Furniture camel.

I was right; today I am as happy as a clam.

We ate sprouted wheat bagels and cream cheese for breakfast. Then we made a camel and rode it around the living room.

Black Christmas.

Yesterday my intent to catch up on movie-watching turned into a pathetic Jon & Kate Plus 8 marathon. Fortunately Andrea called me early in the evening and we headed up to her sister's "cabin" on Mt. Nebo. This so-called-cabin is actually a gigantic old-but-remodeled fancy-but-creepy house with a two car garage and an amazing far away view of the town. We all agreed upon entering that it was exactly the type of house where scary movie slaughterings take place. We ate a little and drank a little and then decided to play Sardines. I was "it" and hid in the second floor bathroom...in the tub with feet. KT found me. Then Andrea found us. Then Lauren found us, making Marvin the loser. We had agreed to yell "LOSER" repeatedly until the last player found the rest of the sardines, so the game wouldn't go on forever. We yelled a bit, saw Marv's shadow coming up the stairs, and waited. The lamp went off. We waited for Marvin to scare us. He didn't. We yelled some more. Waited. And then he tried to scare us. "Nice try," we said. "Like we didn't see THAT coming," we said. "It took you long enough," we said. "I was waiting because I thought that after you guys turned off the light you were all going to jump out and scare ME," he said. "Uh, we didn't turn off the light. We thought you turned off the light?" "Uh, no." "Whatever. We know you turned off the light." "I'm being dead serious. I didn't touch the lamp." "Seriously?" "Seriously." "........................." At this point we all get a little freaked out, creep out of the bathroom, shining flashlights in every corner, and nervously make jokes about our impending doom. The power is out in the whole house, but the street light is on outside. I expect to be stabbed by a guy in ghost face mask at any minute. Lauren grabs an ice pick


I grab my pepper spray


KT grabs an empty bottle of sparkling blueberry juice

Marv has his pocket knife out

And Andrea,

always the sensible one, calls her sister to see if this is a common occurrence. As it turns out, the power tends to go out when the upstairs and downstairs heating units kick on at the same time. Way to scare the bejesus out of us, old house.

After that we settled in to watch some Dirty Dancing until Marv and I left to try and rescue Mark, who had wrecked his car after hitting a patch of ice while driving up the mountain. Rescue efforts failed, and a tow truck had to be called. Way to ruin Christmas for Mark, ice patch.

Today I was a useless emotional wreck. I didn't know what caused it and I didn't know how to fix it. I hate it when that happens. Especially for six consecutive hours. Ewww. Tomorrow will be better. No doubt about it.

Baby Jesus.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

It was a good one. Possibly even the best. My mama and daddy braved the chance of snowy mountainous roads to spend yesterday and today with us. We opened gifts and went out to eat and watched some SNL last night and then ate a homemade Mexican feast today. Now my parents are on their way back home, Marvin is sleeping off his calories, and I am catching up on some long overdue movie-watching and R&R. As usual, I was too caught up in the fun-havings to take any pictures. Documentation or not, I'm really thankful to have a home and a family and plenty of food and the means to share with people who don't have the comfort of those things.

My dad has shut down his locksmith shop after twenty years of business due to the sluggish economy. He seems to be more concerned about getting bored than about not having income and I admire him for that. He insists that they'll get by on wood-cutting and knife-making and gardening and crafting and odd-jobbing and my mom's meager social security check and I hope he's right. I'd hate for them to have to start selling their land to pay the bills. I've promised myself not to worry. We always got by when I was little before he had the business, even if just barely. Eatin' squirrels and beans. Surely it will be easier to manage now without a kid to take care of. And if not, the kid will do her best to come to the rescue.

I wish everyone who reads this the happiest of days. YOU. ARE. ALL. LOVED.

P.S. - I am also thankful for Etsy...or just the general finding of oddities:

Oops.

Marvin & I kept accidentally finding the presents we'd gotten for each other (once because the cats pulled the tissue paper from a gift bag, once because an order confirmation got sent to my inbox, etc.), so we went ahead and exchanged the few remaining mystery gifts last night. (Maybe someday we'll do Christmas right.) His favorites were shoes and Hansen's sodas and a neti pot. My favorites were slips and a sleep mask and a grass-scented candle...but most of all: A SOLAR POWERED RAINBOW MAKER!

This contraption and the Lite Brite are probably the only frivolous gadgets I will ever covet.

Yesterday we went Sunday driving and ended up in Fort Smith, where there wasn't anything spectacular taking place...so we just ate a big meal and came back home...but on the way there we stopped and bought a homemade pie and a bird necklace from a nice lady that was set up on the side of the road. We also admired Subiaco Abbey...as well as a gigantic Budweiser can. I should have taken some pictures of these exciting things, but I didn't...so here are some boring-around-the-house photos:




Our little (live! with roots! plantable!) tree, our forbidden rooftop view, a little teacup of blackberry wine, & a heap of cats.

P.S.-There is a live nativity scene taking place around the corner with a lot o' bass.

A masterpiece.

For those of you who haven't started your self-portraits for the Wall of Fame, Jorge Garcia has just put you to shame:

The man's on a hit t.v. series, lives in Hawaii, and STILL managed to get this masterpiece to Arkansas in less than a week. I bet you procrastinators feel pretty lame now, dontcha?

Misogynist noise canceling headphones.

Searching the internet for advice on how to get one's husband to cut back on his video game playing was an unsurprising waste of time...with the exception of this:

"Ah yes, the noise-canceling headphones. You could lock Rush Limbaugh, Phyllis Schlafly and Mullah Omar in a room together with a stack of Hustlers and 10 ounces of meth, and they couldn't come up with anything more misogynist. I storm back to my desk and type the phrases "my husband" "addicted" "video games" "HELP" into the search engine. Hundreds of links appear.

I click on the first one, a Christian counseling Web site, where a desperate woman named Tiffany, whose husband plays video games nine to 11 hours a day, is reminded by the nonaccredited Christian counselor that man is master of her dominion and tells her to pray to Jesus to restore her husband's love.

This isn't going to work for me. Besides, I have already prayed to the Jewish God for guidance, and the Jewish God, as he has done for millions of Jewish wives since time immemorial, advised me to rip my husband's headphones off his head and scream at him for never putting his leftovers back in the fridge. This tactic proved less effective than I hoped.

I click on another page, where a forum of concerned women instruct me to regain Ben's attention by walking around the house dressed in skimpy outfits and waggling my hips provocatively. One enterprising poster, aptly named Cyberhottie69, even suggests draping one's naked breasts somewhere impossible to miss -- like the coffee table, or on his head, like a doughy, undulating hat."

Yessss.

Cheer.

I love the Amish and try to love the grumpy.

Right now I should be hanging out with friends, picking the weenies out of the rice dish Jumpy made and feeding them to Bennie...but it's just too cold for me to want to step away from the space heater and set foot outside without the promise of snowfall. Sadly, it's hard enough to coax hermity little me out of the house on a warm day. Usually books and cats and candles and blankets and tea keep me perfectly content. I love my friends SO MUCH.......just not hanging out with them. Sometimes. Please forgive me.

I can't wait to bake bread to the record Marvin gave me.

God bless 'im for his noble attempt at fitting in with the granola gang at my work Christmas party. HE ATE VEGETABLES.

And now, a waterfall: