The holidays are always busy for me and I pretty much bit the ground running from November 1st, when I started planning a surprise party for my mom’s 50th birthday, until like next Sunday when the season will officially be over for me because we still have New Year’s and second Christmas to get through.
As it stands we are wrapping up first Christmas which was spectacular save for the blizzard that hit the East Coast and threw a ginormous monkey wrench into my life (more about that later). As it stands I’m currently typing this entry from my brand new, bitchin’ iPhone 3Gs that my lovely boyfriend, Santa Steve, bestowed upon me. Having been dubbed the LadyPhone by Steve’s brother because of it’s pink and purple case, I don’t remember life without it.
So in a few more days I hope to rewind and recenter and get on some sort of regular posting schedule. For now, I’ll just leave this little meme up as a bittersweet remembrance of the holidays before it’s time to usher in a new year and reflect on an old one (generally a nice way of saying I’m late in wishing everyone a Merry Christmas as always, so hope you had a Happy Christmas and Merry Holidays and all that jazz).
Eggnog or hot chocolate? Hot chocolate, hands down. Though I’m not a huge fan of it, I hate eggnog. And I have tried quite a few times so I’m not snarling my nose up for the sake of it. It’s just the egg part. Too much egg, not enough nog. But overall, give me a few glasses of Cabernet and I’m a holly, jolly girl.
Does Santa wrap the presents or leave them open under the tree? Both. There were a few years he unwrapped and assembled them and a few where everything was wrapped. Steve and I dont have kids so everything is wrapped because it’s from us. But seeing my brothers and nieces stash makes me realize we would probably wrap the boxes. Less time to assemble stuff and night and cutting back on chances of little eyes peeking.
Colored lights on a tree or white? Alternate. Whatever mood I’m in that year, which is why I’d never really buy a pre-lit tree. But I usually lean toward colored inside and white outside.
Do you hang mistletoe? We did when I was little but have t in years. Might have to revive the tradition.
When do you put your decorations up? If were traveling for Christmas we don’t put any up. If were home I have them up as early in December as possible. Only because I’m type-A like that.
What is your favorite holiday dish? Ham. Ham, ham, ham. Love it. Have been eating it all week. That and this broccoli- cheese-Ritz cracker casserole my mom has always made.
Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve? One. It’s usually pajamas, or at least has been the past few years. Love doing that.
How do you decorate your Christmas tree? Random mish mash of sentimental and meaningful ornaments. I don’t do ” theme” trees. I prefer memories.
Snow: love it or hate it? Love the first few hours ofnew fallen snow when the world is quiet and you can almost hear the flakes falling. After this season, do not love driving in it and remembered why I hate it a week later – dirty, black four foot mounds of ice.
Can you ice skate? Hahahahahaha! I can’t even walk most of the time.
What is your favorite holiday dessert? Not the biggest on sweets these days but I’ll rarely turn down a fresh baked chocolate chip cookie.
What is your favorite holiday tradition? The Festival of Lights and visting family.
Candy canes: yum or yuck? Like candy corn, I’ll have enough to satisfy the holiday urges but when I’m done, I’m done.
Favorite Christmas show? Elf. A Christmas Story. And Christmas Vacation. I will watch all three at least five times during the season.
So just like that another holiday season has passed and I’m anxious to move into a new year. Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!!
There’s no excuse for me not posting in a month except I was lazy and unmotivated. And that’s all I’m going to say about that. Instead, I’ll move forward and make up for July’s monthly love post as well as throw some August in there.
And without further adieu, here’s everything that I loved in July.
Most importantly was weekends spent with friends. July 4th we had a few drinks and blew stuff up in a friends driveway. The following weekend was a pool party to celebrate another friends birthday. And it culminated the weekend of the 18th with a trip to Myrtle Beach to celebrate another friends birthday. We spent the weekend playing games, drinking some beers, hanging out on the beach, shopping and eating. A LOT! One of our friends has a lovely little house in a smaller, less touristy area north of Myrtle Beach and the great thing was that it wasn’t that crowded and the town was small and tiny enough to not even have a McDonald’s, just a bunch of sleepy little tourist shops and food joints and a gas station or so. All in all, it was lovely weekend spent with friends and fun in the sun and I had such a great time!
We culminated that weekend at Rioz, a Brazilian churrascarria (steakhouse). We had been looking forward to this for weeks and had pretty much specifically planned this trip around this place. It is basically all you can eat meat. I’ll say it again – ALL YOU CAN EAT MEAT! You sit down and they give you a coaster – one side is red and the other is green. You flip it to green to have them continue bringing you meat and when you need a break, flip it to red. The servers bring the meat on skewers to your table and cut off pieces and you just keep taking them until you can’t eat anymore. I’m talking filet mignon, filet mignon wrapped in bacon, chicken, lamb, flank steak, ribs, pork sausage, chicken wrapped bacon – just uber-deliciousness. And they have a phenomenal salad bar (but who wants salad?) with fresh shrimp, cheese, sushi, pasta. They also give you plantains and mashed potatoes with cheese and polenta. But again – who has room for any of that when it’s all you can eat MEAT! And it’s good cuts of meat and they are cooked succulently and flavored perfectly. Not to mention the grilled pineapple sprinkled with cinnamon that they cut off warm at the table and the drink and dessert carts they roll to your table. I had a caipiranha, which is basically just lime juice, sugar and a shitload of rum. And for dessert, a ginormous piece of cheesecake that was absolutely freaking delicious! And we both got all of that and got out of there for about $100 ($35 per person + extra for dessert and drinks). Seriously, if you are EVER in Myrtle Beach, you must go there. Just not this coming up weekend because we’ll be going back for Steve’s birthday!
On the food front again, there’s this Fruit Salsa that I posted earlier in the month. This was an experimentation that I picked up off the Internet because I needed a quick and easy dip type thing for one of the parties and I wanted to do something “different” than most people did. Thankfully, it was a success and it’s versatile enough for me to interchange fruits as they go in and out of season. I definitely think next time, I will cut the recipe in half because we had so much more left than we needed. I ended up leaving it at our host’s house and he pretty much said he was eating it ALL WEEK!
As far as entertainment goes, I can’t talk about July without mentioning Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Like I said to everyone else, I don’t care that the critics didn’t like it. I don’t care that the story was pretty much disjointed and nonsensical. I don’t even care that Megan Fox needs to keep her douchebaggy piehole shut and serve the exact purpose that she got famous for: eye candy. I just care that shits blows up and there are giant robots and awesome cars and giant robots and oh, did I mention? GIANT ROBOTS. GIANT ROBOTS THAT CURB STOMP EACH OTHER. Seriously, that’s all I have to say about that.
Finally, there’s an album I fell in LOVE with and am still playing it over and over through this month. Raising Sand by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss has got to be one of the most hauntingly beautiful albums I’ve ever heard. Even now, when I hear one of it’s song on my iPod shuffle, I kick it off random just to listen to the whole album again. It’s a weird combination, with Plant of Zepplin fame and Krauss’ root primarily in country and bluegrass but it works phenomenally. I’d throw the name of some of my favorite songs out there but I’d end up giving you the entire list so it’s prudent for you to check it out yourself and then thank me as you find yourself humming the tunes over and over again even when you’re away from the music.
And that’s pretty much it! July had some great times and August had some even better ones. And even though this is late, it’s still nice looking back on the little things I enjoyed!
Sometimes the hardest part about making a life with someone is syncing your schedules.
Steve and I have been living together for three years and even now, it’s difficult to work around each others wants and needs.
These past few weeks have been quiet. There have been a few changes in my life that have given me more time but less pay. Thus, I find myself with some half days during the week and less money in my pocket at the end of two weeks.
I’ve spent those days cleaning and running errands and doing stuff that would normally take up my weekends. Stuff that would normally keep me from spending time with Steve or the dog or family or from doing nothing. Just normal house stuff – laundry, cleaning, errands, phone calls, bills. In all honesty, I’m loving it because by last Friday night, my house was spotless, my to-do list was virtually non-existent, and I could sit on the couch and surf the Internet all night guilt free.
The problem was I was exhausted. My sleep schedule has been thrown off with my foot injury and allergy meds and thunderstorms that keep me awake until god awful hours of the morning (plus a dog who is terrified of thunder and insists on crawling in bed and snuggling with us everytime he hears a sound) so by Friday evening, all I wanted to do was plop on the couch, eat a good dinner, watch some TV and surf the Net. And I would have been perfectly content to do that all weekend. Mostly because I was trying to save money and also because the sheer effort of getting dressed and making myself looked human was utterly unappealing at the time.
Steve, on the other hand, wanted to go out. Somewhere, anywhere. He wanted to get dinner, then maybe hit up Best Buy then Wal-Mart to get some stuff. And while I wanted to spend time with him, it would require makeup and brushing my hair and PANTS! And I just don’t want to wear pants on most occasions (just you wait for my new header graphic – it speaks perfectly of me!).
But I put on my pants and brushed my hair and we went out to dinner. No makeup since we were just going to get some cheesesteaks and I didn’t really care what I looked like at that point. Then I think he compromised because afterwards he drove home instead of heading to Best Buy or WalMart.
There are times when Steve says the he wants to stay in and have a relaxing weekend and I jump for joy. Because that means I can sleep late and hang around the house and just be lazy. And generally he means it, until about 3pm on Saturday when he is so utterly bored that he turns into a five year old and whines because he’s so bored and he can’t find anything to do and let’s do something. Which leads to me feeling either guilty because I feel like I need to suggest we do something and we need to spend time together or feeling resentful and angry because we have all of this expensive shit and he can’t entertain himself.
It’s just striking that balance that’s hard. I think we did well with it this past weekend. We went out for cheese steaks on Friday night then met some friends for dinner on Saturday evening. And while that may not have been enough for him, it was enough for me. It was fairly reasonable as far as money went and we both got a chance to get out of the house and not drive each other insane. But we were able to relax enough to feel like we had not drove ourselves crazy overdoing things.
We have enough stuff coming up this summer that we really need to be able to enjoy the downtime.
In the meantime, we are making plans and trying to strike a balance there. We’ve got some trips in the works, some trips that are specifically for us to enjoy and some that allow us to visit with people who we haven’t seen in awhile. We’ve got some movies to look forward to and some dinners and small events with friends. We’ve got an enjoyable summer ahead of us.
And now we just have to work out an amicable schedule between the two of us. Because I want to sleep until 10am darn it! And somebody in this house like to wake up at 7am, even on Saturdays!
So, today is the last day of March and after this post is published, I will have successfully blogged every day of an entire month. This marks the first time I have done that ever in the entire nine or so years that I have been blogging. This also means I have accomplished another one of my goals on my 101 Things list.
The question now is whether I will continue this trend and my answer is most likely no.
This does not mean I’m going to stop blogging. As a matter of fact, I feel like this has at least given me the motivation to write more here and to be more active with regards to some of my other web endeavors. But the biggest thing I’ve learned during this entire month is that forcing the writing isn’t really beneficial.
I know I said earlier that posting every day wasn’t a big deal – that if I failed, I failed. And that remained true pretty much through out the whole month. The world wasn’t going to end if I just stopped. But as I crossed over the halfway point and got closer and closer to accomplishing my goal, I wanted to finish. I didn’t want to quit. I wanted to at least accomplish what I had set out do.
The problem was, March wasn’t that of an exciting month. I was very busy with the monotony of my daily life, as usual and that, in my opinion, lead to some rather uninteresting posts. Sure, now I pretty much have a record of what I did every single day in March – what I watched, what I ate, how shitty or awesome work was that day. Where I went, when I went places besides work. But that’s pretty much it. There were no profound thoughts or interesting anecdotes coming out onto the blog because I didn’t really have any.
So there was quantity, just not quality, in my opinion.
I think my problem sometimes is that my brain moves fifty-million miles a minute. I’m internally multi-tasking twenty-four hours a day. In the morning, I’m thinking about what I have to do that afternoon. In the afternoon, I’m thinking about the evening and what’s awaiting me at home. If a thought, an idea, a musing sneaks it’s way in there, I never take the time to stop and write it down and expand on it. And by the time I’ve sat down to write, it’s gone.
This entire month has made me realize that’s what I need to do: take some time each day to develop my thoughts better.
I also think I need to lock the security down a bit tighter, or at least utilize the security available to me. I absolutely miss being able to post about whatever I want and what is bothering me without offending someone or reprecussions from some off-color rant that I might have made when I’m angry or upset or bothered. There is also sometimes when I want to rant about my job but knowing the history of some of the more popular bloggers, I know better than doing THAT in a public forum, aside from the fact that there is some anonymity and sensitivity I still want to retain with regards to my job and what I do there.
People have asked me numerous times why I do this – why I put my thoughts and opinions out there in a public forum and truth be told, there’s a lot of reasons. I love the feedback, the community, the record-keeping in general. Writing about things (and talking, but there is very few people in my life who will listen to me talk for as long as I can talk) has always been catharthic for me. Truthfully, the audience here has never been large and it probably has waned over the past few years as I got busier and busier and had less free time to devote to this place, but I’ve continued on because it is sort of a sanctuary, a place to escape. Sure, it’s public, pieces of it at least and I don’t mind that because perhaps there is a day where I really need advice or a sympathetic ear, and that’s usually the day someone comes out of the woodwork. Or perhaps there is someone out there who is feeling similarly to me or going through the same thing and just need to identify with someone. And even if they don’t say, generally I can feel ok to just know it’s out there and available for someone to stumble upon if they need it.
That, and I’ll pretty much tell anything to anyone once I get to know you. No shame – that’s all me!
So basically, to sum it all up, it’s been a long and rather quiet month but there were some good times. And because I was able to awesomely complete a goal I sort of set for myself, I now have it all down on a record. And at some point each day, I’m going to try to take some quiet time and collect some of my thoughts so I don’t bore you guys, and myself, with mundaneity when I actually do sit down to write something. I mean, I’m not going to be publishing best sellers here but I can be interesting, dammit!
And if not, this site will just be here, waiting for my kids or my grandkids to stumble upon in the future, kind of like finding the old, dusty leather-bound journals in the attic with the slanted shaky handwriting, only this will all categorized and searchable and graphically appealing in 11pt Arial font.
And they’ll know exactly what movies I watched and food I ate for the entire month of March in 2009.
This, my friends, is the stuff they write stories and make documentaries about!
And just like that my weekend and vacation is over.
Today was a low-key day. I think everyone was winding down from the weekend so we slept in, sat around reading for awhile, got ready to go then headed out and had lunch at R.B.’s down on Shem Creek because the girls wanted to seafood. After that, it was already time to drop them off at the airport.
I was sad to see them go but we’ll hang out again soon enough. After they left, I ran some errands then got home in time to cook dinner and sit down to watch Monday night TV. I realized I was so exhausted because I ran around more than I have in months. And it was all completely worth it.
And now tomorrow, it’s time to go back to work and back to normal life. It may have been a short four-day break but it was long enough. I definitely needed it.
I just hate how quiet the house is now.
Sammy and Steve seem to love it though.
