Holiday Etiquette Post #937

I must say this is the bestest time of the year. The sun relents just a tad in Phoenix, thus eradicating the cloying smell of diesel and perspiration here, everything becomes pumpkin-from lattes to deodorant, and long denim skirts look cute again. This is also the time of the year that becomes mating season, a time when couples start pawing at each other in public and shop Old Navy for the UniSweater (the one with the single neck and four armholes so that said couple can be together all the time). Maybe it's the cold. Maybe it's the rash of work Christmas parties. Or perhaps all the family festivity stuff causes people to get all sentimental. Whatever the reason, it's definitely a Noah's Ark World right now. So to help my fellow singletons out there, I thought I'd throw my own list of etiquette do's and don'ts "What Not to Say to Single People" 1) "Maybe somebody out there will drop dead, and their widower will get to see just what kind of gem has been right under their nose!" Yes, I've actually had this said to me more than once. What a pretty picture that paints. Me hunched over the memorial program vulture-like, preening with my sheer Bath and Body Works lip buffer waiting for Mr. Survivor to pass my seat at the wake. "Why hello there! I'm so glad I decided to troll the Holiness Obituary today of all days! I knew my timing would be good after that salmonella outbreak in the news! Plus I put on some Air Supply in the background. So romantic, and always gets me in the mood." 2) "I met this guy cleaning windshields at the car wash today and..." I don't mind be set up on blind dates. But single doesn't equal scrape-the-bottom-of-the-ashtray-desperate. You know the guy that has the Schlitz beer can pyramid on his coffee table? The one with the homemade tatoo depciting Ozzy Osbourne? The one who would've gotten his GED, but for the fact his mom's Buick broke down? Yeah...skanks, but no skanks. 3) "It's better to be single than wish you were!" Again, shared with me more than one time, and the majority of the time by people in a happy marriage. Ok, ok, I get it. I could be stuck in a loveless union, married to Flippy the three foot carnival weight guesser (see point #2). But I'm not. I'm stuck here watching you make out with your man in your Uni Sweater. Seriously people, that's like telling someone on a diet at least they didn't get food poisoning while you slurpily chomp on In 'N Out in front of them. 4) "Being married isn't everything!" No, and neither are a warm bed, good food, a roof over my head, and scented candles. But they sure make life a lot nicer, ya know? So if you a know a single who's going through a lonely patch right now, don't lecture them. Give them a hug, tell them you love them, and are praying for them. Happy ChristThanksgivingmas!

I Made Sunday Dinner And Nobody Barfed or Found A Hair in Their Portion!

Every Sunday we all converge like piggies to a gravy-filled trough to Snoozy house for some good eats. And Snoozy never complains. She is very, very generous-the type of person who when one goes to her house they end up taking a shower, eating 39 oreos, and freely rifing through her purse. And all they came over for the in the first place was to borrow a paper clip.
Anyway, I was thinking a few weeks ago that one of these days I would like to make the meal. I have been really getting into cooking. So I found a really good recipe on the Internet for chicken spaghetti, hiked up my skirt and decided to give it a shot. The Bad Lunch Omen Fairy must have been throwing black confetti to the wind, because it initially ended up being just Snooze and I. But I text-nagged Brenda, and she dragged Steve over. And people took seconds! You have no idea how much this excited me!

I started making a pink gingham apron and matching hair net at the dinner table right then and there.

Since I made a big old whompin' barrel of it, we had some to bring to Sunday night fellowship. And people ate it!


Hey Big Boy, wanna get together for Sunday Dinner?

Mission Service

I love mission services. I've only been to a couple, but they are so inspiring. I was really glad to hear what Phillip and Heather are accomplishing over there. Here are some pics:



awwww...such cuties








I was hoping to post a pic of just us girlies, but it didn't turn out after all :( oh well.

Such High Hopes

I had such high hopes for this weekend. I am blessed to have Fri through Sun off. So as I toiled at my desk job this week, I had all kinds of visions as to what I was going to accomplish on Friday when I finally got some time when I wasn't tethered to my phone with a headset. Here's what I wanted to get done: do my grocery shopping finish my laundry, work on some kind of craft project, ride my new bike, knit a couch, get sanctified, learn how to conduct open heart surgery, etc. Here's what I accomplished: prayer time and eating several chunks of cookie dough straight out of the tub. I'm not quite sure what happened to the rest of my day. Maybe I lost consciousness and morphed into another me that did something fun, like go to Europe. Maybe the other me is still having a good time, which excuses the present me from any duties today. I hope the other me brings me back a souvenier. Like French cookie dough.

PS I was blessed to get to see Phillip and Heather's mission service last night. I will post pics later. It just didn't seem right to put my indolence and their Columbian efforts in the same room together.

etc, etc

As evidenced by my drought of blog entries the past couple of months, I haven't had a whole lot to say. Most of my time has been consumed with trying to get out of the unrelenting glower of the sun as I commute back and forth in my easy bake Civic, or thinking of really cool nicknames for myself that would couple nicely with "Princess of the Universe."

Summer is my least favorite time of the year. And around here, summer lasts, oh...about 350 days on a non leap year. For those of you who perkily chirp that the weather is only unbearable for about three months of the year, I suppose I would agree with you...if it were possible to walk around with a frozen Lean Cusine perpetuallly duct taped to my back, and if all necessary activities could be facilitaed from the comfort of my bathtub. Since that is not the case, I will continue to count down the days to when I will be able to touch my steering wheel without the aid of an astronaut suit.

Ok. I will quit carping about the weather now, and at least try to focus on some of the sunny (no pun intended) highlights.

A couple of months ago, Angie was given the golden key to Bryan and Julianna's castle while they traipsed about in Florida. One night as I stopped by for something she was house sitting for Snoozy), she had the fab-u-luss idea of taking a little dunk in their hot tub. We grabbed our ostrich feather slippers and palm frond waivers, and headed over in the BMW. Well, more like we grabbed borrowed towels and her camera and went. Here are some pics (BTW, in that middle pic, we are kissing the their rubber ducky. It's kinda hard to see):




Also been busy doing a lot of camp-ing. I went to Texas, Ca, and Whiteside. I was so tired from all of the traveling, that I had a dream the other day that I had to go to Europe every other weekend or so. In my dream, I was so exhausted and was telling someone something along the lines of "Ugh. I have to go to France AGAIN." It was pretty funny. It was reflecting how worn I felt from balancing a stressful job with repeated jaunts away in my flying purple suitcase. Anyway, here are some more pics from Ca Camp:





Here Travis ponders if anyone will notice that he dumped the uneaten leftovers from people's plates back into the pot.


It would be redundant to say how cute the kiddos were. But then I guess I just did :)




And finally, today I took my mom out for a very belated birthday. We had Olive Garden, and tooled around doing what we do best: shopping!









My mom drew the tiger picture, and I am so proud of her talent. Meow-Moo, her kitty, is a little more sceptical.

And that's all for now...

Phoenix Wusses

The night before we left for Texas Camp, I spent the night as Snoozy's house since we were leaving together. Her cat, Fluffy insistently meowed throughout the night. I found out why the next morning. When dawn broke, I discovered one mousie corpse on the floor at the foot of my bed. Snoozy came over and inspected the dead creature, etched chalk lines around it and all. "Musta been screaming, because its mouth is open," she said. Being extremely girly and reluctant to deal with dead stuff, how did we dispose of the body? Well, since the backhoe wasn't available, we came up with this solution:












P.S. for all of you nightgown activists, Snoozy said it would be fine to blog this

Cheescake Band Aid

Since the afternoon ended in a blah, mopey, heap of beige-ness, I will post some pics that harken to a happier time. I won't go into too many details as to my day, just that it involved a guy at work who semi-called me out in front of several other coworkers just because I wasn't writhing around the floor in paroxysms of laughter at his potty mouth anecdote. Never mind that most of his jokes are so corny, I couldn't muster a note of courtesy laughter if I took a Rubbermaid spatula and scraped it down to the bottom of my heart.
*ahem* Now onto the happy stuff.
A few weeks ago, some of us met up at Cheescake Factory under the auspice of girly bonding. In reality, that just meant we hogged out on sugar. Not that it would affect Julianna. We're talking about someone who gets weighed at the doctor's office on a produce scale.
I was very good. I ordered a grilled veggie sandwich. um. and a slice of cheescake as big as a mattress. with a coke.
Anyhoo.
Here are the pics:









Getting to know her cheescake very well...

Here are the pics. I would've loved to comment under each one, but my computer is kind of haunted. It took almost a pint of sweat and tears just to get these uploaded in the first place. So I'm grateful that they're here. They're pretty self-explanatory, anyway. Just us hanging around:

Kim Collingsworth is so nice!!!!!

Angie had the fantastic idea of going to see the Collingsworth Familly who played tonight in Sun City. I'm not a big Southern Gospel fan, but since a group of us were going, I thought it would be fun to a)fellowship in the Lord, and b)add a new entry to my social roster, which for the most part consists of cruising the shower curtain aisle at Target and stalking former high school aquaintances on Facebook.
As I mentioned earlier, the concert was held in the pulsating, bustling, metropolis of Sun City, otherwise known as Oldville. For those of you not familiar with Arizona, Sun City is where people go when they retire. It's life's final course at the metaphorical cafeteria before the check comes in, if you get my meaning. Anyway, it was a tad disconcerting to walk into the church and see mostly the same demographic one would envision at a shuffle board tournament or an Andy Griffith-a-thon. Nonetheless, I figuratively squared my shoulders, thinking that I would at least get to hear songs about God and hopefully feel his presence. And ya know what? I had a great time! I really enjoyed the music. I've heard of people feeling the Lord at concerts, but that hadn't happened to me before this. And Courtney sang one of my favorite songs, "I Can Trust Jesus." All in all, I had a blast. So much so that I was tempted to play hooky from church this Sunday to see them again in Queen Creek. But I love Jesus, and don't want to hurt his feelings. So I will savor the memories of tonight instead.
Besides feeling God's presence, I really enjoyed talking to Kim Collingsworth afterwards. She is so sweet! After performing and sharing your heart in a concert, it would be understandable to not feel sociable afterwards. But she chatted away, and let us all take pictures with her(I will post those after I get copies from Angie)Overall, one of the best Friday nights I have had in a while.
Thanks Jesus!

yummy junky breakfast recipe

take a couple of plain frozen waffles and sprinkle chocolate chips (mini are a little better because they fit so cutely in those little squares, and they melt faster) plop a gob of strawberry jam on top of that. fold 'em into tacos. Stick them in the microwave and nuke on each side 15-30 seconds, depending on microwave. These are best eaten wearing ugly pajamas while streaming random music on your laptop.

The other day I went to the health fair at work. I work for a great company that gives us a up to 400 bucks to spend towards workout equipment, gym membership, anti smoking programs, etc. Anyway, in order to get the full $400, I took a jaunt downstairs to have my waist measured and my vitals evaluated. I should have just kept my lardy, unhealthy, flabby self up at my desk. Or better yet, locked myself up in the janitors' supply closet where light of day would be unable to reveal my slobbiness to the outside world.

One of things that was done was to test me for my cholestorol. And according to the stat sheet, they may as well have stuck the cholesterol tester into a Hostess cupcake instead of my finger, because I have high levels of the stuff. I am also at risk for heart disease. Well, that made me feel old.

I stood there as the cutesy-wootsie technican reviewed the results with me.
"Do you excercise?" she asked pointedly. There she was, petite as a medical scrub fairy, practically small enough to use a band aid as a belt. There I was, gross and unhealthy,like an oozy cookie-eating troll that had crawled away from her desk to take this evaluation merely to avoid taking phone calls for 20 minutes. Imagine the contrast: a bucket of gray mop water next to a shiny, diaphanous bottle of Evian. All I could do was nervously mumble and stare at the paper.

The thing is, I love sugar too much. If I could, I would brush my teeth with chocolate syrup. We're talking about someone who likes to go to weddings just so she can scope out the bride's dress, and then make a beeline for the free cake. I am a hopeless case. If you ever want to find me, follow the trail of chocolate crumbs. I'll be the chick sitting on the overturned mop bucket with cupcake remenants on my teeth.

Helpful Household Hints

It is not a good idea to use a bent wire hanger to retrieve a hypothetical picture that might've fallen behind your stove, and you are unable to see the partially exposed 220 volt plug. Especially if you are still slightly amped from a grande venti grande capaccino from several hours before. You might kill the electricity in your house. Or get electrocuted.

I'm just sayin'.

I have read many a blog describing the scourge of unsightly, nasty vermin descending upon an innocent household. I have empathized and shuddered passively from a distance, falsely cocooned in the misconception that the nuclear heat of Phoenix would discourage all but the occasional cockroach on steroids. I have rejoiced in the fact that the few accidental pets that have scampered accross my floor have been tiny and non-disgusting in nature. Sadly, I have taken my vermin-free life almost for granted.

And then the pigeons came. Actually, the pigeons were already here when I bought my condo. But they knew their place. Shyly and stupidly they congregated in their own area severly humbled by their pariah status, wearing their "kick me" signs with quiet acceptance. But somewhere along the line, they have taken a self esteem course and have boldly come out of their segratated area. I think they unionized last weekend when I drove up to San Bernardino, because since then, they have been chillaxin on my front stoop.

By this point, you are probably wondering why I whining about some stupid city birds. First of all let me explain that they poo by the truckload. And almsot Jehova's Witness-like, they are growing in numbers. It is very creepy to hear the flutter of their wings as I open the front door. Last night as I went out to do some laundry, a fat pigeon lethargically waddled away as I stepped out. He wasn't even scared of me! He plucked the Marlboro out of his beak and tossed it aside. And then he ripped up his "kick me" sign right in my face.

And they are dropping dead here and there. It is not like some little furry thing that is maybe a couple of inches long. Oh no. Imagine a giant gray bloated thing sprawled out with no place to hide right out there in the parking lot. I'm a sheltered person. A delicate flower. A candle in the wind. A fluffy Bambi ear. A city mouse through and through. I have bought meat wrapped in cellophane all of my life. This experience with the grisly side of nature close up just makes my stomach turn. Somehow, I will have to make it.

Especially since someone has scrawled "kick me" on my front door.

I'm getting a tattoo!

Ha ha! Made you look!

Actually, I have decided to compile a list of some of things I'm grateful for, and I was just trying to cleverly manipulate you into reading it instead of clicking on someone else's blog. I'm feeling misty eyed and sentimental enough to get my own series on the Lifetime Channel right now, and felt the need to spread some of that Hallmark-y emotion.
Actually, the truth is that this list is a way to cleverly conceal the absolute lack of anything interesting going on in my life under the auspice of ebuilliant nobility. Nonetheless, here is my list in no particular order:

1) Cake for breakast. Chocolate frosting. Yum yum!
2) Paid vacation days
3) Freedom to go to church and say grace over my tater tots in public. Not that I eat tater tots in church. I meant at the place were the tater tots are served.
4) Starbucks
5) Sleeping in
6) English accents
7) Mute buttons (I work in a call center, so you can imagine what joy that can bring. Too bad they don't have mute buttons for people)
8) Furry socks
9) Furry cats
10) Not having a furry back

And the list goes on, but not here. I'm not that narcissistic. Now go read someone else's blog who has a life.

Preachers' Convention 2008

Just got back from Preachers Convention in Palmdale, CA, and had a great time. Here are some of the highlights/things learned from the car trip and subsequent camp, not necessarily in chronological sequence:

1) Good bonding time in the car with Snoozy, Steve, and Brenda
2) Ate some of Gareth's fried turkey
3) Got hit on in the desert by a complete stranger (story to follow)
4) Was complimented on my pouf
5) Learned that Pastor Steve has a bladder the size of a Hello Kitty change purse
6) Lotsa home cooking

We arrived in the dark am hours of Thanksgiving, and I was so grateful to collapse onto a made bed (thanks Donna). Of course the main reason to go to any kind of camp is to draw closer to the Lord. Which I pulled for. I learned something very important on the last day of what Jesus wants from me. I'm so glad for the encouragement of my God.

All seriousness aside, it was a total food fest over there. Some people didn't end up coming, and some people got sick,which meant there was a lot of extra eats. It was like being suspended in a perpetual buffet at Luby's. There was so much leftover that we made a new foyer and preaching lecturn out of the stuffing remnants. On the bad side, I did succumb for one day to a flu bug (Bubonic Plague Jr) I was grateful that the Lord touched me fairly quickly.

And now for the aforementioned story: Sonya and I decided to take her 47 hyper dogs on walk in the desert. We were trotting along the sandy path, when a white car pulled up to us. Below is a rough recap of what was discussed. I'm going to include the literal conversation in regular type. In italics, I'm going to include the unspoken subtext of what was thought, but not spoken.

Driver: "You guys Holiness?"
Sonya: "Yeah, we're staying at the campgrounds up the street."
Driver: (leering through a sinewy curly que of cigarette smoke) "Great! Me too! I only smoke filtered" In the background, a miniature Doberman barks.
Driver: "That's my dog. She's in heat and so am I"
Sonya: "We have service at 7:30 if you want to come "
Driver: " Yeah, I'll think about it. are there single people at this church? My name's Sam. What's your's?" (brief introductions made)
Sam: (leering at Sonya) "So, are you single?" (leering at Roseanna) "Are you single?"
Sam: "I'm single, too. Me man, you wo-man and standing upright make good couple. ooga."
At this point, Sonya and Roseanna look woefully down at Sonya's tiny dogs, wishing they would temporarily turn into snarling German Shepards in case Sam the Single Person tries anything. Suddenly, the dog jumps out of the backseat,
Sam: "Don't worry about her, she doesn't bite. not that I really know. I just borrowed her from my neighbor to pick up chicks"
Doberman: "Arf arf! run, Forest, run!!!"
Sam: "I'm thinking about either getting a car, because that's a more believable way of making you think that I have money than telling you I own France, or going to Hawaii ...Hmmm. I hear there are single people in Hawaii. (Leering at Roseanna) what's your name again?"
Roseanna: "the itsy bitsy spider went up the water spout..."
Sam: "God bless you! should I get chunky or smooth peanut butter when I go to the store next time? "

When we got back to camp, we shared our story with the peeps back at camp. As Sonya pointed out, this clearly shows that we are still got it-after all, here we were in the middle of nowhere, and we still got hit on! Ron had fun with us and made a litte poster out of one of Thanksgiving decorations we had up in the dining room. Sonya and I decided to have our picture taken with it:

Don't we look excited to be with Sam????