Random Raihala

Here are some random observations from the past week of holiday fun. Enjoy.

*George is an awesome cook.

*A small boy can create a tsunami in a bathroom and still completely deny responsibility even when there’s a witness. BTW, water stains on downstairs ceilings CAN dry to invisibility, if you’re lucky like we are.

*A random sales associate at Best Buy knew everything I didn’t about the Wii and was hugely helpful. (Dang, Best Buy should pay me for this!) Yes, we ARE the last family in our entire freakin’ neighborhood to buy a Wii. I can’t believe we’re caving on this one. Please don’t judge me.

*Our kitchen table can hold approximately 248 cook books and cooking magazines without collapsing. I kept moving the stacks to the book shelves, and my mother-in-law and George kept moving them back to the table. Like mother, like son, I suppose. Given the quality of cooking the two of them produced, I am obviously not complaining. It’s just an observation.

*The Bon Appetit Special Collector’s Edition: Provence has disappeared in our house. A reward will be offered to anyone who finds it before George expires from despair.

*Four adults in one week produce enough empty beer and wine bottles to fill up the recycling bin and make it mildly embarrassing to put the bin out on trash day. What will the neighbors think?!?

*The movie Fantastic Mr. Fox is deeply, deeply weird. Christopherson is a stupid name for a fox. I practically fell asleep, but George remembers that Whack Bat ends when someone calls “hot box.” Dudes have the oddest ability to remember stupid sports facts, even when the games are made up in deeply weird movies.

*Hiking in the woods on a sunny fall day is a combination of sheer joy (sighting a deer bounding through the underbrush) and sheer parental frustration as boys bicker (Mommy, Jack kicked me! Mommy, Nick pushed me! Don’t touch me! Mo-ohmmmm! I’m tired. I can’t take another step! It’s too steep! I want to go home!). You’d think we were force-marching them up Mt. Everest. (Give me oxygen!!!!) Papa saved the day by taking everyone to McD’s afterwards for french fries. Papa rocks!

*The microscope Nick got for Christmas last year is super cool. It has a light aimed down at the slide so you can look at opaque objects. Nick and Grandma share an interest in rocks, so they looked at Nick’s mineral collection under the microscope. There’s no humor in this, but it was highly cool, in a geeky, geological sort of way.

*When people say they don’t want biscuits, they lie.

*Bacon laid on the turkey curls up at the ends so it looks like Pippi Longstocking. Combine it with the gravy-making genius of Grandma, however, and you get the best gravy EVER IN THE HISTORY OF GRAVY. Burp.

*George tried growing a goatee over the holiday. I do not like facial hair on a spouse as it reminds me of kissing my mustachioed grandfather…can you say, “Ewwwww”? Yeah. He doesn’t care what I think on this issue, but he finally got annoyed with it catching on his pillow as he tried to fall asleep and shaved it off. Thank you, George. Now he’s either lazily not shaving his cranium or letting his hair grow out (can’t make up his mind on that one), and I pointed out that his peninsula of hair (you know, the one in the middle of the forehead that has receding coastline on either side?) has disappeared. He pointed out that it had, in fact, not completely disappeared and can be felt, though not seen, at this point. If he keeps growing his hair out, he’ll have a sad little island of hair surrounded by bare skin right on the top of his head. My increasingly gray hair seems less a problem in light of his hair woes, don’t you think?

*If you turn off the heat to open windows to air out your old-food-scented house and decide two minutes after opening the windows that it is too cold outside and a Yankee candle will have to suffice, you really ought to turn the heat back on. Otherwise, you will awaken the next morning to a 60 degree house. Just sayin'.

*Thanksgiving is a great holiday. It deserves not to be lost between Halloween and Christmas.

*As we tucked the boys in tonight, I realized there are now only 23 days until Christmas. HOW DID THIS HAPPEN!!!???!!!???

*I need a hug.