Howdy!

Yes, so, it's been a while.

I can seem to bring myself to post anything these days.

Things are fine at home - Sophie's great. She's very excited about Christmas. To the extent of waking up every morning: "It's CHRISTMAS!!!" and we have to burst her bubble and tell her, no, not for another month. Sorry.

So, she and I put a Christmas paper chain together with scraps of colored paper and the sticker address labels I got in the mail from The Nature Conservancy. She loves tearing off each day when she comes downstairs.

We also bought some things at the local hardware store and they had one of those obnoxious blow-up lawn things - with a huge Santa and a chimney. This one also had the Grinch pulling a Christmas tree out of the chimney. Sophie stopped and stared at the Grinch. "What's that, Mama?" I explained, in shorthand, about the Grinch. She was captivated. She made me repeat my story over and over and over and over again. Apparently I need to get that book because now she's obsessed.

In other news, my family is celebrating Thanksgiving on Friday. My mom's picking up the turkey, but I'm cooking it. I'm also doing the gravy (done last weekend after reading a NY Times article about stopping the gravy stress and just making it ahead of time), mashed potatoes, chocolate oblivion flourless torte with chocolate ganache, stuffing, and cranberry butter (not doing the Parker House Rolls this time. Unless I find myself with extra time). Oh, and Aaron's making an apple pie.

I feel like I'm forgetting something...

We only do a slightly traditional Thanksgiving. No one seems to mind if things get changed up. Which is nice because I like trying new dishes. My SIL is making a yummy stuffed Hubbard squash and a portabello blue cheese thingy. Yum. My mom's making brownies and she'll have our traditional pre-dinner snack - smoked oysters on Triscuits with melted cheese on top. I like them with dill havarti but they're also good with cheddar. I didn't realize how much of an aquired taste they are until I tried to make them for Aaron's family one year. Did not go over well. At all.

It warmed up slightly yesterday but for the past two weeks it's been deadly outside - I don't think it got above 20 degrees last weekend. Much colder at night. It had been in the '60s right before this so it was a shock to everyone.

Tabitha's doing fine without Otto. Unfortunately, she was overshadowed by him for most of their existence. Now she's much more snuggly and playful and she wants to be around us more. She seems slightly lonely, but she was always a pretty solitary cat. With the big switch to all wet food, her fur looks much better (less like a dirty bison) and she's not squirting ass juices on us. Also, she's lost a little girth and she's cleaning her pantaloons much more frequently. All good news all around.

I'm a little stressed at the moment because I'm losing all my hair. It's seriously thinned out and I'm not cutting it as often because it's much more obvious when my hair is very short. After Aaron's last haircut, I noticed he was thinning out a lot as well. And Sophie's hair is also thin. I'm trying to Google and figure out what's happening. Yes, I should see a doctor. What kind of doctor, though? Who covers hair? It didn't happen until we moved to this house. Is it something in the water? Something we're eating? Something we're breathing? Vitamin deficiency? Aaron had to unclog a bunch of our upstairs drains when we moved in - so the people who used to live here might have been losing a lot of their hair, too. Any ideas?

And, on that pleasant note, I hope you have a lovely and happy Thanksgiving.

Halloween

I keep meaning to write about Halloween but our computer at home is having issues and it's been very busy at work.

Anyhoo, just pretend it's about 2 weeks ago, mmm,kay?

I made Sophie's costume this year. It was a trial and a half. If I hadn't been sick for almost 2 weeks leading up to Halloween, that last week wouldn't have been such a marathon of cutting and sewing. The hardest part was having to wait until Sophie was in bed before really attempting anything. She was so excited about the costume, that it was hard for her to cap her enthusiasm and not go running around the house with the very fragile pattern pieces.

She decided to be a dinosaur this year because we got a Dora book and Dora was a dinosaur (Thank you, Dora, for continuing to NOT be a princess. Dora was a black cat last year and then we got a later Halloween book where she was a cowboy/girl). Boots, incidentally, was a banana and Sophie kept trying to convince me that I was going to be a banana this year. I did, honestly, try to find a banana pattern but then I was felled with the flu. So, I borrowed a witch hat (complete with long, flowing hair) from a friend and went as a witch. The best part of it? Beyond it being an extremely easy costume? Now I have Sophie saying: "I'll get you, my pretty, and your little dog, too!" complete with cackling. It warms my heart.

Sophie, thankfully, LOVED her costume. She was excited to wear it, excited to tell people what she was: "Trick or Treat! I'm a dinosaur!" What a difference a year makes. Aaron and I also learned from our mistakes last year and didn't talk about putting on our costumes until after we had all eaten.

I was struggling with the feet part of her costume and had everything else done late Thursday night and was just going to give up on the feet and have her go without. But I brought the directions to work and puzzled over them for a while and finally had an "AHA!" moment. I rushed home after work, thankfully Aaron was home, and started the last minute sewing. Aaron poured me a whiskey and made me stuff my face with pasta (while I was sewing and stuffing dinosaur feet) and then I ran upstairs to get my costume on (easy when more than half my closet is black) and ran back downstairs to get Sophie into hers.

I knew it was going to be a bit big because I wanted to make sure we could get a coat and pants under it. The night was actually quite mild, but you just never know around here.

In all the rushing around, Aaron decided not to wear a costume but he changed his mind later when he ran home to refill the bowl we'd left out on our step.

We get a LOT of trick-or-treaters by us. It's a quiet neighborhood up on a hill and everyone goes all out for Halloween. It's fantastic. Lots of people were waiting to see Sophie so she got lots of extra treats from our neighbors. We walked and walked and walked. As soon as she said "thank you!" at one house she was already asking if we were going to go to another. It was a wonderful night. She kept saying how much she loved Halloween and it was her FAVORITE holiday and she just loves trick-or-treating. If this neighborhood weren't already perfect for us, Halloween just seals the deal for me.

We finally wound our way back home and calmed down a bit from the excitement. We all went upstairs and started getting Sophie ready for bed. Knock after knock on the door as the older kids started their way around the neighborhood.

The best costume? I ran downstairs only to open the door to two Daleks! The two kids couldn't even climb the steps because of the great cardboard costumes. I yelled out "Exterminate!" and they were over-the-moon. Their parents said: "See! We told you someone would get it!" ;) It was the best.

Yay!

I'm still in disbelief. I kept expecting to wake up this morning and find out it was all a dream. It was overwhelming last night. And this morning, reading and watching Obama's acceptance speech. I'm so proud of America right now.

In other news, Sophie loves the name Obama. She was playing in her room last night before going to bed and she was singing songs to him because she likes how it sounds. "Obama! Obama!" How incredibly amazing that she gets to grow up in a time of groundbreaking change.

Woo hoo!

I voted on my way to work and the doors weren't open yet and there was probably a line of about 50 people by the time the doors opened at 7. This is a SMALL town, so 50 people at 7 a.m. is very exciting.

I couldn't stop smiling and everyone was very friendly to one another - "Good morning!"

I got back to my car and had to take a moment because I was overcome with emotion.

I sincerely, from the bottom of my heart, hope Obama wins.

Results Widget

Give the GOP the finger

Awesome video. We've watched it a bunch of times.