December Pointless Lists

Today I was going to be good and stay home and clean house and do laundry, but then my Public called (hi Mom!) and Johanna and I somehow ended up in the Big City with my parents.* Also, I ate at McDonalds for the first time in a year, and I won't lie, that McDouble was pretty damn good.

It started snowing while we were there, even though no precipitation was supposed to be anywhere near us, so whatever, weathermen. We made it home just fine, if you don't count me blowing through that stop sign and almost plowing into a guy while going like 10 miles an hour in low gear.

I do NOT count that, just FYI.

Not the pad Thai picture I'd planned, but close enough.

Usually on December 31 we have fish and chips for dinner, but this year Eric got crazy and found a recipe for pad Thai, so we made that instead. Actually, mostly he made it until he got to a point where the instructions started stressing him out and then I sort of stepped in and saved the day and it was all quite delicious. This is hilarious and worth noting because usually it's Eric calming me down. Role reversal! Anyway, Johanna was dubious about the whole ordeal until she tried it. We had Abby at "pad Thai." It was pretty salty so now I'm itchy, which isn't my favorite outcome, but still, tasty.

Tonight Johanna wanted to go outside and light off some fireworks, but the rest of us vetoed her because we're cold and lazy, so I just downloaded a few free fireworks apps onto the ol' poser iPad and she contented herself with that. I tell you what, Internet, setting the bar low early on isn't the worst thing. I like to think we're teaching the girls about the real world, i.e. it's pretty lame out there.

P.S. We're tired so we're pretending we're in Chicago and in a minute we're going to countdown to the new year. Hey, it works. Abby's rolling her eyes, Jo is totally into it.

"I'm practicing for when I'm old and have 500 cats," Abby says, chasing Skilly for a kiss.

Pointless list time!

Movies Watched:
Take Me Home. I didn't mean to actually watch this. Eric started playing it and I was going to just keep reading and then suddenly I was watching it too and it was pretty great so I'm not even sorry. I'd watch it again, even, so there.

Books read:
PEOPLE!  I finished A Storm of Swords: A Song of Fire and Ice by George R.R. Martin! I've been laboring through these books, and then finally like halfway through this thing I got really involved, but now I'm afraid to download the fourth one because it's getting spotty reviews, so I've decided to take another sabbatical from the series for a while. Good lord, though, this book was crazy. It was like one big blood bath. Arya's still kicking though, as is Jon, and they're my favorites anyway, so that's that.

Then I read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. It's been a while, and I remember now why I love this series so much. Not that I forgot, mind you, because Harry Potter forever.

Refrigerator update:
Hey, our new shelf finally came! It's kind of weird having three shelves again. But I like it.

Christmas tree update:
Um, it's still up. Usually I take our tree down December 26, but this year I kind of like our tree, plus it's drinking water so we don't have needles poking up everywhere, which aids in my general feelings of warmth for the thing. Tomorrow, though, it goes.

Minimalism update:
For Christmas this year my parents gave our family a three day trip. So sometime this summer we get to go to Wildlife Safari and the redwoods with my parents and brother Tim. Talk about the best idea ever. Yay experiences!

Things I learned:
Sometimes you have to just take everything out of a room to get your minimalist ass in gear. Norovirus sucks, but when your baby turns eight and wants a homemade cake, you bake one. There is nothing wrong with leading the parade when it's snowy outside and you refuse to leave second gear. Curling up with a good book by the wood stove is a good way to spend an evening.

Bye, 2012! Thanks for the memories.

*Thanks for the birthday clothes, Grammie and Papa! She's still sporting her over-the-knee socks from the women's section, and Eric agrees that perhaps that compass isn't something you'd want to rely on in the wilderness.

Pretty good year

It's no secret I like these end of the month pointless list extravaganzas because I like closure. I like to see what happened in black and white so I can nod to myself and move on. It's kind of therapeutic.

So of course not everything this year was all sunshine and roses, but you know what? I think that's how you remember you're even alive.  If everything was great all the time, how would you know?

And anyway, it's fun to go through a year's worth of posts (I like the sound of my own voice, obviously) and remember.

Favorite memories of 2012:
Surprise Valentine dinner with the girls.
March was homemade cleaner month!
Getting thrown out of a bar.  With my children.
Meeting Maggie.
Family vacation to Silverwood.
I turned 40 and all I got was an awesome weekend in Sunriver.
Becoming a minimalist.
Volunteering at the care center.
Our little Family Date Night.

...And some other stuff I don't want to forget:
Eric took these pictures of the ice storm in January.
Phone calls with my public.
I got a new Kindle.
I got pulled over for speeding.
And paid $65 for someone to break into my car.
Madie.
Refrigerator destruction.

Most read posts:
Mormon Chicken
I'm on the verge, I'm on the verge
How do we sleep while our beds are burning?
New settings = no one will still ever comment, but they COULD
DYI hair detangler spray
Weekend ramble
August Pointless Lists
Welcome to the game
I only dream of you, my beautiful

(I don't really get some of these, honestly. New settings post? Most hits all year. Whaaaat?)

And I find this kind of cool: Besides the US, I've had readers from Russia, Germany, France, the UK, Malaysia, South Korea, Canada, China and Indonesia. Of course, they might have just clicked on and clicked right off again once realizing there's nothing much going on over here, but still, it makes me happy. Anyway, where ever you are from, thank you for reading. Or not reading. Or just clicking the link.

Um, looking back on my posts I see that I had a Cracker Project going on there for a while. That was a failure. Having a chore hanging over my head like that just stressed me out. Well, live and learn. And that, my friends, is why I do not have any kind of cooking resolution on the horizon for 2013.

The end, I guess. I can't really think of anything else I want to say about this year, except that if next year is more of the same, that would be just fine with me.

Tori Amos, Pretty Good Year. Hold on to nothing as fast as you can. Still, pretty good year.

Ain't this life so sweet

Once upon a time, like this spring or summer or fall or whatever, I decided that I was going to clean out the clutter and sell things in the classifieds section of the newspaper because having a garage sale is more than I can personally handle and a bunch of crap was piling up in the garage.

So that's what I did.  And then I waited around a lot.  Or wished that no one had called after all.  But you know what?  At least it wasn't a garage sale.

No one really seemed to want my stuff, but that's okay because my stuff has a high self esteem, so no harm done.  Those who DID balked at my rock bottom prices, so I went like earth's core bottom prices (what's lower than rock?  Science is boring).  Because the point really wasn't about making money, it was about getting crap out of the basement.

But hey, I ended up with $95 somehow, which is kind of a miracle, all things considered.

Eric thought I should use it to buy something I wanted, since the bulk of the cash came from my kitchen items.  And for about a day I thought I really wanted an immersion blender. Which WOULD be pretty awesome, I won't lie, minimalist or not.  But then I looked at my spanking awesome cleaned out kitchen and figured that one more thing was not what I wanted after all.

I decided what I really wanted was a family date.  In December, when our touristy town is all lit up in Christmas lights.  As the money came in, we would discuss where we could afford to go for dinner.  At one point, I was thrilled to have enough in my jar for three slices of pizza.  No joke.  Then suddenly dinner was taken care of, and we started working on bookstore money for the girls*.

And then all that was left to do was pick a date.

We went on our little family date last Saturday, and you know what, Internet?  That was the best idea I've ever had.  Just tonight Johanna was talking about how much fun it was. And this will sound cheesy, but sometimes the words just are: It was my favorite part of that whole Christmas weekend.

I had envisioned going to dinner and then the bookstore, but a couple of things happened: We needed to go to Confession (because group penance services make us sin more, what with the impatience we feel) AND we wanted to go to Mass, too, because Saturday night is the Folk Group and Sunday is the choir and, frankly, we like the Folk Group about seven billion times better.  Plus also, no stores would be open after dinner anyway.  So this is what we did:

1. Go to the bookstore.
2. Go to the coffee shop for a quick snack.
3. Go to Confession.
4. Go to my parents' to chat.
5. Go to Mass.
6. Go to dinner.
7. Walk around town and take pictures like tourists.
8. Drive around town to look at other Christmas lights.
9. Come home happy.

Lucky that is only nine things because as I've said before, ten just messes with the alignment.  You think about these things when you're OCD.

We gave the girls their allotted monies and turned them loose in the bookstore.  Abby made her choice super fast, Johanna took f-o-r-e-v-e-r.  Who cares, we had time, which is good because the bookstore was crowded.  CROWDED.  But hey, we were going to confession anyway, so pressure off.

(Um, that was a joke.)

Coffee shop (for some hot spiced cider that was NOT spiced, I don't care what the sign said, but it was hot), this could potentially get very long so yadda yadda yadda, our dinner reservation was for 6:30 and we were actually early, which we did not see coming.  We got a great table, we ordered, we drew on the paper table cloth, our food was amazing, the girls were so dang happy, we took a crazy amount of pictures and ended up not having room for dessert.

Johanna and I split the fish and chips and she ended up eating more than me.  I'd have been hungry but Abby decided to hand over her quarter of a swiss chicken burger in order to help Eric with his pad thai.  So it all worked out is what I'm saying.

Even though it was freezing and Johanna decided to only bring a sweatshirt, we ended up walking around town and taking pictures of the lights.  It was one of those cold, silent kind of evenings, and again, cheese, but: So perfect.  It was just perfect.  Until Johanna fell in the crosswalk and was afraid that she'd gotten gasoline on her kneecap (apparently having pants on didn't make her feel better) and we had to talk her down a bit, but it was okay because we were headed to the car anyway.  And she was able to pull herself together, maybe because she wasn't that hurt.

The cool thing about my kids is that they actually made the evening that much more enjoyable.  I mean, I'm all for ditching them, but their enthusiasm (and gratitude--we got thanked about half a million times all evening for the books and dinner) was kind of catching.

It wasn't exactly like I'd imagined it, but being a mother, I'm pretty well versed with Plan B anyway, and now that we've had our family date, I can't imagine it going any other way.  I'm feeling kind of smug that our unused crap could make this kind of memory happen.  And I think maybe a new tradition has been born.

*I don't care how minimalist we get, books don't count as clutter.

David Gray, This Years Love.  Another kind of depressing song perfect for winter.