Holy hell I'm busy today. What is this bullshit where I have to work instead of play on the internet and blog? Just Awful. In the meantime, check out some of these bits and bats from the internet I think you should know about.
1. Kelly Oxford - I hope I'm just like Kelly Oxford when I'm a mom someday. No doubt she is one of the funniest people on the internet.
2.I Suwannee - every photo on Jamie Meares' blog makes me want to be more bold and awesome with my decorating. She and her store Furbish are rad.
3. My Favorite and My Best - Jenny's blog is like a combo of Kelly Oxford and I Suwannee... awesome decor and hilarious commentary. Her stream of conscious American Horror Story recaps are my favorite and my best.
4. Texts From Bennett - This is my new favorite thing on the entire internet this week. Bennett is the real deal gangsta... if a gangsta is a white boy who works at Amoco. Consider this gem:
Image from Texts from Bennett
5. Hooked On Houses - If you are like me and like to browse MLS listings on Realtor.com just for fun, man oh man have I got a blog for you. My favorite articles are on TV and Movie houses. Here is one on the house from National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. Lots of fun behind the scenes trivia!
Pretty much my whole adolescence I fantasized about picking up and moving to New York City. I'm far too much of a coward to ever actually do this, and, having actually been to NYC, I know that all of the things I thought I would love about it would slowly drive me bat shit insane.
Also, I like Kansas... it took me a long time to learn how to like it. I know I'm not ever supposed to admit that... I'm supposed to despise Kansas, at least, that is what decades of movies and television shows have taught us, right? That Kansas is a place you reject and flee as soon as you can, because once you get out of that god forsaken, nowhere place full of bigots and religious assholes your real life can begin. But I don't feel that way.
I love the wide, open spaces. I love that you can drive 30 minutes and be someplace that doesn't look all that different from what it might have looked like 150 years ago when pioneers found their way here. I love that it isn't "pretty" in that obvious way some places are. I don't know what it's like to live a place where the beauty, natural or man made, just smacks you in the face. I like the emptiness. A place where the sky is so big you can see what the weather will be in 5 hours.
I can stare at the ocean and mostly feel nothing except that it is really, really incomprehensibly big, but put me in the middle of a wheat field in early June and ask me what I feel... I would struggle to explain it to you.
My pal Kari at The Sunset Lane put up this fun Christmas survey yesterday, and since I love talking about myself ad nauseum (hence the existence of this blog), I thought I would give it a shot!
1. Egg nog or hot chocolate?
Yes, please! You guys, you could pour both of these together into a punch bowl and I would happily drink it. I love sugar... ALL THE SUGAR.
2. Does Santa wrap presents or just set them under the tree? We always had wrapped gifts under the tree, and then Christmas Eve Santa would leave a big present (unwrapped) and our fill our stockings. My parents still do it this way... yes, that means I am (almost) 30 and I still get presents from "Santa". Child for life, y'all!
3. Colored lights on tree/house or white? Okay... let's talk about my dad. My dad has a weird hang up about red Christmas lights because, get this, he says "Red lights will make our house look like a whore house." Yeah, Dad... I'm sure people driving through our neighborhood in the suburbs are going to mistake our 1970s ranch style house for a whore house. But, then, last year he decided to make himself a Festivus pole for the front yard and proceeded to cover it with red lights!! WHAT? If anything looks whore house-y it's that stripper pole you put in the front yard covered in red Christmas lights. What a weirdo.
So we have pretty much always had white lights on house and tree, which I kind of like now. Ideally it would look like this:
4. Do you hang mistletoe? We had some once when I was a kid, but I don't even know where one would buy mistletoe.
5. When do you put your decorations up? Usually the first weekend of December or the weekend after Thanksgiving. I drove up to the house on Monday and felt like I was pulling up to Ebenezer Scrooge's house... it was the only one on the street without so much as wreath. So I forced myself to haul everything out and I didn't stop until it looked like Santa had puked all over the inside of our house. I feel so much better now. Next up will be some good ol' fashioned exterior illumination... including the stripper Festivus pole.
6. What is your favorite holiday dish? I lalalalove those meatballs covered in jelly and chili sauce. I make them every year on Christmas Eve. Holy JEEZ.
7. Favorite holiday memory as a child? One year when I was around 5 my brother and I both got bikes from Santa. I got a super adorable banana seat bike with a basket and my brother got a sweet 10 speed bike. My brother insisted on riding his THAT DAY even though it was snowy and icy outside... and then proceeded in the first 8 feet of riding his new bicycle to flip himself over the handle bars. Good Christmas time fun!
8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa? I don't sleep Christmas Eve. I can't. Even now I just can't no matter how hard I try. Christmas Eve, for me, is a midnight vigil wherein I argue with myself over when it is appropriate to go and see what Santa has brought me. Well one year when I was probably 7 or 8 I decided it was okay to check things out WAAAAY to early, and I caught my parents assembly a hamster cage for my brother. Oops.
9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve? NEVER.
10. How do you decorate your Christmas tree? My tree is decorated with miscellaneous glass ornaments... just kind of whimsical, vintage-y things I like, and lots of bead garland and lights. My parents tree is a big, wonderful hodge podge of all of the ornaments we have accumulated over the years: the ones my mom made from Christmas cards when they were first married and broke, the ones my brother and I made in school, and nicer ones from the last 15 years or so that we have bought from Hallmark. We usually get a new Hallmark ornament every year.
11. Snow! love it or dread it? You guys, I could honest to God live somewhere it snowed 90% of the year. It does not bother me in the least.
12. Can you ice skate? I tried one time and I hated it. Most of the time, if I try something and I am not immediately good at it, I hate it and quit. So there.
13. Do you remember your favorite gift? Maybe the bikes, or the giant chalkboard easel, or my Barbie Ferrari, or the Cabbage Patch Kids. You guys, we were so poor when i was a kid, but my parents killed it at making Christmas magical! For reals.
14. What’s the most important thing about the holidays for you? Something intangible... just being able to feel the absolute magic of the holiday. Something about people decorating their houses with lights and sparkle and glitter just because it's pretty and kids being excited and people making an effort to be with their families and the crisp air and (hopefully) the snow. It just all adds up to magic.
15. What is your favorite holiday dessert? Candy, candy canes, candy corn and syrup. It would be easier to list the desserts I don't like because it would be a list of nothing.
16. What is your favorite holiday tradition? Christmas morning. I am always the first up (reference question 8 above), and around 3 or 4 a.m. (I KNOW) I wake the rest of my family up, then around 6:30 we call my aunt, uncle and grandparents and they come over for Christmas breakfast. Like clockwork every year. I reject all other traditions. My theoretical future husband will just have to deal with it.
17. What tops your tree? An angel.
18. Which do you prefer: giving or receiving? I love giving gifts. I can't wait to have children to give gifts to... I can't even imagine how wonderful it will be to see their faces Christmas morning.
19. Candy canes: yuck or yum? Whatevs.
20. Favorite christmas movie?
It's like you are asking me to pick my favorite child. Holy shit. Ummmm... It wouldn't be Christmas without National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. I watch it about 5 times and spend the rest of the year quoting it.
21. Saddest christmas song?
Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas... because it's about having a happy Christmas even when you are going through a difficult time.
22. What is your favorite Christmas song? Fairytale of New York by The Pogues... this is one of my favorite songs full stop.
Some of my very most favoritest things to watch at Christmas time are Christmas episodes of my favorite TV shows.
Here are some I highly recommend.
1 The Office (the UK version starring Ricky Gervais)
This is a two-part special that was filmed as a sort of epilogue to the original series. It is balls out AMAZING. Beware fans of the US version of The Office, watching this will ruin Jim and Pam's love story. They are bullshit compared to the seething Victorian melodrama of Tim Canterbury and Dawn Tinsley.
After you watch this the song 'Only You' by Yaz will become a Christmas song even though it isn't.
2. Wings - A Terminal Christmas (Season 1)
To be honest, I just picked the Christmas episode from the first season to make it easy. I love the show Wings. I own it on DVD... all of them, every season. I might be the only person in the world to own every episode ever made of Wings. I hope not, but there is a strong possibility that I am. And I'm becoming okay with that.
3. A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All!
Stephen Colbert filmed a Christmas special for The Colbert Report and released it on DVD... and it is just so stupid... so stupid and so funny.
4. Seinfeld - The Strike
In my family this is the king of "Christmas" episodes... and it's not even a Christmas episode. This is the episode of Seinfeld where we all learned about the holiday of Festivus. And the world was never the same again.
I've had a couple of friends recently tell me that their significant others were less than enthusiastic about Christmas. I believe the words 'Grinch' and 'Scrooge' came up in these conversations.
So later I was thinking to myself, "There sure are a lot of guys who just don't get how MAGNIFICENT Christmas is... what the hell is that all about?"
Then I had an awesome idea: a super awesome Christmas date night for you and your fella!!
Now I can't really use this idea right now since I am incredibly single (which, seriously, soooo fine with me right now), but maybe someone else could use it.
Here's the scene:
A sparkling Christmas tree
Some candles
Some Christmas treats... candy, cookies, popcorn, and hot chocolate
Maybe a nice crackling fire if you've got a fireplace
You settle in and get cozy on the couch to watch a Christmas movie. At this point, your own personal Grinch has probably resigned himself to just getting through this for your sake and maybe for the possibility of some clothes optional cuddling later, but then WHAT?! because THIS comes on the screen, y'all:
That's right... Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker... shit just got real. And your fella is probably super stoked at this point, because HELLO... guys love this movie. Like, for real, I have never ever met a guy who doesn't get a total boner for this movie.
And you should be happy too, because, you guys, this is totally a Christmas movie... one of my favorites actually. It's set during an office Christmas party so it totally goes with the date night theme.
EVERYONE IS HAPPY. You got cozy Christmas cuddle time and he got to watch guys throw each other off of roofs and shoot guns and shit.
So that's my idea. I think it would be totally cute. DO IT, YOU GUYS.
American Horror Story is my favorite TV show right now. It's also the reason why I am constantly looking over my shoulder and taking a running leap into my bed at night. Jessica Lange is probably going to get nominated for an Emmy, but I think Evan Peters should too.
Listening to:
Kreayshawn - Gucci Gucci
In my nerdy white girl dreams I am Kreayshawn's sidekick... the girl with the rat tail hairdo and Charles Nelson Reilly glasses. Beyond that, holy shit is this song catchy. You won't be able to get it out of your head... I don't know if that is good or bad.
I scanned a bunch of photos of myself so I could make strangers on the internet look at them. YOU'RE WELCOME.
For most of my childhood my dad had me convinced that I was born with a tail, and that the Doctor delivering me thought I was a monkey. Also my hair stood straight up for a week after I was born. I imagine it looked something like this:
Image from Google.
I'm not sure what I looked like because my dad wouldn't let my mom buy any of the newborn photos the hospital takes because he thinks newborn babies look "weird". So I'm guessing this might be the source of at least SOME of my insecurities.
Despite what these two stories might indicate, my dad is awesome. For realsies.
Here's a souvenir photo of the fam at Silver Dollar City.
I question the historical accuracy of the costumes in this photo...I mean, my dad is a Civil War soldier, my brother looks like a pilgrim, I look like Laura Ingalls Wilder's more darling baby sister, and, apparently, they didn't even bother to find my mother a dress that fit properly. But we still killed this photo. Look at those faces! We look miserable... just like every person in every antique photograph you have ever seen! We are character actors through and through.
I developed a love of animals early.
My grandma's poodle, Killer, was stage left humming the chorus to 'Food, Glorious Food'.
I soon entered my awkward years... which continue to this day. Here's a teaser:
This image is the property of my former neighbor Lorissa... I stole it from her Facebook. I couldn't resist.
Yep, that's me pretty much owning a sweet New Kids On the Block t-shirt at my neighbor Lorissa's birthday party.
I am humbled right now by my childhood awesomeness.
Scanner Apocalypse Part II: The Teenage Years... Coming Soon!
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