You know I love a parade

Gotta get my sister below the fold there, so here are your annual September parade pictures. How fun that the East Cobber — that  suburban confection– comes just one week after Dragon*Con, land of the weird and home of the nerd-who-idealizes-the-brave. I love them both with all my heart.

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Someone’s in the kitchen with Lyta

I have just spent two — or more — days cooking with my favorite kitchen pal. Here are a few things I heard. (“My family’s just full of them,” she says.)

“There’s a tumble bug for every turd.”

“She’s got her pucker string pulled too tight.”

“Quit assling around!”

“That’s just picking the fly shit out of the pepper.”

And during just a few minutes of chatting with Celia …

“They have TV. They know how to act.”

Righteous Xmas

OK, I don’t know whether to go with bad videos, annoying songs, or the great playlist of Christmas songs I love… but you asked for it folks, so here goes …

Click it. I double-dog dare you.

And here’s a little something for those of you who are still stuck in The ’80s (which, btw, I am no longer) … I wonder if Gunter modeled our all-time fave on this one?

It’s summer!

Let the sleepovers begin!

More fun than a Rattlesnake Roundup!

Maybe the reason I love Freebird is that I’m a redneck at heart. This looks like fun — I may make the trek to Dublin some year for it, but I don’t think we’ll be home from the left coast in time this year.

Thanks to Paul C., who claims this annual festival is why …

“… at least five out of ten people I grew up with from Dublin and East Dublin claim to be from somewhere else. The other five are somewhere in this video.”

Happy, happy birthday to me

We all know I drive like a PTA mother … and have been known to bring draft beer in a plastic cup …  though I wish I were Jewish, not Catholic.

Most of all, I always feel thankful for the small things.

If you love me anyway, give a little love to the East Cobb Middle School Foundation. I’ve given my time to a lot of things, but this one means the most to me. Help us bring Challenge Day back for Tom’s class.

Cubbiepalooza

Cubbie’s grand winter holidays. There were a lot of people in the house for two weeks, and she thoroughly enjoyed it. With no more toddlers around, all cameras were focused on puppy pics.

"Who's here now!" Cubbie the party dog.

"But it had my name on it!" She kept unwrapping her present from the Twentysomething.

Christmas Eve: new toy

no idea that the party's just getting rolling

Christmas Day with Cuzzin Quark

"Does he even know I'm here?"

"How come he gets to get on the sofa?"

Koda, the world's softest snow dog.

basement dwelling

Dawg dog?

lots of new toys

She shared the Hedgie for a while. Then she napped on it.

new friend

bff

Ding Dong. It’s a Christmast song.

It wouldn’t be Christmast without Gunter.

Is it my imagination, or is this one just a tad more explicit than the one I posted last year?

Candied grapefruit!

Wow. Thanks, Craig Claiborne.

I was peeling a grapefruit for a snack this afternoon and thinking there must be a use for all the grapefruit peel I’ve been tossing into the compost the past few weeks when I remembered reading an old-fashioned recipe for candied grapefruit peel in Craig Claiborne’s Southern Cooking. (I love reading this book but for some reason have tried very few of the recipes. )

So while the coffeecakes were cooking, I sliced up the peel off a few and boiled  it up. Very easy if you’re in the kitchen doing something else while they’re boiling.  I only did two grapefruits instead of eight like the recipe calls for because I was skeptical. But I’m going to do more tonight. And maybe oranges and limes, too. It is absolutely delicious! The Littles and I can’t stay away from it.

Here’s the recipe (PDF). I had a little bit of a time getting the sticky peel out of the colander and into the sugar while it was hot enough to stick to the sugar without burning my fingers. I’ll scoop a little at a time out of the pot next time around.

peel, then slice

nekkid grapefruit

coat in sugar

Charlie Brown’s Christmas Tree

If only . . .

It’s just a few days before Christmas, and my tree still isn’t decorated. Although I did finally manage to get it inside the house last night.

For some reason, the three men in the house ganged up on me this year and decided they wanted an artificial Christmas tree.

Now I have never been one to do any Christmas decorating, but I do love a Christmas tree. I get seriously excited unpacking the old ornaments and remembering where each one came from. And those of you who know me are aware that I am completely motivated by my nose. That tree is what Christmas smells like, and I love Chri-mah.

But since I was completely outnumbered, instead of just demanding we stick with tradition,  I took a few days and thought about it seriously. And I decided I’d rather have no tree at all than have an artificial one. Isn’t part of the whole Christmas tree thing bringing something green and alive in from outside to brighten your house in the dead of winter? During this period of intense self-reflection, I also came to realize something central about myself: I have some sort of deep-rooted (punny!) issues with fake plants, of any sort. It could take years of expensive therapy for me to be able to live with an artificial tree in the house.

So Dan and the boys went off on their annual outing to select our tree. I should have known something was amiss when they drove his car instead of taking The Truck. This has been The Truck’s sole purpose for all those years it has sat here. The kids looked forward to getting in the nasty ol’ Thing to go get a tree with their dad.

It was raining, so they set it up in the garage. When I pulled in, I thought they were joking and there was a real one in the house. But no, they had actually brought home Charlie Brown’s Christmas Tree.

Then, over the past week, when I would ask if they could bring it in the house, I’d get this chorus of, “It’s not so simple!” from all of them. But Dan dragged the thing in last night, and today we’ll take on the task of transforming The Littlest Christmas Tree into a thing of beauty. Although I may have to go get a second one to fit all of the  extra ornaments on.

Next year, this little elf may break tradition and assume responsibility for the tree. What’s a minivan for, after all?