Oops.

Mark was wrapping up a package of hiking socks for Zachary, and was chatting with me while doing it. Which was his first mistake, apparently. He handed me the tag he had written out, with a disgusted look on his face. The tag said "to Zach from socks". He was either not paying attention to what he was doing, or he didn't want Zach to get too excited about a package of socks. Warning him maybe, just some socks, no money, no video games, nothing to see here.

On the 23rd, Zach and Thor and I went to Costco to buy Mark an acoustic guitar for Christmas. Mark decided he wanted one, and Costco had a package with guitar, lessons DVD, gig bag, stand, strap for not big big bucks.

Let me jump back here for a second...this Christmas was not a successful one for surprising Mark. I bought several of his gifts when he was there, because we shopped together rather too much. Actually there was at least one thing -- snow shoe poles, adjustable fancy shmancy snow shoe poles (like ski poles, pretty much) -- that he bought and handed to me to give to him for Christmas.

So I was kinda jazzed at the idea that he wouldn't know he was getting a guitar until he opened it. Until we walked into the house when we got home from Costco, Zachary walked up to Mark and said "we have your guitar." Then he clamped his hands over his mouth and had the most shocked and appalled look on his face. I laughed so hard I collapsed against Mark. Zach was devastated. He had meant to say "we have your Christmas present, so you have to get lost so we can wrap it." But he shortcut that accidentally to "we have your guitar."



Turns out that Mark had assumed that we were buying him a guitar at Costco. I should have told him we were going to Best Buy or Target or JoAnn Fabrics.

Poor Zachary has inherited a tendency to blurt, coupled with a manic mind that is racing ahead to the next eight things we have to do. My Mom almost killed my dog once, because of that tendency...

She tied poor Theo to the garage door and then went around the corner of the garage (I know I just told this story to somebody on another blog, sorry if I just told it here too...) and into the garage through the side door. Then she opened the garage door. Yup. The one my dog was tied to, the one she had just tied the dog to thirty seconds before opening it. She turned around to see poor Theo dangling from the door. Lucky for Theo he wasn't a big fat dog, so she could get him down pretty easily.

But it just goes to show, Zach has zero hope of avoiding future "we have your guitar" type incidents. Ze. Ro.

To change the subject completely...

Is it just me, or did my neighbors make a little snowman that looks rather too much like a penis?


Yeah. I thought so. It is just me. But in my defense, Mark has been gone a lot lately...

my new toy...

a Bamboo Pad. Awesomely fun. A complete time waster, for sure.

Zach needed it for a project for his English class, but doesn't think he will have much use or time to use it, so it's mine. And Awesome. Last night I was ready to fall asleep at oh, 7 pm, but didn't actually go to bed until after 11 because Tess and I were messing around with it.

Because you can do stuff like this with it. The program I used is Corel Painter Essential 3. There are a ton of settings and brushes and stuff that I haven't even looked at yet....But I did discover that at the moment I cannot recreate the brush strokes that give the grass texture in the work above. Of course. Because I really like the texture of the grasses.

Some stupid texture or design or effect that I don't want to use, I will recreate endlessly and accidentally. But the perfect texture to suggest grass, lucky one-time accident.

You can even upload a photo and create watercolors and stuff outta them. The hardest part is finding time to do all this stuff. As usual.

Since it was rather pricey, it's gonna be my birthday present, I think. No IPod Touch this year. Good thing my old first generation Nano still works...

Instead I got this new fabulous item for Christmas.
It's really nice to have a reliable source of espresso again. My old red beast is adorable,
but has become increasingly unsteady and unreliable.
Never a good thing when you rely on it for creamy goodness of the coffee variety. Old Red still made espresso, but the pump for the steamer seems to be kaput. Espresso without hot steamy milk is just wrong and a waste of caffeine.

Incidentally, that white box next to the source of all things espresso is my Happy Light.

Seems appropriate. My morning psuedo-sunlight and my source of happy caffeine, snuggled up together on the counter.

I turn it on in the morning and it blasts my retinas with the white hot light of a thousand fluorescent tubes. To make my brain think that I do not in fact live so far north that polar bears go "damn. The North Pole must be right around here somewhere."

Fortunately for my retinas, I have been waking up so late lately that the sun is already up, thus negating the need to sear said retinas with psuedo-sunlight. Or it's a day like today, when the sky was completely cloudless and bright sunshine shone down on us for all five and a half hours of daylight. That does mean it was zero degrees out. Step outside and your nose hairs freeze within 37 seconds, but it looks good from inside, especially if you are standing directly on the heater vent. Sunshine and cloudless skies and cold, or cloudy gray and slightly warmer. I go for the sunshine every time. We have lots of heater vents, and the Army pays our utilities.

Merry Christmas to All!

There's only one more sleep til Christmas!

And I have a ton of stuff to do!

So MERRY CHRISTMAS EVE!!!

It's Thursday.

Woo. I have gotten most of the Christmas presents for my kids. Yesterday we mailed off the packages we need to mail.

Have done no Christmas cards at all yet. Not a single one done. Guess that's this weekend's job.

And I bought something for my husband, and promptly misplaced it. It's flat and small and I could have tucked it in many places. I have a few days to find it...I think I stuck it somewhere downstairs, which means it could be in the kitchen cupboards, the computer cabinet, the several bookcases and cabinets with books and dishes. Sigh. I stuck it somewhere and then instantly forgot about it.

Classic me. I cannot tell you the number of times that I have misplaced something. My kids have gotten presents a couple days after their birthdays because I just found something. And a couple times I have stuck whatever I just found back in its hiding place so that I could give it to them for the next big giftie day.

We have Christmas Day food taken care of. I do not cook on Christmas Day. Christmas Eve is our big crazy day. We go shopping during the day, pick up last minute tiny little gifts, the whipping cream or other indispensable food I have forgotten, wrap the last few presents, and make a big meal. This year I think we are gonna do steak and potatoes. Never ever turkey, because once we finish eating, EVERYONE helps clean up, as fast as possible, because once the kitchen in clean, we get to open the presents. It's the way my family has always done it.

Christmas Day starts early, because the kids dig into their stockings, but they have to do it together, and Mark and I have to be there to watch too. The stockings just have small things in them, little goofy toys and gum, candy, maybe some socks and underwear.

Christmas Day is spent hanging out. We play the new games, check out our gifts, watch the new DVDs. Food is our favorite appetizers and deli sandwiches, soup I made a couple days earlier. Anything that does not require me to spend my time in the kitchen preparing a big meal and then cleaning up again. It's my day off too.

The Christmas Eve menu is still way too vague...Steak and potatoes. The kids would be fine with this idea, because they don't want a big meal with lots of clean up after. Less we eat, less we serve, the faster we get to the presents. But it's so much more fun to torture the kids with the reality that we must sit and eat and chat and laugh and spend some real time over the meal, and every single thing -- every fork, every glass, every bit of food, must be put away and taken care of before they are even allowed to touch a present. It's a family tradition.

And as always, the photo...