Friday, November 25, 2005

The Day After

Ugh. It's over. Well, kinda. If you don't count the few hours it's going to take to get the leftovers packed up and put into the freezer, make soup stock from the ham bone, pick up countless plastic cups, pop and beer cans, and somehow figure out how to disassemble the tent structure we had up out side; Thanksgiving is over for the year.

Every year, my husband and I decide to act like crazy people and invite all those who dare, to come to our house for Turkey Day. It's mostly for our friends that have either no family or their family lives too far away. Last year we had about 30 for dinner and an additional 25 or so stopped by for pie, drinks and conversation. We ran out of food, no leftovers to speak of. This year we invited the same amount of people, and we cooked twice as much. Half the people showed. So even though we had a wonderful time, we have lots of leftovers. Oh and did I mention that our house is about the size of a shoebox? We erected a tent out in the driveway with an outdoor fire pit, tables, and lighting strung up. Makes it pretty interesting when it rains.

But as usual at my house, all good plans can go awry. This years festivities started off well. I made all the pies on Wednesday. I was very proud of myself for that one. I awoke Thursday morning around eight, and started making my side dishes. First time ever I made sweet potatoes. And not the yucky canned yams either. I actually had to peel these suckers. I don't like that marshmallow crap you put on them either, so I substituted graham cracker crumbs. Turned out pretty good. My hubby actually ate some, and he hates sweet potato/yam stuff. Then I got the green bean casserole ready. Another thing I think I've made once.

Anyway, I was doing pretty good time wise at this point. Then I decided to get the ham ready, with the glaze and all that. One of my ingredients for the glaze in Dr. Pepper. Sounds gross, but strangely it's not. I had bought a whole 2 liter bottle, (not sure why), and when I was facing the stove, I attempted to open it. Well, gee it must of got shook up at some point in the last few days, because I ended up spraying the entire kitchen with it. The stove top, the fridge (which I had left hanging open), the kitchen sink that was filled with clean dishes sitting in the drainer, the floor, the table, and two dogs. Normally I would of started yelling at that point, but things had been going so well and I knew something was bound to mess it up. I just started laughing. Big, straight from the gut laughing guffaws. With tears streaming out of my eyes, I figured that if my husband would have walked in at that time, he probably would have drove me straight to the nut house. But thankfully he didn't.

I got the mess cleaned up, and things were going smooth again. My sister showed up with her kids and mine in tow. So of course we decided that this would be a good time to put up the tent. You know that old joke, how many whatevers does it take to screw in a light bulb? Well, this was kind of like "How many family members does it take to put up a gazebo shaped tent, after you cant find the instructions?" The answer is: six. One to walk around with his hands on his hips, spouting out instructions (Hubby), one to actually try to direct the children politely (my sis), one to keep saying "well, I don't know what I'm doing!" (Sis's kid #1), One to try to get the rest of us to believe that they knew exactly what they were doing (my kid), one to moan forlornly that they couldn't reach as high as the rest of us (Sis's kid #2), and one to walk around looking like they were actually helping but not (me). But apparently this method works, because it actually stayed up the whole time, even after it started raining.

Yes, raining. We have not had rain in about three weeks, and the weather dudes had said that we were supposed to have clear blue skys after a little early day fog. Yeah, right. It started out as a little sprinkle. No biggie. But after awhile, it was pretty much a deluge. Half the guests (mostly kids) hid in the house with video games. The rest of us braved it out. The tables got moved back under the tent, sort of, and it wasn't so bad. We took turns pushing the sagging tent up to spill out the pooled up water. I only did this myself once. After that one time, when most of the water went on my head, I decided that I just didn't have the talent for it.

So anyway, all in all, the day went good. I still have an entire turkey left and 99% of the second ham, and an entire pumpkin pie, and my hubby is in the kitchen doing dishes, so I'm content. The rain has stopped for a while, so I think I'll go out and see how long it will take me to take the tent down by myself. You might want to pray for me. HA!

Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Am I Larry, Moe or Curly? Cripes!

Have you ever felt like you were in the middle of a Three Stooges show? Keystone Kops, also was a familararity today.

I don't know if it was the position of the moon or what. I checked my horoscope, and it said nothing about me making an ass out of myself. Well, shit.

My day started ok. I left the house around the middle of the morning. While getting on the freeway, I almost got side swiped by a geezer pulling a fith-wheel. (interestingly, I looked and he didn't even notice me. How can you not notice a bright purple truck with a bright blue wheel barrow in the back, for cripes sake?!?!) Anyway, I proceeded to kidnap my sister to help me finish a job I had been putting off. I had to go to her work to do this. She had just finished an eight hour shift, gaped at me like I was a loon, jingled the change in her pocket, and decided that this was going to be easy money. Ha! Little did she know!

We got to the job site, (landscape stuff BTW) and started to dig. Basically, we had to cut out an oval about the size of a small car from a very nice stretch of lawn, place a large rock on one side, and plant a tree. Sounds simple right? Ha! You know nothing!

The area we had to dig up the sod from, happened to be about the most soupy spot you can imagine. Think about a low spot in your yard, and you left the sprinklers on too long. Multiply that by ten. That was the spot. Ugh. Anyway, we dug. As my sis was filling the wheelbarrow with sod, I warned her that it was getting too full, and would be too heavy. She as usual ignored me. As I graciously decided to take the wheelbarrow myself to the truck to unload, I turned it and the tire apparently came off the rim. Shit. Oh gee, double shit. Did I neglect to mention that I was in the middle of the street at the time? With a load of sod that probably weighed about 100 lbs ?

I was pushing along, and I thought I was dragging something. I looked down and realized that I was dragging the freaking tire! My sis was going on about how she told me last week that she thought the tire was a little low, but since I don't remember that, I think she was making it up. (But she will still continue to keep deer heads in her freezer for us, now wont she? ...Previous post, sorry)

Then of course, since I was in the middle of the road, a van is coming down the road. A delivery van. Gosh I love giving them stories to take back to the warehouse with them. Don't you? I was smack, dab, in the very middle of the road. No way around me. So I am yelling at my sis to get over to me to help me get the damn thing out of the road, and I might of been waving my arms a wee bit, and she starts laughing. Couldn't stop, either. I'm pretty sure that snot was running out of her nose, too. (take that, Sis!)

She came over to me and asked what could she do. I told her to lift one end and I would lift the other. Her response: "I ain't liftin that! Are you shitting me?!".

I ended up taking half the sod out, and carrying it to the truck, and then dragging the wheelbarrow with the flat tire, to the truck backwards. Apparently the DHL delivery driver was laughing his ass off the whole time. I didn't notice, but my sis informed me later. Sigh...crap.

After that fiasco, it was time to get the tree in the ground. This tree, I am guessing, weighed near to 150 lbs. Probably more, because I think I can lift 150 lbs. The owners had bought it about three weeks previously and of course, sat it in their yard, about 100 Ft away from where we needed to put it. So we decided to roll it. Not a good idea. Less than half way to the hole we (mostly I) dug, it started to come out of the pot. Black dirt all over the lawn...Hey I have a great idea! Lets put it back in the pot and drag it over to the hole. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Once we got it to the hole, we couldn't get it back out of the pot. I tried to yank it out using nothing but my brutal strength, but to no avail. (shut up Sonja.) I might of also fell on my butt, once or twice. Ok, so we finally got the damn thing in the hole, and the lawn we had to treks back and forth on to get the sod in the truck looked like total crap. But, all in all, the job got done, and the crappy part will look better once it rains a few times.

Oh, and my sis also informed me she couldn't dig anymore, because she pulled a muscle in her butt from laughing at me. Is that workman's comp by the way?

God, I hope the neighbors were not video taping us for some reason.

Monday, November 21, 2005

Wires to the Left of Me, Wires to the Right.....

Note to Self: When rearranging your living room, be prepared to instantly become an electronics engineer.

Two years ago we got our last puppy. Two years ago was the last time I rearranged the living room. We have a surround sound system, that also has two game systems, a DVD player, CD player, tape player and VCR hooked to it. Most of it quit working about a week after we got our last dog, due to wires that got eaten. We just never had the energy to fix it. But last night I decided to move my furniture around.

I figured that if I just unhooked all the wires from everything, then I could just rewire it in a different location in the room. I decided this because I couldn't figure out how my husband had hooked it all up in the first place. I would just do it my way. Seemed like a good plan at the time.

The first thing I had to do was barricade the dogs out of the living room. Not a small feat considering that Mazzy, our youngest, can jump a five foot fence with ease. But it worked out ok, because apparently she had never thought that jumping a couch would be easy compared to the fence.

I thought that I would have to do a kind of a trial and error type thing with the wires, since I had absolutely no clue how to do this. It's supposed to be easy since all the wires are color coded. Black in the black holes, red in the red holes. Yeah, right. There are approximately 30 different black and red holes. UGH!!

Anyway, three hours later, and I was patting myself on the back. Not only because I got it all working, but I actually got stuff to work that my husband couldn't figure out the last time. I had to call him at work and brag. I also called to tell him not to touch anything. I could just picture him thinking that he could make it better somehow. Why? Because he's a man of course.