Other

Before I enthrall you with more vacation pictures, I feel like I need to give you a quick update on what’s going on here. Because I guess I think you’d want to know.

When we left for New York, the house was a wreck. The painters were still finishing up and there was dust and stuff everywhere. And when I came home, the house was painted but that was about the extent of the improvement.

So I spent all day Monday and Tuesday cleaning every surface and putting things back where they belong and trying to decorate for Christmas. And I’m happy to report that as of this writing, the tree is decorated and the stockings are hung by the chimney with care.

Not new stockings. The same old stockings. I decided that since they’d only be up about a week that this wasn’t the year to buy new ones. Plus, I couldn’t make a decision because I am indecisive that way.

Anyway, Caroline and I decorated the tree last night. And she experienced a bit of a sugar rush after her third candy cane and an afternoon spent icing sugar cookies with her Gigi.

This meant I had to rearrange a few ornaments after she went to bed because she has a tendency to get excited and clump everything in one location. Whereas I have a tendency to have OCD and need all ornaments to be spaced out at appropriate intervals. I’d tell you what those intervals are, but I’ve never been good at ornament math.

So. Part two of New York.

On Friday morning we headed out early to get to Macy’s on 34th Street to visit Santa. And let me tell you, Macy’s on 34th does it right. None of this walking up the steps of a glorified mobile home to see Santa. It’s a full-on Winter Wonderland with trees and a faux train ride and elves that greet you and escort you to meet Santa. I think this was maybe one of my favorite moments of the whole trip.

After Macy’s, we went to the very top of the Empire State Building where I renewed my fear of heights and desperately tried not to think about being ninety stories up in the air or whatever it is. Meanwhile, Caroline wanted to look out at the city from every angle and so that’s what we did while I tried to hyperventilate quietly.

We eventually made our way down and were starving. But we couldn’t find any sort of deli or anything and resorted to eating a few large pretzels from a street vendor. I figured you never hear of anyone getting e.coli from a pretzel so it seemed relatively harmless. And then we caught the Subway to head to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty.

Unfortunately, Ellis Island is still closed because of Hurricane Sandy and so I just took some really bad pictures of Caroline with the Statue of Liberty way in the distance.

And then we walked down to the World Trade Center Memorial and saw Freedom Tower being built. This was the first year that we really talked to Caroline about what happened on 9/11 and I think she had at least a little bit of appreciation for what she was seeing and the weight of it all.

So we’d done all that and it was only 12:30.

In spite of the delicious, street vendor pretzels, we were all starving. Except for Bops. He said that pretzel had totally satisfied his hunger and he didn’t want to ruin his dinner. Which was all good and fine except that the rest of us needed actual nutrition in the form of something that wasn’t purchased off the street. We stopped in a little restaurant and had some delicious soup and sandwiches and even a glass of wine which kind of took the edge off the rush of the morning.

(I don’t know why I called it a little restaurant. Maybe it just seemed small. Also, Caroline didn’t have any wine. Just to clarify.)

We headed back uptown after we ate and walked around a Christmas fair at Bryant Park and then made our way to Grand Central Station and eventually the New York Public Library. Then we spent a little bit of time relaxing at the hotel before we went to eat Chinese food later on that evening. I have no pictures of the Chinese food or the restaurant, but I will tell you that our waiter had less personality than the floor.

Saturday was our last full day in New York and we decided to spend the morning at the Museum of Natural History. And that was before I knew they had dinosaurs made of Christmas trees outside. Bonus.

We made our way through the African mammal exhibit and the ocean exhibit and saw all the dinosaurs. And we also ate at the Food Court located conveniently downstairs because we were starving. Here’s what I’ll tell you, go to the museum for the dinosaurs, not the food.

After we’d seen all there was to see, we walked across the street to Central Park and just enjoyed sitting outside because the weather was gorgeous. About fifty degrees and not a cloud in the sky. Of
course Caroline took the opportunity to climb more rocks. I told her I was going to call this shot “Right before we went to the Emergency Room”.

The rest of the day we spent walking down Fifth Avenue again, but it wasn’t quite as charming as it had been earlier in the week before the weekend crowd set in. This time it was more like crowd-surfing on a sea of semi-drunk people wearing bad Santa Claus costumes. Which, sure, has its charm, but doesn’t really allow for a relaxed experience.

And so we went back to the hotel and went out later that night to eat burgers at Jackson Hole. They were absolutely delicious. I may have dreamed about mine again last night, but I won’t say for sure because that’s kind of embarrassing. However, you need to try the burgers at Jackson Hole if you’re ever in New York.

By late Saturday night, we were exhausted. I’d told Caroline we could go take an overpriced carriage ride around Central Park on Sunday morning, but she said she’d rather just stay in the hotel and relax until it was time to go to the airport. I’ve never loved her more.

And it worked out perfectly because Sunday morning dawned cold and rainy. Perfect weather for watching “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town” for the 85th time.

Later on, a car came to take us back to Newark to catch our flight home. I wish I could say good things about the flight but that would be a lie. It was long. And hot. And I sat next to a man who smelled of dirt and moth balls and onion.

We walked in our own back door around 10 p.m. and I’ve never been so grateful for a shower and my own bed. In that order.

But I wouldn’t trade the trip for anything in the world. It was a great time and something I know we’ll all remember forever.

New York at Christmas is a little piece of heaven. As long as you don’t mind sharing it with eight million people.

So we made it to New York.

And we’ve been up since 4:00 a.m.

But the good news is someone had adapted well to big city life.

Plus we even got to see a little piece of home in Times Square.

So I stayed up too late working on some other things and watching Nashville and looking at all the plastic and tape in my living room.

And I don’t have anything to say here. But I did write about one of my very favorite movies over at Ree’s blog if you want to go read over there.

See y’all tomorrow for Fashion Friday.

So I didn’t go get my free coffee yesterday. I had every intention of doing so but we’re in the midst of finally getting the holes in our wall fixed and the hole guy told me he’d be at our house first thing in the morning, by which he apparently meant noon.

Of course I can’t really throw stones because I live in the same glass house where first thing in the morning often means noon. Or maybe it’s more appropriate to say I live in a house with holes in the walls.

By the time I realized that our hole guy and I have the same view of morning, it was too late for me to make it to Starbucks because I desperately needed to go the grocery store since P was out of Natural White Cheddar Cheeto Puffs again. It’s a wonder he survived.

But we were also out of milk. And bread. And down to one roll of toilet paper. Plus, we’re in the midst of searching for the perfect powdered donut now that Hostess Donettes are no longer available. And by we, I mean Caroline and P. I know you’ll be as relieved as I was to discover that they have finally found Mrs. Baird’s to be an acceptable substitute. It’s just a shame that Mrs. Baird doesn’t make a chocolate cupcake with a white swirl across the top.

Okay, so let me tell you about the house.

This is just a glimpse of how it looks right now.

Not pictured: Industrial size trash can in the corner of the dining room.

I know what you’re thinking. How quick can you pin that on Pinterest? It’s pretty much what every woman wants her home to look like for the holidays.

But the good news is it should look a whole lot better in about a week. And I’m already planning to leave my tree up until at least January 7th so I can get a full month of beautifully lit Christmas tree.

And the even better news is that the built-ins are almost finished.

They need to be painted, obviously. And the cabinet doors aren’t ready. But, still. Look at all that potential storage space.

Speaking of storage space, I believe I mentioned that I was in the middle of a massive clean out last week in anticipation of all the painting and whatnot that I knew was about to happen. And while I was busy organizing, I had a major revelation.

Kristen Chenoweth should not be dating Jake Pavelka from The Bachelor.

Well, that. And that I had all my china and crystal stemware stored in one of my main kitchen cabinets.

True confessions, I’ve used it like four times ever. And that’s being generous. We are not china people. Don’t get me wrong, it’s gorgeous and, other than P, it’s one of the few things I picked out in my twenties that I don’t regret. But a fancy night for us is when we eat on our real dishes instead of paper plates.

What I’m saying is there is no reason it should be taking up prime time kitchen space. So I moved it all to the cabinets above my ovens that are really only accessible if I pull out a step stool.

Now I have room to store my everyday dishes in a nice wide open space where they aren’t crowded.

And, needless to say, the coffee mugs are thrilled to finally have a space to call their own.

Even if they have to share some of it with a little basket that holds all our vitamins and Advil because we’re in our forties and need Advil almost daily for one thing or another. There’s also two boxes of Zyrtec D in there because P keeps putting it on my grocery list and I keep buying it. Which I’m sure means I’m on some sort of Meth Lab watch list.

So this is how life turns out. One day you’re nineteen and excitedly picking out what outfit you’re going to wear to the big party on Saturday night and then you turn around and you’re forty-one and thrilled to use 700 words on the internet to tell people how your kitchen cabinets are organized.

It feels like a low.

Except for the fact that I’m so excited about all the space I’ve freed up in my kitchen that I can hardly stand it. I was actually excited to unload the dishwasher today.

Oh wait. There’s the low.

In other clean out news, I decided to take the opportunity to get rid of Caroline’s hermit crabs and the accompanying crabitat they lived in. Normally I might have felt guilty about this, but Phillip had died almost three months ago and it took her every bit of two and a half months to even notice. However, we were left with Big Daddy and Clementine.

I wasn’t sure what you do with unwanted crabs (all of a sudden this sounds like a late night infomercial) but didn’t feel like I could just throw them away. So I do what I do in all complicated situations, I set the crabitat with the crabs outside on the table on the back porch and told P to handle it.

For some reason, he decided to put Clementine and Big Daddy in the dog’s water bucket to let them have one last swim or something. I don’t know. But then his phone rang and he forgot about them and left for the ranch. All I know is I looked outside hours later and noticed Scout was acting weird about drinking water.

And when I went to investigate, there were Big Daddy and Clementine swimming happily in the water dish. Heaven knows it’s probably the only water they’d had in weeks since Caroline is like the crab-version of Dr. Kevorkian.

About that time, Caroline was about to come outside and I didn’t want her to see the crabs and be reminded of their existence. So I hurriedly pulled them out of the dog’s water, set them down behind it and went inside.

And when I finally remembered what I’d done hours later, I discovered they were nowhere to be found. They made a mass crab exodus. If you consider two crabs to constitute a mass exodus. And I do because, let’s be honest, two crabs is really two crabs too many to have roaming freely in your backyard.

But maybe they packed their teeny tiny crab bags and left our house for good. They’re like little crab Joads in search of a better life.

Here’s hoping they find it.

Before Caroline finds them.

Well. By the time most of you read this I will have claimed my free cup of coffee at Starbucks. Because unless you were under a rock yesterday and watching nothing but the Home Shopping Network or are like my dad and only read “real news”, then you know that the palace made the official announcement that Princess Kate is expecting a baby.

Apparently they weren’t planning to announce it this soon, but she had to be hospitalized because she has Hyperemesis gravidarum. Which is a fancy way of saying she needs to carry around a yuck bucket since she has severe morning sickness. And that just goes to show that being a princess may get you beautiful clothes and fantastic hair, but at the end of the day princesses throw up just like the rest of us. The difference is they can wear a diamond tiara while they lay on the bathroom floor and pray for mercy.

Speaking of being sick, Caroline started running a fever last Thursday night. She came out a few times to tell me her stomach didn’t feel good, but I wasn’t convinced it wasn’t just a stalling technique. But then I laid down next to her and realized her legs were on fire. Her forehead rarely gets warm when she runs fever, but her legs become some sort of furnace. Like they could heat a small country.

And so we spent all of Thursday night and most of Friday trying to keep her fever down until it finally broke for good late Friday afternoon. She was scheduled to play in a soccer tournament on Saturday and I thought it wasn’t going to happen, but she popped out of bed early Saturday morning ready to go. In case you’ve never noticed, kids are resilient.

We had three soccer games and so most of Saturday was spent driving back and forth to the soccer fields. I did manage to watch half of the first quarter of the SEC Championship game between games, but other than that the big game for me involved nine-year-old girls and a soccer ball.

Most of Sunday was spent recovering from Saturday.

And that’s what has been going on here.

It seems like there should be more, but I spoke earlier this evening at my church and I think my brain is tired. So I’m going to head to bed. And dream about my free grande latte.

You know what else I totally forgot to mention over the last few days? The cover of US Weekly that is declaring “A BABY FOR CHRISTMAS!” from Kate and Wills.

A few of you emailed to tell me it looks like I’ve won my bet with my friend at Starbucks. And I wholeheartedly agree. In fact, I walked into Starbucks on Monday morning and told him he owes me a cup of coffee because there is a bun in the royal oven.

He asked me for my source and when I said US Weekly he told me he was going to need me to cite a more reliable source. As if that even exists. What more could he want? A phone call from Pippa?

But, listen. I’m a fair person. I don’t want to claim my free grande peppermint mocha through false information. So I agreed we could wait for a more official source.

In the meantime we have a new bet as to whether or not Johnny Manziel will win the Heisman. I think you all know how I feel about that.

And, in other news, P thinks I might need to find a new Starbucks since my usual one has turned me into some sort of pop culture bookie.

Speaking of Princess Kate, I need to talk about hair. Specifically, hair products.

A few weeks ago I mentioned a hair revelation in the form of Kenra Thermal Styling Spray. I don’t expect any of you to really remember it because you have more important things to do with your life than worrying about my hair. However, I don’t have more important things to do with my life than worrying about my hair. Unless you count the fact that P was out of Natural White Cheddar Cheetos on Monday and needed me to go to HEB immediately to rectify the situation.

You’ll be glad to know it turned out all right. It was scary there for a moment.

Anyway, what I said was that I’d learned the secret to lasting curl and, therefore, lasting happiness is a 1.5 inch Hot Tools curling iron and Kenra Thermal Styling Spray.

Then, in one of the best things that has ever happened to me, the nice people at Kenra offered to send me a few more products to try. They didn’t even ask me to do anything for them in return which was so nice because I hate the pressure of a review. I mean, what if I hate the product? What do I do then?

But I have loved everything so much that I have to tell you about my favorites, in addition to the thermal styling spray that already had my love and devotion.

This is in no certain order. It would be like choosing a favorite child.

1. platinum blow-dry spray

Okay, this claims to decrease the amount of time it takes to blow dry your hair while also offering protection from the heat. It’s also supposed to help with frizz and humidity.

But who cares about all that? Because did you read the part about decreasing your blow dry time?

And it totally does. This has possibly been life-changing for me because it takes a sweet forever to dry my hair and this has absolutely made a difference. I love it. I’ll never be without it again.

2. platinum dry shampoo

This might be my favorite. I know I said I didn’t have a favorite, but if Vidal Sassoon held a gun to my head and made me choose, this is it. Last week my hair really needed to be washed, but I didn’t realize it was too late to do anything about it. Then I remembered I had dry shampoo and LO AND BEHOLD a miracle occurred.

It wasn’t quite the fishes and loaves, but it helped me in my time of hair need by giving me extra volume and the illusion of clean hair. LOVE.

3. volume spray 25

Best hairspray ever. It’s got the hold of Aqua Net but without the smell. But it’s not like a hairnet hold, it’s just enough to make curl stay all day and give me volume when I pull it back in a ponytail or something. I’ll buy it again and again.

So there you have it. My new can’t live without hair products. And I’m even including a picture of my hair even though there’s a good chance P will see it and make fun of me because I can’t manage to smile and take a picture of myself at the same time.

Also, my forehead looks big. And some Retin A might be in order.

Which brings me back around to my bangs or no bangs dilemma.

Because there are always new hair problems to be solved.