Merry Christmas

Hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and get everything your little heart desires!

The kiddo, DIL and grandkiddo are here for the holidays, and we've had a wonderful time with them. My family got together last night at Mom's to eat too much and open gifts. Most of them were for the grandkiddo. He wasn't overly excited, but then, he is only two months old. He got clothes, stuffed animals, rattles, bags, diapers, formula and money, and yawned through most of it. Our favorite was the reindeer who sings and dances to "Feliz Navidad." He watched it wide-eyed the first time, but the other times the deer danced were for the adults' enjoyment.


Not all of the family could make it last night. Niece 1, her husband and their son were tied up with his family, but we'll get to see them today. The kiddo, DIL and grandkiddo are spending the day with her family, but we'll see them this evening. And Niece 2 will be there for dinner, but will have to cut out soon after to nap before her all-night shift at the hospital. After New Year's, she'll be leaving for school in El Salvador, so we won't see her again until next Christmas. I'm not sure what the family will do without her.

Have a good one!
Rachel11:00 AM

And the winner isn't . . .

Me!

Today was the Jingle Bells drawing in Sapulpa -- they gave away two $500 prizes, three $1000 and the biggie, $10,000. To enter, you had to shop in town, the stores gave out tickets, and you had to be present to win.

Since we had to go downtown anyway to check on something I'd ordered for the grandkiddo -- and since sister Leah had done some shopping in town and given me her tickets to add to my own -- Robert and I decided we'd check out the drawing. I'd never been before, since this was the first year it didn't take place at the same time as our writers' meeting.

It was snowing. Windy. The wind chill was somewhere under twenty degrees. Being an intelligent sort, I'd worn my long down coat and heavy gloves. Being a vain sort, I'd put my hair up (do you know how hard it is to get your hair to look charmingly touseled?), leaving my ears and neck bare. And being some sort of idiot, I'd worn long jeans -- the kind that drag the ground if you're not wearing heels -- and a gorgeous scarf that's so thin you can see through it and faux Crocs. Yup, the clogs with no back and little holes all over the top.

I freakin' froze. Normally I never let anyone but a select few invade my personal space, but I found myself edging closer and closer to strangers wearing insulated coveralls and caps with fold-down ear flaps for just a tad of warmth. (Yes, those coveralls are damn ugly, but everyone wearing them seemed way more comfortable than I was.)

Lor Fullbright, from the Channel 6 news team, read out the numbers, and the winner got five minutes to put in an appearance at the stage. Fortunately, there was music playing during the waits, so I didn't look like a total fool bouncing up, down and all around, trying to get a drop or two of blood to start circulating through my frozen toes.

My jeans were wet halfway to my knees. My socks were soaked. I lost feeling in my ears and feet at about the same time. My nose was running, and my great hair got windblown all to hell. IF I had been lucky enough to win, I would have given the ticket to Robert to claim because I was definitely not "ready for my close-up."

And then I didn't win. {Major pout here.} To add insult to injury, when it was over, we had to walk a half dozen blocks to the truck, then fight traffic all the way to the edge of town. (Okay, everyone who knows how small Sapulpa is, stop snickering. We can get traffic-jammed with the best of 'em.)

Oh, well. I got a great burger and fries for lunch at Scott's, found out the grandkiddo's giftie will be ready Tuesday (and will be as adorable as he is), had a cherries-and-pecan ice cream cone from Braum's, and picked up a new pair of shoes. And it only took . . . oh, three hours or so to thaw out once I got home and changed into dry clothes.

And the snow blew itself right on out of here -- thank you, God! So it turned out to be a pretty good day.

Even if I'm not $10,000 richer. Rachel10:58 PM

The coolest tree ever

Yeah, flamingos are tacky as hell, but I love 'em -- the tackier, the better.

Isn't it cool? My big tree is pretty, my cowboy tree is cute, but my flamingo tree is a hoot.

And with it colder than ice outside, people still recovering from the last storm and snow due in tonight, I need all the hoots I can get.

Praying that our power doesn't go out again! Rachel4:06 PM

Did I really say that?

With the ice and short-term loss of power, heat, and water, I've been spending more time in the house with the dogs than usual, and I've found myself saying some really stupid things.

Like, "Put that couch back where you got it."

"Get his leg out of your mouth."

"Quit humping your sister's head."

I tolerate animals, but my alter-ego absolutely adores them, and since she's the one who legally exists, she wins out. But six antsy dogs, none of whom like cold weather anymore than I do, is kind of like dealing with six antsy kids. (Except I can lock the dogs in their kennels, without threat of arrest.) I get that they have to amuse themselves. I also get that five males in one house is an invitation to chaos. I also get that Olivia may be the smallest and the only female, but by God she is determined to make the alpha fight to hold onto his rightful place.

But please . . . I'm an intelligent woman. Why do I have to constantly chide one or another for humping each other? (And why can't Shadow figure out the right end to hump?) Why do I expend tons of energy every day pushing the couch back across the room to the windows where it belongs? And why do I spend half of my day letting someone in, then letting someone else out? And they never want to come in/go out at the same time? No shit, I let Chance in, sit down, pickup my keyboard, and Beau needs to go out. NOW. So I let him out, settle in, and he needs to come in. I let him in, sit down, and Lucky needs to go out. I have no doubt they plan it among themselves via doggy ESP. "Okay, she looks comfortable now. You go whine."

That's why I have an office outside the house. (Well, truth is, my office is in the workshop behind the house because there wasn't any workable space inside the house when we moved in, not with the kiddo's music vibrating my desk all the time.) But now that we have six quadripeds, having an office to go is great. It's just Jack and me -- the others get kenneled. He's the perfect writing companion. He shares my lunch, and he sleeps. He goes out once in a while, stays an hour at a time, then comes in and sleeps. And I never have to tell him to put the desk back where he got it. Rachel10:40 AM

Am I spoiled?

Yes!

We were without power -- meaning no electricity, no heat, and no water -- for about 26 hours, and it was 25 hours too long. I hate to whine when there are still peoople out there without heat and it's damn cold outside, but I hated every minute of it. (Well, okay, candles in the bedroom when you're snuggling to share body heat is kinda nice.)

Every winter we try to get a little bit better prepared for bad weather. A few years ago we got snowed in for a long weekend, with no power and, worse, no food but canned soup and stale crackers. Blech. So we began stocking up on bottled water, for both us and the dogs, and foods that actually tasted good cold. Then, after another winter storm with four or five days without water and every dish in the kitchen dirty, we also began buying paper plates, foam bowls, plastic silverware. Then, tired of cold food when the weather outside was frightful, we bought a propane camp stove.

But we still got caught this time without a provision for heat. Oh, we bought a small propane stove, but this is the first time we needed it for more than a few hours and it wasn't enough. It took thirty minutes to gather the nerve to crawl out of my warm bed heaped with covers this morning for a dash into the bathroom, then to throw on heavy clothes.

Now, the really ridiculous thing is we have two fireplaces in this house, and I usually spend a fair amount of each summer cutting up trees. After one cold-without-heat weekend last year, friend Linda asked, "What did you do with all those trees?"

I, uh, burned them.

"In 100-degree weather? Instead of saving them for firewood?" She followed that with a verbal smack upside the head.

Well, after this ice storm, I'm going to have plenty of firewood for next winter. We lost dozens of branches and probably three or four trees will have to come down.

And we're going to stay warm when the next frigid spell takes out the electricity and, with it, our heat. I'm calling the firewood people tomorrow. Rachel10:49 PM

Commercials

What's happened to all the creative minds that used to be out there? Commercials are, for the most part, the dumbest things on TV, and that's saying a hell of a lot. Sure, there have always been a lot of stupid or annoying commercials (Florence Henderson's "Wessonality" commercials come to mind).

Cell phone companies now have some of the worst ads on the tube. Most of them are amazingly: a) boring b) stupid c) off-putting. Remember the great Sprint commercials a few years back that revolved around a misunderstanding because of a bad connection? Where the dauschunds stampede, and the guy brings home "Uncle Pillsbury Doughboy"? They were cool commercials. Everyone loved them. Now we get some smug-ass goober who can't multiply five times five, or some dippy broad who asks for her husband's opinion in a most annoying way, then always chooses the opposite. It doesn't make me want a cell phone unless I get to beat the broad with it.

(Though, in fairness, Verizon has a cute one on now, with the teenage girl who get the pony from hell for Christmas, while her friends get cool new phones.)

Insurance ads suck pond water (though the Mercury ads have been fairly entertaining). Ditto with fast-food ads. I swear, Arby's uses the most incompetent ad agency in the world. I wanted to throw the talking oven mitt in the fire, the "I'm thinking Arby's" got way old way fast, and the new one, with the drive-through guy repeating the order in the schmoozy voice is just creepy. (There used to be a great fast-food ad with a kid going, "Ka-ching" with each order. It's been years, though, so I can't remember the restaurant.)

Eww, the Burger King shit. I HATE the King. The first one I remember was a guy waking up in bed with that freaky creepy king sitting beside him with that freaky sxpression. Ugh. The guy makes my skin crawl. If I ever ate at Burger King, I would have stopped after those commercials came on.

About the only commercials that are consistently good these days are the California cows and Smilin' Bob in the Enzyte commercials. I get a kick out of those.

When the kiddo was eight or nine months old, no shit, he watched commercials. He did his own thing while the shows were on, then immediately lock in on the TV during the breaks. As soon as the commercials went off, he went back to contemplating his toes or whatever. Not even a baby would watch most of the crap on TV these days. Rachel10:57 PM

The best ideas . . .

. . . always lead to me spending money. Make that MORE money.

Christmas is coming up, right? Just about everyone in the world already has their trees up and decorated, but I do things on my own schedule. I decided not to bring in the monster tree this year -- it would have required removing virtually everything except the Camaro and the freezer from the garage, then moving it back in. If I were some kind of sicko pervert with a garage you could do surgery in (like the guy down the road who keeps his garage door open so we can all see how disgustingly clean it is), moving everything out would be no big deal. But I've got better things to do with my time than organize a garage that's been a catchall for eleven and a half years.

So. It would be easier to do a couple of smaller trees than the monster, I decide, and we just happened to have a couple in the attic. Hey, if you add them together, they're almost as big as Gargantua, but I can handle both on my own. More or less.

I bring the larger one down -- translate to: throw bags from the attic to bounce off whatever's in the way on the garage floor, because, of course, there is no empty floor space for it to land on. While I'm in the attic, I also toss down a 3-foot tree, which lands with surprisingly little damage.

I take the short tree into the living room and avoid sniffing canine noses and paws the size of dinner plates and put the sucker together. And it only takes a couple of tries! Then I put lights on. Gargantua, of course, is lighted. Shorty's not. Not a big deal, though. I have approximately 18,000 Christmas lights in the attic and in the dogs' closet. (You think I kid???)

While I'm stringing lights that the dogs are trying to eat, I get this great idea (hence, the subject of this post): since I have Shorty for ornaments in general and the 3-footer for my cowboy ornaments (the topper's a little angel with blond curls and a red cowboy hat -- too cute), why not get a tacky silver aluminum tree for my flamingo ornaments? I mean, what could be cooler than a tacky silver tree with tacky flamingo ornaments? (Well, the same tree with a topper of Santa in shorts and sunglasses, but I haven't seen one yet.)

Now I'm not being critical of flamingos. I love 'em, I've got dozens of them in all sizes and shapes and degrees of awfulness. But the truth is, fake flamingos are inherently tacky. That's one of the things I love about them.

But I can't find a small silver tree in my limited shopping time, so I put out the word to my buds in Romance Writers Ink -- the best writers group ever -- and within about twelve hours, I have my silver tree. Well, I don't have it yet, but one of my buds does and she's bringing it to our meeting Saturday.

Another of our buds says "Use blue tinsel for the flamingo/water effect." Sounds cool to me, so I go shopping today and buy blue tinsel. (Icicles, actually, since it came in prettier shades of blue.) And then I got these glittery pink feathers and a little pink non-flamingo bird and some pretty blue dangly things. This is going to be one incredibly cool tree.

So the tree's bought. More stuff has been bought to go with it. And now, after digging through my Christmas closet for two freakin' hours, I CAN'T FIND MY FREAKIN' FLAMINGO ORNAMENTS. See what I mean about having to spend money? Either I have to locate those little flockers, or I'll have to buy new ones. And do you know how hard it is to find classy kitsch on short notice?

Wonder if I could swing a trip to Florida before Christmas . . . Rachel9:29 PM

Do I seem familiar?

Yeah, I know, it's been a long time since I was here. I was thinking about making it a full month, but by then some of you would probably think I'd died or something, and I have no intention of dying, literally or figuratively, this close to Christmas.

I've been working, both inside and out. My kitchen is damn near spotless, the rest of my house has moved up from "ewwww" to "ugh," I've made headway on the jungle of my yard, and I've turned in a proposal to my agent for a new book. (But not about Selena and Tony. Not even one to be published under my name. My alter-ego gets the credit this time. She's whiny about that.)

It's cold in Oklahoma these days. Not the bitter Jesus-it's-freaking-COLD-out-there. Just enough to make me uncomfortable everywhere I go. I dress in layers and still can't manage to stay warm. Every restaurant and store has its own discomfort zone, and it drives me nuts.

Robert and I went to the local Christmas parade Saturday evening. Sixty degrees and winds gusting hard enough to make it feel close to fifty. We sat on the curb in front of Walgreens at the official start and got the blast of sirens from two police cars, two fire engines (one with its Federal -- cool!) and a sheriff's vehicle. That was probably Robert's favorite part of the parade. If he could have a Federal on his car, he'd be one happy camper.

Rule of thumb for parades: if the eight kids beside you are obnoxious before the parade begins, they're going to be really obnoxious after it starts. I'd watched these brats running around, each with handfuls of empty Walgreen's bags, but it never clicked in my head what the bags were for: candy. They throw it from the floats; the people walking alongside the floats give it away by handsfuls. These kids didn't give a damn about the parade; all they wanted was the candy. They scrambled for it, they argued over it, they compared it, they fought for it, they begged for it, and when they ate it, they threw the wrappers on the ground. Guess they didn't want empty wrappers mixing with full ones. Jeez, I'd've given them ten bucks' candy to go away and quit raining on my parade.

Big disappointment: no Santa Claus!!! Granted, I haven't been to a local parade in at least fifteen years, but I remember all the years past: the parade always started with a marching band (and we had only two of those this time!!) and ended with Santa Claus on his sleigh, followed by a bunch of horses. (It's Oklahoma.) (And the horses were followed by a pooper scooper.) This year there was no big Santa on his sleigh, and I don't think there were more than six or eight horses in the whole thing.

And note to whoever did the entry order: it's generally not a good idea to put a skittish horse in front of an antique fire engine whose driver insists on blowing his antique siren periodically. Poor horse's eyes were about to pop out of his head.

No Christmas decorating done yet. We've got a huge artificial tree -- remember, the last time we tried a live tree, the dogs thought they'd gotten indoor plumbing -- and it's a hassle to get out of its corner of the garage and into the house. It weighs about a ton and having to get it up on top of our old dining table is a major effort (it goes on the table because of dogs), and then Robert has to tie it securely to the table. (Again, dogs.) Then I have to spend hours going up and down the ladder decorating it, twisting the hooks around the branches because of . . . sigh, the dogs. Every time I try to get started, I think about all the hassle and sit down again to rest. I'm thinking maybe I need smaller trees this year.

Who knows? I may hang my rusted barbed wire wreath and be done with it. Rachel8:45 AM