November 2007

Holiday fiasco?

5 Comments / Family Funk, Friends & Family, Holidays, Kid Talk /

Every year I look forward to reading mommybloggers blogging about their holiday food fiascos and I always feel just a little be BETTER than them because I have never experienced such a thing. Possibly because I don’t do a lot of heavy duty holiday cooking or because I raised my children not to get all excited over holiday meals. Food. is. Fuel. That’s it. Unfortunately TW has come along and screwed that right up and the big kids have all of these big expectations for their holiday meals. Damn her. But it’s ok – she can do the cooking and deal with it if things don’t go quite right.

Seriously, as I was sitting here trying to come up with a holiday food fiasco so I could play along with Chris (y’all know how much I adore Chris, I’ve even pretended to forgive her for that whole “Big Yellow House” lie) and the only food fiascos I can come up with are related to my son. Poor Chris.

The first year my ex husband and I were divorced, Michelle and Chris headed back up to Jersey for the Thanksgiving feast. The ex had remarried and they were having some huge holiday meal with his new wife’s family. This was not a situation either Chris or Michelle were going to be in love with but Chris especially was no doubt uncomfortable just stepping in the front door. And then it happened. The boy dropped the macaroni & cheese as he was carrying it to the table.

The macaroni & cheese (which we do not have on Thanksgiving, EVER) was apparently one of the “new family’s” favorite Thanksgiving dishes and the kid dropped it. In front of everyone. Before anyone had a chance to eat a bite. Poor kid. The fact that his father divorced this “new family” hasn’t really helped ease the pain of that day – people still say stuff like “Don’t let Chris carry the macaroni & cheese”.

Also, the boy caught a birthday cake on a pink plastic serving tray on fire – inside of the oven – melted it all over the place which is why we have had a sign over our oven that says “Look Inside Oven” for about four years.

Do yourselves a favor – don’t invite my poor, sweet, son to your holiday dinners – he seems to be cursed.

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The Off Season

1 Comment / 2007, Books in Bed, Favorites, Fiction, Queer, Young Adult /

I was a little wary of The Off Season. I liked Dairy Queen pretty well but I was worried about the sequel. There were a lot of “issues” brought up in Dairy Queen and I just wasn’t sure the sequel would handle them the way I wanted it to. If anything, The Off Season was better than Dairy Queen.

I was particularly pleased with the relationship between DJ and Brian and how that entire thing played out. I was even more impressed with the handling of Amber & Dale’s relationship and how DJ adjusted to that. (Very very amused by the end, when the women were cleaning up Thanksgiving dinner to a cd by “Melissa something”. Ha. Excellent.)

I’d love to say “I can’t wait for the next book” but I’m worried. The curse of the third book might strike here. I’m thinking Murdock should quit while she’s ahead with DJ and family.

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A Lemon Earworm

2 Comments / Family Funk, Kid Talk, Sights & Sounds /

This morning, don’t ask me how because I don’t remember, it became clear that the small children did not know the song “Puff the Magic Dragon”. I did the only thing I could possibly do, I downloaded it, and some more Peter, Paul & Mary, and we listened.

The bird is not impressed by Peter, Paul & Mary and the only comment from any of the children was from RJ – “I like the part when the kid dies.” Errr, yea. OK.

Then, Lemon Trees came on and all three children listened. When it ended there was much discussion about how stupid the song is because the “fruit of the poor lemon is POSSIBLE to eat” – the kids like lemons.

Err, yea. OK. I was trying to work and will admit that I had absolutely no interest in explaining the moral of the story to them. And that was fine because it was time for eggs benedict (which coincidentally involves lemons) and they wouldn’t have listened to me anyway. They were too busy eating.

All day long I’ve been fighting to keep the chorus of Lemon Trees OUT of my head. Apparently Liz was thinking about lemons too because she eventually asked to make lemonade. And now, that darn song is totally and completely stuck in my head.

The lemon tree, oh so pretty
And the lemon flower is sweet
But the fruit of the poor lemon
Is impossible to eat

Over… and over… and overrrrrr again.

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The Virgin Blue

2007, Books in Bed, Fiction, Women /

Oops.

I picked up The Virgin Blue in audio several months ago. I handed it to TW and asked her if we had read it because I felt like we had but I couldn’t remember it from reading the cover or reading the reviews and stuff on Amazon. TW felt like we had read it but also couldn’t remember it. So, we started listening to it, it did not sound familiar. And then the tape broke.

I took it back to the library and decided to reserve it in print so we could finish it. The darn thing has been on the shelf for months and was due back this week so I pushed it to the front of the TBR pile and picked up where the tape had broken. And that’s about the time it started to sound familiar. But I just kept on reading.

And oh yea! I liked it the first time, too. I remember now.

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It’s a love/hate thing

4 Comments / Daily Dose, Day to Day, Family Funk, Kid Talk, Travel Log, Work /

Michelle had some long discussion with TW about me, my “new” job and my travel opportunities. Apparently Michelle is hoping that BlogHer will send me on many, many trips because she is sure I love to travel and have really missed traveling.

Errr, ummm, weird, right?

Michelle came to this conclusion because I am always encouraging HER to travel and she thinks this means I wish I had traveled more.

Dude. I traveled. A lot. And still travel. A lot. More than I’d like.

It’s not that I don’t like going to new places or visiting friends and family and really cool people (like the BlogHers on the west coast), it’s that I’m a creature of habit and it’s hard to maintain habit when I’m traveling.

Take this last trip to California. Awesome, except for the really crowded flights and that whole orange juice spilled all over me – twice – and the really annoying woman who not only spilled OJ on me – twice – but argued with the flight attendant and many travelers about our flight being delayed because she did not understand that her cell phone was displaying east coast time rather than west coast time.

Awesome except my carefully created schedule was out the window and I really hate that. I hate not getting up, getting a cup of coffee and getting to work on my email, my blogs, my boards, my life.

This is why I don’t do vacation very well. I always feel like I should be doing something else, like my email, my blogs, my boards, my life! Business travel makes me feel the same way. It’s a problem, I know. I should get over it and just chill. And I do, mostly. But there’s always some niggling little thought in my head that if I was at home, I’d be doing X and I really need to be doing X – that’s why I do it every darn day.

So no Michelle, I really don’t wamt BlogHer to send me traveling a lot. Once in awhile is good – really good, and fun. But I’d really rather stay home. I like it here. You, however… you should travel. A lot.

It’s a love/hate thing Read More »

links for 2007-11-17

1 Comment / Daily Dose /

links for 2007-11-17 Read More »

Books I read on the plane

1 Comment / 2007, Books in Bed, Children's Literature, Non-Fiction, Young Adult /

You may remember that I said I prefer reading chic lit or YA when I fly and that’s what I read on my trip home from San Jose yesterday. Unfortunately, neither of the books I read were all that great.

First was a “Caught Reading Novel” called Playing With Fire. All that did was depress me. It was geared for high school students and high school students should have a higher reading level than this – and they don’t. Which was what depressed me. I’m glad I read it, just so that I could be reminded that not everyone is a reader. Depressing, isn’t it?

Then, I read Writing Magic which was written by the author of Ella Enchanted. It’s a non-fiction “how to write” bit written for middle schoolers and it was slow and a wee bit boring. But then again, I’m not a middle schooler. So I’m cutting it some slack. If it wasn’t due back to the library, I’d hand it to Liz and RJ and see what they think (particularly RJ, the writer in the family.)

I will share one little tidbit that made me laugh out loud, much to the interest of the two men seated beside of me (both of whom were amused that we all three had iPhones and that I was reading children’s literature and writing away on a tablet PC.) On the invisibility of the word “said”….

Avoid other noticeable words, like affirm, allege, articulate, assert, asseverate (a word I’d never heard before I started writing this), aver, avow, claim, comment, confabulate, contend, declare, express, hint, mention, observe, opine, pronounce, profess, remark, utter, voice. I don’t mean that you shouldn’t ever use these perfectly fine words. I just mean don’t use them as a substitute for said.

Damn good advice.

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