Uh-Oh

I think I'm in trouble here.  Let's see, I'm hosting a New Year's Day party for the entire neighborhood in 2 days, I have LOTS of cooking and cleaning to do tomorrow, and...uh...my hands and fingers hurt in a really weird way and using my computer mouse seems exhausting.  In fact, sitting up seems exhausting.

You know, it would figure if I dropped dead of the flu the same week I won a very special handmade bowl with cats on it over at Derfwad Manor.  Just my luck...

I'm going to bed.  If you're a praying sort of person, pray I don't get sick until Wednesday.  Thanks.

Twitter Faves 2012

[Annual disclaimer: The idea for this post was stolen from Where Hot Comes To Die.  I am telling you this so that Suzy doesn't hunt me down and kill me.  She's not the type to fall for that "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" nonsense.]

Al Yankovic
Every time somebody tweets "Your an idiot" an irony angel gets its wings.

Laid Off Twinkie
You didn't hear this from me, but Suzy Q's door was always open, if you get my drift.

Honest Toddler
Feel like Tickle Me Elmo should have a safe word.

Evelyn
Just set my clocks back to when I still had perky breasts.

Shari VanderWerf
You pretty much failed life if your death bed is a futon.

Life on Mars
"Ikea" is the Swedish word for "good luck putting this together." 

Tim Siedell
A watched neighbor never showers.

Anna Lefler
Just saw "palazzo pant" in a catalog. Now I know how Michael Douglas felt when Glenn Close popped up out of that bathtub.

Sandra Boynton
If someone begins: "Now don't take this the wrong way..." it's exciting to wonder what's next, from this person I maybe liked till just now.

lisa goodwin
My favorite thing to do at the gym is leave

Suzy Soro
Apparently mothers have to hang up on me when their child is bleeding. Rude.

Danielle Bean
The only problem with vanilla is that it's not chocolate

moooooog35
I'm no fashionista myself, but I offer this 1 piece of advice: Just because they make a bikini in your size doesn't mean you should buy it.

 Uncle Dynamite
I can't see my @ replies. Now I know how Helen Keller felt.


[Twitter image: Higher & Higher] 
[Boynton image: News Hugs]

A Christmas Miracle

Remember this?  Remember how Larry demolished a main living area of our home at the beginning of December?  Of course, you do, seeing as how that is almost all I have talked about this month.

Well!  Apparently my spouse works most efficiently when a deadline looms - a serious deadline, a "Hey, honey, I invited ALL the neighbors over to our house for New Year's Day!" sort of deadline.  Because the room?  It is finished.  In fact, by last Saturday, all we needed to do was paint it ("we" as in "Larry," of course).  That is, once we agreed on a paint color, a task that usually takes us several months to accomplish.

So we (as in "Larry") spent all Saturday afternoon running back and forth to the paint store and smearing different colored paint samples on the newly primed den walls.  Larry wanted a blue-green.  I didn't.  Neither of us liked any of the colors we tested anyway.  It was a discouraging experience, on a par with shopping for kitchen stoves at Best Buy. 

There were many cans of paint involved.

At 7 PM, we took a break from testing the newly fragile bonds of our marriage in order to attend an honest-to-goodness holiday cocktail party, held at the home of good friends.  Only, now they are VERY good friends, the BEST of friends, because - after we had entered their house and doffed our coats and poured ourselves some (very stiff) drinks - I walked into their living room to socialize.  "Larry!" I said, dragging him away from the bar to see what I had seen, "Look!  Look at the walls!"

He looked.  "That's it!" he said.

"Yes!" I agreed.

"What are the odds they remember the name of that color?" he asked.

"Not very good, but I'll ask anyway," I said, determined to put an end, once and for all, to our latest home renovation nightmare.  I scouted out our hostess and asked if, by any chance, she knew the name of the paint on her living room walls.  Because, really, that's the proper way to behave at cocktail parties...

"That's easy," she said.  "We just painted it this month.  Homestead Green, by Benjamin Moore."

And right there, folks, was Larry's and my Christmas miracle.  Like the "Gift of the Magi," only with a happy ending....

Where The Guys Are

Let's take a break from madmen and guns and horrific tragedy today, shall we?  Let's discuss something utterly inconsequential -- say, our current home renovation.

Devoted readers (if there are indeed any of you out there) will recall that Larry, seized by the desire to make our holiday season as challenging as possible, ripped all the walls out of the den on our main floor - the den that is connected to the living room by a wide archway and is therefore visible to anyone on the main floor of our lovely townhome.

All. The. Walls.

So here we are, three weeks later, and I will admit that Larry has performed admirably.  The electrician has come and gone, having installed a ceiling fan and the ungodly number of electrical outlets that any household needs nowadays.  The handyman is at our house putting the finishing touches on the drywall and the trim.  Trim, it seems, includes things like baseboards - you know, those white strips of wood that run along the bottom of the walls that you never even notice until you own a home?

There are many, many different types of baseboards, people.  And Larry brought home what, in my opinion, were the wrong ones.  So, there I was, standing in the unfinished den with a handyman who was threatening not to come back until Larry and I resolved our baseboard differences.  In a fit of desperation, I promised him that I would go get the baseboards and the trim for the fireplace myself, while he finished patching the walls.  "I'll be right back," I said, grabbing my purse and Susie and heading for the car.  "Don't leave!"

WTF?

That's how I came to find myself standing in the middle of the wood trim aisle of Home Depot, dressed stylishly in my cherry red wool coat and chic Danskos, staring at stacks of quarter-round while my 7-year-old did her best to injure herself on the weird-looking cart I had dragged in from outside the store.  What had the handyman said he needed for the fireplace?  2 six-foot pieces and one 8-foot piece?  I gamely grabbed a huge stick and attempted to measure it against the ruler thing plastered on a column.  Only, I was too short to read the darn thing.  Twelve feet?  Was that the same as 2 6-foot pieces?  I voiced this question aloud to a fellow customer who had drawn near with a justifiably concerned look on his face.

"Well, ma'am," he said, "You might have some trouble fitting that in your car."

It's NOTHING like Joanne Fabrics.  NOTHING.

Oh.  Oh, yeah.  "Of course!" I said and dragged the behemoth over to what looked like a cutting table in the middle of the aisle.  Funny, but it didn't look like the cutting tables I'm used to seeing at the fabric store.  The ones at Joanne's definitely don't have saws.  No matter.  I hoisted the stick up there and tried to determine how to measure it for the cut.  Mr. Concerned Customer approached me once again and said, "Can I help you with that?"

At which point, ladies and gents, I just gave up.  Putting my pride in my pocket, I said, "Yes.  Or else, I could just keep on pretending I know what I'm doing."

At least he had the grace to laugh.  After cutting my pieces of quarter-round and watching me stow them (incorrectly) on the weird cart, he asked, "Do you need any more help?"

"Oh, no," I said airily. "Thank you very much. I'm just heading over to the lumber aisle to pick up some wood for baseboards."  Really - I'm so much better at baseboards than quarter-round.  I'm a flipping expert at baseboards.

My savior followed me (discreetly) to the other aisle and helped me find the 1x5 planks I needed (no mean feat), waited patiently while I called an obviously irritated handyman on the phone to check some details, and demonstrated how to sight the length of the boards to make sure they were straight.  He then loaded them - correctly - onto the cart, and I thanked him.  Repeatedly.

I'd like to announce that I DID manage to check out all by myself.  And the baseboards look great.  MUCH better than the ones my house-wrecking spouse selected.  But my main point here is this - all you single ladies looking for pleasant, competent guys with a sense of humor?  I've got a great place for you to hang out.

Look For The Lawmakers

Sorry, just can't bring myself to post some lighthearted banter yet; and I'm sure we have all already read plenty about...well, you know.

Just...if I see that stupid Mr. Rogers quote in my newsfeed ONE MORE TIME, I'm not sure what will happen.  But it won't be good.  I don't mind telling my kids "Look for the helpers" when there's a natural disaster.  But I'm not discussing this incident with my little kids at all.  Because, if I did, I would have to explain to them the scariest part of this whole thing: how we, as citizens, lack the political pull or will or whatever to effect even the smallest of changes in our gun laws.  How, unlike the REST OF THE CIVILIZED WORLD, we can't get our lawmakers to agree to ban semi-assault weapons and rigorously regulate gun ownership.

See, I don't find it difficult to explain to my children that there is evil in this world.  That's easy.  Kids grasp that intuitively.  What's harder to explain is our country's unwillingness to do something to minimize its effects.