If I look at one more picture of the sun or a palm tree on Bree Wee’s blog I will officially start throwing things at her on Facebook.
It’s winter. Wait, I take that back. It’s not even winter yet and there is more than 8 inches of snow in my front yard. We had two major winter storms this week. Really they are late fall not quite winter storms but I think we in Chicago have just had too much craziness to deal with lately so we’re letting the details slide.
Last night an Arctic cold front arrived and left us with minus 6 degrees and a negative 25 degree wind chill this morning. In case you are wondering how that feels – super.
In an effort to make winter more exciting, we in Illinois like our crazy hats. Here’s the latest:
Looking at the picture now I realize I was wearing a bear hat surrounded by an aisle of pills. Those two conditions had nothing to do with each other.
Boss has completely put his middle paw up at late fall/winter. He’s brilliant I say because he’s learned to generalize that a tree is a tree is a tree. Whether it’s indoors or outdoors it’s good enough for going potty by. As ridiculous as it sounds, we implemented a behavior mod program to get him to potty outside that includes lockdown after meals and at night. Along with going outside in snow/sleet/cold wind while singing the “Make – a – The – Potty” song. Sometimes it works, sometimes Boss just sits in the snow carefully lifting one paw at a time to relieve it from the cold while we sing.
Life in winter is so cruel.
In between keeping warm and cursing Illinois we have been busy lately. The holidays are creeping up whether we like it or not and the fact that neither of us has started Christmas shopping is becoming harder to hide from. But we’re holding out, kind of like Boss and the potty we are hiding indoors until Christmas so we are not faced with the need to buy things.
We did get out last night to the annual swim team party. The head coach pulled me aside at the gym yesterday to request that I bring something ‘healthy’. No one else will, she said. Do you know how popular it makes you to walk into a party surrounded by brownies, fudge and booze with a tray of vegetables in your hand?
Not very. But one or two people did walk up to me and say thank you for bringing something healthy. I’m so glad I have that label now – that’s the chick that brought healthy food into holiday food buffet hell.
Curse her.
We missed the memo that said this was a black tie affair. Of course we showed up wearing jeans whereas everyone else was really dressed up. We also missed the memo that the party would be a Wii Bowling Bowl Off. I watched about a dozen adults play Wii for 4 hours straight.
Chris stared to get his drink on (just like Bryan – but unlike Bryan he was not naked at the time) quite early. It was Chris’ turn to drink himself silly. I drank myself silly the other night with my old co-workers. Someone asked why I wasn’t drinking and I told them that. They said but wine is good for you. And I said yes but not when you have 4 glasses. The way I felt the next day was enough to remind me that you overdrink about twice a year. Once because you forget and the next time just because you need to remember.
While Chris was drinking and touching people (he’s kind of a touchy when he talks drunk), I was skittishly eyeing the buffet table waiting for the buckeyes to arrive. I even asked the coach if the person that makes the buckeyes would be there and she said yes. False hope. Or reason for me to check the door every 5 minutes or walk around the buffet table eyeing the sweets.
You don’t understand – buckeyes are the most perfect form of food. Chocolate covered peanut butter balls. They are called buckeyes because – duh – they look like the nuts on buckeyes which actually do look like the eye of a buck. Whatever. They just taste really REALLY good and the moment they walked in the door I would be all over them. You know you’ve got it bad when someone actually mentions that you keep looking at the sweets on the table. I didn’t deny it and told him I could easily clear off the entire table in under an hour.
Meanwhile the party partied on, bowling continued and Chris kept drinking. I do believe the funniest moment of the night was when a small Asian woman that swims on our team asked our friend Beth who is the handsome Asian young man sitting on the couch. Beth looks around and says “Chris?” Then the woman says yes, he would make a nice handsome boyfriend – FOR HER EIGHTEEN YEAR OLD DAUGHTER! Beth tells this woman that Chris is 35 but she still persists. And finally she points me out as Chris’ wife and still persists that Chris would make such a good boyfriend.
Perhaps she missed this….
I call this the “I should have been cut off 3 drinks ago” face. While my husband continued to drink and got man trapped by a conversation involving indoor baseball domes, I took a walk around.
Do you know what this is?
This is me stealing the baby Jesus. Actually I’m not stealing him, I’m just correcting the nativity scene:
For all of your non-Christians out there, this is a nativity scene. Growing up, my grandma had a similar scene that she would set up on top of her television every year. Of course the manger would remain empty until Christmas morning. As kids we would sit there wondering when baby Jesus would arrive which looking back I find hilarious because it’s not like he showed up on the same day every freakin’ year. Still, the element of surprise was never underrated and Christmas morning there he was snug in the manger by immaculate arrival of my Grandmother’s hand.
I did end up putting baby Jesus back. Recently I heard stealing baby Jesus is a lot more common than you think. In fact, in the city they started putting GPS tracking devices into the baby Jesus for if he got stolen. I’m not sure what you would do with a stolen baby Jesus but it is an area that Trakkers could consider growing into for the off season. Rather than tracking triathletes you could track stolen baby Jesus’.
Just an idea.
The buckeyes never did arrive and by 11:30 pm I was tired of waiting. I pulled my drunken husband away from flirting with Anwar and Jackie and drove home. Boss was still on protest and decided to hold it until the next morning. And he is still holding it. I wonder how long he can hold it before it just explodes right back out his mouth? We have tried many times to get him to go outside protected by his favorite sweater.
The look on his face says it all: get this f-in nancy-ass sweater off of me. N.O.W.
Today I might not leave the house. Why? Because an episode of Home Improvement is unfolding right before me. I will watch Chris do house repairs. He just pulled this out:
Do you know what this is? You could tell by Chris’ hand that he couldn’t believe I didn’t know what it was. Uh, yeah. You should know that when it is turned on a little red light shines and it makes a humming noise. Any guesses? A lantern. A French press. A fly zapper.
All wrong.
This, as I was just informed, is a level.
And this is my husband trying to “prove” his theory that the ceiling is crooked.
This is what engineers do on really cold days. I suppose this is also how you cure a hangover. You do something so mind numbingly dorky that it cancels out the pounding in your head.
As you can tell, it is going to be a five star day around the house. Getting the small dog to crap. Proving the ceiling is crooked. Putting away laundry. You all can keep you beautiful beach pictures and surfboards. Around these parts we know how to really seize the day.
But wait – it gets better. Chris told me my task today is to go to the pet store to buy Boss some booties. The last time we went to the pet store, I got a little off track.
Who needs booties when you could have these fabulous antlers on your head? Of course they really don’t do much to keep you warm but they are so cute!
I know, I know. The day will possibly be so exciting that we’re going to have to save some of this stuff until tomorrow. But as for today, if we still have time left, we might just go steal a baby Jesus.
We’ll see.
