Happy Birthday!

I can't even say I've been bad about blogging because six months since you're last post is beyond bad, but today I'm back for a very special reason.

Happy Birthday Mrs. Big Dubya!

(aka my sister who people think that I may be older then even though I'm not)



I hope you are having a great day!

Love,

Aunt P

She's crazy!

Today I had a doctor's appointment in the town where I grew up. Yeah, I know. I haven't lived within 40 miles of that area for more than six years, but I still go to the doctor's there. What can I say? 1) It's well documented that I'm lazy and I like to procrastinate and 2) Who really wants to start establishing new relationships with doctors when you only have to inconvenience yourself once or twice a year to keep the old one. But I digress...

So while I'm in town I figured I'd stop by my parent's house. I called my mam (Granny to those readers of the Dubyas blogs) to remind her I'm on my way and she does the nice mammy thing to say she's looking forward to it and could I stay for a quick lunch after my appointment. I figured sure, what's an extra half hour or so. Off to the doctor's I go.....

On the way back from the doctors, I call mam:

Aunt P: Hi Mammy. I wasn't sure if you had anything already in for lunch, or should I stop and bring something back with me?

Mammy: Oh you know, I just had a dropped egg on toast. But I can go and buy you something? Or do you want a dropped egg on toast?

Aunt P: Don't worry about it. I'll be at the house in a few minutes.

End call.

Huh? Did that really just happen? Hello short term memory! Or is she just crazy! I'm thinking crazy!

I'm getting my car back!

4K in damages turned into $5500, but that's why we have insurance. The real question though is how the heck did I do so much damage when I couldn't have been going more than 15 miles an hour! Either way I was quite pleased to return the rental this weekend and am looking forward to going back to my new and improved RAV4 this afternoon. Of course as luck would have it, we're in the midst of a snowstorm.... Should I even ask what the chances are that something happens on the home?!? Let's just say I'll be driving like a granny to be on the safe side!

The holidays are over!

And what a holiday season it was. Where to begin, where to begin...

The holiday season started early this year. Mr. Tall Guy, Wunder Mutt and I headed over to Granny and Grandad's on the 22nd to celebrate with Mr & Mrs Dubya, their kids and Uncle RoRo. This meant that all the shopping and wrapping needed to be done by the 22nd as well. Shopping was going well until I got the annual call from my father and brother asking me to complete 1/2 of their shopping (the other 1/2 was to be done by my sister -- my brother wouldn't hear of me buying my own gift, just everyone elses). Somehow all of it got done in time for the family gathering and we all had a lovely time. The food was good, the gifts were plentiful and the children were adorable.

The next day I packed up Mr Tall Guy because he was going to visit his family for the actual Christmas Eve/Christmas Day. After he had left I decided to go visit the Dubyas and as I pulled up I decided to run smack dab into Mr. Dubya's car. Did I mention that I got a brand new car just three months ago? Yeah... My hood crumpled like it was designed to and Mr. Dubya's car? Well it had a smudge on it's spare tire. Yeah that it's right. While my car has about 4K in damages, Mr. Dubya's was fine. In the battle of Toyota vs. Honda, the Honda won hands down. In fairness the only part of contact between my car and his was with his spare tire, so I suppose we can say that the Honda spare tire won.

After a wonderful Christmas Eve baking cookies with my Godson and waking up to watching 'lil dub & dubyette opening their gifts from Santa, I needed to head back to dinner with Granny & Grandad. The car was drivable, or at least I thought. 75 miles into the trip the car goes haywire on the Massachusetts Turnpike. I then waited for 3 hours to be towed.... Luckily Uncle RoRo came to my rescue and picked me up. We were only two hours late for Christmas dinner....

So now I have a rental car. Luckily no one was hurt and I would have felt terrible if I had done any real damage to Dub's car, but let's just say I was ready for the days of Christmas to be over and to start the New Year. How was your holidays?

What's So Wrong With Practical Gifts?

The holidays can be a stressful time for people. Even though we know it's coming, things just seem to get a little frantic around this time of year. And most of it is stress we put on ourselves. Seriously think about it. While it's understandable that you want to find the perfect gifts for the people you are closest too, these are the same people that wouldn't want you driving yourself crazy because of them! But we do it anyways...

And now to the point of my post. What is the perfect gift? Does it have to be something that they wouldn't buy for themselves? Maybe one of the reasons they wouldn't buy it for themselves is because they wouldn't get much use out of it. Wouldn't a better gift be something that they will get use of? Sure. You can dress it up a little. Maybe get a nicer version of something they will get use of? Don't you want them to use the gift you got them? So it may be a bit on the practical side but it shows that you know them enough to know what they need. How can there be something wrong with that?

Apparently my brother-in-law thinks that there is. He thinks that I must not be comfortable with gift giving because I get people non-flashy, practical gifts. I for one think that my mother will be very please with the all-weather, heavy duty floor mats that I got her for her brand new car. On one hand I could have gotten her a sweater she'll wear once every couple of weeks for two seasons of the year or on the other hand I could get her floor mats that will protect her new car and she'll use pretty much every day for the next five or six years.

I say practical gifts win!

WooHoo! I'm finished!

As of five past midnight last night I finished this semester's graduate class. My 4,000 - 5,000 word paper was due at midnight and by golly I got it in within minutes of it's due time. Does it matter that ti was a couple of minutes past it's due time? I would like to think not, but I guess I'll find out later... This feat was even more remarkable by the fact that at 8:15 that night I only a mere1850 words written and the finished paper had ~4100. Was it my best work? Not even close, but it also wasn't my worst. I've said it before, I'll say it again. I'm a bad student.

On the bright side I know I did enough to get a decent grade, pass the class and now be done with 6 of my 10 classes. WooHoo!

With school work out of the way I can now put all of my attention on the upcoming holiday season. First thing on the list is to finish decorating the Christmas tree. The tree is up and it has lights on it. It even has my brand new tree toppper on it, but no ornaments. Once that is done it's time for a little photo shoot with wonder mutt to see if I can top last year's Christmas card (shouldn't be hard!). And then there is the shopping...

This year I actually got an early start. I was doing so well but then I lost momentum. If all goes well I'm hoping to be done by this Sunday. It's unlikely, but I'm going to give it my all. Either that or get drunk... decisions, decisions....

What tops your Christmas tree?

Or

And before you start, yes it is a Christmas tree, not a holiday tree.

Growing up we usually had very sad Christmas trees. They were pathetic really, but that is a topic for another post. I remember having a star that had colored lights on it and I think it might have been trimmed in garland (not sure the color garland), but we didn't have it for many Christmas', so maybe our dog ate it (our dog destroying stuff wasn't uncommon). Then I remember one year where we had this straw doll thing. Maybe it was supposed to be an angel, but it was big. And my parents have a small living room, so our tree was typically short and thin, so this straw doll thing was way to big for it. The rest of the years the top of our tree was empty. Granny may occasionally put something up there, but we didn't have that moment that you see on TV where the tree just isn't done until that touching moment where someone lifts up a child to put the tree topper on.

I've been out of my parent's house for a number of years now and I get tree, but the top of the tree has been empty. I've looked for an angel, a star, or a whatever but usually I find the ones in the stores to be awful. And because I grew up with a short thin tree, I tend to get trees that are short and thin. If you go early, you can get a great petite tree and while big trees are great, I'm very happy with my small one, but again I face the challenge of finding an appropriate sized tree topper. On top of the size issue, there is the question of angel vs star? Or something else entirely?

So what tops your tree? Angel? Star? Bow? Something else entirely or nothing? If you do have something up there, does it light up? And when do you put it on? Is it the last thing on the tree to imitate that touching TV moment?