Zip it!

Question: Which is worse? Being told by a stranger that your fly is open, or going an entire day and then finding out later that your fly was open?

Saturday morning, there I was: minding my own business at The Wal-Mart, doing shopping for my Christmas party in T-11 hours. As I turned the corner to almost every aisle, there he was - Open Fly Guy. Fly wide open, so far open it was clearly open. You know what I mean; your fly can be open, but still flat, or it can be open and not flat.

His was not flat.

I saw him once by the ketchup and ignored it. No big deal, right? Then I saw him a second time, by the soup, and ignored it again. A little uncomfortable, but not the end of the world. A third sighting by the milk almost did me in. I wanted so badly to tell him, but I didn't want to embarrass him.

I am of the opinion that if I have a wad of TP stuck to the bottom of my shoe or something equally embarrassing, I would want to know. Thank you so much in advance for telling me.

Andy says he'd rather just figure it out himself than be told by a strange lady. Which is worse for you? He also wonders why I even noticed it in the first place. Because it was wide open! And I do mean open.

Let us not even ponder the fact that maybe he wanted his fly to be open, and just hope that he was blissfully unaware of the indiscretion until much later in the day.

What would Jesus do?

I think if he discovered his Christmas tree tipped over because the plastic stand broke on the cheapest $50 tree he could find at Target, Jesus would return it and fork out the dough for a better tree.

Wouldn't you?

At least that's what I'm going to do.

Maybe my super-snazzy-retro-glittery-starburst-star from Crate & Barrel (AnJ!) will stay on top of a more expensive tree? Andy keeps telling me not to be cheap.

I guess I should start listening to him.

Update

Our fake tree just tipped over. Luckily it decided to fall into a corner, instead of forward, so it's still kind of propped up.

The super-snazzy-retro-glittery-starburst-star fell from its perch on top and severed a limb on my one and only Christmas poinsettia.

I think it's the Spirit of Christmas getting back at me for making a mockery of the season.

Good grief

A part of me died inside over the weekend.

There were many conversations, multiple shopping trips, and a last-minute run to Target that all led up to it, but it finally happened: I bought a fake Christmas tree, and as I handed over my debit card, I felt a huge "whoosh" as the spirit of Christmas left me.

I am pained just typing it.

A fake Christmas tree. As in, not one real branch protruding or real scent emanating from the tree I carried into my house in a box. Just like I would have done with a brand new tent.

I couldn't help but think that I had succumbed to the commercialism of Christmas, a la A Charlie Brown Christmas. In fact, I almost considered getting a pink aluminium tree; I figured, if I'm going fake, why not go all the way? It seems almost everyone I know has started buying fake - you know, the modern commercial Christmas spirit Lucy was so inclined to favor. In fact, I think Lucy put it best when she said, "Look, Charlie, let's face it. We all know that Christmas is a big commercial racket. It's run by a big eastern syndicate, you know."

It used to be that I got excited about the tree, picking it out, tying it to the car, bringing it home, and setting it up. This year I had thoughts about whether the tree would catch on fire while we were in Utah for a week, or how many needles I'd have to vacuum up because we wouldn't be here to water it for a week. So not only am I getting older, but I'm getting more practical and also a little more lazy.
Good grief!

But after the tree was up, I realized that Sally was clearly the smart one. Christmas is not about what your tree looks like, or how many decorations you have hanging in your house (including fake garland on the staircase), or how much baking you do.

It's about getting presents. And right now there are two big ones under that fake tree with my name on it. Hallelujah and Merry Christmas!

(You know I'm kidding. I know Christmas is about Jesus. Good grief! Don't you know sarcasm when you hear it?)

What smells like burnt pumpkin pie?

What would you do with one cup of leftover canned pumpkin? I thought making homemade pumpkin pie spice doughnuts was the answer to that question. Let us pause for just a minute to ponder two things:

1) Um...yum!

2) No wonder I can't lose 15 pounds. Ahem.

While in the throes of this blissfull, flour-encrusted domesticity on Sunday, I thought hot apple cider would go very well with said doughnuts. But once I started making it, I realized we didn't have enough apple juice to make it work. Raspberries don't taste too strong, right?

Wrong.

Mixing half plain old apple juice, and half apple-raspberry juice made a delicious raspberry-flavoried drink. With cinnamon, allspice, cloves, and oranges. It tasted just okay, but that stuff smelled awesome. So for the past few days, it has sat on my stove, and I've heated it up here and there to make the house smell Christmasy and drive away the smell of death that seems to lurk in every room here (that is another post for another day).

And yesterday, we heard the good news that Garrett was in town. It's not every day a brother-in-law drops in to see us (though we wish it was), and we were caught unprepared. Kitchen a mess. TV room a disaster from my failed felt ball-making activities from the previous night. And the house was smelly.

So, as soon as I got home, I started up the pot of raspberry cider, and in a few minutes, the house smelled divine. But when you go to dinner and a movie without turning off the burner, you come home to a house that smells like burnt pumpkin pie, and a pan that is covered in a sticky brown goop.

That's right. In this season of fire-safety awareness and the coldest time of year to lose everything you own to a flaming pot of hot raspberry cider, I left the house unattended for five hours with the burner on. Luckily, nothing burned down, and the worst we had was the smell of burnt pumpkin pie.

Which I'll take over the smell of death any day.

Here's what I've been thinking a lot: can we move yet?

How is it that I let a month pass by without blogging?

While I can't remember exactly why, I do know that we dealt with a few things that took up my time. Mainly this:

• I had a huge project at work. Like 28 hours of overtime in one week huge. That lasted for three weeks.
• After that, I lost access to my login ID at work, and couldn't get to my laptop for three days.
• My laptop died. I think it was fed up with all the work I made it do. Getting it re-imaged took a couple of days.
• I spent a weekend making Muppets. Watch Episode 3 here to see how they turned out.
• Andy and I both got food poisoning. Down (and up and down) for several days.
• And then Andy had surgery.
• After surgery, we had Thanksgiving - parents visited and made a most scrumptious dinner. And then cleaned it up! (thank you)

I hereby make a promise not to let another month go by without blogging. So sorry for my absence.