Sunday, December 29, 2013

Heads Up


Ho-Ho-Ho.  

It wasn't the merriest of Christmases at the Chez Bang Bang, but it wasn't the worst, either. So that's a win. 

The holidays can be hard. Harder still when I put a lot of pressures on  myself to create an unrealistic environment during long days at Tiny Town.

It just didn't happen the way I had visioned it in my mind. In my mind, I was hanging twinkling lights outside and garland and lights throughout the house and baking up dozens of Christmas cookies. 

The reality was, we quickly put up a Target tree, threw on some unbreakable "cat toys", put up a second small tree (the one I used to have at the old yucky house) in the kitchen, and of course my Christmas Village that finally came out of storage. Not one Christmas cookie was baked. Presents were haphazardly purchased and wrapped. The house remained quite a mess during the whole month of December, with packages and wrappings and glitter falling everywhere. 

But I did up up the Santa Head posted above. I've had that Santa Head since my I think my FIRST marriage, so we're talking 20 - 23 years ago. He's looking pretty good, right? Because I'm a great storage packer. After eight years in storage, he finally got to hang his head high on the new front door. It made me happy.

Hm, so in retrospect, after reading all the decorating I did do, I need to say, "Good job, Me!" instead of thinking about all the stuff I didn't accomplish.

I didn't get any Christmas cards out this year, either, so if you didn't get one from me, you were not singled out - no one did. 

My brother told me that I just need to lower my expectations of what I can reasonably achieve while working at Tiny Town. I think he is right.

It didn't help Christmas matters that we went on vacation right after Thanksgiving, which was a much-needed break, but also put me weeks behind in my holidaying. 

But guess what? Even without being perfectly prepared, Christmas came anyway, and presents got handed out and it was all fine.

And about that Christmas Village - the cats have not broken one piece of it. That was their Christmas gift to me.  

So sometimes what you don't get is even more important than what you do get.  

Hope you had a nice holiday, Reader, and are looking forward to a brand spanking New Year. 


Monday, December 16, 2013

Match Game

Big news, Reader! I've joined Match.com. Or something like that, I thought it was Match.com, but I think now it's called Chemistry.com. 

Yes, I know what you're thinking. What happened to My Mister?! 

He's still in the picture. We decided to try out being Swingers for 2014. Everyone's gotta have a goal. 

Not really.

Really, what happened is this: our mutual friend has found himself at a table for one, and is dipping in toes in the dating pool. He was so eager to talk about this whole crazy personality test that is now administered by Match.com, that I was too intrigued not to try it. And by trying it, you have to make a free account.

I don't think the personality test really captured my essence, but then I did have a lot of trouble answering the questions and kept asking My Mister to tell me what he thought the best answers were to describe me, which is a whole other problem - that I don't even know myself. 

So maybe it was skewed in some weird direction. It says I am a "Negotiator" with a secondary trait of "Builder." I think more fitting descriptors would be "Bossy" with a secondary trait of "Shouty."

Now since I have an online profile, I can't wait to see who I'm matched up with. Not that I have any interest - except for one guy who was decent looking and indicated his salary range was in the $150-$200k range, and My Mister and I both want to date him as a package deal. 

I just want to see who's out there, ya know, who's swimming around in my potential pool.

I want My Mister to take the test and sign up, so we could see who attracts the most viable candidates, but he hasn't so far. He told me to just do it for him. which I think would get him negative points somehow. 

Today I was super excited because I had two emails, and a few winks. And then I clicked on their photos and read their profiles and I was much less thrilled by who I attracted. Not judging a book by his cover, but ya gotta work with me a little bit here, Dating Site. A lady ~ ahem ~ has her standards.

Some guys were dismissed because I have no doubt that, "he can do better than me." I mean, really, sometimes ya just know. 

And if there is any of these key words in their profile, I know we will not be a Match. 

*punctuality is important
*seeks an even-tempered woman
*no drama
*enjoys working out and keeping physically fit
*loves camping
*organized and tidy

And any Conservatives who enjoy "lively" political debates. I hide that nonsense on Facebook for a reason, I don't need to date it. 

Probably the most fun part about it was writing a profile about myself because it just doesn't matter. 
"must love t.v* is one of my criteria.  Because Honey Boo Boo ain't gonna watch itself.

Saturday, December 14, 2013

I'll Never Be a Pin-spiration. To Anyone.

Well, it's finally happened, Reader. I've done plumb lost my mind. 

This whole 'Christmas in the New House" has caused me to do something I'm certain to regret. And I knew it was a bad idea when I was doing it, but I did it anyway. Like I said, done plumb lost my mind. 

Back in my olden life, I used to like to decorate my house for the holidays, make it festive and cozy. But then once I moved, I didn't have the space to do any sort of decoration, nothing more than putting up a tree on an end table to make it look like a large tree in the window. It's a good trick, really. All the look, none of the fuss. 

One of the things I was most excited about doing in the new house was re-building my Christmas village, which I bought in 2003, and only had 2 years to enjoy it before I was a homeless single woman. I don't even know if I put it up in 2004, so it may have only been up for 1 year. 

While we lived in our old house, I stored it in the garage. The same garage that was inhabited by squirrels, because there was a missing brick in the wall, and My Mister generously wanted to provide a little shelter rather than block the hole. 

Until he discovered they chewed through and peed/pooped on everything. Including the box of my Christmas Village. 

But we moved it anyway, and I was delighted to discover this evening that:

#1 - Eight years ago, I did a bang-up job packing that thing away.  I put all gajillion pieces back were they belonged and secured it all with tape

#2 - Nothing was ruined on the inside. 

I was a little grossed out at opening the box, however, and all the cats went on a wild scratching frenzy of the box until I was able to gather it up and pitch it in the trash.   

We had to sanitize a lot of stuff - floor, hands, cats. 

So the village was saved. And I decided to put it up.  I had thought it would be pretty on the mantel, but that just wasn't going to work - it's quite a busy village with a lot of shops and people, so I had to put it on the sofa table. 

This is the moment where My Mister started laughing and laughing. Not with me, Reader. At me. 

A trillion little breakable pieces. 

Within paw's reach.  

Five cats + Two paws each = Equals a whole lot of trouble. 

Nevertheless. 

I was the first one to break off a piece of one of the houses.  

Of course I was. 

And then I struggled with placement of each of the buildings, and how to make 'em all fit. I first had them on a white tablecloth, to be the "snow", with the lights glowing underneath it which was good in theory, but it created really bunchy fabric and nothing would stay upright with confidence, and it was slippery. 

It just felt like a 3:00 a.m. disaster in the making. 

So I rebooted and took that off. Then I had to get off all the tape that I had underneath it to keep in in place, and then move all the buildings around yet again, and in the process I pulled the greenhouse off the flower shop and dropped it under the table and my back is too stiff from old age to get all the way down there to get it, so I had to get a broom and sweep it out towards me and it was just a lot of trouble is what I'm saying. 

Tomorrow I'm going to go and buy some of that fake snow fluff and roll that around the village landscape, instead of the tablecloth, and hope that works a little better. In the meantime, it is sort of up, complete with a handi-capable man waving from the bridge sans hand, because oh yeah, someone broke that, too (back in 2003). 

So while I'm busy blaming and worrying about the cats wrecking the village, I should really be more concerned with Godzilla Me terrorizing Tokyo. 




It took me so long and so many repositioning attempts,  I realized that I would never make it as a city planner. So that's one career we can scratch off my list. 

With this project half-assedly done, I decide to decorate the mantle, and just let me go on the record as stating that I will never win a Pintrest award for creativity or aptitude. 

I had some lights up there, and some plastic holly, and it just looked so jankety that after about a half hour of effort, it all came down and went in the trash, because plastic holly from at least eight years ago is brittle and dumb looking. 

The take-away from that little revelation is that it took me a half an hour to deem it unsuitable. Not five or ten minutes to realize it's crap. A full thirty minutes (or more).  

I may get an award for persistence, if nothing else. 

So that was the evening. Now the house is a total mess and I'm so tired from chasing ornaments (decorated the tree, too, or I should restate - I added cat toys to their favorite new thing in the house), and now I wish I would have had a few kids fifteen or so years ago and I'd have them hauling and cleaning for me. Really, I just need a wife. 

My wife's first job would be cleaning up the broken Christmas village at 3:00 a.m. this morning, when the cats will probably decide the village is lacking a cat.  Because, really, do any of us have any notions that the village is going to make it?? I'm ready for the crash. 

Thursday, December 12, 2013

Heat Miser

It seems I took an unplanned hiatus, which is a whole lot better than an unplanned pregnancy.   I didn't realize my last post about rape-y lions live so long in the top spot. 

Nine whole days of life was spent in Florida and the Caribbean. Yep, we managed to sneak in a much-needed nod to my old ways, before I completely forgot how to vacation. 

I was able to get right back in the swing of it. 

In other news, being gone right after Thanksgiving, on top of the fact that we had a late holiday, with only four weeks til Christmas, has put us quite a bit behind on Festivus Activities. 

I need to do a little shopping. Er, a lot of shopping. I have like one thing bought for one person. 

I have to find the presents I bought for my dad and his Lady last year, that I never got mailed to them in time. If I wait about two more days, it'll be too late again this year. 

We didn't manage to get the garage cleaned out in time to beat Old Man Winter at his snowy game, so we're still stuck in our old ways of scrapping snow off of cars. But I'm hoping to find some time this weekend to do a little more to remedy that situation. 

We did manage to purchase a Christmas tree and put it up last night ~ raises Victory arms and high-fives self~.  

It's not decorated yet. I figured I'd wait a day or two and see if the cats knock it over. So far they are only mildly interested. 

We had been struggling this winter to figure out how to program our thermostat. It's very fancy, which translates to complicated. We had to download a brochure. Er, My Mister did, not a true 'we".  It was programmed to set at 62 degrees, going up to 66 in the morning before I had to get up of work  The rest of the times we'd turn on the fireplace to knock the chill off the room in the evening. 

That was fine for Oct/Nov. Once snow started blowing up our snatches over here, 62 was just way too cold.  And then I fucked around with the programming and did something which added some function of plus -or - minus 2 degrees to it, so it was hovering around 60 degrees. 

My grandmother would have been very proud of us. 

In the meantime, I'm not quite ready to wrap myself up in a babushka at night, and the bill hasn't creeped up too high (yet), so we're living on the wild side, and have it programmed at 64 in the evening, and all the way up to a toasty 70 when I have to get up in the morning. I think it still goes down to 62 at 11:00 p.m. Something happens. 

So that's the story of our thermostat. 

You're welcome.