Hierarchy of Needs

Is it just me or is their a caste system in the training program at the Starbucks? I am interested to poll my Starbucks drinking readers as their experiences with this. I walk into any freestanding Starbucks and I never have a problem. I either get the cute chipper gay boy who is beloved by all his girl friends and his parents or the quiet, thoughtful girl clerks who are probably torn between early education and social work. Yet, when I walk into any Starbucks attached to an entity IE grocery store, Target, etc, I get bubble-headed girl, who I can only imagine is employed only for the sheer fact that her parents threatened to take away her Neon if she couldn't at least pay her own gas, who freaks out if I ask for low fat or get my own straw. Or I get middle-aged, I can't work a cash register because it is too much like a computer, mom who thought it would be "fun" to wear an apron and be abused by over-caffeinated shoppers. Lastly, there is the airport Starbucks or any Starbucks that exists as a kiosk. These people always strike me as the bottom of the customer service barrel. They resent you any everything about any person who would get off an airplane and pay $3.50 for a cup of coffee.

Seriously, what happens to these people? Is there just like an open employment call and they get sorted into A, B and C teams? You don't appear particularly bright, B team for you.

Christmas wrap up

I would do a top ten or even a top 5, but I can only transfer four pictures so this is what you get.

1) Bell ringing. Yes Lori and I froze our patoots off, yes we had an uncomfortable incident with a crazy homeless person, yes we had to see someone, who will remain nameless, who we now know is a total cheapskate bastard. But Lori and I rocked it out and the kid was cute too.



Cookie decorating-Always enjoyable. Always nauseating and messy, but a good time. God bless Tina and her ability to see past 9lbs of frosting and take them all home.
Advent calendar activities-We made our own advent activities and out of twenty five we only felt like we needed to pass on one. Kid tested, parent approved and a new family tradition.
Working towards your personal best-I think the holidays tends to be a time of year where you let a lot go because you have so much else to do. This year i wanted to find something to challenge myself and it came in the form of Martha's Gingerbread Caramels. Having never made any kind of candies or fudge before i was proud and impressed that I followed through with it. Chad said they were the best of all the holiday confections. I thought that went to the Fleur de Sel cookies, 72% cacao and fleur de sel. 100% yum.



As usual, the kid made a haul and was very well behaved despite being completely overstimulated. So despite my grinchy predictions it was a great holiday season and we are looking forward to another four day weekend for New Year's if we can get out of the house. Oh yeah, it is snowing again. And again on Sunday, lucky us.

Class Act

SO in a precursor to the larger Christmas wrap up post I have to do a quick post to pay proper homage to the greatest gift giver of all time, my husband. Chad would ordinarily not strike you as one who would give great gifts. He is a procrastinator, kind of absent-minded and I am almost sure that when I talk to him that 85% of the time all he is hearing is that sound that the teacher used to make in all the Peanuts movies, wha wha whum wha. I, on the other hand, am the worst gift giver of all time. My lists, organization and generally good listening skills serve to do nothing but paralyze me in the gift giving arena.

So at some point over the holiday season we were cruising through Macy's to get to the slummier parts of the mall and we passed the Chanel desk. We had a long discussion about Chanel's new ad campaign, how gross i think Keira Knightley is, etc, etc. I remember saying at the time that I thought it was such a shame to sully such a classic brand with someone so low rent, and that I thought Chanel was one of the few things left in this world that was still classy.

Low and behold, under the tree was some Chanel No. 5 and he told me had to buy it because i was the classiest girl he knew. Go ahead, tear up a little. This was followed by a lengthy and difficult conversation with my daughter who was traumatized that Mommy was crying at Christmas, where nothing should happen but frenzied unwrapping and shrieks of joy.

Library Day

So today is library day. I look forward to this day possibly more than my own birthday. My mother takes Olivia traditionally for two days after Christmas so that i can clean up and get rid of all the toys Olivia has forgotten about before she brings home a slew of new ones. That was yesterday. Today is library day. I will be at my library in twenty minutes waiting for he door to open and I will not leave until my husband pages me to go to dinner. I bring a sandwich like that guy in Mallrats. I read every magazine, page through all the books, read the New York Times and sit and put all my books on hold that I am going to want for Olivia in the next month.

Best day ever because I am the biggest dork ever.

Happy Birthday Sean!

Hey readers, my datebook says today is Sean's birthday so go to his blog and give him well wishes because, let's face it, it sucks to have your birthday two days after Christmas.

Calendar Girl

Well, I will have my holiday wrap up post later today as I am still sifting through the mountains of gifts and their attached packaging (oh, Al it is such a waste!) but right now I am trying to clear off my desk from all the paper that has piled up from the last month or so. I don't know about anyone else but my desk seems to be the first to go when all the organization I strive for goes off the rails. I suspect it is because my office is in the basement and has a nice handy door that can be quite easily, shut.

After I assured myself that I had not buried any bills or other papers that needed to be dealt with immediately i tackled my favorite year-end project, transferring all necessary info from my 2007 datebook to 2008. The purpose of this is make sure I remember birthdays, but it always ends up taking like an hour because i like to look at every single entry because it is the truest reflection of what i have accomplished in a year. When you are in my line of work no one is doing quarterly evaluations, there are no bonus meetings or being called into the boss' office if you screw up. So my datebook is the closest thing i have because my datebook runs my life. It holds not only my appointments, but also phone numbers, notations for recipes, web sites I like, events or locations I have been meaning to attend, books I want to read, confirmation numbers for all vacations, tracking all Olivia's various doctors and illnesses, etc. It is me.

I sometimes think that if someone wanted to know who I was, they could just read the blog, but all bloggers know that this is not true. Blog posts are only the parts of you that you hope will be funny to someone else, the stories that you call to tell your friends on the way home from work, the e-mail that you send because the picture is so cute. In April my blog was all about consumerism and my war with the IKEA, my date book shows a woman panicking about her daughter being smarter than she ever imagined that she would be since my datebook is covered with sites and books about what to do with your gifted child, there was no blog for when, it appears, that i spent weeks selecting the perfect birthday gift for Olivia, or trying to piece together my Irish heritage through my grandfather.

The hardest part of the datebook is getting to the end and realizing all the dates you had forgotten, all the things you took for granted, all the things you could have done better, that's why the first page of my new datebook always says something like: today I will try harder, today I will slow down, today i will smile at every little thing so I do not forget how lucky I am to get to start it over again.

A-Okay

Thanks for checking on us, everyone! Apart from a lot of wind and ice, Madison was largely missed by the giant storm. We were completely prepared and spent yesterday taking care of our last minute shopping and our last outdoor advent activity. Here we are in front of the tree at our state capitol building. Today were are shut in with yummy cooking, a Christmas movie, and the first round of gift opening which included a couple of really big steaks for Chad since he was threatening to divorce me after a great meal of prime rib at Steph and Michele's last night.

Stay safe everyone, I know that a lot of areas of the country are having crazy weather that we are not even hearing about on the news.

Liar, Liar

Apparently it does catch your pants on fire, or at least your ceremonial office.

What next?

And now sweet little Jaime Lynn is pregnant? You might as well close Christmas if the teenage sister of Britney Spears can't use her family as a cautionary tale.

Ho, Ho, Oh Just Forget It

Well the day I have been waiting for for six weeks has finally come. This morning I woke up and remembered that i hate Christmas. I really do, I have never liked it. I am sure there are many reasons for it. As a kid, like most modern families, I had to juggle the families of three parents instead of two, my mom is a nurse which means there are no true holidays because she always works and so on and so forth. Now that i am an adult I really resent the implication that there is one perfect gift that proves that no matter what happened all year you really know and love someone. I get a little Charlie Brown this time of year. I see Christmas as more work with less help since my spouse, like most non-governmental workers has his busiest time of year from November to January. Eventually I just get burned out.

I thought this year was going to be different. We got a head start, our gifts were bought with relative ease, there were no disputes about where to get our tree, our budget or really anything. We were organized, we planned extra activities because everything was going so well. Then the wheels fell off the wagon. I got sick, I got behind the schedule and the fights finally began about who is responsible for what, who really wanted to do the activities that were planned, and who was going to do the extra work needed to get through to C-Day. The dread about eating my mother's cooking, the inevitable disappointment with the gifts my parents and siblings give me that reveal that they don't really know me at all and the realization that the two days that I will be childless isn't enough time to unpack all the crap, certainly not enough time to do anything fun.

Christmas time is here. . .

Question

CAn you have mono if you have no other symptoms than being completely exhausted? Both Olivia and I have this bug where we are both just completely exhausted, like right now I know I have to walk up my basement stairs, but I just can't bring myself to do it. I blamed it on all manner of things last week but when Olivia was asking to be put down for naps this weekend I knew she had it too.

The end of a very long journey for Chad

While we did many fun and exciting things as a family this weekend, the most exciting thing that can or ever will happen for Chad is that his long awaited iPod Touch came home with him this weekend. I know you are saying, "Wait! Don't i remember several posts where Liz refused to purchase the Touch?" The answer is yes, loyal reader, I staunchly refused to purchase or let Chad purchase such a ridiculous and extravagant item. However, the following is a story about how you should never come between Chad and his desired electronic device because he becomes wiley and resourceful.

After coming to the conclusion that I really was not going to budge Chad found some crazy on-line scheme to get himself an iPhone. It involved his work paying for continuing legal education credits from some private company or some sort of crazy thing that i am sure in six months they are going to find out was some bogus scam. But he used his lawyer-talk charm on his managing partner and he signed off on it so it is his problem now.

So now Chad has an iPhone. Well, he doesn't want an iPhone (though he did use this opportunity to try and convince me to let him buy a Blackberry) so he has to figure out how to unload the iPhone. His lawyer-talk skills failed on the employees at the Apple Store (why don't they call it an iStore?) so now he has to figure an alternate way to unload this thing. Enter eBay.

I will use this ooprtunity to assert that the stupidest people alive shop on eBay. I don't care if every single reader I have shops on eBay and is removing me from their bookmarks. eBay shopper=complete f@#$ing moron. Chad put that thing up there for like $125 more than it goes for retail and some a-hole bought it. Full freight, eight hours after he posted it. You can go to the Apple web site and get it, why would you pay more on eBay? Frankly, now that the money is in my checking account I just don't care.

So while I and one of Chad's co-workers froze our patoots off ringing the Salvation Army bell, Chad was at the Best Buy using six different coupons to buy himself an iPod Touch. Last night they bonded together over surfing internet poker web sites, tonight they are going to shop for a case because she is looking a little smudgy.

I hope they are very happy together. Why this kind of effort can't be put into getting me a snowblower I will never understand.

School Daze

Madison does it again. We were ranked number two on Forbes list of best places to educate your child. Arlington, VA edged us out for the number one spot. Milwaukee made the list of top 20, as did Columbia, MO! The obvious theme was college towns with Syracuse, Ann Arbor and Columbus all making the list. The only CA city on the list? Santa Clara, and it was at the bottom.

PS-I'm a drunk

The meatballs I made today needed a cup of vodka which I had to cobble together from vodka that people have left here after parties so I tossed more than one bottle of vodka in the recycle today so all my neighbors think that I am drinking while Olivia is at school. So since that perception is already out there I would also like to establish two hours a week to sit at home and drink.

So now I REALLY cannot go back to work.

Zen mama

So after a few days in a snow shovelling funk I emerged in the zone today. A little house cleaning and a lot of cooking. I got to use my new blender from Ryan and DJ and poo poo to anyone who says kitchen appliances are lousy gifts. That blender kicked ass, I could have put a tree branch in that thing and made paper. I have also decided that I need one morning a week where I can cook uninterrupted for two hours. It is kind of like a restart button for all that ails me. It is almost meditative, or maybe just an extention of my control freak nature. I know where everything is in my kitchen. EVERYTHING. I like to quiz myself. Chad moved my dried mustard last week and I damn near had a meltdown.

So the long of the short of it is, I can never go back to work. Too bad so sad.

It's a beautiful morning

I heard the three most beautiful words I have ever heard this morning on the radio alarm clock.

NO SNOW TODAY!!!!

That doesn't mean that I didn't spend the first hour of my day shovelling, it just means I won't be shovelling tomorrow.

PS-All anger that you feel towards your husband for not helping you shovel can be completely eliminated by posting drunk pictures of him on the internet. I just came in this morning and laughed and laughed. . .

Sneak Preview

So here is a sneak preview of our Christsmas card. I wanted to make jokes about the Gendreau family sweatshop, but I was overruled. Apparently, sweatshop jokes aren't "festive" enough? In all the hoopla I neglected to realize that all I did was measure the ingredients, the kid did the rest. This is making me very excited about next year's sweatshop possibilities, with those two little hands I think that 80 dozen cookies isn't out of the question.

Letter Perfect

Today in my master Christmas spreadsheet is Christmas card day. So we will be taking our photos for our Christmas card and with the help of the good people at Shutterfly be constructing our card. I will be keeping the theme and photos under wraps because I know that people look forward to the goofball antics of Miss Olivia. However, I did want to make a note of how fun it is for me to page through the list every year and see how many different states we are sending to. I was sad this year to remove ID from the list this year because that was a real coup but I still have CA, IL, FL, AZ, NV, UT, WI, VA, NY, TN, DC, WA and, of course, MO.

Maybe the Morgan's will have to get a card this year so good old ID can get back on the list.

Charming

So Chad had a great weekend with Ryan and DJ. I managed to finally rouse him by slamming the door into his head about a dozen times. He thought that my wifely love for him would prevent me from posting this photo, he thought wrong. Thanks to DJ who encouraged me to take this photo.

Milestone

I am not bragging, I am simply stating that my child reached a milestone on Thursday. She read a word with no help from me in a manner that makes me suspect that she has been holding out on me. Now i hope that I am not the only parent who suspects that our children are actually much more capable than we realize and they are keeping it under wraps because they are annoyed that their parents, once aware of unspecified talents, will treat them like trained monkeys.

We were in the library and there was a gas can sitting by the fish tanks. She asked why there was gas in the library. I replied that it was not gas, but what was in the can was written on the side and she could read the word to figure it out. I urged her to sound it out. She flashed the annoyed look that she always gives me, claimed that it was too hard and asked me to read it to her. I refused and walked away. Watching out of the corner of my eye, I saw her look at the can, sound out the first half of the word, turn and say, "Mommy it's just water."

Here is where I must shamefully admit that I burst out into tears practically hug tackled her while simultaneously dialing her father to tell him that Olivia read her first word. I say shamefully because deep down I know that my child can't really read, she got half the word, took one look at the fish tank and assumed that the "wa" in question was probably water.

I am going to take it as a milestone though because if reading is anything like walking, crawling, talking, or any other milestone she has accomplished thus far she is going to bust out reading whole books like three months from now confirming what I already knew all along. She is no trained monkey.

Accounts payable

Today is one of those days that being a stay at home is your downfall. We all have those days where you would just prefer to stay in bed, but most of us have to get out of bed to go to work. Not me, not today. Olivia is at school so I could lay here all morning, and I have been. just surfing the web completely enabled by wireless internet and the laptop. Yet I know that my house is completely trashed from a weekend of fun houseguests, that i have a very tight and specific spreadsheet of things that need to be accomplished today, for God's sakes I have to eat and bathe.

Yet no one would know if I did none of these things. Sometimes being accountable only to yourself is a dangerous thing.

Au Revoir 171

Chad's childhood friend Ryan arrives today, and by childhood I mean these two have been friends since they were eight. I had no idea that these kind of friendships existed until I met Chad, I thought that they only existed in movies. I digress. The reason that we have to say au revoir to my hard-earned 171 pounds is that Ryan's partner DJ wants a boat load of crap for Christmas. When asked what he wanted for Christmas this year he replied that they wanted nothing-except me to cook their favorite foods when they came to visit.

Here is the favorite food list as it was e-mailed to me:

- macaroni and cheese
- boneless and skinless fried chicken breasts
- meatloaf
- mashed potatoes
- green bean cassarole
- home made pie (whatever your specialty is, if there
is one
- beef stew
- chicken and dumplings
- spaghetti

Since he gave me this list e-mails have come through requesting banana bread, brownies, cornbread and everything be wrapped in bacon.

I ask you, how do two boys born and raised in the land of abundant produce and healthy living learn to eat like this? They claim that they never would move here, that may change once they are here and realize that everyone in the Midwest eats like this. Unless, of course, they are trying to be 170 pounds!!!

Snowbound

So you know that scene in The Shining where they have been snow bound for awhile and he starts typing "All work and no play. . ." I never took that too seriously because I live in a cold weather place and have never experienced that level of psychosis-until today.

Today I got up, shoveled another five inches of snow, and got my daughter ready for school. i laughed, amused at her bundled up waddle out to the car. I was sad that I didn't have a video camera for when she stepped out into the driveway, one eye on her father gently encouraging her to get in the car, one on the ginormous snow bank next to the garage. In an instant I saw her resolve cave and knowing full well she should be getting in the car, she flung herself with abandon onto that snowbank rolling around like a pig in mud. We tried hard to mad, but we can't, after all the poor kid can't even move her arms. Let her go. I ate breakfast, watched the weather which informed me that we will be getting at least another six inches of snow before the week's up, so back out to shovel every last inch before more snow comes. That's when it all turned.

I am not sure if anyone who has never shoveled snow can understand the psychotic rage that occurs when you shovel for long periods of time in temperatures hovering in the teens. The wind is blowing snow you have already shoveled back onto the driveway, half the snow has already turned to ice so you are using a combination of your boots and your shovel to try and dislodge it and all your neighbors are watching this scenario from their front windows. They are waving to you because they are nice Midwestern folk, and that's when the rage bubbles over to an irrational combination of kicking, swearing, crying and stripping down to your sweater because suddenly, even though it is 16 degrees outside you are blazing hot.

So you go in, call your husband, sobbing, tell him you hate the winter and that you are moving in with your aunt in Florida and that you still have to go to the grocery store and can he please come home so that you can take a nap because, after all, you are exhausted. He responds with a calm and even, "Okay, honey, take a breath we are going to get through this." Like you have just been hit by a tsunami or something. After all, he takes this call about twice every winter for the past six years, he's prepared for the psychosis of being snow bound.

Crafting With Special Needs

Why I cannot do any kind of craft has alluded me my whole life. I am creative, detail oriented, meticulous and patient, so why scrapbooking or paper crafts, pottery, embroidery or any of the thousands of things I have tried in my life never turn out well I have never understood until last week. I was loading my aunt's dishwasher when I realized that I realy sucked at it. I have always sucked at loading my own dishwasher (and my mother's), but I thought it was because they were old models ill suited to my modern dish sizes. No, I just suck at loading the dishwasher, and and all the brain teaser puzzles and understanding anything my father in law tries to explain to me about, well anything really. I have no spatial reasoning, and apparently no auditory memory.

I found this shocking that an art history major with a minor in interior design has no spatial reasoning. I didn't suck at either of those things. Yet, I could not put together the advent calendar above. It was not terribly complicated, if I had a series of pictures demonstrating how it went together i would have been fine. Heck, you could have just flashed a series of photos in front of me really fast and asked me what was in them, I'd rock that. Alas, I had a written description so I ended up begging my poor, more spatially gifted husband to help me. Then I still ended up putting on the roof backwards.

So to Martha Stewart Crafts, I implore you, please address the special needs of visual learners and throw a few more photos in those instructions. Don't continue to embarass me in front of my child. She is already really pissed that her advent calendar doesn't contain candy like in the photo on the box.

A weekend in pictures

Here we are enjoying all the season has to offer. We had crazy Midwest weather this weekend which caused Chad's firm holiday party to be cancelled (not so sad) and allowed us to have lots of time in the snow. I voted to make the picture below the Christmas card photo, but I was overruled. Also pictured is this year's Christmas tree.