2010: What Happened Was.....

When I started out to post my year in review, I was originally going to do a "The Good and The Bad." Ha ha! I hear you all laughing. I know I have a strange genetic defect that does not allow me to see things as bad. Well, in January we lost Rita.
I loved her dearly but she was very old and had terrible pain in her hands. She could barely hold a fork. Our last day together was wonderful. And she died in her sleep. That's really ideal. Death happens and it doesn't bother me at all when an old person dies. It's inevitable. I miss her quirky humor though.
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Another thing that happened was I got my new Meals on Wheels route at the beginning of the year. It was a little irksome at first with the wanky apartment complexes, but the rest of it was golden. So close to my house, so quick, so easy. We also had winter storm tree damage, but thankfully, no damage to our house. And the video I made of that always makes me laugh.
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Our next big event was our annual beach trip.

Everything about the beach trip was wonderful and I had so much fun. I'll never forget the Trivial Pursuit and all the laughs with friends and family. And great food!
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I got some great home improvement projects done like painting both hallways:

And I knocked out those stupid posts that were in the opening between the dining area and the living room. I really hated those things. There may have been some other little things that I forgot.
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In the summer, when I got that photo text from my daughter of a wedding chapel, I realized she was really getting married. They had been engaged for maybe two years, so I guess I wasn't really taking it seriously. I remember that day that my daughter, her fiance and myself went to the country club to check it out as a possible reception venue. That's the day I realized it was really going to happen. And so on another day, my daughter, her maid of honor and I went shopping and I found this:

Yes! There is actually a uniform for The Mother Of The Bride. And I found a comfortable one. My brain kicked into high gear then. Oh MY! There really is going to be a wedding. We need to make plans! Where will all my people stay? And how can I have people stay at my house when the spa has become tiresome and unsightly? So I hired people to take that thing out:

That was quite a process and left a deep hole and broken deck and so I hired someone else to fill the hole and finish the deck. Then I converted the library into temporary sleeping quarters and came up with ideas of how to entertain guests for several days.

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I realize I left some things out, like the fantastic sports year we had with our basketball team (DUKE!!) winning the national championship and our baseball team (Go Rangers!!) winning the ALCS and making their first trip to the world series. But really, I would have to say that Kate's wedding was the big event of 2010.

I had so much fun with my friends and family all here at the same time. And the reality is Duke could win the national championship again next year. An old beloved person could very well die next year, there will be things done to the house, we'll have another great week at the beach cottage, but my one and only child getting married and having Mom, my brother and my best friend all here? That will never happen again. I loved it. I loved 2010. I'm looking forward to 2011.

(I have plans, you know. )

Christmas Wrap

I can't believe Christmas is over! We had a fun weekend, but it seems like it went by too fast. That deep fried cajun turkey was excellent and I'm very impressed that the restaurant had lost my order and managed to come up with a turkey at the last minute. I called Thursday night to get my pick up time for Friday. I imagined it was 3:00 but couldn't remember for sure. We had ordered it way back on November 21st. The girl was all flustered and said she would call me back that she had to "look it up." She called back about 10 minutes later and asked if maybe my order was under a different name. Whoa! Alarm bells went off in my head. She even said they were out of turkeys. She told me she would call her general manager and call me right back. She did. She adamantly told me that I would get my turkey. The GM called me the next day to verify my exact order and everything was fine. I was very pleased.

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Our last minute Christmas eve shopping was almost anti-climatic. We ran into Target for some gift cards and didn't even have to stand in line. Then we stopped in a restaurant for a gift card and had a beer and we were done. We stopped by the grocery store for some last minute things and came home. Of course, like we do every other year, we forgot to get Christmas day lunch food. We always forget that everything is closed on Christmas. So our Christmas lunch was convenience store hot dog and taquitos. And by lunch, I mean breakfast. Because I only eat lunch and dinner. And lunch is my first meal, just an hour or so after I wake up, so I guess it is breakfast. But I always call it lunch because it is 1:00 pm. And it's not breakfast food. I am not a fan of breakfast food.

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My daughter and her husband (I am still trying to get used to saying that) came over Saturday evening. We had a fun time.

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Oh wait! I forgot something. On Thursday, My Sweetie set up the x box kinect. It's the newest technology where you just use your body. There is no controller. On Friday night we did the dance contest and played a few sports games. You control the game with your arm in the air like Tom Cruise does in Minority Report. It's really funky. The thing is you have to stand a certain distance from it and our living room set up didn't work for that, so late Thursday night, we rearranged the whole living room and on Friday we had to move the Christmas tree. It was all a little crazy.

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Anyway we all played the dance game Saturday night and my daughter's husband was hilarious. Very deer in headlights, and gave up pretty quickly. My daughter was the master and won hands down. We had a great meal and they probably were here longer than they ever stayed before (not counting that crazy night where they came over after 2:00 am and stayed til almost 6:00 am.)

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Sunday we went to my MIL's house. My Sweetie and I are usually overwhelmed by the kids and the tight quarters but we made the best of it and my FIL was up the whole time which is very unusual. We had a good time and shared lots of laughs. Everyone was in high spirits and the kids were all fun and happy.

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I got lots of great meaningful gifts. I'm looking forward to using the two great restaurant gift cards we got. I'll be wearing all my Duke wear for years to come and will have a big smile every year when I pull out my sweet Christmas decoration that Lo made for me. I love all my gifts and I had a great long Christmas weekend, that started on Thursday when Carole came by for our gift exchange and visit. Now in just a few more days we will have our shrimp and crab leg boil, do our noisy poppers, drink champagne and ring in another year of adventures and fun.

Christmas Eve 2010

The decorations are nestled all snug in their place.

The delivery boxes are taking up space.

Our food that was ordered: the order misplaced!

The restaurant responded, they had to save face.

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The last minute shopping, we'll both do today.

With bar stops for beers along our way.

I wish you a wonderful holiday.

And now, I guess, I've had my say.

(Merry Christmas everyone! These are some of my Santas.)

I'm Stupid (and injured because of it)

I woke up this morning and my mouth was totally dried out and my tongue was stuck to the bottom of my mouth and when I was able to detach it, it actually pulled skin from the bottom of my mouth and it hurt. And all the while, that humidifier was sitting in a box on the kitchen floor.
Lesson learned.
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Unrelated Addendum 12:51 a.m. (CST) 12/21/10: Because the moon is straight overhead, I am able to watch the lunar eclipse through my living room skylight. How cool is that?

Call Me Old-Fashioned, But....

I don't know why, but "trending" as a verb really irks me. I have a nice Oxford Dictionary made out of actual paper and in it "trend" is only

a noun. I guess it shouldn't bother me. I almost feel like a hypocrite.

I make up words all the time. I even have my own gerund-speak. For instance, if I want my husband to grab something that I am handing to him, I say, "Taking." Or if we get on an elevator and he is distracted I would say, "Pushing." Actually, gerund-speak has a slight hint of a question mark behind it. As in, "Are you going to push the elevator button?" But I would never, ever, under any circumstances, show him something that is cool and happening and say, "Trending."

Christmas Card Chaos

Is it just me or does everyone make this much of a mess when they do their Christmas cards? It doesn't seem like there should be that much stuff.

Not Going To....

That picture is unrelated to this post, but I thought it was fun and goofy. We've had spotty at best internet service for over 10 days and I'm tired and I'm not going to take it anymore. I bet I've spent an entire workday's worth of hours on the phone with our stupid cable internet provider. It's almost embarassing that it took me this long to realize two things: 1) They obviously do not give a frick about my business and 2) I don't need this crap.
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After wasting another almost hour on the phone today, when she put me on hold for the 5th time, I hung up. I ate my lunch. I called another internet provider and ordered service. It will be installed on Monday. I absolutely CAN'T WAIT to call and cancel my current "service" next Monday. Unfortunately since I have to wait until Monday, I will continue my daily calls going through the whole frikking rigamarole to get to a person to loudly and flatly state: You need to credit my account for today. I refuse to pay for something I am not getting. I'm tired of doing it, but I will do it every day until I cancel. Because I'm not paying. I hate them. I don't need this crap.

Poor Fella!

It's bad enough that people dress up their pets,

but dressing up wild animals is just rude.

Man, people are stupid.

Monday night on Jay Leno's "Headlines" segment, he showed a newspaper photo and the caption was something like First Graders Build Replica of France's Leaning Tower of Pisa With Toothpicks and Marshmallows. There was barely a titter of laughter from the audience. Jay looked disgusted and didn't even bother to explain it and moved on to the next one. I guess the audience thought the marshmallow and toothpick picture wasn't that funny. I guess the audience didn't realize that the Leaning Tower of Pisa is not in France. It was sad. Good on Jay for not explaining it. If they don't know by now, well, sucks to be them.

Someone posted a rant on Facebook the other day about using "Xmas" for "Christmas." Her problem with the whole thing, according to her was "There would be no Christmas without Christ!" Well, yeah there would be. It would just be called something else. There have been winter solstice celebrations since ancient times. National geographic has a great article about it. The picture above is the magalithic tomb of Newgrange in County Meath, Ireland. It is older than Stonehenge and lines up perfectly with the winter solstice to send a beam of line well inside to light up a decorative floor. Seriously, the winter solstice is something to celebrate. I do.

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I did a paper in college years ago on the history of the Christmas carol and that's where I learned that Christians co-opted nearly every pagan festival, as well as pagan songs (they changed the lyrics, but kept the tunes). That's where the Christmas tree as well as the bunnies and eggs of Easter come from.

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Yeah, people are stupid. I should be used to it by now. And by the way, I do not like "Xmas" either. I even spell it all the way out in phone texts with my lazy fingers. I just think it's stupid. I also wouldn't type "I'm doing The New York Times Xword puzzle." And Steve Martin didn't say, "Well, Xcuuuuuuuse me!"

This Sucks!

My internet's been down all week.
I really want to rant.
My internet's been down all week.
So, therefore, I can't.
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(Posted remotely via Carole my neighbor)

Hey! Pass Me A Joint!

Joint pain is like the weather: Everybody talks about it but nobody does anything about it. I don't want to sound like an old geezer. Pain is not just for old geezers anyway. I remember coming home from ballet

class so sore that I would soak in the bathtub until my feet and hands pruned up. And I was in elementary school. I also remember the first (and only) time I tried to water ski. I was in 8th grade and I was so sore I didn't go to school that Monday. I didn't even get out of bed that Monday. I remember Mom coming in to ask me why I hadn't gotten up.

I said, "I can't move."

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I've talked about the osteoarthritis in my thumb alot, but that was my right thumb. Now my left thumb is doing the same thing. It's in agony. Or maybe I am in agony. Can a thumb be in agony? It occurred to me that if they can do hip and knee replacements, they should be able to do thumb replacements. I want some new thumbs. I happen to think thumbs are pretty important. I probably use my thumbs more than I use my hips and knees.

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And it's not just the joint pain that's so annoying, it's that sometimes it feels like I'm actually coming apart. My elbows feel like that sometimes too. And that probably is an old geezer thing because even when that rope tried to rip my arms right off of my body when I tried to water ski, I didn't feel like I was coming apart. I just couldn't move the next day.

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Oh well, like joint pain and the weather, aging is another thing everybody talks about and doesn't do anything about. I'll just drink another beer. That's always good.

Our Anniversary

I made and posted that picture 3 years ago and forgot all about it until tonight. I was actually looking for something else and ran across it. That really is cute.
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So today is our 10th anniversary. The timing was pretty good. It was a good year. Our basketball team won the national championship. It was an Olympic year, which we both love. And our baseball team won the American League Championship and we got to go to most of those games.
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Our long week at the beach cottage in May was wonderful and then we had that fun weekend at The Worthington for Fourth of July. We had crazy weather but we not only made it through that, but had that dangerous tree taken down just in the nick of time. No crushed roof for us.
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Rita died, but we got to celebrate her life and have that time with all of My Sweetie's Michigan family. And we had had a good year with Rita before that. She was ready to go and although we'll miss her, it

was her time, and it was okay. She would smile about this post and make a joke.

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We were troopers through all the wedding planning for my daughter, the wedding, all the company, the reception. We survived intact and in good humor.

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We adapted to the random schedules of My Sweetie's schooling with late dinners and missed events, but we celebrated each "A" scored on his tests.
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We had random good money luck, like deciding to remove the spa and then realizing how it had been draining our pockets. Our electricity bill dropped like a lead weight. (And something else which I can't post about.)
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I'd have to say that 2010 was a good year and a good year to celebrate our 10th anniversary. 10 is a good number. And maybe 11 will be better.