there is only so long you can re-gift.

i have an antique chest that i call the gift closet. you may have a gift closet: your backstock-- your re-gifting stash. my gift closet is where i collect birthday, christmas and miscellaneous gifts that either a) we don't want; 2) we can't use; or c) we just don't like and throughout the year, i pull out these never used, unopened items and wrap them up for someone else, usually another kid, just like mine. rarely, are these gifts for adults.

however: we were invited to a wedding tonight. i turned to the gift closet with a creative hopefulness. there in the back, i spotted a silver and glass "jam set", which by luck would make a lovely wedding gift, seeing as how i had received it as a gift for my own wedding. but. never opened it. (it's a jam set. what the hell am i supposed to do with a jam set? if i need jam, i'll dig it out of the jar then put it back in the fridge.) i knew it was time for the jam set to find a home in a new gift closet: one with a happily married couple to care for it.
so i plucked it out and dusted off the box.

somewhere between drying my hair and cutting the silver wrapping paper, i had the idea to check out this jam set. the cellophane that kept the box taped was sticky and felt old as i carefully pried it up. the box showed wear, no doubt. it should, considering it's been moved three times. as i noticed the delicate, white paper protecting the trivet-part was kind of yellowed, i started to do the math on this potential re-gift. let's see: i've been divorced for seven years... married nine... oh god, this thing has been in the back of that chest for sixteen years!

the numbers made me laugh, as i pulled the pieces out of the box.... ... only to find a tiny envelope atop the white-wrapped silver spoon. "on your wedding day" the card read. "To tony and julie, we wish you many happy years together." ... name with held to protect the innocent.

this clever lady had put the card INSIDE the gift so it wouldn't get separated in the moving of the gifts from the reception to the ... wherever. SIXTEEN YEARS AGO. thank god i checked it, i thought. how freakin embarrassing to give an obvious re-gift, but with the original card. wow, would my face be red.

but the worst part is: the silver was all tarnished. can't save that.

re-gift: fail.   guess who's getting a gift card !

same song second verse... no, twelfth...

here's another classic blog, originally written sept. 25, 2007....no, i'm not being lazy about posting... i'm just being... um, frugal -- using what i already have before getting new ...


I get so irritated with my daughter at the dinner table. Every single night she sits sideways in her chair and every single night she ends up spilling food on her lap, or dropping her cup off the edge of the table or something. All just because she's not sitting up straight paying attention. I tell her the same thing… every night. It's like she doesn't learn. I can't imagine where she gets it. Irritates.

So reader, as you may recall
when last we left this weary life traveler, i was feeling a leap coming on… forward movement
in the game of life lessons. I was looking for it; ready…to grow.

the problem with setting out to learn something new about yourself is… well, you learn something
new about yourself. something that is not usually cool. besides, by now, I already know all the cool things about myself.
I've spent the greatest part of my waking life glorifying, magnifying and generally extolling all the cool things I thought about me.
so I guess
now it's time
to move on

I talk to God.

I think one of my first mistakes here, was asking God to teach me how to be more loving. sounds good, doesn't it? I thought so. I didn't think
of it as such a challenge to master. in fact, I just dropped it into my prayers between wisdom and patience…'make me more loving'
... a sweet filling between the two biggies.
Mmm..warm fuzzies to me…muah! Love.

God has the ultimate sense of humor.

My second big mistake is being a slow learner.
I should know by now, that if I want more of something in my life,
like love.. or respect ..or acceptance.. I have to purposefully
do/give that thing for/to other people.

This is life 101: do unto others.
It's karma.
The great, goes-around-comes-around.
duh.

Conversely, if you find yourself not getting
something you want from this life;
logically it follows
that you are not giving enough of that thing.
Want your boss to be nicer to you? then bring the maintenance man cookies.

it's the universe man, wake up. Its real

So I shoulda known
when I wanted more love in my life
that He was going to show me
all the ways I act like an ass.
Yea. Fun lesson.
so much for fuzzies...

So I ask God to show me how to be a better person and he drops a dime to the universe and says, "hey man, go ahead and put it all in motion.
She wants to show more love and have more respect for people, so she's gotta learn lowliness.... This is going to be fun. I love this one."
(that's me paraphrasing God… I can still hear Him kind of giggling …)

I will not go into the myriad ways over the last few months that I have made a fool of myself and then had it served to me on silver the next morning at breakfast. I will not further shame myself regaling my public embarrassments; the times I was taken down to where I could see just how hurtful I can be to other people. I won't replay the times I've stumbled over someone's feelings or cut into someone's self esteem with clean-sharpened sarcasm. more times than not, I was made to answer for it. sometimes for the first time.

And in my misery; in the darkness of disappointment
and self-realization that I'm such a bitch …..
the universe whispered in my ear:
"You have to respect first,
before you are respected.
It doesn't matter if you think it's fair.
It's the game."

I'm learning to be more loving,
because I've see what a bitch I can be.
And that's not cool.

so…I've softened, I'm trying to be softer… girlie, if you will.
Holding back on those trademark sarcastic additions. snarkiness no more. Conversations with me will be dusted with colored sugar
punctuated by frosted muffin tops. No more piss and vinegar
from this little lady. Mindin' my Ps and Qs.
yes sir, mr. God sir… I done learned my lesson.
No more schoolin… please….

seriously

I'm begging you. stop.

This was a tough lesson, but i think i broke into bedrock; which is very cool. for now, I continue to offer apologies in my wake and walk the property nailing up boards I kicked out of the fencing around my bold, some might say strong, personality. and if out there in this anonymous web someone who knows me and maybe even loves me is reading this: thanks for loving me even when I'm a rude, conceited jerk. I hope you'll have to work less at loving me from now on… but I can't make any promises, I still can't get my daughter to sit up straight at dinner.

embarrassing is not funny when it's you.

in elementary school when they wanted you to write an essay, seems like it was always something so stupid, like "what did you do this summer?" or "talk about your happiest memory" or "what is your most embarrassing moment?" all of these were as pointless now as they were to me back then. i was in the 4th grade people. my happiest memory? i really liked the cocoa pebbles i had this morning? give me a break. embarrassing moment? this one is fraught with possible disaster to me, as i'm sure there had to be moments of pee-in-pants and throwing up in front of the class that had to go through little minds with this one. i never really had an embarrassing moment, so i usually made up something asinine like grabbing a strangers hand at the mall because i thought it was my mom. wow. was my face red. ugh.

you have to get some life on you to understand what it's like to be truly embarrassed. to walk out of the bathroom with your dress tucked into your panty hose (BTW can i please hear it for bare legs coming into style? good lord how i hate panty hose...anyhoo). but more often that not, embarrassing shit is hard, hurtful stuff. Calling your guy by the wrong name. twice. getting caught at a bar by your pastor. forgetting to pick up your kid and the teacher has to sit there with them in front of the school. it's embarrassing. and it's not cool to be embarrassed.

this morning i was listening to a blurb from the interview diane sawyer did w/ Rihanna (which not matter how you spell, still reads in my mind like diarrhea, sorry Ri..) anyway, she was talking about getting abused and even i can't make something funny out of that. i've never been hit by a man. actually, i don't think i've ever been hit by anyone ever. once in the 8th grade i was supposed to fight some butchy mean girl, but i was so terrified that i hid in the bathroom and let her think i was a total coward, which i am. although in hindsight, i doubt i would've gotten hit even then; i went to this tiny baptist school and i'm sure there was a teacher or a coach or a preacher or someone who would've broken up the whole thing before anything happened.

so what i'm saying is: i can't relate to Rihanna getting punched in the face.

but she said something that i can relate to: she said she was embarrassed. i can't find the transcript of the interview, so please don't sue me Ri if i get this wrong, but she said something like, "i am embarrassed that i fell in love with a man who is like this. that i fell so far in love with someone like this, it's embarrassing."

i totally get that.

my ex never hit me with his fist. but having to tell people that he left me, moved out of state and was living with his then girlfriend while i laid in a hospital bed having his second child--was embarrassing. it still is. he hit me with his words. his abandonment bruised me. gave my girls a black eye. you just can't see it. i selected this guy. do you? i said yes, i do. i'm not proud of it.

people tell me: it wasn't your fault. he's a jerk. i would say the same to Rihanna--he's a jerk, it's not about you. but the fact is: it is about her. she picked him. i picked mine. we CHOSE to be with these guys. you can't pick your parents, you're just stuck with them, but i loved this man. i had children by this loser. and as much as my incredible friends have stuck to their guns about hating him and his name is synonymous with asshole in every conversation, at the end of the day most of my regret about the whole thing is that i fell in love--so completely in love--with a man who was capable of leaving his family in the blink of an eye, for a piece of ass. it's embarrassing. but it is what it is. he's gone. life rocks along. lesson learned: you never really know someone. love as if they'll never leave. because it's all about you. one way or another.

so rihanna: hang in there. the great thing about life is that there's always tomorrow. another chance to get it right. least you don't have to worry about our bare ass hanging out of your panty hose anymore. and if i ever get stuck in an elementary school writing class: i totally have an embarrassing moment to write about.

After the sugar comes this big crash

Is everyone comfortably seated and safely strapped in? because halloween is over people. clear out the little plastic gravestones from your yard-- it's time for the wild ride toward YEAR END.

yahoo. but pooor halloween. every year it gets more crammed and shoved into one stinkin lousy day. this year Wal-Mart had their halloween stuff 50% off the day before halloween! they were literally stocking wreaths and santas on the shelves as they were cleared of obama masks and fake blood. so in honor of halloween, here are some pics of halloweens past and present, in homage to my parents who were the most awesome costume-makers ever!

What a cute little clown i was back in 1974. the picture-in-front-of-door motif would be picked up again many decades later when i would pose my own dressed up kids at the same place. well... not the SAME place. different house. different door. same location within a different house. jeez. do i need to explain this? hell no.

Halloween 1977 - that's me as cheerios. mom and dad positively LOVED to make us wear boxes. strangely, i don't remember complaining about it. whereas my six year old daughter won't even wear a fairy skirt because "it's too itchy." i spent my first ten halloweens with my arms hanging straight out all night. Here's my poor sister in her box that year: MILK. the parents were very into the whole go-together costume ideas. Cheerios and Milk. One year i was a mailbox and she was a package. me: cracker jacks (cracker "julies" actually) and she was popcorn. possibly the most tasteless costumes they came up with was during the bicentennial -- in which my sister and i were both bicentennial fire hydrants (did the whole country do this or just texas--where the fire hydrants were painted in patriotic colors to celebrate the bicentennial?) anyway, we were bicentennial fire hydrants and my parents were: yep, you guess it: dogs. somehow, the photos, classic as they are, have been misplaced over the last 800 years but i did find this. you can just sense the joy on my dad's face.


Now let's fast forward to my own little darlings, who i allow to wear good old, store-bought costumes that require little, if any, intervention or box-cutting on my part. this was my very first costume as a mommy for my little darling: a flower. both my girls wore this to absolutely rave reviews. Dang, i wish they had a baby costume contest i could've entered them in. this was so incredibly easy, it was back when all that Anne Geddys crap was real popular and i looked at making a flower costume a'la anne geddys for my then 10mos old. but sista mary and the baby it was complicated, i was like screw this. so i went the craft store and bought a bunch of silk flowers on long stems. took them all apart and hot glued the pieces in the right places on a footed sleeper i had. the hat is an amish bonnet someone gave me as a baby gift, covered with hot-glued blossoms. evidently the bonnet was handmade by some woman who rode around town in a black horse-drawn buggy. ah, backstory.



Circa 2002, this was (is) a custom-made raggedy ann costume with my daughter's actual name stitched onto the front apron. i made that yarn wig myself. you can't see it here, but she has red-ringed leggings on, also made by me, by wrapping pieces of red duct tape around her little white-tighted legs. she was three. and just LOVED it. actually, she hated it and couldn't wait to tear off this whole getup. but my dad is happy. no dog costume for him that year. by the way, if you happen to have a 2 yr old named bailey elizabeth *call me* have i got the costume for you in 2010.

obligatory snow white. notice the front door. it's because that's how MY mommy did it. i guess. now this year i was able to talk them into a little "couples" costuming with this: snow white and the witch! get it? but of course you do. My attempt to set up a little vignette: notice the apple? jeez louis that is one cute snow white. lordy. then there's this... not the most well thought-out pose, i grant you. again, in front of the damn door. why?

Blogger seems to be cloggered right now.. probably with everyone trying to meet their NaBloPoMo quota... current pics to follow... looks like i'm gonna get another post outta this! take that daily posting rule! ah HA

hold that bandwagon, i want to jump on

the blogosphere is packed today with a bunch of posts from people that i follow who haven't posted in about as long as i haven't posted and i just figured out why--its' that dangnabbit NaBloPoMo time again.

this time i want in on this action. for months i've been mercilessly beating myself up (on the inside, scars you can't see) for not writing more. ... as they say, i'm not writing any more, i'm just not writing any less. so, without further adieu, here we go.

and yes, this counts as a post so bite. me.