The Fridge Files (Part One in a Series): Loving Letters

There are few things sweeter than getting a piece of mail, a little moment of connection tucked inside a fragile paper envelope that can capture someone's complete attention and put your love right in their hands. One of those things is getting letters from Laila.

Because she is smarter than all the other kids in the world, Laila, 6, is already able to read and write. She read the entire "Push Button to Cross" sign all by herself when we were at a crosswalk this weekend... she actually said "Push Button to Choose" but that was only because she was mixing in some philosophy since she's already mastered the English language. This kid knows what's up.

Since Mack also knows what's up and his 103.1% A+ calculus tests (the highest in the class) deserve some attention, I had to swap some of Laila's letters for his exams. I love a decorated fridge, but we're running low on the magnets, and I've had to make some cuts. But I'm not about to part with my collection of Laila Love Letters without immortalizing them first.

I mean, when someone as brilliant as Laila lets you know that you are it, you don't let go of that easily...
As you'd expect of a genius, she is very articulate, able to maturely yet subtlely let you know her needs and wants. And if the words don't drive home the message, she considerately adds a visual that expands your perception of yourself.
I've seen a lot of art in my time, and I've never seen someone so profoundly execute a woman with male pattern balding and earlobes for arms. Makes you wonder if Picasso wasn't a mailman in her neighborhood, doesn't it?
Because two-dimensional artwork and messaging is for, well, babies, Laila has already started executing outside the page. The masterpiece below may just blow your mind, so you might want to cover your computer. I know you like it.
This last Laila letter is my favorite. It's simple yet poignant, poetic yet direct, full of whimsy while rooted in reality. And, since if that's all it was she'd be any other six-year-old, she actually designed the paper herself. She calls it, brace yourself, Zebra.
If you need to take some time off because her talent has left you dizzy or your jealousy is starting to consume you, Laila, who is basically a doctor, can write you a doctor's note. Or a prescription for "optibibotics," which are so futuristic today's doctors don't even know about them and which Laila brought to my attention while we were playing "Emergency Room." It's like "TJ Maxx," only with more tantrums and Ma'ams.

It's really too bad I can't just keep her on the fridge.

How Does a Garden Grow?

I've tried gardens a couple of times in the past, and while I love getting my hands in the dirt, I hate weeding and mosquitos and the surplus of a single type of produce that comes with these pesky old seasons.

My first garden attempt was with Amy and Dave in the backyard at Bob-O-Link. They tilled the soil and blistered their hands, and then I spent hours in the dirt putting seeds and seedlings six inches apart and two inches deep (or at least what felt like six inches apart and two inches deep). We planted carrots and strawberries and tomatoes and green peppers and red peppers, and for the first couple of weeks, I weeded and overlooked the dirt patch with nothing but optimism. At about the one month mark, the mosquitos were so bad you couldn't pick a tomato without donating a pint of blood. Weeding became a thing of the past, and the garden was left to its own devices for days at a time.

Even without our TLC, we were still gifted with the fruits of our labor every time we trekked to the garden. Red peppers, which were just as easy to grow as green peppers but which cost three times as much at the grocery store, started showing up, carrot tops started breaking through the earth. The garden was growing.

When life gives you peppers, well, you have to use them. With the same optimism I'd had when we planted the seedling, I started chopping the green peppers for veggie lasagna. Accustomed to store bought produce, I assumed that when I popped the garden pepper in my mouth it would be the same experience I'd had whenever I'd popped a purchased pepper in my mouth.
Not the case.

Garden grown produce actually has taste. It's full of flavor, dense with aroma and completely screws up your cooking. Where I'd normally used three peppers, I could only use one, and that one little pepper was almost overpowering. And then on top of that, I had a basket of peppers. No one likes veggie lasagna that much.

The carrots were a different story. They were tiny, little finger-sized carrots. I assumed they were ready to harvest because it was a beautiful weekend day and I felt like being in the dirt. I pulled up one and saw a rod of orange, and immediately plunked myself in carrot row and started digging up buried treasure.

Then, as it does in Kentucky, the weather turned. The thunder rolled in, the rain bore down, and the lightning did its best to find me hunched over immature carrots, drenched to the bone and relishing in gardening without mosquitos. After one too many brushes with death, David finally came outside to point out how absurd I was being and ordered me to abandon the carrots and come inside.

I don't really like carrots, so I don't remember eating them or how they tasted. For me, the thrill came from cultivating them.

The second garden came courtesy of Shannon, who read somewhere that success was growing a garden, and since she is a brilliant overachiever, it only followed suit that she would grow a garden. She started her seeds under grow lamps in the kitchen. For weeks we watched as dirt pods gave way to unfolding seeds. For weeks I wondered if the police would be raiding us anytime soon.

When it came time to break the earth, what better spot that right in the middle of the backyard? After she'd shoveled a path to having a garden, she stacked the old land in a heap next to her project and was content to let that mound be the start to the Picadome Hills. Having done the garden thing, I made it clear that this was her project. I watched, I laughed, I shook my head, knowing that if the weeds didn't kill her the mosquitos would. I also assumed my usual position as her shadow and cleaned up her destruction so that the beauty she was making would be amplified.

I don't know how often we pulled goodies out of that garden. She planted peppers, tomatoes, zucchinis, cucumbers, chives and zinnias, and I distinctly remember the thrill of adding some of its offerings to breakfast one day. Shannon married Charles that summer, so the garden didn't get its due respect from anyone. I mowed around it every week, noting how many tomatoes were abandoned to rot on the ground, how many zinnias were begging to have a place on the island in the kitchen. Life just got in the way of the romance of having a garden. Life and the mosquitos.

My association with two gardens has left me with a brutal honesty about what I will do for a vegetable. I will not hoe, I will not till, I will not weed, I will not fertilize, I will not harvest regularly, I will not modify my cooking.

I also will not miss the chance to bite into a juicy, warm, homegrown tomato in the middle of summer, and since I'm not sure I can count on Californians to share their produce the way Kentuckians do, I'm back on the garden wagon. I love how tomatoes are hot inside when you pull them from the vine. I love slicing them and putting salt on them and calling it a meal. I love making salsa from their mass production. They're the the flavor of my childhood, of summers at Grandma's and cookouts by the sandbox. They trump watermelon and ice cream, the swimming pool and playing Chase at dusk. They're the heart of the garden, and even when the gardener doesn't have heart, the tomatoes still deliver.

Just 60 more days...

What a Day, What a Day

After what felt like the longest week ever -- the kind where you go from loving your job to hating your job to being indifferent about your job and where you hate to admit that the highlight of your Valentine's Day came from being completely selfish -- I got to have a Saturday -- the kind where you have nothing planned and no one telling you what to do. These were completely foreign to me until I moved to LA.

We've been having the most gorgeous weather I've ever experienced in February, so instead of holing up and riding it out like we're conditioned to do at this time of year, we've been riding our bikes to Venice Beach to watch people and smell the sea in the air. We never plan to ride our bikes to the beach, but somehow we end up there, laying in the sand and listening to drummers and wondering why we don't go there more often. It's amazing how that salty moist air manages to blow away the residue of life while that crystal clear sunshine reinvigorates your whole attitude.

After a day in the sun, the night in the house is actually a pleasure. The windows and doors are wide open, the air is wandering through the house and cleaning the stale life out of the corners, the alley noises are creeping in and teasing our imaginations.

Today I love living here.

44 Questions

Dear Elijah sent me one of those questionnaires, and I couldn't resist. I love these things.

1. What is your occupation?   not really sure. i wish i was a writer, i'm basically an editor, but i also play with video stories.
2. What color are your socks?  black with a snowflake
3. What are you listening to right now?  two boys playing Guitar Hero, very badly
4. What was the last thing that you ate?  pepperoni pizza or a tater tot
5. Can you drive a stick shift?  i prefer them
6. If you were a crayon, what color would you be? cornflower blue
7. Last person you spoke to on the phone? mack, but i've left a couple messages this morning
8. Do you like the person who sent this to you? i adore her.
9. How old are you today?  28
10. Favorite drink? lemon lime sparkling water or Ruble's martinis
11. What is your favorite sport to watch? boxing on tv, baseball in real life
12. Have you ever dyed your hair? twice... once reddish, once maroon, now just highlights, which i desperately need.
13. Pets? miss kitty and V
14. Favorite food? too hard to answer, since I love to eat... maybe mashed potatoes
15. What was the last movie you watched?  part of match point, otherwise Last King of Scotland
16. Favorite day of the year?  my birthday
17. What do you do to vent anger?  bitch
18. What was your favorite toy as a child?  homer or my silky
19. What is your favorite - fall or spring?  fall
20. Hugs or kisses? kisses. not the sloppy tonguey ones, but the tender full affirmative savory lip ones. delicious.
21. Cherries or Blueberry? bing cherries raw, blueberries in my dad's pancakes
22. Do you want your friends to email you back? usually
23. What happened to this question?
24. What happened to this one?
25. Living arrangements? cramped and overpriced
26. When was the last time you cried? not sure. i almost cry every day but only really cry about once a month. probably the last horrible cry was leaving leiah, ben, betsy and my mom and dad in october. that one still hurts.
27. What is on the floor of your closet? the dog
28. Who is the friend/family you have had the  longest that you are sending this to?  my mom
29. What did you do last night? hung out at a pub with Kristin, Will, Melissa, NUC Dave, Gio & Raul, drinking beer and playing Guitar Hero
30. Favorite smells? thanksgiving dinner and mack when he changes deodorants
31. What inspires you? ladies
32. What are you afraid of?  corruption and lies
33. Plain, cheese or spicy hamburgers? sometimes a plain cheeseburger is a taste of heaven
34. Favorite dog breed?  devoted mutt
35. How many years at your current job? <1
36. Favorite day of the week? Saturday
37. How many states have you lived in?  three
38. Favorite holiday? halloween
39. Ever driven a Motorcycle or heavy machinery?  yes, a motorcycle, once with success and once it tumped on me and that was the end of that.
40. Who's your favorite NFL team?  UK is the only team I like
41. Do you have a house phone that is NOT cordless?   i don't even have a house phone
42. 10 inches of snow or 100-degree weather?  depends on if I want to swim or snuggle
43. What kind of car do you drive? no lo tengo un coche... I scoot
44. Do you have any tattoos?  uh huh

I also love reading other people's answers, so you should answer in the comments part. Pllleeeeeaaaassseee?!!

Happy Days

I spent the last couple of days rediscovering why I'm too old for things like "spring break" and why I really can't rely on potato chips and brownies as my sole sources of sustenance. That's right, it was the annual ski trip weekend with 30 of my oldest and newest friends, which means we were holed up in a cabin in a construction area in the mountains in Gatlinburg with nothing but board games, junk food and liquor. Good times.

Since most of my weekend has an alcoholic or hangover haze all over it, I can only really remember laughing. At Porkchop whenever he gave clues for Catch Phrase. At Thumper. At Amber 2 and Phil whenever they were wearing those ridiculous glasses and had to get a better look. At Will whenever I passed by him playing Guitar Hero. At Brady whenever I skunked him in my second-ever game of cornhole. At Jana moments before she passed out. At Vic wrestling a Jagered-out-of-his-mind Matt to the ground. At the artwork throughout the cabin.

And since it's been barely 24 hours since my last drink, I'm still in an exhausted stupor, so I'll let the pictures be worth the thousand words.

Will rethinks the whole marriage thing...

Lisa embodies a side effect of too much ski tripping.

Security.

Jon and his standbys... cafe lattes and Woodford!

You should have seen when Amber had them hooked on her shirt collar. Pee my pants funny.

This is what you call "double fisting with a beer bong backup."

Guitar Hero plays his favorite song ever -- "Surrender."

The Shot Train stop, starring Amber 2 in her shot sequence debut!

Team Drunk & Hello, My Name Is Drunk doing math.

JD, Manlissa and Megan 2 Getting Steamy

I'm pretty sure we killed on points. Girls tore it up.

Thanks to all who made it a weekend worth remembering -- to all the game planners, to Griffin for letting me steal his room, to all the girls on Team Amber, to the members of the Shot Train, to all the cooks/shoppers/keg transporters/money figurer outers/event organizers/video makers, and to Lisa for not killing me when I got 4. See you next year!

The Endorsement Series (Part 6 in a Series)

While going to Weight Watchers meetings may not make you lose weight (I weighed in at 148 last week-- a loss of 4.2 pounds in two months -- but that was before pizza night... and chip day... and taco night...), it does keep you abreast of all the latest high-taste/low-point foods on the market. I immediately discredit anyone who says, "The fat free dressings really aren't that bad once you get used to them," since I know the fat free dressings that are intended to be creamy are complete garbage. I'd rather dress my salad in water than let it swim in that sugar syrup with rehydrated chives crap. The people you can really believe are the ones who come in and say, "You can eat 51 Goldfish crackers for only two points. That's 51 cheesy snacks!" Those people know how to stretch food the way it was meant to be stretched. It's flavor value. It takes talent.

When a guy mentioned that he'd tried the latest Fiber One granola bars at my last meeting, I was a little apprehensive. I hadn't heard him contribute any suggestions before that meeting, so it meant he was new and knew nothing or he was quiet and finally found something worth talking about. Turns out, he's a genius.

My co-worker Molly, who is basically California's version of Jennifer, took the Fiber One Challenge first, and immediately showed up to work with a box of Peanut Butter & Oat flavored sticks of heaven for me to try. They were divine. Chewy, smooth, peanut buttery with real live peanut butter chips in them and a zig zag of peanut butter drizzle across the whole slice of goodness. De. lish. us.

Fiber One is known in the WW as the most bang-for-your-buck cereal, meaning that you can lace an entire tube of fiber pellets in a bag of melted semi-sweet chocolate morsels and come out with 16 haystacks of Kit Kat cousins that are only two points apiece. And now, they've mastered the two-point granola bar.

When "diet food" is so good you'd eat it if you could eat anything you ever wanted, it has succeeded. Whether Mack agrees with my new-found, fiber-full friend, well, that's a discussion for another day.

(Fiber One Bars are in the granola bar section of the grocery store. They're $3.99 for a box of five, but I've picked up the chocolate version at Target for $2.49. And, they're so new, I acutally had to take a picture of the box myself since I can't find one on the web to steal. That's how new this endorsement is!)

Our Bodies, Ourselves

Mack told me about this new artist who was preserving bodies and dissecting them in interesting poses forever ago, so when I saw a "Bodies: The Exhibition" ad cruise past on the top of a taxi, it was immediately added to the To Do list. It turns out that this new artist is actually a team of noted dissectors in China, but that didn't detract from the sick desire to see what's really inside all of us.

We paid entirely too much for our tickets and then took a trip through all the systems of the body. At first, it was kind of gross to see people standing there with yellow toenails, eyebrows, smiles and no skin, but it quickly became fascinating.










It was cool to see muscles splayed open like pinwheels to reveal metal rods and artificial joints. It was amazing to see a brain and try to imagine how that traceless mass of playdough controls everything we do. It was strange to see how our bodies look from a cross-section perspective. It was interesting that most of the bodies that were on display were men and looked Asian, as much as a skinless face with lips and eyebrows can look like any particular ethnicity.
Apparently there is a pregnant woman on display at some of the exhibitions, but she wasn't at ours. I can't imagine what that would have been like to see. Or imagine how her family came to the conclusion to donate her body, with fetus still therein, to this project.

My favorite part of the exhibit was the blood vessels. They have some process where they inject the circulatory system with these different colored polymers, and it makes the most stunning, colorful sculptures. They reminded me of coral reefs, little lung coral reefs and heart coral reefs and brain coral reefs -- evidence of beauty way beneath the skin's surface.

I'm a Whale Watcher (to be sung to the tune of the Wheel of Fortune promo song)

The Thomases braved temperatures in the high 50s and light, sprinkling rain to go whale watching yesterday. Tom, Shahin, Mack, Laila and I all boarded a boat that was half as seaworthy as the yacht we were hoping we'd be going on and twice as full. Of kids with that frozen green snot stuck in one nostril. And parents who thought that a slippery, rocking deck meant playground on the sea. And reasons not to follow that life path.

After about a 45-minute drive to Long Beach and a 45-minute cruise toward off-shore oil drilling platforms (in California?!!?), we spotted our first "blow." It was the typical puff of water and air that cartoon characters stand on top of, but much less dramatic and long-lasting. Regardless, it offered promise that we would see a gray whale.

This is what we were looking for.

Gray whales migrate from Alaska to Baja California every year between December and April to breed and give birth. There is another population of grey whales in the Pacific that travels between the Sea of Okhotsk and southern Korea, but it is smaller than the California clan. A third population in the North Atlantic was hunted to extinction 300 years ago.

At 52 feet long and weighing 36 tons, the whales live to be about 50–60 years old. They are one of the oldest species of mammals, having been on Earth for about 30 million years, which is weird because Jesus wasn't even around then. Curious.

As we charged ahead to catch up to this whale, we were told that we were pursuing a mother and her calf, and that if she felt threatened, she could speed up or change direction in an instant. Tail-tell (you can pause an admire the wit right there) signs of her course, however, float to the surface and are called footprints. Whenever the whale moves its tail, it interrupts the surface of the water and leaves it looking a little calmer and more glossy than the rest. By following their footprints, you can start to guess where they'll surface.

Can you spot the footprints?

I was expecting a little bit of pomp and circumstance surrounding the surfacing, but, to be honest, it blows (again, feel free to pause and admire the wit). You see a little water explosion, and then a strange, fleshy, cold mass peeks out through the matching waves for an instant, and then it disappears again, leaving you wondering if that was the whale or just weird light on the wave. I wouldn't be nearly as let down if everything I'd ever seen about marine life wasn't courtesy of Sea World. Once you see killer whales jumping through fiery hoops and dolphins launching their trainers fifty feet in the air, well, a whale poof and a part of its back in nature -- the kind that's in view of an off-shore oil drilling platform -- just doesn't get the heart racing.

Share our experience. Save your $25. Preserve your feelings about the general public. And their kids. And the majesty of whales.

This is what we were expecting...

This is what we got.

And a pretty view of Catalina Island.

And lots of pelican sightings.

And a pretty rainbow.

I Guess I Should Be Flattered

Being married comes with such bonuses as someone to bring in all the groceries, someone to park the car and someone to deliver the rent check. It also keeps you from having to go to the movies alone and makes cooking dinner a little more rewarding. But my favorite part of being married is that arsenal of secrets that gets bigger every day you're together because you just can't hide your true self. For instance...

Sometimes the urge to dance takes control of my body and I end up flailing my arms and gyrating my hips in the middle of the kitchen at totally inappropriate and uninspired times. Fortunately, Mack isn't gifted in the area of dance, so when he laughs, I know he is laughing with me and not at me. Normally he just cocks one eyebrow and does a laugh/sigh/huff combo while trying to keep his eyes from rolling back into his head. It's very sweet.

But yesterday, I saw through his masked kindness. My dancing was inspired for once, as I'd just finished watching J. Lo's MTV show Dance Life, and I went to celebrate something, like paying the rent or finally having food, with my mad skillz. Mack, entranced by the World of Warcraft, glanced my way before saying, "You remind me of Domo Kun."

He's said this to me before and explained it, but part of what makes our marriage work is that I forget everything he tells me and that makes his stories seem brand new every time. It was part of the contract. So, I couldn't remember Domo Kun, but I could remember having mixed feelings about it. Here's why...

Domo Kun is potentially adorable, potentially fierce, and potentially a fuzzy turd with an angry mouth. He is sturdy, but square, strong yet shapeless. He has nice, bright teeth. He is either scowling or laughing uncontrollably.

Since the association isn't exactly clear to my delicate id, let's look further.

In social situations, Domo Kun appears to be helpful, although he could also be leading other creatures to dangerous situations or justifying abandoning them altogether. He watches television and either interacts with it as a friend or battles it like a foe. I, for one, tend to smile vacantly at the television, whether I'm watching High Maintenance 90210 or Man Vs. Wild. Mack is the one who yells at the television from across the room, especially if White Rapper is on.

I'm still not entirely convinced that the association is a good thing, but I guess it could be worse. At least he's not saying, "You remind me of a fuzzy square turd who tries to eat kittens and lead others to certain death."

Old Dog, Old Tricks

She did it again. I have no idea where she finds these things. This time she crunched her way through it like a starving beaver, so I got to see just how stale and funky it was on the inside. I guess she didn't like what we were having for dinner.

Supper Time

Because Mack was still at school, the ham was moldy, the leftover green curry wasn't really very good when it was fresh, and I can't eat pasta one more night, I present... the Dinner Challenge.

It wasn't microwave popcorn night. It wasn't green beans night. Just what was Thursday's dinner???

Thank god I don't have kids. I couldn't see them being very forgiving of my lazy culinary habits.

All Work and No Play

Out here in sunny SoCal, I work for a women's website called Capessa. We went live on Dec. 21, through Yahoo. It seems like a pretty small thing, considering it comes out of three cubicals, but I'm starting to absorb just how big it really is.

Today we were featured in an article in the Wall Street Journal. Which is pretty awesome. Especially since the only major paper I've ever been in is the Herald-Leader. A couple times with letters to the editor, a couple times on behalf of Nougat, and once when I was in high school and I hit a grand slam. They actually used the word "fireworks" in that one. I mailed it to relatives.

Even though I'm not actually in the Wall Street Journal article as Amber, I am there as Capessa. And, my blood relative Leiah is actually pictured and named, so my energy is directly featured. Dear Elijah Maples is also pictured. Woo hoo. Check it out.

And then come to Capessa, join the Capessa group and celebrate the collective wisdom of women. Girls rule.

An Apple a Day...

The sweetest doll ever born is in the hospital. Betsy went from watching Real World/Road Rules Duel and eating pickles to being in the midst of an intestinal bloodbath in a matter of four hours. No one knows what happened. No one knows exactly what she had yet. Suffice it to say that this exquisite angel and well-versed hospital patient acutally asked her mom, "Am I going to die?"

The thought of her being that scared and that sick just makes me quiver with agony. In situations like this, it is a curse and a blessing that I am half a country away.

Trying to figure out how she went from fine to literally wasting away is an exercise in futility. The doctors seem to think it was something she ate or accidentally injested. The culprit could be an unwashed apple carrying an invisible but deadly bacteria that grows even faster when it's cold. It could be something hand-selected and hand-delivered as she touched her mouth. It could be something not yet described on the Center for Disease Control website, especially since the closest thing to her symptoms is E Coli. You know, the sickness that comes in bags of spinach and kills all those other people on the news.

My mom and I started doing what controlling Tauruses do... looking for ways to ensure it won't happen again. Get the vegetable wash, since water doesn't really clean them. Microwave everything for at least 30 seconds before eating it. Peel all fruits and vegetables to get the contaminated skins off them. In the end, we had to admit that we were helpless.

No matter what we do, there is a farmer trying to cut costs and maximize production, a corporation trying to get one more dollar by injecting animals with hormones and antibiotics, and a bacteria out there trying just as hard to live and adapt as humans do. No matter what, anytime someone gets that sick, it's going to be completely unexpected. There is going to be no one to blame but nature -- the nature that humans helped create by exploiting it and demanding too much from it.

I love that we have a global economy, that I can get shoes from Spain and Christmas cards from China. With a global economy has come global awareness, global tolerance, global explorations. But when it comes to food, to water, does it really make sense that we're getting apples at unseasonal times of the year from a part of the world as hungry for global participation as the United States? Is it really good business to reject what your own community can produce so that you can have more to choose from? Are we supposed to be comforted by the fact that we can't trace where the food we eat comes from, even if it could kill us?

Betsy should be fine. She seems to be getting better everyday. They're still trying to figure out what she picked up in safe and sound Louisville, Ky., where my mom and dad shop at legendary produce markets and make concerted efforts to buy healthful foods. Betsy's progress is wonderful, promising, most of all relieving news. But what if a pregnant Shannon or nursing Leiah or older grandparent had picked that apple instead of a healthy Betsy? How many other people have to fall victim to their pantries before we change the way we consume?

I don't have any answers, but I think Local Harvest may be onto something.

Ben & His Auntie Am

This is bragging. Although, didn't Dan Bern say it ain't bragging if it's true? Or was that Muhammed Ali? Whatever the case, this is not bragging. This is shoving a cute baby down your throat because I love him!

Little Packages

In addition to blueberry pancakes every morning, rooms so dark you can sleep until two in the afternoon and still think it's only four in the morning, and people that I love more than anything, Home also has a Little.

Little, who I thought should be named Buttercup after the princess in The Princess Bride, is allegedly Betsy's chihuahua, but Little, like all dogs and children before her, intrinsically knows who the real mom is and, therefore, spends most of her time riding on my mom's shoulder, sleeping under her shirt, snuggled under her covers, and biting anyone who dares come too close when she is watching tv with mom. She also can dance on two feet like a ballerina, likes to bring you toys when you come in the door, prefers her food, aka "crunchies," to be laid across the floor in a sweeping motion, and does "the pretty" when she's really interested in pleasing you.

Although she didn't inherit the princess's name, she did come equipped with her tendencies. She likes to get up on the table while we're reading the newspaper. She likes her own bowl of cereal in an appropriately-sized bowl, complete with a splash of milk. She expects a reasonable helping of turkey, especially if it's the kind we have for special occasions, but certainly every couple of days. And whatever you are feeding her, whether it's turkey or chips or crackers or apples, she will turn her nose up at any piece offered to her that is bigger than a thumbnail.


For a six-pound dog, Little has done an admirable job of training us. She is brilliant.

Ghosts of Christmases Past, Present & Future

There's never a dull moment at the Griswald, er, Hensley's house at Christmas, and with the addition of two husbands, one fiance and one infant, the odds of something happening go way up. With laptops adorning every flat surface in the living room, discarded shoes at the top of every flight of stairs, and "boop boop" pads decorating every discreet corner in the house to demostrate how well-potty-trained the little Chihuahua is, tragedy is basically being tempted.

The clutter and lingering disaster is part of the thrill of being at home for the holidays. Just how long can a dozen unique personalities at different stages of life and enlightenment get along, especially when half of their time is spent making meals or doing dishes?

Perhaps the most exciting part of Christmas at our house is the Appendicitis Attack. For the last half decade, my dad has spent either Christmas Eve or Christmas morning at the Urgent Treatment Center or the Emergency Room. It started with Shannon, whose appendicitis morphed into menstral cramps. Then Leiah, one Christmas Eve, got a bout of appendicitis so bad, she ended up with a bladder infection. Even Little, the dog, had an absessed appendix one Christmas that erupted when she jumped from my mom's shoulder and landed on the hallway floor. I've secretly had appendicitis every year for the last five years, but eventually I poop it out. That's when the appendicitis attacks the plumbing, which is another indicator of a successful Christmas.

This year, son-in-law, husband, brother-in-law, uncle, dad-to-be Charles carried on the Hensley family tradition. He bravely started coming down with appendicitis on Christmas Eve, just before our 13th meal of the day. Not wanting to let marinated Alaskan Salmon, made especially for his vegetarian tendencies, go to waste or to miss out on the mystery present inside his holiday cracker (a three-year-old tradition courtesy of the victim himself), he sat through the meal before fully succumbing to the Appendicitis Attack.

I thought for sure we'd dodge the AA bullet this year, since Baby Ben would be filling the house with appendix soothing gurgles and demonstrating how best to have a bowel movement, but when I got to Shannon and Charles' bedroom at 9 o'clock Christmas morning, I was met with a sprawling, vacant bed. The saddest moment of the day. Then I learned that Charles had gone to the doctor. The second saddest moment of the day. Then I realized Christmas would be stalled. The third saddest moment of the day.

Charles ended up having the actual, real appendicitis, the kind where the appendix is inflamed and the pain localizes in the lower right side of the abdomen. The kind my dad actually, really had when I was a little girl which inspired the collective hypochondria that makes us believe that every unfamiliar stomach action is destined to be appendicitis. The kind that requires surgery and vicatin. The kind that delays Christmas a whole day while we wait for Charles to get better so he, his wife and our dad can be a part of our Christmas gift-opening marathon.

The Boy Who Stalled Christmas made it home the next day, and we picked up on our traditions where we left off -- eating, drinking, and being merry, with a thin layer of potential disaster on top to keep things exciting. It was the most wonderful time of the year.

'Tis the Season

At 9 p.m., after making ornaments out of a cut up soda box and some glitter from my forgotten/abandoned craft box, I felt inspired to do Christmas cards. I love to do Christmas cards, and it's not necessarily because I like to get them. I like to spend a couple hours flipping through my address book, prioritizing the 36 people I want to know I'm thinking of them, sending a quickie message into the Christmas mail abyss, never knowing for sure if they're getting the message but feeling good about at least sending it out.

This is the first year I haven't sent them out solo, and I gotta say, adding Mack's name felt a little fake, a little conflicting and made me a little mad. He didn't ask me to include him on the cards, but to omit him seemed to be bragging, like an unspoken, "I am better than you because I am thoughtful and it is the thought that counts." To include him gave him a sidecar of credit that crippled the integrity of my thought. I mean, it's not like he signed his name. To be honest, I don't know if he wanted to sign his name or not, but I assumed he was like every other man I've ever met who masks his laziness by trying to appear flippant about such silliness as Christmas cards. I added him because I wanted to be nice, which is probably the whole desperate reason I spend two hours every December being inventive with the phrase, "Happy Holidays."

Mack does not care in the slightest if I include his name or invite him to sign the Christmas cards or ask his opinion as to which ones are cutest. I have a feeling he is not alone. I can't think of a single Christmas card I've ever received from a single man. I get them from couples, families, single women, but single men, never.

Do they not think? Or is the thought too much to ask? Or are they too cool for cards? Or are they lazy? Or, maybe, do they not do it so that women can feel good about having the thought and passing it on? Do they secretly like getting the Christmas cards when they get them from their women friends and from other couples whose female component takes the initiative? How is it that something I like to do so much can seem so worthless to the other gender? How can we be so different? What would people think if I just left his name off? Why should I care, especially since these are my top 36 people?

I guess it comes down to relationship building, and women are so much better than men at relationship building. If I were to get a Christmas card from one of my dormmates from my freshmen year of college once a year, I would look forward to that once-a-year update and expect nothing else. That would be sufficient relationship maintenance for me. If I send a hopeful hello to a cousin I haven't spoken to in years, I hope it resonates enough to reinvigorate that relationship, but if it doesn't, hey, I tried. The Christmas card relationship round up -- all I can say it's a good thing women keep it going. If we weren't keeping relationships alive, there'd be some very lonely men in the world. And all that thought that's supposed to count so much might be lost in the shuffle toward the PS3.

Old Habits Die Hard

Ever since she was a puppy, Venus has had an affinity for bread. Pizza crusts, bagels, baguettes... any hard, crusty bread turns her into a sneaky hoarder. A few years ago she lost bed privileges, and one of the hardest things that went with that was the "silly dog" smile that swept across my face as I'd stretch my hand under my pillow and come up with a covertly buried pizza crust. She won't eat the bread, she just wants to keep it. And when she buries it, she doesn't like for you to notice what she's doing. The cutest part about the whole deal is when she uses her nose to cover the bread up. She used to stand on her blanket while trying to shove it over the bread and then smoosh it down on top of it. It was a futile exercise, but she thought she was really accomplishing something. One day, just before we moved, I caught her burying a pizza crust outside. Hilarious.

Since we don't have much of a yard here, and since she's already been hauled in once for meandering about unsupervised, she doesn't get the hoarding opportunities she used to get. But somehow she still finds a way to feed her habit. On Friday, as we walked around the block so she could go potty and I could pick up her hot poop (going to the bathroom in front of people is also something she's had to learn how to do), she picked up a hunk of bread somewhere along the way. I have no idea where she picked it up or how long she'd been carrying it, but when we got home, there it was, sticking out the sides of her mouth, while her eyes said, "What? I don't have an enormous hunk of bread in my mouth."
I left the door open while I finished getting ready so she could have some alone time with her special find, but since watching her bury things is one of the highlights of having a weirdo for a dog, I waited until she was around the corner and then I followed her. Sure enough, she was pawing at someone's unkempt flower bed, digging out a spot for a chunk of bread that she will not eat, will not even remember burying, but still cherishes and needs to save it. The cuteness of her at those moments is enough to make me forget just how bad she can smell and enough to remind me just how sad life would be without her quirks warming up each day for me.