The times we've shared

Once upon a time, when I was a wee lass of somewhere between six and nine years old (the details are hazy), my sister Heather and I had the same music teacher in elementary school. Said music teacher asked us to call her Mrs. DoRae (or some variation of spelling thereof), as in Do Re Mi. Har, har, har! So punny. (In case you were wondering, her real name was Mrs. Doris.)

Now, Mrs. "DoRae" was an aspiring singer/songwriter. And while I can only remember snippets of the song "Strawberry Ice," Heather and I still fondly sing the classic hit "Pickles in the Snow." Allow me to share the lyrics with you, as we sing it.

Pickles in the snoooooow
But you don't want to eat 'em now.
Nooo, you don't know what they're doing in the snow,
What they're doing on the grooound. ("Ground" is sung in a gravelly, rather unattractive voice.)


Pickles in the snooooooow
But you don't want to eat 'em now.
Something something something something
'Cause they're not green, they're brooooowwn. ("Brown" is sung in an even throatier voice, if possible.)


While for some shocking reason, Mrs. DoRae's songwriting career never picked up off the ground, I'm sure she would be thrilled to know that "Pickles in the Snow" is sung, sometimes daily, not only by two of her former students, but by many of those students' former roommates and (current) husbands, as well.

The holiday special

Back in the day when I lived with five other girls instead of one handsome man, our apartment was known for celebrating even the most obscure holidays in the most fantastic ways.

For Earth Day, we made "dirt" dessert (in very non-biodegradable plastic cups).

For Cinco de Mayo, we served chips and salsa and hit a piñata.

For Mexican Independence Day, we decorated my sister's car in red, white, and green streamers, and threw candy out the window while driving around playing Mexican music and shouting "Viva, Mexico!"

And so forth.

In the past couple of weeks, I've attempted to recreate some of the joy in celebrating holidays with Jacob. Unfortunately, he doesn't get quite as enthusiastic about said celebrations as I do.

For Leap Day, I practically had to beg and plead for him to play a rousing game of leap frog with me. We leap frogged our way from one bedroom to the living room, for a grand total of five leaps. Also note: It is very difficult to leap over a 6 foot, 5 inch individual, even when that person is crouching on the floor.

Pi(e) Day holds a special place in my heart. One year, my roommates and I threw a fairly impressive Pi Day party, with numerous varieties of pies for the taking:

Last year, I made a solitary chocolate pie. This year, I was even lazier than that:

Thank you, Hostess, for manufacturing individual pies a girl can use to celebrate Pi Day in a pinch.

Last year, I blogged about how I celebrated St. Patrick's Day a day late with some frightening green fettucine alfredo. This year, I celebrated in a more timely manner, with results that were much more pleasing to the eye.

I promise, the rice and milk are green. And for some reason, Jacob wasn't too terribly thrilled about taking the leftover green rice to work for his dinner tonight. I can't imagine why.

Also, remember my dilemma about this shirt? In honor of St. Patrick's Day, it made its first appearance since I purchased it almost a year earlier.

I'm still not quite sure how I feel about it.

Lesson learned, tough stuff

Reason #27 why Blistex is better than Chapstick:

In our family, we girls were expected to do our own laundry starting at the age of twelve. Throughout my high school and college years, I had the unfortunate habit of leaving a tube of Blistex in my pants' pockets while washing my clothes. This often brought me angst, as the Blistex wasn't salvageable after a run through the dryer, but at least the extent of my woes was a ruined tube of lip balm. The then-melted nectar of the gods managed to stay concealed inside the tube, and my clothes were no worse for the wear.

I must've run at least half a dozen or more tubes of Blistex through the wash, with the same result. Naturally, the one time a tube of Chapstick weaseled its way into the laundry, it exploded in a fury all over Jacob's and my shirts in the dryer. This was a tragedy, and I admit I was a bit of a Sir Grumpsalot when I found out. Jacob and I dutifully applied a stain remover treatment to each grease spot we found on our clothes and ran them through the wash again.

A small improvement, but the spots were still there. And then the clothes sat in the dryer for five days while I successfully avoided thinking about trying something else to remove the stains.

Today, I tried using dish soap to remove the rest of the stains. After a nice soak in the tub, back into the washing machine they went. Upon retrieving the laundry, I noticed that some grease spots remained, but I went ahead and hung the clothes up in the closet anyway. Maybe nobody else will notice?

* * * 

Reason #59 not to buy an 88 cent can opener:

A few months ago, the can opener I, ahem, accidentally stole from one of my former roommates kicked the bucket. I resorted to borrowing a can opener from one of our neighbors in desperation, but before long we determined we needed to purchase one of our own.

As Jacob and I perused the kitchen needs aisle at Walmart, we were overwhelmed by how many varieties of can openers there were. Well, really, there were only two or three different kinds, but the prices varied widely. What made a $12 or $15 can opener better than a $3 or $4 one? And why spend that much money when you could purchase a can opener for 88 cents?

As it turns out, the reason for spending that much money is so your can opener doesn't break on you mere months after purchase. A few nights ago I was attempting to open a Costco-sized can of peaches for my not-quite-midnight snack, and I was struggling. I called for Super Husband to come to the rescue and open the can to satisfy my peach craving.

He was unable to get the can opener to work, either, and after 15 minutes with no success, he decided to use scissors to cut the lid off. Um, yeah. Said can is now a death trap (or at least a mutilation hazard):

But I was able to eat my peaches, and that's what really matters. Though I guess now we need to buckle down and fork over some money for a higher quality can-opening device.

Flowers, chocolates, promises you don't intend to keep

This morning Jacob woke me up at 6 with a Valentine's Day breakfast in bed surprise (consisting of a bagel, yogurt, part of a muffin, peanut butter crackers* [ha!], and milk). He said he stayed up all night just so he could surprise me (he didn't have work yesterday, so he could've gone to bed at an "early time", which really means four in the morning).

I think he made me breakfast partially because he loves me and partially so it would mask my morning breath of death by the time he came to bed.

Happy Valentine's Day!

*So we bought a Costco pack of snack crackers MONTHS ago. We ate all of the cheese crackers and the cookie-style crackers ages ago, and we've been hanging on to about 30 packages of peanut butter crackers ever since. A few days ago I snuck one in the lunch bag he took to work. He retaliated by telling me I needed to eat ten packages a day. So far, neither of us have eaten any. So if you're in the area and you like peanut butter crackers, I'd be happy to gift you some!

Parking woes

I like to think I'm usually a pretty understanding person. But I admit it, I can be petty sometimes. Take our latest parking situation at our apartment complex.

The parking spots are assigned by apartment number, and when we moved into our apartment, we had the good fortune of being awarded THE ideal parking spot. It's the spot closest to our apartment building, and it's on the end so you can just pull forward out of the spot instead of backing up like everyone else. Which is good, because backing up is not one of my strong points in driving. Neither is parallel parking or making unprotected left hand turns, but that's besides the point.

The parking spot is so ideal that I even spent 15 minutes constructing a fairly accurate diagram of our parking lot and apartment building:

See what I mean? Perfect. (The rest of the parking spaces in that row are also numbered, but I didn't include them because, erm, I can't remember which numbers are next to ours. I assume they're in the 20s, but you never do know. At the back of the parking lot, we have a row of unnumbered spaces for visitors.)

Now lately, a Big Mean White SUV has been parking in our parking spot while Jacob has been at work. The owner of said Big Mean White car (or BMW car) is clearly a visitor of one of our neighbors, as our neighbors do an excellent job of parking in their own spaces. If they had an award for proper parking, my neighbors would all get gold stars. But when Jacob comes home and our parking spot is taken, he's forced to park in -- gasp!-- one of the unnumbered spaces a whole 30 feet away!

This means that when Jacob tumbles into bed and doesn't mention that he parked somewhere else, I get a mild panic attack when I look out the window some time later (and see the now-empty parking spot, as BMW car has left since then) and naturally assume our car has been stolen.

All in all, this isn't the worst situation to be in. But it's our parking spot! Have they no sense of common decency?

Tonight I was tempted to leave a note on their windshield, informing them that they were parked in a reserved parking spot -- and could they be so kind as to park in one of the unnumbered spots in the future, instead? But I didn't know how to phrase it without sounding either completely pretentious or like a jerk. Suggestions?

(And as it turned out, the car left 15 minutes after I first saw it, so maybe the owner could just sense the negative vibes coming from me and decided to hightail it outta there. Problem solved?)

Christmas: the California edition

 Jacob and I, along with my sister Heather and her husband, Dustin, had the good fortune of being able to drive to California to visit my family for Christmas. And it was glorious. Allow me to display about a million pictures, with minimal text, to record our adventures.

One night after dinner we decided to have a friendly competition to see who could suction a cup to their face the longest. Dustin was the ultimate champion by a landslide. Heather was able to stop laughing long enough to snap a picture, but that's about it. For some reason, my mom declined to participate.

I tried on Heather's glasses and marveled at how much more clearly I could see! She then proceeded to play "optometrist" by holding up various books from about ten feet away and having me try to read the title and author first without glasses, and then with them on. Her very professional diagnosis is that I need to get my eyes checked out for reals. And this is probably true.

One day we hit up the beach before going to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. The younger husbands explored the seaweed and a dead seal, while the wives (and my dad) admired the ocean from a distance. Emily, as is tradition, took off her shoes and socks and thus needed to be carried by all three of the men at varying times back to the car (lest she get sand in her socks before cleaning her feet off).

The aquarium was really fun. We didn't get a ton of pictures, but the jellyfish, otters, and sea horses were definitely some of my favorites.

One night Robyn, my good friend from high school (and before, but high school is when we really became close) came over and helped make delicious cookies and our traditional candy trains with us. My sisters and I have been making candy trains for years, and they've evolved to include elaborate themes. This year my mom purchased enough candy for each family unit to make their own. (You may want to click on the pictures to enlarge them, because they're really quite fabulous.)

Heather and Dustin with their tropical island themed candy train, complete with volcano and palm trees.

Our "Elf" themed candy train, with the seven layers of the candy cane forest, sea of swirly twirly gumdrops, and the Lincoln tunnel.

Emily and her "Occupy Train" train.

For years my mom has put on a "Bethlehem dinner" on Christmas Eve. We eat on blankets on the floor, and we eat what shepherds in Bethlehem may have eaten the night Christ was born: "Shepherd's Stew," crackers and cheese, olives, dried apricots, and so forth. We used to wear bathrobes and towels on our heads to try to dress up like shepherds, but the costumes were cumbersome while eating and when we grew up we kind of hated it. But the dinner remains!

My expression is clearly saying, "Dad, I'm in the midst of chewing. Don't you dare snap that phot . . . Oh."

Naturally, we have about half a million pictures of the family opening presents, but I'll just let you imagine our expressions of delight instead of actually posting them. And I think this entry might break if I add any more photos.

In sum: My family is awesome. And our Christmas vacation was fantastic!

A grave concern

One day, I should probably update this thing with Christmas festivities of the sort, but there is currently a more pressing matter at hand:

Jacob started working the graveyard shift on Monday, and will continue to do so until August. He leaves for work about 5 pm (the man likes to be early), and doesn't get home until 6 am. This has several pros and cons.

Pro: Since he is now sleeping during the day, I have access to the car. No more walking to my substitute jobs in the bitter cold and snow*!

Con: Since he is now sleeping during the day, on the days I only work in the morning I have to resist the urge to jump on the bed to wake him up at noon. In fact, I have to wait until at least TWO O'CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON before I can justifiably wake him up, at which point he should've slept for about 8 hours. I don't know what I'm going to do on the days I don't work. Be bored out of my mind probably! Oh, the angst!

Pro: Since he is at work during the evening and at night, I have access to the computer. Which means I can watch shows on Hulu like Project Runway without being judged.

Con: Since he is at work during the evening and night, I have to fall asleep without my favorite cuddle buddy. I knew I shouldn't have given away Chester at a white elephant gift exchange a year ago!

For some reason, Jessica later pawned the man pillow off on our other former roommate, Cari (who originally owned Chester in the first place, so I suppose all is right in the world).

Pro: Since Jacob and I only see each other (awake) for two to three hours a day, we've been spending our time together much more meaningfully. It's nice to have him without the distractions of the computer and the television!

Con: Jacob and I only see each other (awake) for two to three hours a day.

So there you have it.
*So we really haven't had that much snow so far. But I have walked to jobs in the snow before, and I'm trying to garner as much sympathy as possible.