Angie: December 2003 Archives

It has been a while since I posted. Real life seems to have taken over and we are in the land of "living in reality at the expense of living in cyber space". Life is good. I couldn't ask for better or more. So... this is what we have been up to ... Thanksgiving Vacation We spent the holiday in Virginia. It is a long haul to DC from Georgia. 9 - 10 hours of straight driving with one stop in North Carolina for gas. If my Explorer got better gas mileage it is possible I wouldn't have to stop ;-). It is a hard ride. Your butt and feet get tired of sitting in one place and it gets to be rather antsy with lots of shifting and moving, stretching the legs, arching the back etc. but the end result is worth the effort. The Saturday after Thanksgiving we went out for our Christmas tree. We decided on a live tree but not just any tree. We went to a Christmas tree farm with children in tow and cut down our own specially selected just for us tree. It actually looked smaller in the great outdoors than it did once we got it in the house. Steve ended up taking about an inch or two out of the top and once the branches began to relax it fully fills the double front windows of the townhouse. We arrived at Clifton Christmas Tree farm at mid afternoon. First was a trip to an exclusive local 4-star Micky D's on the good side of town for the kids. (I should add here this is the very first time I had been taken out to eat by Steve. It was truly a memorable moment in my life.)It was SO very cold. The wind was whipping like it was coming off ice. The lot was full of muck and mud. We walked into the edge of the balding forest and wouldn't you know it the best tree for us was at the end of the field of trees. The children stood in a huddle that rivaled the best of the NFL. Their eyes were bright and shining. Their noses and cheeks where cherry red. They were freezing as they inhaled but each and every face had a huge smile. All of the girls were happy and excited and brimming with the joy that only children know at the wonder of Christmas and all of its magic. Steve was the man of the hour. Like all great lumberjacks of their time he felled our tree in minimal time. Single handedly he hauled that giant specimen of outdoor beauty out of the forest of trees and back to the shack. At this point we found out they did not accept bank cards. DOH!! Steve didn't have cash. Woman to the rescue! Once the tree had been netted it was back to the truck. We girls made sure we hurried in out of the wind and with the engine started we soon had warm air circling our frozen hands, faces and feet. Meanwhile "Our Lumberjack" was out braving the weather strapping our felled centerpiece of the holidays onto the top of the truck. In awesome boyscout fashion he tied those knots and the tree made the trip back to the house. Once back at the house of the pre-hundred acre wood, our Christopher Robin set the tree in its stand and removed the netting. A few minor adjustments and the tree resevior was filled with fresh water for our perfect tree and we were ready to begin decorating. In the process of putting on the lights, Colby noticed something on the tree. Then she noticed something jumping in the tree. On inspection our wonderfully Christmasy smelling tree was filled with jumping spiders. The room was cleared of all living breathing beings and Steve proceeded to empty a couple cans of insecticide. The spiders are gone and so is the scent of the tree. Oh, well, it's better to have a spider free tree than to have the scent of pine. After nearly 1000 tiny white lights it was decided by me that we needed a few more. So, out into the night we went and collected 300 more. I still think it is not enough but oh well what's a girl to do when the man thinks that is plenty and probably too many before the venture out into the cold of night to retreive more. Ahhhhh!! The beauty of white lights. Ok, sidenote here. I cannot let this subject pass without comment!!!! ... Why in the world do people think those aweful colored lights are so great? I hate those things with a passion. To me they are the most tacky things in the world. If you want multicolored (omg or monochromatic colored decorations) why can't you save those colors for cookies and cakes and candy? Why why why do people think splashing those things all over their trees and draping them all over the outside of their houses is wonderful? Do they have no tastes? What happened to the elegance and beauty of Christmas? I am almost in DC and with the multitudes of colored lights I feel like I am in "Bubba's Roadside Trailor Park and Festival of Trashy Lights". Whew ... got that off of my chest. Ok, where was I? Oh yes!! The house is beautiful. Colby made gorgeous boughs and swags of greenery, decorated with the perfect amount of festive ornaments. These hang along the porch and sidewalk railings and look so very warm and inviting and respectable. We solved the delima of the 3 foot wreath. steve hung it buy rigging some string and hanging it from the upstairs windows. We are almost a Norman Rockwell painting. The girls decorated the tree with my collection from the last 20 years. Excitement was rampant. The joy on the faces of the girls was priceless. At the moment of topping the tree. Steve was balanced on the arms of a nearby chair and one hand on the ceiling, let me quote Colby ... "All we need is you and the tree sailing out the window and onto the front windshield of momma's truck." The decorations in place, the lights twinkling, children fed and smiling, the day ended with a warmth born of the magic of Christmas, the excitement of children and the feeling of love in the air. I won't go into the details of leaving, let just say, we did not stay gone long. About 18 exits down the interstate we turned around and came back. We stayed 2 extra days. The 17 days between then and when we returned felt like a lifetime. It was the most miserable 17 days of my life, not to mention the girls. They both cried nearly every mile of the way back to Georgia ... all 596 miles. Now we are back and we have picked up where we left off. It is almost in the fashion of the keystone cops. If it can happen it probably will happen. Let's see ... The first Sunday morning back Steve woke with crusty gunky eyes and I told him it was pink eye. He then called his mom (who works for the eye doc) and she suggested he had conjuctivitis. With a few phone calls (OMG doctors here work office hours on Sunday) he had a walk-in appointment. His diagnosis was indeed pink eye. Now, I have to tell you, Steve has a real problem with eyeballs and having to put things in them from his days in college studying bio-technical engineering. It seems his job was to visit the local slaughter house in Rochester, NY and collect the eyeballs from the fresh kills. With a spoon he scooped them out of the skulls and filled buckets and then transported them in his car back to the college for the students. Every 2 hours for 2 days and every 4 hours till completed he is squirting drops in his eyes and at bedtime he has to fill his eyes with gunk that looks like vaseline. Hed whines and moans and groans with each treatment. He is such a baby when he is sick but tries to remain manly I know for Colby's sake (LMFAO). Colby has decided that he is so ragged he is precious and nothing he does is wrong. He is the perfect man. The teenager who can find something wrong with everything has deemed she can find nothing wrong with Steve. I should remark here. The first visit here the house seemed to have a moth problem which is a result of a 3-star General who lives next door to his parents having given him some military coats which transfered the Generals moth problem to this house. he spent a week trying to rid the house of those creatures and ended up just throwing away the General's used coats. The DC area is now under an alert for meats sold at Safeway. It seems there was some meat here that possibly came from that tainted cow all the way out on the west coast that came up with mad cow disease. I am so happy to say that the meats we have, ham, turkey and pork roast were all imported from the great state of Georgia. We have avoided famine so i guess the 4 hoursemen of the Apocolyps have not been released onto the world. So, now we are up to the day after Christmas. What next? Moths, spiders, and ... take a big pause here ... we are now on code orange alert for a possible head lice infestation. Everything in this house has been vacuumed and cleaned from top to bottom. Linens and things have been washed in liquid lysol. Here I am standing downstairs putting laundry into the washer, Steve is vacuuming the sofa and I walk in to see how he is progressing. OMG I walked into a green fog of funk. This mild mannered man, who is so polite and caring and giving and loving had filled the room with deadly truth gas. I was quick to find the stairs in the blinding haze and made my way back to the main level. Colby says, "What's wrong?" and I was about to die, "Steve farted." For a moment I thought I had walked into the Night of the Living Dead. Colby has now dubbed him the resident "Fart Master", King of Flatulence. The only thing I can say is it is not a wise woman who feeds a man baked beans and beer for supper. Now, back to the story ... Steve even treated the poor dog. I have no idea what all he put on that poor dog but I do know she got a tea tree oil beauty treatment from CVS drugstore and now she looks as if she has a remnants of a bad gerry curl in her fur. The poor dog is greasy. She leaves a sheen on your skin when you touch her. She is currently resting on me while I type this. Damn, lazy dog, she must think I am her new best friend. I think I may have said enough.