My New Refrigerator has Every Convenience, it’s Gonna Make Life Easy for Me

So sang DemiGoddess the Elder and I last night as we danced together around the kitchen. She is very into the Talking Heads these days (have I mentioned how exceptionally cool my children are?).

Our new refrigerator doesn’t exactly have every convenience. There is no built-in water filtration system or even an automatic ice maker. In fact, from the outside, the new refrigerator looks a lot like the old refrigerator:


Inside is where the real magic happens. Slide-out, divided, spill-proof, tempered-glass shelves! A light in the freezer! In-door adjustable compartments that can hold a gallon jug of milk! And, best of all, I now have a drawer for nothing but cheese!


That’s not the only new acquisition in the Goddess household, either. I am also the proud owner of a brand new timing belt and muffler, which were installed on my aged but trusty Honda Civic yesterday morning. (Tax refund in… tax refund out…)

And, because I am so very clever, I dropped my car off at the shop on Monday night, so that my fix-it-up chappie could get started installing the new timing belt and muffler bright and early on Tuesday morning. Which he did. Right after he called me at 6:30 a.m. to tell me that my car had been broken into overnight and my stereo was gone.

I felt so violated. Why would someone do that to my car? And, come to think of it, why would someone bother to steal a six-year-old stereo that wasn’t worth all that much when it was new??

The very apologetic fix-it-up chappie agreed that it was a major drag, but assured me that the shop has insurance for that sort of thing. So yesterday's final major purchase was a brand new stereo for my car.

It can play MP3 files and has an auxiliary jack for hooking up the Demis’ iPods, and I did not have to pay a thing for it, unless one counts the emotional cost of picking my car up from the shop and succumbing to an overwhelming urge to check under all the seats for any nasty remnants that the stereo thieves may have left behind.

They were exceptionally tidy thieves, it seems. They left no trace, save for a few screws lying neatly in my cup holder, and the gaping hole in my dashboard.

But, getting back to the refrigerator. As I transferred all of our old magnets, business cards, photos and whatnot from the old refrigerator door to the new one, I took the opportunity to thin things out a little. However, this little gem, compliments of DemiGoddess the Younger, will be staying:


I'm so glad she's putting that Teen Vogue subscription to good use.

Boys: 1, Girls: 12

The boy child has a baby sister!



After astounding us all by producing a son on her first go-round two years ago, my sister-cousin Kerry followed up on Tuesday evening with a gorgeous baby girl. The lovely Ms. Keara brings the count to an even dozen females between my sisters, sister-cousins and our children, and her arrival also means that order has once again been restored to the universe.

Zeke, Keara's older brother, is a delight, but we all knew the whole "boy" thing was, as sister Betsy so eloquently called it, "a blip."

Isn't she pretty?

I had an opportunity to spend a little get-to-know-you time with her last night, and I think she's going to work out very nicely.

Congratulations, Kerry, Erik and Zeke!

(P.S. I totally called it.)

Signs of Spring

Happy Pitchers



and Catchers



Day Everybody!

Next stop... opening day!

I still haven't gotten over that final regular season game last October. I don't know if I can take that much excitement again this year.

Okay, maybe I can.

Speaking of exciting... My Ho has a baseball blog! How HOTT is that?

Neither Pampered, Nor a Chef

Last night my lovely next-door-neighbor, Leah, had a Pampered Chef® party. I am not a huge fan of these in-home shopping parties, mainly because every day is a struggle for me to contain my impulse-shopping tendencies, and that’s just at Target. I go into these gatherings with the firmest of intentions, but the sad truth is that it never takes long for the peer pressure and implied sense of obligation (I have to buy something, she made a cake!) to entirely dispossess me of my senses, and the next thing I know I’m whipping out my checkbook to purchase a Crinkle Cutter that I simply must have, so that it can sit, nestled in its protective plastic sleeve, unused in a drawer in my kitchen for years and years because, hello! I DON’T COOK!

But Leah is lovely, and I hadn’t seen her since the last time it was possible to leave the house without dying from hypothermia within seconds. Besides which, I had just finished doing my taxes, and had very recently learned that all those upgrades I made to my home computer last year are totally tax deductible “education expenses.” So I was in an optimistic mood.

I really, really wanted to order a Food Chopper, especially after Rita, the sales representative, demonstrated right there on Leah's dining room table how just a few quick presses of the knob will rotate the durable blades to perfectly chop all manner of nuts and vegetables and chocolate chips as coarsely or as finely as I might like. Nevertheless, through a goddess-like display of super-human fortitude—in spite of the fact that the Food Chopper is also top-rack dishwasher safe—I managed to limit my order to what I’m pretty sure are the five least expensive things in the entire catalog. And I can’t wait to use my new Quikut paring knife.

You know, to cut open the wrapper on a frozen pizza. Or something.

Jeebus Take The Wheel

DemiGoddess the Elder took driver’s ed class at the high school last fall. At the end of the quarter, she passed the written permit test, and after that I took her to our neighborhood licensing bureau to get her driver's permit card. We filled out forms. She had her picture taken.

So you’d think it would have occurred to me that now I am supposed to take her driving. In MY CAR. And actually LET HER DRIVE MY CAR.

Somehow, though, the reality of the situation didn’t set in until her card arrived in the mail. Turns out, it's much harder to live in denial when one is staring at a photo of one’s child on a lerner’s permit.

I told her, sure, I’ll take you driving. Just as soon as you’ve had your behind the wheel training. It sounded perfectly logical at the time, but was really just a desperate stall tactic as I put forth a monumental effort to hide the fact that I was completely freaking out.

I said, since it’s the holidays and all, maybe wait to schedule your first lesson until January.

Because, you know. January will never come.

Except that here it is, January, and she had her first behind the wheel session yesterday after school. When I asked her how it went, she said it had been fine. She was too scared to go on the busy streets, but she did get up to 30 mph on the side streets, which felt really fast. And she hadn’t hit anything, so that was good. Then she said her instructor would be calling me later that evening. Apparently she’s supposed to have been practicing already, and I have wasted my money by allowing her to take behind the wheel training before she’s had any driving experience.

“Yah,” the guy said when the call came. “She needs a lot more practice. Take her over to the school on a weekend and have her drive around the parking lot, then. She needs to be able to go on those busy streets before I take her out again, doncha know.”

I was being chastised by what sounded like a 150-year-old driving teacher from Lake Wobegon. Sheepishly, I thought, I know. I can do that. We’ll just start slow. It will be fine.

Then he said, “She needs to learn to look right when she’s turning right, and look left when she’s turning left."

Wait, what? She needs to learn that?

When Demi the Elder was a toddler, I bought her one of those Playskool Tyke Bike riding toys. The day I bought it, I eagerly set it on the sidewalk for her, and she toddled over, turned around, and plopped her diapered butt down on the seat. Backwards.

I learned an important parenting lesson that day—Do not to take for granted that some things will be obvious. As in, when you sit on the riding toy, you’re supposed to face the handlebars.



And, similarly, when you're driving the car, you’re supposed to look left when you’re turning left, and right when you’re turning right. Okay then.

But the thing is, a Honda Civic can do considerably more damage than a plastic riding toy. And, my car may be old, but I only have the one.

And, seriously. Where the hell was she looking?

Warning: Do Not Go To This Film

My Ho and I went to see “Babel” on Sunday, along with my sister Betsy.

I admit that it was me who wanted to see it. And the only reason I was interested was because it received the most Golden Globe nominations, and I felt a need to see it before the awards show broadcast last night. This, in spite of my aversion to all things Brad Pitt. I should have known better.

We left for the afternoon show right after the Bears won their playoff game, which is a good thing, because it meant that My Ho was in an exceptionally good mood right before I forced him to sit through over two and a half hours of pointless storylines loosely connected by long periods of excruciating boredom. And Sister Betsy nearly whoopsied from the herky-jerky handheld cinematography.

But don't just take MY word for it.

So you can imagine my astonishment when the film won the best picture Golden Globe last night. Although I suppose the fact that the cameras spent so much of the evening focused on Angelina Jolie's bony clavicles should have tipped me off that things were not going to go well. And, inexplicably, no sign of Isaac Mizrahi, either.

Betsy and I also saw "Little Children" on Sunday (my sister and I, we are the kind of hard-core movie fan freakshows who will pay to see two films, in the theater, in one day) and although the ending was just a smidge too precious, we both found that one ever so much more enjoyable. And decidedly less nausea-inducing. And also, 100% Brangelina free.

The Rocket Ship Lunchbox

DemiGoddess the Elder got it for Christmas.

Spectrum

On December 30, my friend Batgirl welcomed her son, Dashiell John, into the world. She and her husband, Jeb, were in town for the holidays when they discovered she was in labor about eight weeks ahead of schedule. Dash ended up being born right here in Minneapolis, and although he weighed in at a slight 3 pounds, 2 ounces, he is able to breathe on his own and is healthy enough that he’ll spend the next few weeks in the special care nursery, not the NICU.

After confirming with the new parents that it would be okay, My Ho and I made plans to visit Batgirl and Jeb in the hospital on Tuesday evening. I was very much looking forward to meeting the newest member of Team Batgirl.

Then, on Tuesday afternoon, the DemiGoddesses received a call from my Ex with sad news. We had no longer been expecting that his baby, also a boy, would make it to term, but the hope was that he could hang in there for another few weeks, long enough that surgery might be a viable option. But when my Ex called, it was to tell the Demis that the baby’s heart had stopped beating that morning. There wasn’t anything left to be done but induce labor.

That night at the hospital, I stood next to the incubator as baby Dash slept, pink and tiny and perfect, with one scrawny arm thrown back over his head like he was sunbathing under the bilirubin lights. Watching his little chest move up and down as he breathed, I was in awe and in love, while at that very same moment, I ached over the loss of the one named Henry, whose due date had been within a few days of Dash’s.

Some days life is impossibly wonderful. Some days it is brutally unfair. That day, it was both.

Noooooooooooo...

Say it ain't so, Doug! Say it ain't SO!

Yankees reach tentative deal with 1B Mientkiewicz

Major League Baseball News Wire

NEW YORK—The New York Yankees apparently have found
a defensive caddie for Jason Giambi.

The Yankees have reached a tentative deal with first baseman
Doug Mientkiewicz, the New York Post reported Thursday on its
web site.

No terms were disclosed in the report, which said Mientkiewicz
will undergo a physical Thursday.

Mientkiewicz, 32, won a Gold Glove with the Minnesota Twins in
2001 and would provide the Yankees with a more than capable
defensive alternative to Giambi, who has regressed defensively
over the past several years and figures to be the team's primary
designated hitter in 2007.

A veteran of eight-plus seasons, Mientkiewicz batted .283 with
four home runs and 43 RBIs in 91 games with Kansas City last
season. He is a career 270 hitter with 59 homers and 348 RBIs in
870 games with Kansas City, Minnesota, Boston and the New York
Mets.

Mientkiewicz served in a similar role for the Red Sox at the end
of the 2004 season and caught the final out in the franchise's
first World Series in 86 years. He kept the historic ball for a
time before turning it over.

Speaking of Smack...

How much do Wednesday nights suck now that Lost is on hiatus?

Seriously. Taye Diggs is cute and all, and I even watched his show once because it came on the TV while I was in the middle of something and my hands were full and I couldn't reach the remote, so I just left it on, even though I vowed that I would never ever watch that stupid show simply on principle. And it was actually kind of interesting, in a non-Lost kind of way. But no. Just no.


The other night My Ho and I took the DemiGoddesses to see "We Are Marshall" (bring tissues, kids, it's a weeper), and the movie was okay, but every once in a while I couldn't help leaning over and whispering in My Ho's ear, "Live together, die alone..." Because, duh, that was totally Jack up there coaching the football.

And then last weekend they went and re-ran the Saturday Night Live show that Matthew Fox hosted, and I'll tell you, it was fun while it lasted, but when it was over, the emptiness was hard to bear.

If I think too much about how ABC has enslaved me with that TV show, how cruelly they teased me last fall with those six episodes, just letting me get good and settled in for a full season before--oops!--killing off Mr. Echo and then YANKING IT ALL AWAY AGAIN until February...

If I think too much about that, I start to get really, really angry.

What Is This “Cash” You Speak Of?

The DemiGoddesses both achieved the pinnacle of their young lives last week. As in, they both finally got their iPods.

Christmas contributions from many of their extended family members, along with the not-a-Shuffle cash I had placed under the tree for them (in boxes, and wrapped, because I had to watch them open SOMETHING), plus the money they both have been saving for months all added up to the three of us making a trip to the Apple store at the mall.

The place was packed with post-holiday shoppers redeeming their gift cards and buying up all kinds of electronic goodies. As we waited in line, DemiGoddess the Younger twitched and wiggled and occasionally made little squeaky noises. When our turn arrived, she told the young man behind the counter that she wanted a 30 GB video iPod. White, please.

Her voice was clear and decisive, but she was hopping up and down and vibrating, which the employee seemed to find amusing.

“How will you be paying today?”

“Cash,” said DemiGoddess the Younger.

“What?” he asked, looking confused.

From her little corduroy Old Navy purse, Ms. Younger produced a fat roll of bills, which she handed to the man. As he blinked at it in astonishment, she then pulled out a mason jar half-filled with silver change and set it on the counter. A look of panic spread across his face.

“Change??”

“She’s been saving for a while,” I said. “Just add up the bills and I’ll write a check for the rest. I can take the change to the bank on the way home.”

That transaction completed, it was Demi the Elder’s turn, and she wanted a PRODUCT (RED) 4 GB Nano, the one that Apple will donate $10 of the cost of to the Global AIDS fund. The Apple store man seemed relieved that her wad of bills was slightly smaller, and that this time there was no jar of change.

From the Apple store we went to the bank (to empty $28 from Demi the Younger's mason jar into my account), and then to purchase protective cases for each of their new treasures—Demi the Younger’s a blingy, silver metallic wallet-style thing, and for Demi the Elder, a clear plastic case that the red is visible through.

All the way home in the car, Ms. Younger raved about how long she’s waited for an iPod, and how she couldn’t believe she finally has one, and she couldn’t wait to get home and charge it up so she could download all the songs from every one of her CDs that she has stored on our computer at home. She asked if she could please use my credit card number to set up an iTunes account, if she PROMISED never to buy any songs without asking me first (“Absolutely not.”). She also vowed that she will never, ever, take her beloved to school. We’ll see.

After buying the iPods and the cases, neither of the Demis had enough money left to purchase the $29 wall-charging cords, so for now they have to take turns charging their perfect precious-es through the USB port on our PC. Later I griped to My Ho about what an insidious racket this whole iPod thing is—you pay a sizable amount of cash for the unit itself, and then they nickel and dime you to death with cases and wall charging cords and docking stations until the cost of the whole mess pretty much doubles.

He offered the services of his Youngster’s friend Sam, who can allegedly build a docking station from scratch.

“Is this the same Sam who got in trouble at school for making a taser out of a smoke detector?”

“He made the taser out of a disposable camera.”

“Yeah. No thanks.”

Round Robin

Last Saturday, seven-eighths of the sister cousins assembled for our Little House/Sex and the City pre-Christmas flirtini party. After some eating, drinking, catching up and viewing of videos on Tiffany’s laptop, we all hunkered down on the living room floor and began a long-overdue project--sorting and doling out Grandma’s jewelry.

Grandma had a lot of jewelry. Some of it has monetary value, some has sentimental value, and a whole lot has neither. Everything was all jumbled together in trays and Ziploc bags and little boxes—earrings, necklaces, bracelets, pins and rings, as well as a pair of cufflinks, two fancy pens in velvety cases, and a pair of somethings that Tiffany identified as shoe buckles.

We sifted through piles of pieces that nobody recognized until, every once in a while, someone would gasp and say, “Oh…” Then they’d hold up the coral ring, or the Christmas tree pin, and we’d reminisce about the dress she always wore with that one, or how she’d wear that pin to church every Christmas Eve. A lot of the things we'd forgotten that we remembered.

The whole collection had been in my uncle’s basement since we cleaned out Grandma’s condo six years ago. My sister Meghan told us that when she picked up the boxes last week, she opened the biggest one, and when she met with the unexpected scent of Grandma’s perfume inside that box, she burst into tears. I knew what she meant. I have a little quilted coin purse that I carried around for months after Grandma died for exactly that reason. It’s in a drawer now, but it still smells like her, faintly.

We started by passing around the bangle bracelets. They took several trips around the room, and everyone ended up with a few. Then we did the same with the rings. If something looked particularly valuable, or if more than one person wanted it, we set it aside for later. But because we all have different tastes and different sized fingers and wrists, for the most part, if somebody found something they thought they’d wear and that fit, it was theirs.

Hours later, we had only divided up about half of the collection, but by then it was nearly 1:00 a.m. and everyone was tired. We put the valuable and contested items back into the box, along with the pieces that nobody was particularly interested in. We’ll have to come back to those the next time everyone is in town. Maybe next Christmas.

And even though we hadn’t planned it, the following night at my parents' house on Christmas Eve, the DemiGoddesses and I each had on one of Grandma’s rings. Molly and Betsy jangled with her bangle bracelets. And both Meghan and Shanna were wearing her earrings.

And we all looked fabulous.

All I Want For Christmas is a Humping Dog USB

Yeah, scratch the TiVo and the Wii. Just tuck this under the tree for me, please:



Humpy Holidays Everybody!

I’d Do Much Better on the Amazing Race

My Dad’s birthday was last weekend, and my sisters all pitched in to buy him an “American Girl” Barnes & Noble gift card, because darned if they weren't all out of the ones with the assault rifles and the NRA logo on them. But I went my own way and gave him a Watersmeet Nimrods T-shirt to wear the next time he visits Upper Michigan. Because I am by far the coolest.

While we were at my parents’ house for the birthday festivities, somebody found a drawer full of old photos of the DemiGoddesses from back when they were all little and cuddly and adorable (sniffle), and from the family trip we all took to England and France in the spring of 1999. I found one of those so particularly horrifying that I had to ask out loud, “Who’s the cow on the left? MOOOOOOOO!”

Of course, the cow was ME.

And that photo was taken three years before my Great Weight Loss of ’03, when one of the inspiration tools I relied on to keep me motivated was another photo, a black and white shot taken by my cousin Tiffany at Christmas 2002, of me sitting on a couch with some other family members. Or, more accurately, me taking up waaaaaaaay more than my fair share of the real estate on that couch. Ouch.

Remembering that photo reminded me that it’s Christmas time once again, and how nice it is to be so very toned and HEALTHY these days. Except for, um, those cookies with the pound and a half of butter in them that are all over my dining room table. The ones that I nibble on every time I pass through that room (many, many times a day). And except that my exercise bike has pretty much served as a coat rack for the past several weeks, and my hand weights are buried somewhere behind the gifts under the Christmas tree.

If I don’t get my act together, by next year I’ll be right back in bovine-land, so I resolved that as soon as the holidays are over, I will consume nothing but water and the occasional cup of hot tea for the entire month of January.

Later that night, we all gathered ‘round the TV to watch the Survivor finale, which reminded me that there is no way I will ever hold to my resolution, because unlike Yul and Ozzie and Becky, I am not a Goddess who can function for any length of time without food. And while Yul without a shirt makes excellent eye candy:


(Yummy.)

...one cannot live on washboard abs alone. In fact, as my children will tell you, when my blood sugar starts to get low, I become one ornery Goddess.

My sister Meghan is exactly the same way, and we agreed that neither one of us would ever last a day on Survivor, unless they changed the ultimate goal of the game from being the last one voted out to being the first person to hack all the other contestants to bits with a machete. Then we would totally win.

I've Shaken Them All

A bunch of gifts mysteriously appeared under my tree today. A happy surprise, yes, but not a single one of those packages is TiVo or Wii or Johan Santana shaped, which means that there had damn well better be a pony hidden in the garage somewhere.

Just sayin'.

My gifts have all been bought and wrapped, the cookies are baked, and snow is finally in the forecast. Enough with the prep work already. Bring on the Christmas.

The first of the sister-cousins, Shanna, arrived home yesterday. Tiffany, who thankfully was not blown away or crushed by falling trees during the recent killer windstorm in Seattle (she also assures me that Cupcake Royale is safe, and thank heaven for that), is due in on Saturday, and preparations for the second-annual flirtini party are well underway. This year's theme is "Little House on the Prairie Meets Sex and the City."

The invitation pointed out that there were four Ingalls daughters, there were four girlfriends who regularly met at that coffee shop in Manhattan, and there are four sister cousins in each of our two families. And that cannot be mere concidence.

We have been instructed to wear our best sunbonnets and Manolos, and I'm told the menu will include salt pork, corn bread, and Chinese takeout.

I'm sure it will all make perfect sense once we've had a flirtini or two.

P.S. For those of you who have been up nights wondering if the Goddess is a real or artificial tree person, please note the needles on the carpet.

And Yet, They Look So Cheerful

It's been a very sad few days in the Goddess household.

For months, the DemiGoddesses have been looking forward to the arrival in March of their new baby brother (I am not pregnant. The Ex's wife is.). But now it's looking like this baby was not meant to be.

In spite of all the animosity there has been between the Ex and I, my heart is breaking for him. And for the Demis.

When we got the news on Saturday morning, there wasn't much to be done except pray and wait for someone to call with updates from the hospital. So we went ahead with the baking we had planned, and it helped, a little. Something in the purposeful creaming of butter and sugar, in the application of colored frosting and sprinkles, was a comfort.

We kept on baking, right through Sunday, when it seemed like there might still be hope. And just this afternoon, after the latest news was about as bad as it could have been, the Demis finally finished decorating the last of the cutout sugar cookies.

That photo shows only a portion. The dining room table is full, and there are more in the freezer.

And still, we're really, really sad.

World AIDS Day

I’m wearing red today, and so is DemiGoddess the Elder. When she reminded me this morning that today is World Aids Day, and informed me that she and all her friends had made plans to wear red to school, I was already wearing a red sweater simply by coincidence. I was simultaneously proud and embarassed to have been educated by Ms. Elder's clearly superior social conscience. But I think my red sweater still counts.

The magnitude of this epidemic seems overwhelming, but there are lots of ways we all can take action to help alleviate some of the suffering caused by HIV/AIDS in the world. Below are a few links to some of my personal favorite non-profits that already working to make a difference:

Mother Bear Project

Make a bear. Make a donation. Or, for the holidays, sponsor a bear for $10 in someone else’s name, and receive a thank-you letter that you can present to that person as a gift. The website also has knitting kits for sale for $15, which make great gifts—the kit includes yarn, handmade needles, a pattern, a tag, and a brochure about the Mother Bear Project. One knitter gave them to her whole family, even the fellas, last year, and wrote a great story about what happened afterwards, which is posted on the website here.

Open Arms

Open Arms delivers meals to people living with HIV/AIDS, both locally in Minneapolis/St. Paul and in South Africa. Their website includes volunteer opportunities, information on the World AIDS Day Beaded Artwork sale that is happening in downtown Minneapolis tomorrow, and links to make donations. They help distribute Mother Bear Project bears in South Africa.

Arm in Arm in Africa

This is another Minnesota-based group that works to alleviate suffering, improve conditions and create opportunities for changing the cycle of poverty and disease in South Africa. They also partner with the Mother Bear Project in distributing bears to HIV/AIDS impacted children.

World Camps

World Camps provide fun and educational camp experiences for HIV/AIDS affected children in developing nations. They distribute Mother Bear Project bears to the children in these camps, and the thank-you notes I received a few months ago were from kids who had received my bears there.

“It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope.”
--Robert F. Kennedy

Black Friday

The doorbuster deals at Toys R Us used to have me shivering in a parking lot at 5:00 a.m. every year on the morning after Thanksgiving, back when $5 Furbys and buy-one-get-one-free Polly Pocket sets could still make the Demis' Christmas dreams come true. I still get a special thrill from combing through the stacks of glossy Thanksgiving day newspaper ads while I watch the Macy’s parade TV. But for the past couple of years, I’ve opted to skip the Black Friday insanity and just sleep in.

I was planning to do just that last week, but then my friend Daniel, the one who so kindly brought my PC into the 21st century for me, found out from an advance online advertisement that Micro Center stores would be offering 160 GB hard drives for a deep, deep discount on Friday morning. He was very excited until he realized that the discounted hard drives would only be available to the first 25 customers through the door when it opened at 6:00 a.m., and the only Micro Center location in the state is a good 45-minute drive from his house.

As it happens, that very same Micro Center location is about 2.5 minutes from my house. So, since I have some experience with day after Thanksgiving shopping, and since I have a lot more time than money with which to repay the kindness he bestowed on my home computer, I told him I’d go to Micro Center for him.

When my alarm went off at 5:00 a.m. that morning, I threw on the clothes I had laid out the night before, grabbed the Micro Center ad and a protein bar and ran out the door, thinking that I would wait in my car if no other customers had arrived yet. Moments later I found the entrance to the parking lot blocked by a police car with its lights flashing. It appeared to be preventing a block-long line of people from extending into the street.

Alrighty then.

Since I was up already, I decided to try my luck at a couple of other stores instead, which actually went pretty well except that somebody stole my shopping cart in Menard’s. The mass of bargain-hungry humanity that stood between me and the $3 hand-crank LED flashlights forced me to temporarily abandon it, along with the throw rug, the slippers and the various other items it contained. When I returned, my cart had disappeared and there was no trace of my hard-won merchandise. Whoever you are, I hope you enjoy eternity in your special place in HELL, you cart-stealing bastard.

The checkout line at Kohl’s was freaking ridiculous, but it moved along pretty steadily, and was worth enduring because I picked up skirts and sweaters for both the DemiGoddesses to wear on Christmas, as well as a new pair of gloves for a certain Goddess who seems to have a terminal case of glove/mitten dropsy, all for less than I spend on an average trip to Trader Joe's.

I found out later that my sister Meghan had been out shopping that morning, too. She did Herberger’s, immediately earning my respect because another customer in line at Menard's had told me she had tried to go there but left after being unable to find a parking spot, and then had to fight her way out of the lot. And Meghan was there with a toddler in tow, no less.

Now that’s plain crazy.

De-NIED

In putting together my annual Excel spreadsheet of the gifts I will be purchasing between now and Christmas (What? What??), I was super excited over the prospect of ordering two of the cutest little items ever. Tiny, shiny iPods! With engraving, no less!

I had visions of the DemiGoddesses opening their bitty packages on Christmas morning, gasping with joy, and then leaping over piles of discarded wrapping paper to fling their arms in ecstatic gratitude around their uber cool Goddess of a mother, who so clearly has her thumb on the pulse of everything that is cutting-edge and hip with the youngsters.

The next day, I began laying the groundwork...

“Have you seen those new baby iPod Shuffles? They’re sooooo cuuuuuute!”

…and was quickly shot down.

“I don’t want a Shuffle. I want a 30 GB video iPod.”

“Me neither. I want a Nano. A red one.”

Yeah. Not so much. Even if I were not morally opposed to the idea of buying teenagers expensive (as in, costing more than $79) high-tech electronic gadgets that they will probably break or lose or that will very likely be stolen from their lockers at school within a matter of days (which I am), no amount of Excel spreadsheet wrangling is going to work either of those items into my holiday budget.

After some negotiations, the three of us worked out an arrangement in which I will simply give to each of them the cash I would have spent on their Shuffles (no engraving for ME, sniffle), which they will then add to their respective iPod funds so that they can eventually purchase for themselves the items that they really want.

Gone are the days when I could work some clearance-aisle wizardry and produce a glee-inducing Christmas haul for $50. This year the Demis will be getting cash in a box, which may yet be glee-inducing, but is considerably less fun for ME.

Sigh.

Things That Are Neither People Nor Items, But That I Am Thankful For Nevertheless

I am thankful that even though the holidays will soon make it disappear, this year, I actually have money in a savings account earmarked for Christmas. And damn, does that feel good. My goal for next year is to have a little money still in my savings account on December 26. Dare to dream, ESG.

I am thankful that yesterday, for the first time since I can’t remember when, my ex and I had a phone conversation that was very nearly affable. I’m not 100% ready to make a habit of that, but it is definitely progress.

I’m thankful that this year, everybody in my inner circle is healthy, nobody is under indictment, nobody is being audited by the IRS, and everyone is employed. With benefits, even. (Well, except for Dad, who is “retired,” but he does volunteer work, and he is covered under Mom’s insurance).

And I’m thankful that the only items I am responsible for cooking tomorrow are the creamed onions and the sweet potatoes. And everybody who will be having dinner at my parents’ house should be thankful for that as well. Trust me on that one.

Enough with the gratitude. Let’s eat.

(Happy Thanksgiving, Everybody!)