Holiday Cards, Anyone?

Every year I joyfully ship handfuls of holiday cards across the nation. I usually select cards illustrated by local artists benefiting the charity Jardin de los Niños. Alas, this year they really amped up the religion on their greetings. As an agnostic, I prefer secular greetings. Still, I’ll buy Merry Christma/Feliz Navidad cards, but no God’s Blessings upon You This Holiday Season cards.  

Anyway, I hunted down alternate cards and I am in a card sending frenzy. If you’d like a card, email me to swap addresses.  I won’t stalk you if you won’t stalk me! :D

Happy Birthday Clarke-mas!!!

Yay! Have a happy birthday or I'll menace the toad with strobe lights! Oh, wait--have a happy birthday, while I menace the toad with strobe lights! Yay!

Love and Hooeyness!

Positive

Two faint lines on the internet order super-ept test. I am so happy and so scared. And so totally broke out!  I will be testing for quite some time.

SURPRISE!!!

Click on a photo for a larger view 
Rodoyo enhances Ewbliette's dignity with bunny ears.
Rodoyo stifles a laugh while enjoying his homemade desert pizza.
A fellow Werner Herzog fan, Klaus traditionally follows his Thanksgiving dinner with "Aguirre, Wrath of God."
Brad Dourif's long lost younger brother showed up for pizza, Kalua and a roll of flying paper towels.
Our Den Mother and reality check matron, Razzy.
Yours truly.Last night we threw a surprise birthday party for Ewbliette. Her sweetie, brotherkurt began party planning two weeks ago, delighting Rodoyo and I immeasurably. Shopping with him this Tuesday was a riot, I laughed so much my bladder is still weak. Big Lots will never be the same again.

After buying last minute decorations, I realized that mylar balloon manufacturers must have a perverted sense of humor. Strategically placed on the balloon’s abdomen, the air valve resembled a perky pastel penis. If the religious right finds out, my amateur photos might gain notoriety on Fox News as an example of the debauchery and godlessness amongst New Mexican partygoers.
Anyway, never underestimate the decorating powers of duct tape, wrapping paper, rocks and shiny ribbons. Guided by Rodoyo, our decorating squad transformed Brother Kurt’s home into a purple and silver paradise (sadly, my decoration pics never turn out.

We were so efficient that we finished decorating twenty minutes early. Then we theorized how to maximize the surprise factor for Ewbliette. But before we had a chance to take our shirts off and paint letters on our bellies, their car pulled up in the driveway, so we hid instead. I am pleased to report that we did more than surprise her; we managed to startle her into an involuntary terrified shriek.

I’ll leave the remaining exciting details for Ewbliette to recount (she will probably be incommunicado till Tuesday). So here’s a few snap shots, feel free to stir up trouble by alerting your local relgious fanatics.

Ewbliette is the Birthday Queen

Happy Birthday Ewbliette!!!

Initially I wrote a birthday song to the tune of Abba's "Dancing Queen," but it was embarassingly corny. Imagine how teeth-gratingly awful it must have been for me to consider this my superior verse: 

(sung to the tune of that "Mother" song)

E is for the “Eeeeeee!” you scream at scary spiders.

W is for the Wine coolers we drank behind A mountain.

B is for the “Bitch” in Sexy Bitches.

L is for the Laughter we will share forever.

I is for the “I” in “I love you, man.”

E is for the Enquirer we read aloud while eating nachos.

T is for the Tomato sauce you order on the side.

T is for the Taro Chips on your bathroom floor.

E is for the Evil deeds we carry out together.

Lah, lah , lah, something something, something else.....You Rock!

(Check your email!)

Dinner Will Be Served at 11:54 p.m.

To Do List:

1. Bake Marie Calander’s Dutch Apple Pie (my own resemble pre-school art projects).
2. Call Mom in a panic and ask her to pick up vanilla ice cream at Walgreens.
3. Make stuffing for turkey.
4. Stuff and truss turkey.
5. Finish orange yam dish.
6. Fret over turkey while roasting, once every 30 minutes.
7. Put extra leaf in table.
8. Wash dishes or put in garage with a towel over them.
9. Set table.
10. Make gravy, lumps be damned.
11. Call Ewbliette for a reality check (she’s also doing her family’s dinner, and she will have three times the guests).
12. Be very grateful that Tennis Fiend does not mind vacuuming or mopping the floors.

A Little Less Vexed...

Here's the rest of yesterday's rant.

My mother’s approach to holidays is militaristic—they are something to conquer and subdue. Although she’s not one to decorate the house, her meals are impeccable--created with precision, pride and perfection. I remember my shock when I first began to spend holidays with other families--if a meal was not perfect, so what? The holiday was not “ruined” because of a burnt pie/steak/turkey.

I confess that I have inherited a certain amount of holiday fastidiousness, but I’ve learned that even though a delicious meal is appreciated, it is not requisite. So when Mom showed up yesterday afternoon with two boxes of cooking supplies, I should have been prepared for the clash of the cooks.

Box one contained two quarts of her crystal clear turkey broth for gravy (my own broth was murky, since I boiled the crap out of it). Also present was her vast personal spice assortment, which I’m certain she hand-picked and blended herself.

Box two was the shocker—she brought her eclectic cutlery collection, her favorite chopping block, five mismatched measuring cups, plus a hodgepodge of bowls, plates and dishes. Mom’s collection of six knives was clearly selected to optimize the chopping, dicing and cubing of specific ingredients for tomorrow’s meal. A knife for onions, a knife for celery, a knife for me to stab myself in the ear with, etc…

As I helped equip her cooking station, I was horrified to see her chopping block. It looked like Satan’s missing front tooth. Once white, it was now a hideous moldy yellow with dark brown stains etching an overabundance of knife marks. How could this be my mother’s chopping block?  Then I remembered. Mom always microwaves her chopping block since bleaching ruins the food cut on it. Heh.

Mom launched her chopping ceremony with a knife sharpening ritual (she also brought her own kit) while I washed veggies and used the food processor to dice Vidalia onions for my famous green chile cranberry sauce. This utterly scandalized my mom, who proceeded to talk to our dog Misty about my barbaric cooking techniques (I kid you not). Later I joined her at my cooking station, defiant with my super-ultra-bleached white chopping block.

Eventually we made peace with each other and the afternoon proceeded smoothly. I offered her my special nut chopping knife and she asked me about my beloved cranberry sauce. Later, she surfed the web while I sautéed her meticulously diced vegetables destined for stuffing. To save time, I decided to wash dishes while sautéing. So naturally, I over- browned the precious veggies. Sigh. I immediately mixed them with some wild rice for camouflage. I wonder if anyone will notice.

ETA: Sheesh. Rant over, I promise! Happy Turkey Day Everybody!

A Bit of Vexation

Thanksgiving is Tennis Fiend’s favorite holiday so we will celebrate with the traditional meal, substituting apple pie for pumpkin (he hates pumpkin pie). Since I was planning on fixing the big dinner anyway, I invited my folks to join us. Sigh.

After shopping Monday afternoon, Mom and I had an unpleasant heart-to-heart about aging. In essence, she was distressed because she could not host this year’s dinner due to hip pain. (Two years ago, she injured her hip and she has refused to see a doctor. After a profusion of frustrating and futile conversations, I am exhausted by her never-ending rationalizations and excuses for not getting help.)  To cheer her up, I made plans with her to come over Wednesday afternoon to prep for Thursday’s feast. Sigh.

I’ll post the pleasant and funny side of our afternoon later, it wasn’t really that bad. But now, I’m aggravated. Anyway, I believe that her entire reason for coming over was to make me feel like I was six years old. I understood that she was irritable and her hip hurt her, but I hate to be bossed around, especially in my own home. Nevertheless, I held my tongue for the first hour while she told me exactly how she did everything to prepare her Thanksgiving dinner, vaguely implying that I was a total idiot who couldn’t boil water.

In forty minutes, I ran out of “Uh-huhs,” “Oh, reallys” and “I sees.” I turned on the oven fan and worked nearby to make my silence less noticeable (I am way too nice). Then she said the thing that really pissed me off. I mentioned that I might need to go to the store to pick up more cranberries. Indignant that I should go to the store the day before a holiday, she sternly said, “You are not going out. The stores will be too crowded.”

I flipped (well, for me). I told her that it was not her place to tell me whether or not I should go to the store. It wasn’t so much what I said, it was the way I said it. For an instant, I was the biggest, bitchiest demon in hell right down to the flaming eyeballs and crimson skin. Lordy, I was angry. Mom responded immediately, she apologized and explained that she meant that she would not go to the store on such a day. She went out of her way to be sweet to me for the rest of the afternoon.  

Revenge

Most of Sunday afternoon we played “find the stench.” We emptied the trash and rid the refrigerator of suspicious leftovers. When we still could not locate the source of the evil smell, the horrid possibility of septic system trouble occurred to us.

Mid-septic tank panic, we realized that Misty had avenged herself for being excluded from Saturday’s rock hunt. She had rolled in something indescribably foul. As best as I can figure, she came across the excrement of a cat whose sole diet was rotten eggs and month-old cadavers.

The worse part of the ordeal was giving her a bath. Misty is a sweetheart when it comes to baths. She may look miserable and put upon, but she is well-behaved. Sacrificing my pristine bathtub to putrid cat-scat Misty was a nightmare that required copious amounts of bleach and scalding water (post-dog wash, of course).

After her thorough shampooing, Misty endured a half an hour of blow-drying and brushing. She was playful and enjoyed the attention. Next rock hunt, we’re dropping her off at Grandma and Grandpa’s.

Rockfiends

Tennis Fiend taking a break from rock hunting.

One of my favorite pursuits is rock hunting. Whenever I can recruit a companion, I journey to Rockhound State Park where anyone can cart away rocks for a nominal fee.

I also love to visit a stretch of desert owned by family friends that boasts colorful rocks and boulders. Saturday I enlisted Tennis Fiend for a boulder hunt. As I gathered supplies for our expedition, our dog Misty became extraordinarily excited. As soon as she hears the jingling of my army surplus backpack, she knows an outing is forthcoming. Usually included in our hikes and outings, she howled dismally when we left her behind.

Driving took over an hour—twenty minutes of freeway followed by forty minutes of increasingly rugged road plus the eternity it took me to locate the landmarks of our destination. Our hunting ground was adjacent to a stretch of power lines connecting our city to the El Paso, TX power grid. The whistling of wind through the power lines made the sizzling pops and hisses of the transformers even more ominous. Reaching to open the back door of our SUV, I recoiled from a sharp static shock. Suddenly, the palpable sensation of electricity in the air amplified.

Weighing the consequences of imminent electrocution against potential rock hauling exhaustion, I moved our vehicle forty feet away from the power lines. The next two hours we enjoyed rock hunting bliss. The first hour was punctuated by cheerfully shouted Russian phrases: “Vot On!” (Here’s one), “Dai mne Molotok!” (Bring me the hammer) and “Oy! Slishcom Agromnye!” (Oh, it’s too big). The second hour was punctuated by cries of “Euuugh,” “Oof,” “Ow, ow, ow” and “Pochimoo tak dalyeko?” (why did you park so far away?).

Afraid to burden my truck with too much weight, we collected six mini-boulders and twelve smaller stones. Returning home happily, we banged our way across the rough dirt road, grateful that we left Misty at home as the rocks shifted and rearranged themselves behind us. Cranking up our velocity to traverse a treacherous expanse of arroyo, I almost struck a man in green camouflage. The wide-eyed fellow gave us a jerky wave as we covered him in dust. At a slower speed we passed an ancient truck where a camouflaged woman guarded several buckets of gravel with a shovel held menacingly in her left hand. I smiled and waved hoping that she did not sport a Lugar in her hidden right hand.