Filed under: Misc. Humor, Posts | Tags: adulthood, Christmas, decorating, family, holiday, Holidays, humor, kids, Middle-Age, south, southern, subourbonmom, tradition, trees, Virginia, winter
This year I made it my mission to convince our office manager Lacy that she should get a real Christmas tree instead of using the same old plastic one she’s been using for the last few years. After an hour of nagging and convincing her that a real tree smelled better and was a better way to enjoy Christmas, Lacy gave in and got one. When she explained to the folks at Lowes (she went to a store, not even a place outside – mistake #1) that she had never picked a live tree before, and asked who had the most experience with picking out live trees, a German man said “I don’t” and immediately walked away. I don’t think he got the irony that the live Christmas-Tree-in-the-House tradition comes from Germany.
What I didn’t realize was the amount of basic Christmas Tree Knowledge I have accumulated over the years, and that I probably should have passed on:
PICKING OUT A TREE:
Size Matters: Decide what room you’re going to put it in BEFORE you go shopping. A fat tree in a little room is like Donald Trump’s ego in an election – there isn’t room for anything else.
Trees are not naturally symmetrical. Even the trees trimmed to look like perfect cones will never be perfect. The fun part is finding the most perfect one you can. This can be difficult at the places where the trees are wrapped and leaning against the wall, like, say, your local grocery store. To get the full experience of arguing for 30 minutes in the cold over which tree to get, you must suck up the cost and go to a place where the trees are set up on stands, as if they are ready to decorate, or better yet, in the field where you must cut them down.
Trees Get Bad Haircuts Too – Sadly, the two-week rule doesn’t apply. Most live trees come with a bad side – that side where the branches don’t fall right and there’s a hole.
This is the side you turn toward the wall when you put it up, or if it isn’t going against the wall, you find your fattest, heaviest ornaments to make the branches dangle over the hole. (These ornaments, along with the most fragile ones, will be the ones the cat goes after.)
What About Bugs? Some tree vendors will do the Tree Shake, which entails putting the tree on a spike attached to a generator that shakes the tree so hard that it looks like Beyonce twerking, until all the loose needles and bugs fall out – of the tree, not Beyonce. If your vendor doesn’t do that, you can console yourself with the fact that the fallen needles will make your vacuum cleaner smell good for months.
Net or No Net? I recommend getting one, even though it might ruin your Norman Rockwell vision of a Christmas tree strapped to the roof of your car. The net is crucial to getting the tree through the door and easily sitting in its stand. Trying to get a tree through the door without the net is like trying to thread a needle with a sausage.
SETTING UP YOUR TREE
Size matters – again. Tree trunks come in varying sizes and diameters, and they often come with branches sticking out of the bottom. Trim the branches at the bottom – you’ve heard the adage, “trim the bushes to make the deck look bigger“ – well, we don’t need the stand to look bigger, but we do need the tree to glide into the hole smoothly.
Getting the tree to stand up straight in the stand is usually a deal breaker – worse than hanging pictures on a wall. This task is for the patient and determined. If you’re like me and not allowed to go into the car dealership because you get too impatient to sit through the deal-making process, sighing and rolling your eyes for the entire three hours, this may not be the task for you. Some tips:
Wear gloves! Christmas trees look and smell great, but their trunks are covered in sap that is harder to remove from your hands than the image of Miley Cyrus twerking from your memory.
When you’ve given up and decided that tree that leans is now “charming,” make sure the tree doesn’t fall by tying some part of it to the wall. If you have cats or dogs, this is a must – they will find a way to bring that big green monster to the ground, and then skitter your breakable ornaments over the floor for the next two days.
FEEDING YOUR TREE
To determine if the tree needs water, you have to see how much water is left in the stand each morning and evening. Checking the water level for a live tree requires freakishly long arms and a relationship with your tree. As Lacy said, “I feel like I’m feeling up my tree.” Would that be second base? 
Watering the tree requires the ability to slither along the floor and pour a pitcher of water into the stand without spilling any. I recommend placing a piece of plastic under the stand, hidden by your tree skirt to prevent any stains on the carpet from water spills. 
I also recommend getting one of the tree watering tubes that blend in with the branches, the top of which sticks out for easy access.
Check your tree for tree food – some vendors provide it. The tree food is the little white thing on a random branch that you thought was the price tag.
If all of this seems like too much of a hassle, and you want to go back to taking your tree bits and pieces out of a box each year, and putting it together like a Tinker Toy that’s fine. I totally understand. Nothing says Christmas like a plastic tree with “Sensicles” hanging discreetly among the branches so that the whole house smells like fake Christmas.
Perhaps Lacy said it best when she was describing the experience of getting a live tree vs. setting up a plastic one: “It’s like trying to pick an animal out from the pound, but it’s such a pain in the ass I want to give it back.”
Well, I’ll take my temporary, evergreen mutt with its holes, dropping needles and intimate watering/groping sessions. Just as people today decorate their homes during the festive season with pine, spruce, and fir trees, ancient peoples hung evergreen boughs over their doors and windows. Your plastic tree may make your house look like it was decorated by Southern Living, but my tree reminds me that life goes on, even in winter.
Filed under: Middle Age, Posts | Tags: adulthood, anxiety, family, health, humor, insomnia, menopause, Middle-Age, mom, moving, new home, senses, sleeping, south, southern, subourbonmom, Super Powers
A year ago I never would have thought I would find myself standing in the bathroom at 2:00 in the morning, cooling my feet off on the cold tile. Gone are the days of worshipping those cold tiles after a night of drinking. This sin’t the only thing that’s changed. The first couple of times I woke up in a light sweat, I thought, “Right – this must be what menopause is like.”
Yeah….about that.
These days, I am enjoying the lovely combination of night sweats, which now include a literal puddle of sweat nestled between my collar bones, feet that feel like they’re on fire (hence the time I now spend standing on cold bathroom tiles.) and a racing heart that I am currently attributing to stress of moving to a new house and a marketing campaign at work, but which I have been informed can be a symptom of menopause as well.
But at least I’m not on FaceBook at 2:00am. That’s the kiss of death for me as far as menopause is concerned. When that hapens I may as well throw in the towel and start shopping at J.Jill and Hallmark for everything (if you don’t know what J.Jill is, you’re not there yet).
So I was standing in the bathroom topless (because my shirt was too wet to keep on), cooling off my feet and eating a granola bar, when it dawned on me: when you are trying to sell a house while still living in it, you gain some serious Moving Super Powers:
- Your heightened vision can spot the tiniest crumb on the new carpet in the house you are trying to sell;
- Super Ears hear the cats at any time day or night as they scratch and paw in the kitty litter box, sending showers of gray litter all over the floor that you will have to vacuum up later on;
- Your Super Nose can detect the last thing anyone cooked – especially when there’s the possibility of a showing the next day – even something as bland as a peanut butter sandwich has a lingering smell;
- You can vacuum, dust, and load and empty the dishwasher faster than flow of money hemorrhaging out of your bank account;
- And, you can simultaneously sleep (snore), review your massive list of things to do and have an anxiety attack at the same time.
Superman and Wonder Woman were definitely over-rated. I bet Superman and Wonder Woman never found themselves in the bathroom in the wee hours of the morning, unsuccessfully trying to silently open a granola bar wrapper while putting on a dry pajama top right-side-out. And I’m pretty sure they never had to coordinate the movers, stager, helpful friends and family, utility disconnection, and getting the garage door fixed.
I’ve got Moving Super Powers, baby – I’m invincible…except when my feet get hot.
Filed under: Middle Age, Misc. Humor, Posts | Tags: adulthood, Build-A-Bear, decorating, family, home decor, home decorating, humor, Middle-Age, mom, moving, packing, real estate, realtors, south, southern, stagers, stress, subourbonmom
There comes a time when every suburbanite needs a change, so they turn their lives upside down, become instant HGTV experts and get the overwhelming urge to purge.
Since there’s no good time to have kids and there’s no good time to move, we decided to add the challenge of doing it in the fall of Daughter #1’s senior year. I mean, really, there isn’t much going on except SAT Tests, college visits every weekend, college applications and Senioritis.
Once the decision was made, we realized we had to get our stuff out of the house (all 15 years and two children of it), and try to make it look like no one ever lived there except June Cleaver and a decorator from Crate & Barrel.
It quickly became clear that we needed a Stager. For those of you unfamiliar with this term, a Stager is someone you pay to come to your house and tell you what you need to get rid of or change so your house will sell. What no one tells you is that having a Stager come into your house is a lesson in humiliation.
Oh, don’t get me wrong – our Stager is a seriously nice lady with good decorating sense who was trying really hard not to be too critical when she was talking about my decorating.
Apparently, there are decorating rules.
I decorate by seeing a picture in Southern Living or Coastal Living, buying one piece of furniture to start the look, then covering that piece of furniture with stuff until you can’t see it anymore. Then I start the process all over again. After walking around the house with my Stager, she said in an exasperated but kind voice, “Are these also the same curtains that were here when you moved in?” When I nodded, chewed her lip and asked hesitantly, “So, do you like shopping?”
I looked around and said, “Um, does it look like I like shopping?”
She just nodded to herself, like a therapist would after hearing some whackadoo story that confirmed their theory that the client is definitely…skewed.
After realizing my serious decorating deficiency, I decided I would channel all of my pent up anxiety at having my world (voluntarily) turned upside down onto the Stager.
And Build-A-Bear.
I now despise Build-A-Bear. Not only did they raise the stuffed animal bar so high you spend half a paycheck picking out fake roller skates and a tutu for a leopard, but they did something even worse – they created memories for the children.
Oh, it was great when my sweet baby girls’ faces lit up on a Build-A-Bear day. I loved watching them pick out the outfits and “adopt” their animal at the kid-friendly computers. Fast forward 10 years when we are trying to fit everything into a pod and there are two more trash bags filled with stuffed Build-A-Bear creatures that just won’t go in. Can I give them away? Of course not – each bear is a memory. They say you can’t put a price tag on memories – well I call bulls#*&t. The price tag is $25-$35 dollars, if you’re lucky and get the basic model without the fancy clothes.
So in went the Build-A-Bear bags (yes, I kept them, damn you, Build-A-Bear) and all of the syrupy memories, and out went two trailer loads of junk to the dump. In went boxes of schoolwork from kindergarten on, and out went my jean skirt from 1989. The closer we got to the show date, in went a lot of bourbon, and out went sentimentality.
Now that the Stager is no longer in our lives and the Build-A-Bears are packed away, I’ll have to find something new to channel all of this self-inflicted anxiety onto.
I’m thinking it will be the person who decided the NFL should play football on Thursdays. I’ve already missed my picks for Week 1 – maybe I’ll go get a football bear.
Filed under: Misc. Humor, Posts, Travel | Tags: adulthood, children, Disney, family, Fears, Holidays, hope, humor, New Year's, parenting, patience, PDA, resolutions, Space Mountain, subourbonmom, travel
Okay I meant to post this earlier in the year since it’s about New Year’s resolutions, but I couldn’t get organized. So,
Resolution #1: Get organized. Yeah, I’ll get on that–right after I fold those 12 loads of laundry still in a pile on the spare bed, figure out what’s stinking up the fridge from Christmas, and write those thank you notes that are hanging over my head like a guillotine axe (thanks Mom, for that good ol’ Southern guilt).
I’m not a big fan of New Year’s Resolutions, mostly because I suck at them. By February, I’ve usually given up and gone back to eating Rice Krispie treats straight out of the pan. But while we were briefly at Disney World in Orlando this holiday, I realized you can get ideas for New Year’s resolutions just by waiting in the 80-minute line for Space Mountain (and yes, my super-helpful FB friends, we tried Fast-Track, but the earliest spaces available were at 11:00PM).
Here are the resolutions I came up with while waiting in line:
- Have patience. Disney does a fabulous job of keeping you entertained in line for the Space Mountain ride—while you are jammed into the cattle shute with hundreds of other folks, they are are worth observing because, let’s face it, people are just weird. Unlike cattle, though, the people in the shute are aware that they may soon be facing their deaths in that dark cavern of spiraling humanity called Space Mountain; in fact, they go willingly.
PDA is cool—but not in a line with five hundred of your newest friends. It’s especially not okay of you’re over 20—the couple next to us was easily in their 30’s. That’s just nasty. I don’t need to see anyone’s tongue that close up. And the hands groping the muffin top? Nobody wants to see that, no matter what age you are.- Keep your hands to yourself. Not in a PDA sense, but more for Ebola’s sake. Just looking at the handrails skeeved me out.
- Crop dust whenever possible. Always fun, but especially fun when you’re stuck in a dark room with nowhere to go. Be sure to wrinkle your nose, turn around and glare at innocent people—your children are the best target, especially if they’ve been bugging you for souvenirs all day—so are older make-out couples.
- Face your fears. I’ve been afraid to go on Space Mountain, since we first went to Disney probably 35 years ago. This year, Daughter #2 wanted to ride it—it was the only thing she wanted to do while we were there, so I reluctantly said ok. It was awesome. I also felt like a wuss afterwards for being so terrified for so many years.
- Don’t be afraid of the dark. Whether you’re riding a rollercoaster in a pitch black room or dealing with a personal darkness, the ride always comes to a stop. It’s up to you whether you choose to wave your arms in the air and shout “I survived it!,” grit your teeth and stoically step off the ride, or burst into tears. Also, in the dark, you can crop dust to your heart’s content—no one will see you blush.
- Take a second before the next freefall and look up. In Space Mountain there are tiny constellations lit up in the “sky,” just before you plummet into the blackness. It was oddly beautiful, even if it was fake. When you know things are going downhill, take a second and look up—you might see some pinpoints of light.
- Always know where the bathrooms are. An 80-minute line—seriously, Disney? No bathrooms? Let the crop dusting begin….
- Savor the anticipation of doing something new—we had 80 minutes of anticipation, but sometimes you don’t get that much. Take one breath and enjoy your rapidly beating heart, the pump of adrenaline through your veins, the knowledge that you’re really living. You only get to do something for the first time once—hopefully that something new will be fun, not watching strangers making out in front of you and your kid in line. I totally should have blamed the crop dusting on them.
Filed under: Parenting, Posts | Tags: adulthood, children, Colleges, English, family, grammar, high school, humor, Juan, kids, language, Middle-Age, mom, parenting, south, southern, subourbonmom, teenagers, teens, Universities
There are times when every parent worries about their kids—not because of grades, or because they play a sport, but because sometimes they say things that just make you shake your head and wonder how they managed to live this long.
Daughter #1 and I were sitting at the kitchen table the other night, pouring over the stack of college brochures she’d brought home. We finally got down to the last three. She was leaning in close, looking at the brochure for a big university down South—which I encouraged because neither she nor I have any interest in going father north than where we are right now.
I asked her, “So what is it about that school that makes you want to go there?’
Daughter #1 glanced up at me, leaving her finger on the picture of a girl sitting on a green lawn with a book in her lap. “Look Mom, I’d wear that outfit. She looks like me.”
Seriously, that was her answer.
Not to be deterred by her answer, I asked why she was looking at another southern school.
“I like red.” she answered.
Sigh….and that’s how a teenager with a 4.5 GPA decides how to spend thousands of dollars on their education.
But I don’t know what we’ll do when they’re out of the house. How will I survive without conversations like the following?
Daughter #2, Daughter #1 and I were all sitting at said kitchen table, when Daughter #1 started making fun of how Daughter #2 says some words. “Milk” is pronounced melk, and she says I Juan instead of “I won.”
Daughter #1: “You do too say it that way. Juan is a Hispanic boy’s name.”
Daughter #2: “No I don’t.”
Me: “Actually, you do.”
Daughter #2: “Mom!”
Me: “But I think you’re not saying Juan, you’re saying wan, which actually means looking all washed out.” I tried an example: “You look wan today.”
Daughter #1 and Daughter #2 just stared at me, used to my random insertion of pointless facts into conversations. Sometimes they’re even true.
Daughter #2 thought about it for a second. “That’s one of those words that sounds like what it means.”
Daughter #1: “Yeah, like faaaaaat. Or thin.”
Daughter #2: “It’s an onomatopoeia.”
Me: “No, onomatopoeia is a word that is a sound, like Bang. ‘Wan’ isn’t a sound.”
Daughter #2 looked deflated.
Daughter #1: “C’mon, Mom, let her have it.” She looked at her sister. “Good job! You Juan!”
Subourbon Mom 
