came our way.  No diamond tennis bracelets this year, but I did receive some sweatpants for wearing to the pool that were wrapped in the box for a heating pad endorsed by George Burns.  My mother never gets rid of anything.  Ever.  For any reason.

Which, thankfully, includes receipts.  Not that I was thinking of returning anything...

Once the presents were opened, wrapping paper cleared, and the grill and my new copier/printer/scanner/fax converted to footstools for my dad and I, the Packer game was turned on.  Which brought no holiday joy to anyone except my traitorous brother who turned Bear fan back in the 80s.  Not that he didn't pay for that decision later in many years of the Bears sucking.  And then he moved to Baltimore a few years ago and became a Ravens fan.  Good move, Dan.  Excellent timing.

Finally the Trivial Pursuit game was produced.  The Trivial Pursuit battle of the sexes grudge match is a big geeky tradition in our family.  We women, tragically short on baseball knowledge, lucked out with a fashion question on the sports & leisure category and narrowly defeated the men.  To be fair, there were four of us (Lisa, Mom, me, and my sister-in-law Dawn) versus just the two of them.  But this is more equal than you might think since my dad knows almost everything.  Too bad for him that the "freakish ability to memorize random and useless facts" gene was passed down to both of his daughters.

I managed to leave without any leftovers, a feat in and of itself.  And that, folks, is an exciting peek inside a glamorous holiday with my family.  God, family, and the Green Bay Packers, in the immortal words of Coach Lombardi.  Who, incidentally, also never bought me a diamond tennis bracelet.

Thanksgiving in Review

Let's start with Thanksgiving Eve.  I saw Rent, of course, because that was when it came out.  And after that I had to go home and search the entire house to find the recipe for the pumpkin cheesecake.  At one point, I was ready to give up the hunt and get online to download a new recipe, but of course the DSL was doing its evil flashy thing and wouldn't let me in.  So I finally found it and had to go to the grocery store at 10pm the night before Thanksgiving.  Which I do not recommend.

I got what I could think of for the cheesecake on Tuesday night at SuperTarget, except for the pumpkin pie filling, which SuperTarget did not have.  Not so Super if you ask me.   I also noticed that the only eggs in our fridge had expired in July, so I thought I'd get some of those as well.  Plus we were out of Pop Tarts.  So there I was in line at HEB with my pumpkin pie filling, eggs, and cinnamon and brown sugar Pop Tarts and I had to wonder whether the check-out guy thought I was inventing a new dessert.  And then I had to wonder whether a person could make a pumpkin pie with a Pop Tart crust.  And now you're wondering too, aren't you?

So I built the cake and put it in the oven just before midnight.  And then read the recipe.  The part about the baking for 1 hour and 45 minutes.  And also the part about cooling in the oven for an additional hour.  So it was looking like a late night. 

My favorite part of the recipe is the very last instruction.  Chill.  So I did.  For two and a half hours while this thing baked and cooled.

And then my sister called at 9:30 am to ask me to bring something to my brother's that I immediately forgot upon hanging up the phone.  And then I watched some parade and ate some Pop Tarts.  Before getting in the shower roughly one hour late.  There was a parade, people!  Marching bands!  C-list celebrities!  Killer balloons!!! 

So I'm finally on my way out the door, cheesecake and wine in hand, when my brother calls to ask if I have any twine.  Which I do, a fact that I don't remember until 2 stores later.  They need some twine to tie the turkey's legs together so they can begin to cook it.  So no rush, but we won't eat for hours until after I arrive with twine, so get a move on!

Which leaves me driving around San Antonio with the AC on high in an effort to keep the cheesecake cool in the "fall" 80-degree weather trying to find an open store that stocks twine.  HEB, while helpful with the pumpkin goo and all, does not come through on the twine front.  Leaving me no choice.  There was no other way.  To save Thanksgiving, I had to go...to Wal-Mart.  Dun, dun dun...

Where I found twine, remembered I had twine at home, and bought the damn twine already.  The rest of the day was pleasantly drama-free.  The turkey, cooked by my sister-in-law, turned out beautifully.  I ate several metric tons of stuffing.  As well as some mashed potatoes, green beans, and cheesy bread.  And cranberry sauce.  The kind that retains the shape of the can.  Oh yes.  It's not Thanksgiving without can-shaped gelatinous cranberry substance!

Several days later, after we had digested, we ate some cheesecake.  And then I brought the rest home.  Over half a cheesecake.  Expect several extra chins in my near future.  Because pumpkin cheesecake is a terrible thing to waste and a wonderful thing to eat for breakfast.

I don't work alone

My sister and I, though very different in many respects, do have the exact same sense of humor.  Which means we think we're hilarious.  We believe ourselves to be an enormously talented comedic duo.  For example, here is an actual conversation that we had at a party:

Innocent Bystander: I hate Slipknot.  They sound like (insert barking noise.)

Lisa: That sounds like a seal.

Me: No, you're thinking of Sealsknot.

Innocent Bystander walks away.

Lisa: Right, Sealsknot.  What a great band.

Me: Yeah, those seals are so talented.  Not all seals can play like that.

Lisa: Well they can, but not all of them are willing to tour.

That last part sends us right over the edge and hysterical, silent shaking laughter ensues for the following ten minutes.  Tears are streaming down my face and we both turn shades of red most often found on produce.  And no one in the room notices.

Which is fine, because if they had, they would have asked what was so funny, and we would have told them, and they would have given us How is that funny? and You are so weird. looks and we would have said "I guess you had to be there" while really thinking Seals who won't tour!  It's pure comedic genius!  What kind of idiot doesn't see that?  And nobody wins in that scenario.