Tonight I'm squeezing into the booty jeans

pushing the girls front and center, and curling my hair until it’s all big and bouncy. Why would I do this you ask? Because I’m ringing in the New Year with colorful style and in my heart of hearts, I’m still a flygirl of the 90’s. Bigger is always better and green eyeliner never hurt nobody nohow. I’ll be primping myself in front of the mirror alongside my sister – who is more of an eternal Jennifer Aniston minus the pleats and suspenders.

So in the words of the wise Willy Wonka: “Goodbye, Mrs. Gloop. Adieu! Auf wiedersehen! Gesundheit. Farewell.”

See you in the morning. And try not to make a lot of noise.

A peaceful and prosperous 2008 to you!

I bet I'm weirder.

“No cweam on my wip! I don’t wike spicy cweam it’s spicy.” The toddler yells as I gently rub Vick’s Baby Rub on his chest. Like almost everybody else in this house, he’s fighting a nasty post-holiday-let-down cold. All that excitement of constantly being told to unwrap another present just wears on a little person. Not to mention the 38 family members who want to give kisses, take pictures and not let you nap. We'll feel better with a few moments’ peace when nothing needs to be done. Today would’ve been a great day for doing nothing except we had to show the house (love cleaning, totally can’t get enough of it, in fact I’d rather clean than take a nap I love it that much). As for treating their colds? They refuse to breath in deeply all the warmth and sleepiness of a nice chest cream. It’s too spicy.

Child, you don’t know spicy.

Let me tell you a story about a little girl and her spicy poultice. And although spicy poultice might sound like a fancy recipe in a Martha Stewart cookbook, I assure you it’s not. I had so many colds as a child and I remember the days crying with my sister about it being too spicy, just as you do. Except instead of gently rubbing us with cream designed especially for babies and their undeveloped olfactory senses, my mother would bring us down to the kitchen and ladle a hot, caustic, mustard-yellow, gelatinous soup onto a square of old fabric – usually a piece of faded corduroy jumper circa 1973. She’d then hold up the soupy material and press it onto our bare chests for what seemed like an eternity for a few seconds, giving the searing liquid sufficient time to bond itself with our skin. I was always amazed that my n!pples never just fell off it hurt that badly. We’d have to wait patiently by the woodstove until the blob of musty old material and smelly goop dried and firmly adhered itself to our entire chest and mid-sections. (Yes, I said woodstove and sometimes I can’t even believe half the stuff my childhood was made of – I’m beginning to realize just how old-school my parents really were.) After it dried we were expected to get dressed and go on with our normal lives as if nothing at all weird was happening. Like walking around with a gluey thing stuck to my body was absolutely normal and not at all bizarre. I smelled like a joyfully malodorous blend of star anise and hippie. And on many levels, that was normal.

I suppose the most insufferable part of this whole cold remedy was the itching - because you could never get a really satisfying scratch. It was like wearing a snowsuit for days but only on your chest. Sometimes I’d try to dig a pencil under there just to get one good scratch, and I’d look up to see five of my classmates giving me the infamous fourth grade You’re Weird stare. I can’t really blame them because I was weird - very little pop-culture exposure and a lot of time spent outdoors. And made to wear a poultice to school for a week every time I caught a cold. I had no choice but to be weird.

And look where it got me?! Raising more weird people. I’m sure my sister would agree with me– the weirder the better.

What's that you say?

You’ll have to repeat that as my head is currently buried beneath 17 inches of snow and I've been picking icicles out of my nose all morning. My mailbox, my healthy baby apple trees, my basement windows and my sanity are buried too. As the gusts of Northern Revenge and droplets of freezing rain pelted against my bedroom window, I could feel the last shred of reason and composure oozing out of my head. I can’t be housebound again with these psychotic energetic monsters children! Not that this weather comes as an earth-shattering shocker given my current geological location, but still, it’s only mid-December. Most years I remember wondering if Christmas would come and go upon a frozen, brown landscape. This year however, I’m cringing just thinking about how skinny my budget is about to become because of fuel costs for my house, vehicles and the freaking snow blower. If I searched hard enough, I betcha I could find an obscure tax deduction for snow removal costs.



Try as I might though, I can’t imagine living anywhere other than New England. I’ve had 32 years of experience with nor’easters, oppressive humidity, ice storms, mud seasons (wicked awesome if you know what I’m talking about), black flies, moose (rather constantly watching for moose so I don’t end up a pancake in my own car) and overall pernickety weather. What, you aren’t enjoying the weather? Wait five minutes.

But this morning I awoke to this in my driveway:

What?? I’m totally not lying.

Okay, I actually dragged my pajama-clad butt to the coffee machine and looked out the window to see this in my driveway:

But honestly, would you rather have a cuddly polar bear sitting on your doorstep just waiting for you to give him a fishy and wittle scwatch behind his eaws? Or a cranky man wearing a snowmobile helmet while swearing at the snow and complaining that he hasn’t had enough coffee yet?

I'm perfectly normal, thanks for asking.

I’ve been really sad lately. So dreadfully sad. I knew something was wrong but I suppose I wasn’t ready to face the truth. The depressing truth being my secret lover Dyson wasn’t doing its job properly. For weeks it’d been making a long, low moaning sound similar to my own noises when I’ve eaten too much of my grandmother’s homemade ployes and beans. I tried ignoring it. There’s always the chance that if I pay no attention to an unwanted event, it may just go away. Not that this particular tactic ever works mind you, but that doesn’t stop me from trying. Often.

So I went about my normally busy life, pretending my precious wasn’t crying out in pain, pretending the hand attachment hadn’t completely stopped sucking, and instead was actually spitting. (I find the ignore feature in my personality comes in handy, especially when dealing with overdue oil bills, holiday shopping, gynecologist appointments and other trivial bothers, but doesn’t work so well when the chi of my obsessive cleaning habits is impeded.)

“Honeeeeeey? Can you fix my vacuum? It’s not workiiiiing.”

Equipped with only a butter knife and a superior MacGyver intuition, my darling Husband began solving, yet again, another of my problems. (I swear, did I just stumble around in a haze of broken things before I met this amazing man?)

“Here’s your problem baby.” He said as he began dumping the contents of a round tubular thingy into the garbage. I watched in horror as marbles, pens, slices of toast, wads of crafting felt, Mufasa-sized hairballs, socks and other various abandoned toys fell out.

At this point I’m all about blaming my children because I can’t imagine ever abusing my precious Dyson in this way. Then of course, I’d have to admit to slave-driving my children with chores whilst I sit on the couch eating crisco and watching Ginger Rogers and George Montgomery.



I'll never ever let them hurt you again.

"Just like the Imperius Curse."

Because these muffins are just like that. I found this recipe on one of my favorite food blogs. Like my Girl said (while hurriedly cramming a sweet buttery muffin into her face), "these are just like the Imperius Curse - I'll do anything you want when I'm eating this." They're heavenly, easy to make and make great little holiday tin fillers. (for wonderful neighbors who snow-blow you out from under ten inches of snow when your Husband is traveling for work)

I betcha can't visit her blog without drooling on your monitor. Try it. Plus she has pretty pictures to help the domestically challenged me.

My own inner dialogue is eerily similar to Kelly's...

Grab a cup of coffee.

It's 20 minutes long and starts simply. It's everything you thought you knew delivered with a punch to the gut. It's the very reason I hate commercials.

Garage sales and hand-me-downs rock. Viva La Thrift!

Wait for it.