Tag Archives: Humor

December 2, 2011 · 0:00

Both Sides Now

“The Season” makes me crabby.  Grumpy.  Irritable.  I’ve come to hate it.  Everything about it.  I hate the music, the crowded stores, the decorations.  I especially hate the decorations.

Last year a friend stopped by our house in the middle of December.  “God, it’s December 15th,” I said to her, “and the only decoration I have up is the wreath on the door!”

“I don’t think that counts, Lease,” responded my husband John. “You didn’t take that down from last year.”

“Oh, yeah.”

Tonight, I’m looking around at my undecorated house thinking, “uggggh,” not “Ho ho ho!”

It wasn’t always true, though.  I used to be one of them.  I was a veritable Christmas Elf.  I baked, I decorated.  I embroidered Christmas stockings for the whole family.  My son Jacob and I built gingerbread houses that did not come from a mix or a box and were actually made of gingerbread stuck together in the shape of a house!  My friends got a bottle of homemade Irish Cream liqueur.  Some used it to get their kids to bed on Christmas Eve.

But mostly, I sang.  The records, tapes and CDs came out on Thanksgiving.  From the moment I woke up the day after Thanksgiving, until New Years, I would trill away.  “White Christmas,” “Do You Hear What I Hear?” “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas.”  I belted “Mele Kalikimaka” when I had an established escape route to avoid people trying to punch me.  I know the words to all 18,423 verses of Frosty the Snowman.  I would start singing in the shower and keep going until John tackled me and put duct tape across my mouth, usually at about 8:30 a.m.  Regardless, I’d start up again the next morning.

If the current, Crabby Christmas Me got a hold of the old Merry Christmas Me, I would slap myself silly.

So you see, I do understand the Christmas-sy part of Christmas.  The love, the joy, the traditions.

But now I see the other side.  And it’s that “tradition” part that is to blame.

You see, my family’s always been fairly competitive.  My mother and her sister Ruth were particularly so.  They’d argue at each shared Sunday dinner over a million things:  whose gravy was better (my mother’s), who cracked the best one-liner (always Aunt Ruth – she was a hoot), and most traumatically for me, whose young daughter was taller. (Duh, Maureen was almost a year older than me – of course she won every time.  But you’re not taller now, are you?  And you’re still older, Maur.  You’re still older.  How do you like it??)  Darn, I wish I’d missed the competitive gene.

When I was a kid, Aunt Ruth was high on the list of my favorite relatives.  Now she’s tops on an altogether different list.  And it ain’t Santa’s list, neither.

Because Aunt Ruth started a family tradition.  A competition.  But it’s not a family tradition I recommend, especially during the Christmas season.  In fact, it should have a warning, although I’m not sure where you’d put it:  Don’t try this at home.

You see, Aunt Ruth started the tradition of kicking the bucket on a major holiday.  What fun!  Great idea!  Not many families do that!  Hey, we are DIFFERENT!

Knowing Aunt Ruth, I’m sure her last thought was “Doris, you’ll never top this one!  I’m dying on Thanksgiving!!!!”   She was no doubt a bit miffed when my mother joined her a couple of years later.  Because, not to be outdone, Mom arrived in the afterlife on Easter Sunday.

Their party really got going when we reached Y2K, and my sister Judy died unexpectedly on my birthday in January.  Now, you might argue that my birthday is not, technically speaking, a holiday.  Not a paid day off for most folks.  But hey, in my book, this qualifies.  So there.

As time went on, there were fewer and fewer holidays I could celebrate.  The only big one left was Christmas.

Guess what happened on Christmas, 2000!  Yup, Dad reclaimed his spot at the head of the table with Mom, Judy and Aunt Ruth. Dad trumped them all.  Or because it was Christmas, perhaps he trumpeted them all.  Maybe both.

I must say I am rather ticked off about it all.  Sort of changes the tone of the Holidays, you see.  I plan to have words with all four of them, next time I see them.  And I will not be nice.

In the meantime, celebrating holidays, well, it just seems so odd to me.  Especially Christmas, because Christmas is so stuff-oriented, and most of my Christmas stuff is from them.  It takes a bit of the fun out of decorating.

For a while, I considered joining the Eastern Orthodox Church.  That way I could celebrate the same holidays, just on different days.  I could keep all my Christmas crap!  I could decorate!  I could bake!  I could sing!  But then I realized that the change would just give us all additional high priority target dates, and I don’t have enough family members left to meet the challenge.  So Eastern Orthodox is out.

At the same time, I also realized that, when Dad hit the Holiday Lottery, the whole tradition had to stop.  Because I’m pretty sure that biting the dust on, say, Columbus Day, just wouldn’t cut it.  So why bother?

Nevertheless, this whole thing has made me decidedly anti-Holiday.

There is one holiday I still look forward to, though.  Groundhog Day.  I just can’t figure out what sort of decorations to put up.

Photo courtesy of Google Images

109 Comments

Filed under Family, Humor, Music

Tagged as , ,

November 26, 2011 · 0:00

Too much information

I’ve had a house full of folks here for Thanksgiving for most of the week.  So I’ve been doing a whole lot of cooking.  Tonight, however, I’m taking it easy.  I bought a frozen lasagna, and not long ago, I turned over the box to read the directions.  Basically, I needed to know how long and at what temperature to cook it.  What other information do you think I’d need?

Apparently, our friends at Stouffer’s thought I needed more.  Apparently, they think that the straight jacket has just been removed from my torso.  Apparently they think that I need careful guidance in frozen Lasagna-making.

So I guess it is a good thing that the box gave me the most complete pre-cooking instructions I could wish for:

Preheat oven to 400° F

Do not exceed 400° F

Pull tab from short side of package and remove perforated strip.

Remove tray from box.

Now, I know that some people are better cooks than others, but if you can’t figure out that you need to open the package and take the entree out before you start cooking your frozen dinner, well then, maybe you need something more than a frozen dinner.

Maybe you need a drink.

34 Comments

Filed under Family, Humor

Tagged as

November 21, 2011 · 0:00

Great Balls of Fire!

People here in Northern Virginia are way different from the ones I grew up with in Connecticut.  Folks here just can’t seem to get away from the Civil War.  And now, I guess I can’t either.

Now, I can understand the interest.  That war is still all around us.  After all, Richmond, Virginia was the Capitol of the Confederate States of America.  The first battle was fought here in Manassas and the last battle and surrender took place here too, in Appomattox.  There are hundreds of known and marked battlefields where you can touch history, where you can learn the details of the battles and who did what to whom.  All is laid out clearly, respectfully.  We Americans do a great job at battlefield parks.

Throughout most of the year there are also reenactments of battles.  From what I’ve gathered, though, this mostly involves men dressing up in gray uniforms and blue ones and hanging out in front of a campfire.  They shoot the breeze — instead of each other, which is modern life for you — being a Civil War participant is much better in this century than it was back in the day.  Nowadays you can avoid the bullets, the bayonets, the cannon fire, the dysentery and, and, and ….

Recently, the Civil War got even closer.  You see, a history buff bought the land across the street.  And he really wants to feel the history at home.  And of course, that means history is at my doorstep.

Now, the property across the street includes about 10 acres. John and I thought that no one would ever buy it.  It’s just a weird piece of land.  It’s a triangle, with woods on the left, woods on the right and an open, grassy area in the middle, where the owner may not build.

When we ran into Beau, our soon-to-be-neighbor, he introduced himself.  “I’ve always wanted property with a ‘meadow,’” he told us, with misty eyes and a ramrod straight back.

“Actually, it’s a natural gas pipeline,” said John helpfully (because that’s what it is.)  It is a potentially explosive piece of property.  We told him that before he bought it, mind you.  When he still had time to change his mind.

But Beau has a dream.  Now we have a nightmare.

Beau didn’t specify just what his dream was.  Perhaps we should have known what was in store for us by his pronounced drawl.  Or maybe by his military bearing.   Or maybe when he didn’t know the difference between a peaceful meadow and a grassy knoll.  Can you say “Stonewall Jackson”?  Can you say “Great Balls of Fire”?  Can you say “Rhett and Scarlett”?

You guessed it.  To our surprise (horror?), Beau built Tara, right across the street.  Or maybe it’s Twelve Oaks.  I can’t quite decide.  Maybe it’s Tara Oaks, but that sounds like a new flavor of oatmeal.

OK, I cheated. The real one is (thankfully) hiding behind trees from my Yankee camera. (Google Image)

To be fair, well, the house isn’t like the McMansions that surround our more modest house.  It isn’t quite as large as I expected either (apparently they skipped some of the wings found in a real southern plantation).  But Tara Oaks is from another era, one that ended in 1865, also here in Virginia.

More visible to me and folks driving by, the property is surrounded by Civil war-style stockade fences, just right for the boys in gray to hide behind while shooting Yankees.

The real fence. It surrounds the property.

But the thing that worries me most is that there is one spot on the side of the meadow where they leveled the ground and put in a rectangular bit of asphalt.  You can see it in the upper right.  This spot is suitable for only one purpose:

And I just know it will be pointed towards the Yankee across the street.  Especially if Beau ever reads this piece.

45 Comments

Filed under Humor, Real Estate

Tagged as ,

October 18, 2011 · 0:00

Life stinks

Here it is, fall.  The beautiful changing colors, the graceful tease of the orange and yellow leaves as they flutter down to the ground.  The cool, comfortable temperatures.  The stink bugs.

Yup, they’re here.  Stink bugs.  Got them?

Two years ago, when my friend Judy and I were having lunch, riding up in an elevator, she first mentioned them to me.  I had never heard of them.  In fact, I thought she was using code to refer to the woman standing in front of us –because the woman reeked of cigarettes to the point where I feared we would be asphyxiated then and there.

But no!  She was referring to real live, invasive species-type insects!  Whodda thunk it.  They are annoying beetles that get into your house and can become quite an expensive pest.

I am actually quite confused about stink bugs.

My husband, John, who knows everything and who more annoyingly is never wrong, insists that they do not stink when you smush them.  John claims that the ones WE get are a special invasive species from Asia that do not stink.

“Why do they call them ‘stink bugs’ then?”  I keep asking.  He never answers.  And he never produces genetic evidence that they are, in fact, Asian.  Disillusion is starting to penetrate my marriage.

My friend Judy is also one of the smartest people I know.  She is far less annoying about it, though.  Besides, she is a much more practical sort of smart.  She assured me that when smushed, stink bugs smell like stinky socks.  She assured me that her son is far away and that her husband, Steve, has delightful feet.  Therefore, to Judy, there is only one place the stinky sock smell can come from.  Smushed bugs.

So I just don’t know who to believe.

Me, I am a very careful person.  As a rule, I am a bit of a life-lover.  I have never actually smushed a stink bug.  Why tempt it?  Actually, though, I try not to smush stuff intentionally.  There is always something else, some other way, something natural you can use to rid the house of pests.

For example, when we lived in France about 10 years ago, we were informed by the animal control squad that the best way to keep certain rodents at bay was for a man to pee in the area where they had taken up residence.

Huh?

Yup.  That’s what French Animal Control told us.  You may not know this, but the French don’t always like Americans.  Sometimes there are clues.

So when my husband was told by guys in uniforms to go up in to our attic and pee into the dark corners, well, we thought twice about it.  John more so than me, I’ll admit.  One of those thoughts, naturally was that the critters we were trying to evict had long, sharp teeth, and were known to be rather aggressive.  They were “fweens,” a type of weasel.  A type of weasel that is not afraid of humans, of the peeing or non-peeing variety.  A type of weasel that is too ferocious to be made into a coat.

So back to the stink bugs.  I think I’ve figured out a compromise.  We catch the stink bugs in toilet paper, throw them into the toilet, John pees on them.   We flush.  Everyone is happy.

And we make the French proud.

Asian Stink Bug -- Courtesy of Google

15 Comments

Filed under Humor

Tagged as ,

October 15, 2011 · 0:00

Sign of the times

It is election season here in Virginia.  In fact, it always seems to be election season in Virginia.  We have elections just to show off Virginia’s historical connection with the U.S. Constitution – Madison, for example, was a Virginian, and he wrote most of it.  Jefferson, another Virginian, wrote him letters from Paris with helpful hints on how to write something that would one day be put into a really cool frame.  George Mason was in on it too, so were a whole bunch of other Virginians we all learned about in grade school.  Folks from other states had their fingers in the pot too, Virginians admit, but only when pressed.

But Virginia still takes its voting rights very seriously.  So we have elections frequently just because we can.  It is now mid-October and I’ve already voted twice this year. We will, of course vote again on the 1st Tuesday in November.   Yay.

Actually, I don’t really mind.  I vote in every damn one of them.  I value my right to vote.  Even more so since 2000 when I was living in Europe and my absentee ballot didn’t show up.  You know what happened – George W. Bush became President.  The world went to hell in a handbasket.  If only my ballot had shown up, things might have been different.

For a while, I blamed myself – until, of course, I realized that my absentee ballot would not have been for a vote in the Supreme Court.  Damn!  I want to get one of those, but I’m not quite sure where to apply for it.  In fact, the longer John Roberts remains Chief Justice, the harder I’m going to try to find a way to get a vote there on the Supreme Court.  One of those awesome black robes would be pretty cool, too.

So now that it is just a few weeks away from the next election, the political signs are out all over the place.  Big clumps of them at every corner.  A big mish mash of signs advertising people I’ve heard of and people I haven’t, for positions I have never heard of either.  What does a delegate do?  Or a county supervisor.  Who does he/she supervise?  And if they need to be supervised, shouldn’t we just get rid of them?

This time around, there are also candidates running for School Board, and one candidate made me nearly get out of my car and knock over each and every one of his signs on principle.  Or maybe on principal.

Why?  Because the guy is not running

FOR School Board

Nope.  He’s running

4

School Board

Is it just me, or should folks on the school board know how to spell those sound-alike words?

The sign made me realize that, yes,  it IS bad when the Supreme Court overrules the popular vote of the country.  But when you start out with a school board full of cretins who cannot distinguish between “for” and “four” (and probably “there, their, and they’re”), well, that’s when you can pretty much be sure the next generation is going to be dumber than we are.

You can vote on it.

13 Comments

Filed under Elections, Humor, Voting

Tagged as , , , ,