8 Days and counting

Eight days; that's all that's left of 2008. Can you believe it?

It's been a very wonderful and insane year. I've been working on a list of the top ten moments of this year, but feel like the kid in this picture:



So much has happened, it's hard to pick just ten. We were married in May; went on a gorgeous honeymoon in June. Summer was spent working very hard on dissertation and conference work.

We feel very blessed this year.

I was out of town for the past several days. I had a campus visit yesterday. Think of it like a day-long job interview. I even gave a 20 minute presentation on my approach to teaching writing and then fielded questions for another 25 minutes. It was fun. Really. Seriously. I mean it.

I hope I get the job-- I am one of two people they brought to campus. The other person had her/his visit today. I like to think I was a tough act to follow. Sometime I'll bore you with the gorey details about how I overheard the Dean and Assistant Vice-Chancellor (both at my presentation) say that my presentation was "incredible" and "very good". Perhaps they had low expectations and I simply blew them away by my ability to string together whole sentences and keep a cohesive theme throughout.

Blah, blah, blah.

I don't have much to write-- still working on the cross-stitch-- at a feverish pace now. I will see mom on Saturday and hope to be done. It'll take an X-Mas miracle.

We are beginning the annual trek Thursday morning and won't be back until Sunday.

I've missed you all-- I'll write again soon.

Hope everyone has a safe and blessed week and here's a virtual hug from the skyewriter (((( ))))

Cheers!

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You know it's X-Mas when folks start having parties

If we were having an X-Mas party the planning list might look something like this:

• Arrange living room furniture for conversation groups
• Set up chairs in office for a second conversation room
• Throw piles of clean laundry into closet to hide from guests
• Throw piles of dirty laundry into bags (into same closet, if room)
• Put bills, unopened junk mail, catalogs into plastic bag (into same closet, if room)
• Clean: fridge, bathroom, kitchen countertops
• Bathroom: place hundreds of toiletries piled on vanity into plastic bag and hide in linen closet
• Iron linens and wash wine and champagne glasses
• Hide porn, lube, and sex aids (okay, that one's a joke, I swear, Dad)
• Grocery shop (a separate list)
• Emma's boxes
• Replace tea light candles in holders (about 25 of them total)
• Hang clean hanging clothes in either walk-in or narrow closet (if room after everything else in there).
• Find new spot for bags of dirty clothes (maybe trunk of car?)
  
• Fluff pillows on bed for guest to put coats

I won't bore you with the grocery list, but I can tell you, it wouldn't look like this one (from found.com):

All I want to know is: what the hell are nose pills, what kind of party is this, and why am I not invited?

Hope you all had a great Tuesday.

Message for Wednesday: smile at strangers. It will make you feel good.

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Bah Humbug, Beg 3. Only coal for you in your stockings.

Bah Humbug.

I say that because I am so confused and angry about the Big 3.

I posted on this a few weeks ago, but it is still an on-going issue and the CEOs and UAW leaders go way beyond the naughty list to the "consciously unrepentant" list.

The "Beg" 3 automakers continue their attempt to get government support for their terrible business models and even crappier vehicle models. What irks me is that GM HAD an electric car (they subsequently crushed all of them) in the 1990s. Now we are expected to shell out billions of dollars to union stooges who, while lining their own pockets, are in DC with hands out, palms up, waiting for congress to write them an enormous check?

Don't misunderstand me. I feel horribly for the families this will affect. Please read these highlighted comments. They are a fearful glimpse of what might happen to real people in real places if the American Auto Empire falls. I do not blame the workers, but blame the company and the union leaders; make them culpable. Don't make us foot the bill when folks like us are struggling to get to the first of the month and drooling for student loan money that is coming in January.

This year I am giving home-made gifts to family. We cannot afford to shop, our cat got sick and the vet bills have taken over what we had in savings. But we can still afford to visit loved ones, which is priceless, and X-Mas isn't about stuff anyway-- we get it. Besides, who would want to deal with all the crazies at the stores:



I say let them file for bankruptcy protection (let the BANKS bail them out using some of that 700 billion they already got from us). Restructuring will clean house and prevent them from coming back in a month asking for more. The current bailout of 34 billion is just a start-- it's grown 9 billion over the last two weeks even with the selling of their corporate jet fleet and token driving to DC in their hybrid cars (*hmph*). Some experts say 90 billion is needed to get them out of the hole. You know me and big numbers:

90,000,000,000.00

None of us will ever see that many zeros in a ten thousand lifetimes. Neither should the Beg 3.

Thanks, Aliceson, for your input and sharing that blog. Everyone should see the human side to this.

PS: Today's Daily Confucius below is so synchronous with this post: He who will not economize will have to agonize. Let the Big 3 take this to heart.

"American Triplets" Mike Lane, Baltimore Maryland
Christmas shoppers, Eric Allie, Chicago

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Store Bought , Homemade or a Little of Both? And a tree on a table

Where does time go?

I recently finished the stocking for my husband. Here it is (click on any image to enlarge, but you knew that, right?):



And some of the detail:



I know, I know, it's a kit, but I have never sewn before and I think it turned out okay.

Also, took some more pix of decor ('cause I know you are sooooo interested).

Kitchen Tree:


Latest favorite ornament (picture does not do it justice):



Baking is going okay. I need to learn how to use my rolling pin. I am making cookies the old fashioned way totally from scratch. I even used yeast for the first time in my life. If I get a nice looking nut roll today I'll take a picture and post it. I know, I know, riveting stuff, huh?

I am also working on a counted cross-stick for my mom's X-Mas gift. It is unbelievably hard--blank black linen, four quadrants, butterflies, dragon fly, hummingbird, and finch all surrounded by floral scroll work, 45 different colors of thread. Hope I can get it done in time. We'll see.

Hope all are safe and dry on this December 2nd.

PS: Thanks, Aliceson, for the cocktail recipes. Cannot wait to try them.

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Swaddling, Streisand, and a tree on the table

It's more than 24 days until the inauguration, when our new President will have flocks of shepherds visiting his humble abode, he'll be swaddled in a manger and three dudes he's never met will give him some gold and a couple of smelly blobs of goo. Oh, wait, wrong guy. Don't mistake me, I am TOTALLY stoked that Barack is heading for the White House. But the X-Mas is coming. The X-Mas is coming. . .

Yes, it is a beast. A monster. A time of year unlike any other when our desire for choking the living crap out of others far outstrips our need for holly, tinsel and sleigh rides. But not egg nog. Oh, no, nothing ever competes with the egg nog.

I had a couple of glasses whilst I trimmed the tree and decked the halls over the last few days (see widget on the lower left about my diss hell--not a word was written other than for this blog). Everything is dripping with memories. Swollen with emotion.

I am not sure why I do it, the decorating and wrestling with the lights and that f*cking ribbon, every year I swear I am not going to put it on the tree (the spiked egg nog helps). Perhaps it is a desire to recapture those feelings as a child of yummy things baking and getting bundled up to go sledding on the hill in our back yard or ice skating on our neighborhood pond. The glass topped table my mom would foist the tree atop so that there was room for gifts for our enormous family (Catholics and their litters). The choice X-Mas vinyl with Johnny Mathis, Steve Lawrence and Edie Gourmet (sp?), Andy Williams, Robert Goulet, Maurice Chevalier, and Barbra Streisand that all remind me (to tears most of the time) of those days as a child. I cry as I decorate, thinking of my parents singing "O Holy Night" together when I was little. Then the years after my parents' divorce when my mom sang it at our new church at midnight mass. I will never be able to listen to the traditional stuff without crying. I put ornaments on tree branches that once hung on the tree on the glass top table. I would lay under it and look up into the center after it was all put together. The picture of our tree above isn't on a table, but I like the reflection of it on the floor; it makes it look like it's up on that table, sort of.

This is my first X-Mas with my husband (as married folk, not living in "sin"). I made him a stocking (picture to come soon). I keep telling him that this or that will be part of OUR X-Mas traditions. My mom would always cry putting up the decorations. She would say she missed her Dad or Mom. In later years it would be my Dad or her brother she missed.

X-Mas is a beast. A monster. But it does help me remember to hug those I love a little harder, to be thankful for the laughter in my life, to maybe cut others a bit of slack. If I can't remember those few things, the egg nog helps. I promise. You should try it.

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