As Mr. Crabs would say (he’s from Sponge Bob Square Pants btw…but must I really explain?!), “Mother of pearl!  Fire in the poop deck!!”

In other words, “Heavens-to-Betsy!  Houston we have a problem!!!”

All of a sudden it’s come to light that there was no cubscout meeting scheduled this month.  The cubscout leader “gently” took us to task over it and as a result I threw out a flippant offer to go caroling at my house knowing full well we’d never get a quorum of scouts this late in the game.  Since it’s Christmas-time and everyone is soooo busy with other obligations, no one has time to squeeze in one MORE thing, right?!??!?!??!

Wrong.

Turns out there’s enough time for some quick caroling with 8 monkeys and various siblings at my house on Friday.

Like I said – Fire in the poop deck!

I’m sending out an SOS email to my drinking-buddy-neighbor-ladies today to see if anyone will be home so that we can go caroling to their house.  And so that they can give me drinks to keep me alive until the end of what will soon be referred to as Cubscout Caroling Fiasco 2012.  (No – Mom & Dad, I don’t have a drinking problem.  I drink, get drunk, fall down, no problem.  Kidding!  Totally kidding.  No – no problem.)

Mother of Pearl!!!!

Worked Teacher Appreciation Luncheon all day yesterday.  It was exhausting!  I was literally on my feet for 6 hours straight.  Which reminds me that when I find a job – it totally needs to be a desk job.

Previously (before they took my job) for the Teacher Appreciation Luncheon effort, I would have participated in the planning (via email) with maybe a coffee-meet-up thrown in along with a twenty buck contribution.  And then I would have capped the effort off with a hostess-with-the-mostess approach by working for an hour serving the lunch.

But this time around I was in charge of the student participation component of the meal (each child cut out a star and wrote their Christmas wish for their teacher on it.  We then hung the stars on paper Christmas trees throughout the luncheon room.  Cute, right?!).  And I also planned and executed the lunch – from purchasing supplies, to set up (starting first thing in the a.m., right after carpool drop off), through lunch service all the way to clean-up and beyond.

Like I said…it’s exhausting.

First off, people, please bring what you’re supposed to bring.  Unless you have the stomach bug – in which case no, no we don’t need your salad after all.  But other than that, please provide the dish you committed to, and please make sure it’s enough to feed the 10-to-15 people like we requested, and not just 3.

Take the mashed potatoes for example.  Someone supplied a little, tiiiiiiny container.  And someone substituted stuffing instead.

But God is present in all things and the balance of the mashed potatoes we desperately needed to round out our “Christmas Dinner” theme walked in the door (a huge crock pot full – complete with another crock pot full of gravy!!!) 5 minutes before lunch started.  Seriously.  We were right in the middle of calling the other party planner out of her morning spin class to run and get some mashed potatoes asap.  But then the potatoes walked in the door.  Those there were some divine-intervention spuds!!

Even so, it did get to be pretty slim pickin’s at the end.  We slowly downsized to smaller serving spoons as the meal went on and then began serving little dollops instead of having them help themselves as part of our potato conversation efforts.  (wished we thought of that sooner, d’oh!)

There was even one point where we were trying to come up with a recipe for MORE potatoes using rolls, heavy cream and butter.  But saner heads prevailed and we settled for moving the rolls closer to the gravy for a make-your-own-biscuits-and-gravy concept, while adding the heavy cream and butter to thin out the remaining potatoes.  Though we were forced to pull the potatoes totally off the table towards the end and reserve them for the last batch of teachers to come through so they could get a little taste.

But all’s well that end’s well and we received so many thank yous from these wonderful people who are with our children all the live-long day, that it made me feel guilty we don’t do more to thank them for their efforts.  Except for provide them with a Christmas Dinner with too few potatoes and lots and lots of stars!

P.S. How do you spell potatoes?  Singular is potato and plural is potatoes??  Anybody else think that looks weird?!!

I believe I have received the highest compliment of my entire baking career.

From my daughter.

After she tasted a new recipe I made (comprised of butter, brown sugar, milk chocolate and almonds – what’s not to like?!?).

“Wow, Mom!  This is really good!!  It tastes just like store-bought.  Not homemade at all!!!”

Which leaves me to wonder what kind of crappy crap I’ve been making over the years?  Or at least this most recent holiday season??!

Did I mention I’m new to my neighborhood?  Well – I am.  And I’ve now learned that there’s an annual tradition in the ‘hood wherein the ladies get together for a holiday bash.  Based on last name, you’re supposed to bring an appetizer, a bottle of wine or dessert.  Lots of desserts and wine…but the apps were of the slim-to-none-and-slim-left-town variety.

So the email exchange this a.m. with some of my ‘hood peeps recapping the party went a little something like this:

ME:  Holy S*^#!  My wagon is draggin’ today!!  I think someone slipped me a mickey last night.  It may have been the werewolf boy who showed up at the end.  Did anyone else see him?!?  Ugh.  I can’t even imagine how you poor saps-who-work are dealing.  Unless of course you’re feeling fine because you didn’t drink too much wine and/or had more than a fancy snowflake sugar cookie and some cashews to eat!!!

REPLY FROM 1ST NEIGHBOR:  I overdosed on the pistachio brittle and malbec

REPLY FROM 2ND NEIGHBOR:  OMG!!! I am dying, trying to figure out my early exit strategy from work. Not good!!

REPLY FROM 3RD NEIGHBOR:  Thank goodness my boss is gone today…and hopefully he doesn’t have a nanny cam hidden in the office! The one saving grace is that when I got home I had a bowl of mashed potatoes. I WILL be leaving early today.

REPLY FROM 4TH NEIGHBOR:  oh girls…you should have left when 5TH Neighbor and I did!  I had a tidge of a headache when I woke up (and went and worked out at a 6:30 boot camp) but took 3 Advil and am fine.  It would have been helpful to have SOME FOOD!!!  I didn’t even see any appetizers…were they there and I didn’t see them????  did you girls go out afterwards???

And yes, after dropping me off at my house at 11 p.m. some morons went out afterwards.  They are the ones currently planning their early-exit strategy from work.

At some point don’t you get too old for this foolishness?!  Next year A-W should bring appetizers and leave the wine and desserts to X, Y and Z!!!

This is the “Preparing for St. Nicholas’ Visit” play that’s going on in my kitchen right now….

(FYI – for those who don’t know, St. Nicholas Day Eve is like the poor man’s version of Santa Claus wherein you leave out your shoe the night of December 5th and St. Nicholas comes and fills it with candy & treats.)

Sonny – Guys!  It’s time to put out our shoes!!

Husband – (from the bowels of the house somewhere) No!  That’s not our tradition.  St. Nicholas isn’t gonna come and put candy in your shoes.

Sonny – I’m gonna give it a try and I’m gonna use Daddy’s shoe.

Sissy – Wait!  I’m gonna use Daddy’s shoe too.

Sonny – No, I already called Daddy’s shoe.  You can use Mommy’s shoe.

Sissy – No!  It’s big, but not as big as Daddy’s.  That’s not fair if you get more candy in your shoe than I get in mine.

Husband – (from the bowels of the house somewhere) Guys!  We don’t celebrate St. Nicholas day!!!  It’s not our tradition!!  He’s not gonna come!!!!

Wife (me!) – ok, well it’s worth a try I suppose.  But don’t say you weren’t warned.  And you’ll use your own shoes.

-End Scene-

And shhhhh…St. Nicholas will be coming tonight.  My son’s been going on and on about this whole thing for a week or more so St. Nicholas is prepared to bring his A Game tonight.  But he won’t be putting anything in Daddy’s shoe.  Doubters aren’t welcome here.  Plus it’s too big and it would use up all the candy St. Nick has.

Pet peeve of the season?

Annoying “My Christmas Valentine” type songs complete with jazz flute and snare drum accompaniment.

I can’t stress enough that these songs are NOT classics.  Never will be classics.  No one actually knows the words and these songs only serve to annoy.

Song by Rose Bonanza?  No.  Absolutely not.  Knock it off already.

And “Santa Claus Got Stuck In My Chimney”?!  At least it’s sung by Ella Fitzgerald, but the humming, doo-doo’ing men in the background make the whole thing sound vaguely (inappropriately) sexual.  [Daddy made a brand new chimney; Please come back this year.  UGH!]

So stop.  Just stop.

Whaaaa happened?!

Why haven’t I posted since last Wednesday??

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat….and I’ve got a TON of stuff to do.  Turns out it’s more stressful to make gifts than it is to buy them.

It’s also more stressful to clean your own house than it is to pay someone to do it for you.  I’m not two women (wearing khakis and polos) whose life work it is to clean houses.  So I CAN’T clean the whole house in a little over two hours – and I’m done trying.

I’m just one woman with a master’s degree whose job was taken and who hasn’t cleaned her own house in 10 years.   But I’m smart enough to know when I’ve been beat.  By my own system.  The get ‘er done in a day method isn’t working.

So I’m now gonna try my friend’s do-one-housecleaning-chore-a-day.  In fact, when I posted a previous blog about the two methods of cleaning house (1. my way or 2. the highway), my friend L.C. called me to complain.  She swears by her tried-and-true housecleaning method of doing one thing a day (but not on Sundays!  Score!!).  And she was incensed (is incensed too strong a word to use here?  Nah!) that I would lobby for the get-‘er-done-like-two-cleaning-ladies-in-two-hours methodology.

During said conversation, I explained that I do “interim cleaning” (it’s not like I let the house fall into complete ruin in between the every-two-week-visits the cleaning ladies would make) [side note: I was gonna refer to the visits as “bi-weekly” but all of a sudden I couldn’t remember if that meant twice a week or every other week.  Oy.  Where’s your English Major mom when you need her?!].  Regardless, L.C. lobbied strongly for her methodology.

So I’m gonna give it a try.  But I did invite her to come and stay with me for a week so I could apprentice to her to see how this whole thing should flow.  I haven’t heard back so I’m flying solo here.

Housecleaning Sensei – where are you when I need you?!?

I made wild grape dumplings for the Native American project open house in my son’s classroom today.  As he says, “they sold out!”

No – we weren’t actually selling them, just sampling them.  But in seeing how fast the samples went, he hatched a brilliant plan wherein I make more dumplings and he takes them around in the wagon to various neighbors and sells them for 25 cents each or 2 for $1.00.

There are so many flaws in the plan, I don’t know where to begin – other than to say the dumplings are absolutely horrible and no one would ever buy them.  Picture a chicken nugget from McDonald’s but a weird gray/purple color.   And rubbery.  In order to make them halfway palatable for 75 third graders I squirted a ton of grape jelly on them.  I sent them off to school with a bunch of toothpicks and strict instructions that each child should use a NEW toothpick when they took a sample.

Too bad I didn’t get a chance to give my son’s classmate, Andrew, the same speech.  I found out on the car ride home that Andrew was collecting the used toothpicks on the back end and then going around to the front of the line and handing them out again.  What?!!?  Good Lord!!!  Who is Andrew and WHY did he think that would be helpful?

Funny?  Totally.  Parentally approved?  Absolutely not because now I’m pretty sure the majority of the third graders will shortly be coming down with throwing up sickness and when the vomir is purple, they’ll know exactly what caused it.

The person I feel most sorry for in this whole scenario is the Seminole stay at home mom who had to make the wild grape dumpling “treats” for her kids without sugar, an oven, sugar, flour, grape jelly or really anything useful.  Do you suppose the first Seminole mom whipped the recipe up in her boiling pot when the kiddos complained, “there’s nothing good to eat!” ?!   God bless the ingenuity of all moms when faced with that comment.

Let me tell you a bedtime story about the worst 5 bucks I never spent.  That’s right, never.

It goes a little something like this:

• Must, must do something about the scuzzy shower door.
• Have heard the squeegees everyone’s talking about might do the trick!
• Lucky day – $5 off a $15 purchase coupon to Bed, Bath & Beyond (say it the way Buzz Lightyear would say “To Infinity and Beyond!” and it’s much funnier.  I’ll go first, “Bed, Bath and Beyond!”)
• But cheapest squeegee only costs $10!  (what to do, what to do?)
• Buy a more expensive squeegee?
• I’m not convinced the squeegee concept will even work so that’s a big no.
• Buy another 5 bucks of nonsense instead and STILL only spend $10 with aforementioned coupon?
• Why yes.  Yes, indeed.  A seemingly excellent plan.
• Searched and searched and found…a sweater brick for $5.99 (ok, sometimes the math gets rough.  Give me a break.)
• Sweater brick is a black, pumice-type thingy in the shape of a brick that’s used to get all those nasty pills off of sweaters without chopping holes in them like that annoying sweater shaver does.  It employs a more manual-labor approach by “scrubbing” the pills off.
• It also works on pill-y blankets
• 4 (very) pill-y Christmas blankets later and the sweater brick is worn to a nubbin.  Where did it go?  Did it evaporate??
• And something smells like rotten eggs.
• I smelled the carpet in the family room where I was working and it only smelled like dirty socks and sweaty boy, not rotten eggs.
• And I don’t think it’s my breath huffing out of my mouth because I surreptitiously breathed into my shirt and my breath only smells like my deodorant and Sweet Pea body mist.
• Lint and fluff scrubbed off of the blankets drops all over the rug, and really everywhere AND follows me to the laundry room AND drops all over the laundry room floor.
• Project now seems way more annoying and involved than originally anticipated.
• And…WTF?!!…it looks like someone carried a blanket into the laundry straight off the beach!  A black beach in Hawaii!!!
• CRAP!!!  That’s where the sweater brick went!  It dissolved into sand and is now buried (scccrrruuubbbed as hard as my aching arm could scruuuub) in the blankets.
• And Holy Mother!!!  All this black sand SMELLS!  It smells like rotten eggs!!
• Ack!  Acccckkkkkkk!!!!!

And that, Folks, is the story of the worst 5 bucks I NEVER spent.

Good night.

Back when we lived in Pennsylvania (did I mention we used to live in PA?!) we would get the Monday after Thanksgiving off because it was the first day of deer-hunting season (?!?).

Here in Colorado (did I mention we live in CO?!) we apparently get the Monday after Thanksgiving off to put up our outside holiday decorations.  The Fall Harvest scarecrows in our front yard were looking pretty sad-sack compared to all the glorious Christmas stuff everyone put up over the week-end so we had to hop on it today!

Speaking of the week-end, we went to see the movie “Rise of the Guardians.”  It’s a pretty cute movie if you picture Santa Claus as an intimidating Russian Cossack.  Other than that, it did raise a major question:

SONNY:  Soooo…if Santa is for Christmas and the Easter Bunny is for Easter, what holiday does the Sandman do?

SISSY:  (my daughter, not actually named Sissy, just called Sissy for the purposes of this blog so as to perserve her anonymity because when you know EVERYTHING and you’re only 10, people want to know your name) The Sandman doesn’t represent a holiday.  He comes at night to sprinkle crusties in your eyes and give you good dreams.

ME: [in my head] wow, that’s totally right!  Maybe she DOES know everything about everything and that’s why she THINKS she knows everything about everything.  That’s my girl!  Like mother, like daughter.