I won’t ever make fun of Frank again. You see, when he is unable to find something, it’s usually because he expects the missing item to jump up and do a dance in front of him. He seems unable to move things or look behind things. After yesterday’s discovery, however, he can now claim that I do the same thing. You see, while I looked at every single box in the basement during my wine glass search, I completely forgot about those 2 boxes that were shoved next to the refrigerator. It wasn’t my fault. Really. There was a huge package of toilet paper on top of it. One of those really big ones from those wholesale club places that enable you to buy enough food and paper products to last you for 5 years. Ann Marie is off the hook for the alleged robbery.
Finding those wine glasses means that when I have company for the holidays, they won’t have to drink wine out of plastic cups. Now I can set the table with real glasses from 3 different sets that don’t match. One set of glasses are so thin that if you look at them funny, they’ll break. I expect their number to decrease by 2008.
On TV they said Christmas is officially here now that the tree in Rockefeller Center has been lit. I always believe whatever I read or hear in the news so it must be true.
Frank works right near there and was very happy he had a meeting late in the day that required him to be down in Wall Street (at Wall Street?). It’s not because the whole tree lighting thing isn’t cool because it is. It’s because it’s really, really crowded. We know this because we went once, 24 years ago, when we were engaged. People get there hours ahead of time. Unless you are one of those people, you don’t really get to see much other than masses of people and the big tree. After it’s over, you had better want to go in the same direction the rest of the crowd is going in because that’s the only way you’re walking. Trying to walk in the opposite direction is sorta like walking into a tidal wave.
I had the TV on during the whole tree lighting show & was listening to it as I went about the house doing other stuff. I’d walk in every now & then to see performers I liked (Carrie Underwood, Josh Groban, Celine Dion). I have some questions. Why wasn’t Celine out there freezing her butt off in 42 degree weather like all the rest of the singers? How did she rate being broadcast from the Rainbow Room? And if it’s called Christmas in Rockefeller Center & if they are lighting a Christmas tree, why do they still have to say, “Happy Holidays?” If someone is offended by Merry Christmas, they shouldn’t be watching a Christmas show in the first place. Get over it.
It’s been a few years since a parade of boys has marched through my house to the dining room closet in search of basketballs & other assorted sports equipment. Back in the old days, every one of Stephen’s friends knew where to find the big bin with about a dozen baseballs, tennis balls, gloves and just about anything else they’d need. Since we live across the street from a playground complete with basketball courts, handball courts & a softball field, there were even times I’d have boys appear on my doorstep when Steve wasn’t even here, asking if they could borrow a ball.
Today I decided that bin can go down in the basement. After all, my basement doesn’t have nearly enough stuff down there already. You can still see part of the floor.
I started looking through the bin first, to see if there was anything I could throw out. Some decisions were easy. “Hmmm…. this softball that’s missing it’s cover? Yeah, I think it has seen better days.” Others weren’t so easy. “I can’t get rid of this glove Steve had when he was 8! Oh, how cute & little it is!” Then there are the bats from the Little League days. There’s no one in the house who will use it but what if my nephew wants to use it while he’s here?
Yep, you can see where this went. Not much got thrown out. What do you expect from someone who still has a paddle ball racket that dates back to high school? Ask me when was the last time I used that. Uh, yeah, prior to 1975, when I graduated from high school. But hey, ya never know. Someday someone might be looking for a paddle ball racket.
It seems I am green. Funny but I don’t feel sick or anything. I also have quite a lot of hair and a mustache. What? You don’t believe me? Well take a look at the picture Christopher drew of me:
All that squiggly stuff over my head is hair. The crooked line is not my mouth. It is a mustache. I believe the 2 circles that are sort of the same size are my eyes and the larger one is my nose. (Thanks, Chris. Like I need to be reminded that I have a big nose.) I’m not quite sure what that line on my forehead is. Maybe more hair. And about that dark circle in between my eye & my nose - I’m not even sure I want to know what that is.
In other news, our last trip to the nursing home was interesting. As we were approaching MIL’s room, the nurse says (about MIL’s roommate), “She’s on a roll.” What I find odd is they’ve shared a room for several weeks now & she never said a word up until recently. When we walked in, we were greeted with, “You keep your hands off of me!’
I turned to Frank and whispered, “Yeah, don’t you go near her, Mister.”
When the dinner trays were brought around, once again The Roommate said she didn’t want it. Her tray was left on the bedside table. We were cringing, waiting for her to toss it but luckily she didn’t. It wouldn’t have been a pleasant scene since the curtain separating the 2 beds was opened. I could just picture flying jello all over the place.
It was a year ago this week that we made the decision that we really didn’t want 2 mortgages which meant temporarily giving up our dream house. (I will not go into all the gory details of what happened. The short version is the people we were buying from backed out of a verbal agreement and, since it was verbal, we didn’t have many options other than the one we made.)
For the 4 months we had our house on the market… well let’s just say it was interesting & it is not an experience I want to repeat any time in the near future. One part of the whole house selling venture, though, wasn’t a complete nightmare. This involved packing up stuff and getting rid of some of the clutter.
Keep in mind that we’ve lived in this house for over 22 years. You accumulate a lot of stuff in 22 years. The first things I packed up were knick knacks, things that didn’t really serve any purpose other than sitting around collecting dust. Next came my mom’s china. It’s not like I do a lot of entertaining and I could always use those every day dishes for the times I did. Everything was carefully labeled. Or so I thought.
Recently I realized that among the dishes, I also packed our wine glasses. With the housing market the way it is, we’re not going anywhere for quite a while so today I decided to unpack a few boxes and try to find those wine glasses. I went through all the boxes that were labeled as containing glasses. No wine glasses showed up. Okay, maybe I stuck them in with the punch glasses or the beer mugs. Nope, not there, either. Either one of the potential house buyers ran off with them or I did a really good job of packing them & a really bad job of labeling them. I vote for the first guess. Yeah, I can just picture that family sitting around drinking wine out of our glasses.
“Their house was horrible but damn, they had a nice set of wine glasses, didn’t they?”
On Friday we went out to Mohegan Sun with the kids. Frank went off gambling with Stephen while Theresa & I went into all the cute little shops. There’s this one little store that’s a favorite of mine. It reminds me of this old time general store we’ve gone to in New Hampshire. They sell all sorts of really good foods, mixes, jams & yeah I know I don’t actually need to buy Mud Slide Brownie Mix but come on - how could I resist?
There is one slight problem with this little shop - it’s 2 hours away. That got me to thinking that there has to be some sort of store that carries things like homemade jams & things like that. I know there are lots of quaint little shops way out on the east end of Long Island but if I’m going to drive all the way out there, I may as well drive to Connecticut. Then I discovered that there’s this little farm house shop not too far from here. Guess where Theresa & I went this afternoon.
Just in case someone from NY wanders into my blog and wants to know where this place is, it’s called Young’s Farm in Old Brookville. Getting there was a bit tricky. The directions said it was on a road just off Route 107. There we were, driving east on Northern Blvd. when we saw a sign that said the intersection we were coming to was Route 107. We turned but the street this farm was on wasn’t there. Lucky thing we had that GPS but we thought it a bit odd that she was telling us to get back onto Northern Blvd. and continue further east. Then we saw another sign that said… yep, Route 107. They must be twins. Okay, not really. It seems the first sign meant it eventually got to 107 & was an alternate route. That’s not the important part, though. The important part is that we got there.
More important is we bought stuff. Things like apple preserves, apple spice pancake mix, maple syrup and cranberry bog honey. Then there was the cashew crunch candy that Theresa showed me.
Me: “You are a bad influence. This is why I can’t go shopping with you.” Apparently she took that to mean I didn’t want to buy that & she put it back. “Hey, what are you doing?! I didn’t mean I didn’t want it.”
Yep, it seems I didn’t eat nearly enough junk over this Thanksgiving break.
I was going to e-mail this little sound clip just to my sister but I think there may be 1 or 2 others who might like to check it out, especially if they’ve met my son.
As Stephen was leaving tonight, I ran in front of the door and refused to allow him to leave until he saved a file from his computer to my flash drive. We’re not going to be able to drive down to D.C. next weekend to hear him play an organ solo and sing so there was no way he was leaving here without at least giving me this:
That first voice you hear is him. Then he’s joined by the others. It’s just a tiny clip from when they were practicing for a Mass they were taping.
I have no idea how on earth I gave birth to 2 children who can sing so well. They sure didn’t get that from me. I can sing okay - just as long as it’s within a 3 note range.
Or… I should have known. I’ve said it a million times before: My family always cooks enough food to feed double the number of people actually there for dinner. The gluttonous part of my brain, however, forgot that. It said, “Oh, no! If you’re not doing Thanksgiving, there will be no leftovers. You better buy a turkey breast & make cornbread stuffing & yams so you can get leftovers or you might starve to death!”
Now, keeping in mind the first part of the above paragraph - uh, yes, we did get leftovers from my brother & sister in-law. But there was still that turkey breast sitting in that good old brine. There were still the cornbread muffins that came out good the second time around. Yes, we are doing Thanksgiving again! (Only this time without the 7 desserts.)
I had planned on posting a picture of myself here that my nephew drew of me but it is in the trunk of the car, which is at the shop to find out why the brakes are vibrating so that will have to wait for another time.
Something is wrong with my Internet connection. I am connecting through a neighbor’s signal which is weak. This means I virtually have no Internet. Since we’re heading out today, I also won’t have time to be on the phone with India for three hours. Anyhow, eventually I’ll get it back online. Meantime we’re off with the kids. No, we are not going out shopping. Even under normal circumstances shopping isn’t my thing. And on Black Friday? I don’t think so!
UPDATE
Okay, it seems to be working now. I have no idea why. It’s like magic. All is right with my world again. If you ever want to see someone panic, just come over here and disconnect me from the Internet. I’d have to go move into Starbucks or something. Take away my TV. Take away my chocolate. Just don’t take away my Internet.
I had planned on doing this long post for today. The plan was to write it up ahead because I knew this morning would be busy. Yeah, well that didn’t quite work out. Besides, ya’ll are too busy today to read a long post. The Thanksgiving story will have to wait for another time.
One of the things I’m thankful for is the Internet because without it, I wouldn’t have meet most of you. I’ve gotten to know so many people online & my life is better because of it.
