...That's What She Said

I've really missed my regular journal writing. On the one hand, it often feels good to have been highly productive throughout my work day and having stopped home on my lunch break to give Hershey an extra walk each day (more efforts to reduce kidney strain and improve her prognosis)... but on the other, there are days when I find myself zoning out while gazing at my lovely view of the parking lot, wishing I could pop online and write about all the little clever thoughts that had been bouncing around in my head that morning. Of course by the time I arrive home, take care of the animals, figure out my dinner situation, return phone calls and emails from friends I've ignored over the weekend while I was hanging out with the boyfriend... and finally take a minute to breathe... I have completely forgotten whatever I'd amused myself with earlier in the day and pondered posting here. Before I find myself out of time again, I will now type up my holiday weekend recap... including a possible solution to the above described problem.

Thursday before hitting the highway for my annual trek to Grandma's house, I was able to spend a little time with the boyfriend before leaving Hershey in his care for the day. After an excruciatingly long drive down I-95, I arrived, homemade apple pie in hand. My mother presented me with my Christmas gift, early as usual, because she cannot keep secrets or surprises under wraps (unless it's a secret kept from Grandma, i.e. tattoos and motorcycles). Since my pink Razr stopped sending or accepting photo texts, stopped vibrating, lost a button and continuously dropped calls, she bought me a new cell phone. It's brand new, from Hong Kong and it's called a Ming. I guess it would be classified as a PDA phone, though it's hard to tell because the instructions and packaging are in Japanese. The reason why I'm bothering to share info about this new phone is 1.) to let everyone know that they can send me photo texts again, 2.) to announce that I upped my text messaging limit per month (so bring 'em on, people!), 3.) to share what I think is the coolest feature on any phone ever. Is it the 2 hour video recording capability or the 2 gig memory card for music and photo storage? Nope. Is it the calendar, task alerts or internet access? Wrong again. What I consider to be the coolest thing ever is the fact that it has a version of paintbrush on it... and I can now send "Tanya's Famous Paintbrush Art" via text messaging. I hope you all have missed my "Paintbrush Art" blogs and comments as much as I have... because very soon I'll be bombarding your phones. While it's not as cool of a feature, I also now have a note pad function for list making. In addition to grocery lists (hooray for saving trees), I can also jot down all the blog worthy ideas I was complaining about forgetting about in the beginning of this entry. Nice. Back to Turkey Day... Grandma was highly annoyed with my mother and myself for fidgeting with and setting up the phone, though I did try to pay special attention when she was showing me her antique silver for the twentieth time. The food was delicious. The Pirate and my mother bickered over the best way to make gravy and Gus the wiener dog has gotten rather chubby.

Friday was a lazy day due to getting to sleep so late the night before. Even it being Thanksgiving did not stop the boyfriend from hosting band practice which turned into a jam session which turned into me sneaking off to bed when no one was looking. However, we were able to avoid turkey overload by having a Mediterranean themed dinner, cooked by yours truly, while watching The English Patient... which for some reason, I'd never seen. It was a beautiful movie with seamless transitions. My only reservation that kept me from loving it as much as Jason is the fact that the love story involves one of my movie pet peeves: romanticizing the act of infidelity. That aside, it is a superbly done film.

Saturday was a big day. There was a whole lot of cleaning going on, followed by good team work in putting up the Christmas lights on the outside of the house. This is a tradition I've sorely missed due to my recent years of apartment dwelling, so dating a homeowner has certainly added to my getting into the holiday spirit early this year. After throwing a pot roast into the crock pot, I drove home to take care of Mr. Meowgi and Kitty. Stopping at Amy's apartment first to deal with Satan-In-Kitty-Costume, I then arrived home to shower and spend time with my own angry feline. However, on this particular weekend, Meowgi decided against pooping on the floor in protest. Good cat. Upon driving back to Jason's place, our dinner guests had already arrived and we set the table for four and dined on another non-turkey feast. This was followed by an informal pre-holiday get together/band practice which ran well into the night. Hershey enjoyed all the extra petting hands that were available. This guy named Clay really enjoyed the cheese platter.

Last, but not least, Sunday: the boyfriend and I woke up and got ready for church. Yes, church... for the first time in about a year. As it turns out, his mom's church is the same one that Deanna's brother goes to. This meant that we had the opportunity for him to meet my best friend from high school and make his mother very happy, killing two birds with one stone, if you will. It almost went off without a hitch, but there was a pink lemonade incident in which we learned that I cannot and should not ever mop a floor. Despite making us twenty minutes late, I found the whole scenario amusing... and in that, I was alone. We missed the opening music, but we made it for the sermon. Sadly, I can't say that I'm sure it will be happening again. It was by far, one of the strangest church services I've ever been to. I'll try to keep the story short by saying that it was a surfer church. The pastor was wearing jeans and no shoes. When I wasn't distracted by his bare toe nails, I heard him saying things such as, "Like you know... that's God at work, Man". I typically support anything that brings people together in an effort to live better lives and grow into better human beings, regardless of the name tag placed on their religion... but this one was a little too far out there for me personally. The message just wasn't deep enough to make me think... and I believe it's safe to say that both Jason and I agree that we prefer a more traditional service. Studying the history contained in a book and discussing how one can apply it to modern life is more my bag than just taking ancient words and translating them into surfer slang so the beach bunnies don't have to think about what it might mean. I guess this place made church too easy because I walked away having learned nothing new. Well, moving on... what really matters most is that we made two people very happy and all had a nice brunch together. Perhaps one day we can do it again... just somewhere else. Next, we stopped and purchased a Christmas tree. A real one, not plastic. When we got back to his house, I had to mop again. And mop again. Then we decorated the tree while watching Catch Me If You Can. Jason's mom stopped by for dinner, where we finally finished off the turkey left-overs. We chatted. I heard stories about "Young Jason". We laughed. We got to know each other better. We drank egg nog and ate the brownies that I accidentally burned. Then when he and I were alone again, we took photos of the tree and silly smoochy face pictures of ourselves before I had to return home to my apartment (and a very bitter Mr. Meowgi):




(Yes, that's an actual photo I took of the tree! Pretty, no?)


I could get used to this whole holiday traditions thing. I could get used to being overwhelmingly happy.