Listen...can you keep a secret?

I mean seriously. Don't tell Santa I said this.

But I am really annoyed with his elves.

Not a fan.

Sure they look all smiling and happy and helpful.....but frankly I'm getting sick of being fooled by those sweet looking little faces.

I tested them, yet again, and I swear this is the last time.

I started getting out my Christmas decorating stuff (pictures are blurred to let me maintain a teeny, tiny bit of my pride...sigh) and I deliberately left a big mess just so the elves would feel needed.
Ya know? I was trying to do my part to help build their self-esteem because I read somewhere that elves have notoriously low self-esteem...being so short and all...

Just trying to do my part as a compassionate, caring, non-elf-discriminatory person and all.

And what do they do? They obviously just came over and hung out in the living room, probably found the wine fridge, maybe found the hidden bag of hershey kisses...

They just did absolutely, totally, zero in the help department.

And I'm disgusted.

But since I am all fair-minded and everything I'm willing to leave the mess up just one more day to give them a chance to redeem themselves.

Sigh...

Please do not attempt the fluffy hair thing...

...that I wrote about on this post.

Or at least do not attempt it before attending a concert.

I am firmly convinced that it is somehow attracting people to me that are...ummmm...smelly.

Same story as Trans-Siberian Orchestra.

We got to the venue for Sara Evans.

I was all kinds of wiggly in excitement because her voice is so wonderful.

Two empty seats to the right of me.

I keep telling my husband to keep his fingers crossed.

Show starts.

Sara is amazing.

Two women start down the aisle. I look up. Uh oh. They are the sisters to the guy I sat by at TSO. OK, I tell myself to be positive. I look again.

They are carrying big armloads of food including popcorn and hotdogs topped with chili and raw onions.

The people around us are sniffing in disgust.

What? What is this? How can this be?

Go away bad people.

Leave.

They squash me going by and the hovering scent of raw onion and chili makes me feel slightly less holiday-like.

My husband leans over to the woman on his left. They talk.

I am squashed.

I am mad.

I am cursing my fluffy hair which has, obviously caused this, cuz before I knew the fluffy hair trick this never happened to me.

I look to my left and my husband and scooted down four seats to his left. The woman next to him saw what was happening and accomodated his request!

Oh hooray!

I love him!

He is my hero.

I scoot down and leave a four seat buffer between me and additional chili/onion stench!

Hooray

The show is wonderful.

She sings amazingly well.

I am blown away by her versions of the Little Drummer Boy, Oh Come all Ye Faithful and Oh Holy Night!

And no nostril cells were damaged in the pursuit of this musical magic.

Go me!

But I'm thinking next Friday when we go to see Guy Fieri I'm gonna just let my hair hang down like stick hair. Why risk it three times in a row?

Sigh...

We have a winner!

Our sweet little blonde Grandaughter, Mo, picked a winner... and here's how she did it!

Drumroll (and awwww....) please!



Catherine! Congratulations! Please e-mail me at: jennymatlock@cox.net with your snail mail address and the snail mail address of your sharing buddy.

The lemons will be mailed out on Monday!

And Catherine is a new follower! Hooray! Here's what she said:

What a great giveaway :) ! My long distance friend Anne sent me a sweet surprise recently, and I just know she'd love some lemons. :)
Blessings,
Catherine

And now I am off to get ready to see a Sara Evans concert!

Thanks everyone for "playing"!

We'll have another giveaway soon!

Week 10 of Red Writings 12 weeks of Christmas!

OK, this week we are supposed to write about Christmas parties! But I haven't given any yet or even gone to any.

I wonder if it's my poor table manners?

Hopefully there will still be a party or two in my immediate future but I'm gonna have to cheat a bit here and go backwards in time to share two of my favorite party ideas with you. Gotta warn ya, though, there are lots 'o pictures so you might want to get comfy.

The first is a graham cracker house making party. Hey, we're lazy and gingerbread can be really hard to work with! We found out, though, that graham crackers (get the cheapest ones) can be heated in the microwave for about 30 seconds and then they become soft enough you can use a serrated knife to cut the roof angles without breaking them.






This other little party idea is a progressive dinner party we have with a small group of Master Gardener friends. We're supposed to decorate our table with things from our gardens and since roses and citrus are so plentiful in December that's what I used. I think it turned out quite pretty.


And those are my two party ideas!

If you want to read about other parties check out Red Writings McLinkey for this event by clicking anywhere on this long, dragged out sentence!

And the drawing for the lemons will be mid-afternoon tomorrow. My little name drawer is at pre-school until 1:30 tomorrow but I'll have everything ready for her when she comes home!

Best friends...

Best friends support you when you're down.

Best friends listen when you cry.

Best friends understand when things are hard and don't say "suck it up!"

Best friends feel our sorrow.

Best friends understand our pain.

And we do those things for them.

Do you agree?

My question to you, then, on this cold and rainy Arizona afternoon is why aren't we ever this kind to ourselves?

Why must we beat ourselves up and say "c'mon girl, be tough, no crying, quit having a pity party."

If one of our close friends was experiencing what we're sometimes going through we would be supportive and kind and make them tea and send them a card and we would help them until they felt better.
But we rarely do that for ourselves.

And I think that's sad.

I was talking this afternoon to a friend whose Mother just died two weeks ago, who suffers from chronic illness, whose grandson is a relapsed heroin addict with all the ugly stuff attached to it and she said to me...

"I am such a baby. All I do is cry. I hate that I am having a pity party...I am just a whiner."

And instead of answering that I said "wow, you think that's bad? I have a friend whose Mom just died, who suffers horribly from degenerative arthritis and whose grandson is a heroin addict."

And she said, seriously, "wow, that poor thing..." and then she paused.

And then she thought about it.

And then she yelled at me a little bit for tricking her.

But it made me think really hard about why we are so darned hard on ourselves.

My naturopath has a theory that the reason women statistically suffer from chronic illness at a higher rate then men is because we are always trying to tough it out.

She believes that if we just cried when we need to, took a day of self-pity when we need to, didn't always put ourselves down by thinking we are not tough enough and not strong enough that we would all be a lot healthier.

And I agree.

And for some reason I felt compelled to share that with you today.

Just something to think about on this rare, drizzly, gray Arizona afternoon.

And while you're thinking about it make sure you entered my double box-o-lemons giveaway two posts down!

I sat entranced in the dark...

...with bouncy hair (hopefully you read that trick on my blog a little while back because it truly works).

I was prepared to feel Christmas.

I was prepared to feel culture.

And I did, a little bit, although it was slightly uncomfortable.

The seats we had purchased to see the Trans-Siberian Orchestra this afternoon were decent. However, the man next to me was ... ummm... OK, Jenny, be tactful. Ummm.... very, very, very large.

Now look, I'm not throwing any weight stones cuz Heaven knows they would bounce off and hit me back but this man was seriously huge.

But I was determined to be positive and feel Christmas so I snuggled extra close to my sweet husband who smelled wonderful and was wearing my favorite old, denim shirt that was velvetty and soft.

The lights went down. The music came up. And I felt this weird vibration thing from the guy next to me and all the sudden I thought I was going to die. Holy laser light show! Did this guy eat an entire pot of chili by himself. I hoped it was a one-time thing.

It was not.

Oh, but I tried and tried to feel Christmas-y.

When the laser lights twinkled on the falling snow I felt the stirrings of memory...and then I felt something else and HOLY SPECIAL EFFECTS! all my nostalgia left me.

I leaned closer to my husband and inhaled the wonderful smell of his clothesline dried shirt.

OK, that was better.

But to sit super close to my good-smelling husband I had to sit sort of a in a twisted, writhe of a position that was not very pleasant.

And the show went on and on and on.

Sure the narrator had that marvelous deep voice that takes you back to what you wish you remembered your Great-Grandfather sounding like.

Sure the music was cool.

Sure the lasers were amazing.

But, honestly, I was just sitting there engulfed in this foul-smell.

There were no other seats to move to.

The mans wife kept hitting him.

I wanted to hit him, too, but I was afraid violence would release even more gas.

And then they wrapped up the Christmas portion of the program.

Seriously, I had lots of things I wanted to remember to write about how the audience became one in the mesmerizing purity of the notes and blah, blah, blah...

But old smelly wasn't letting me get into any of that.

Then one of the announcer-guys of the program said that they were going to share some of the new music from their new CD.

And all the sudden not only was it smelly it was scary. It was dark, dark music with red pulsing laser, and girls writhing on the ground with lots of blond hair getting violently flipped about and huge TV screens with helicopters hovering and fire flaming up all over the stage.

And I lasted through one song and told my husband that I felt like I was having a bad acid trip.

Which is a funny remark coming from me because a) not only have I never taken acid or any other drug even though I was a teenager in the 70's and b) I have never taken acid or any other drug.

But it seemed like what I imagine a bad acid trip would have been like which makes me quite happy that I never experienced either a) or b).

So we headed out.

Went to the bathroom with no long lines.

And when we walked out of the restrooms they were playing my favorite, favorite Christmas song... the one set to Canon's Pachelbel. And there was no political protest stuff on the big TV screens, the blonde chicks had brushed or otherwise contained their long flowing locks and all the fires had been extinguished.

So we listened leaning against the wall and my husband put his arm around me and was all snuggly and sweet smelling and the air around me was as fresh and pure as a pine glade in Colorado.

And I was finally happy.

Because I finally felt Christmas.

The end.


Oh, and don't forget to check out of my giveaway posted on yesterdays post. which you can get to by clicking "older post" right below this or clicking anywhere on the link!

No mush today, just something to give away

Ahemmm... I'm back to being my normal smart-alec self so no sappy writing here for me today...no sir-ree Bob. I actually know someone that used to say that...and my name was never Bob and I was always a girl so I could never quite figure that one out.

But...

Today I'm hoping you might want to register for a DOUBLE giveway so I can send you something sour that you can make into something sweet, sweet, sweet.

And I want to send the same thing to someone you know that needs a little surprise in the mail!

So although this is just a single post it's actually TWO GIVEAWAYS IN ONE!

In honor of Christmas and in honor of the fact that our lemon tree is breaking-the-branches laden with fruit here's the giveaway.

To be entered in this giveaway please comment on this post.

You can be entered three times if you:

1. Post a comment with the name of someone who has surprised you with something sweet this year. You don't have to tell the story - unless you want to - just the first name will do, though.
2. Register to be a follower to my blog. If you are (or register) that will be an extra entry
3. Post a link to this giveaway on your own blog.

I will select a winner on Wednesday, December 9th (with the use of a little, blonde winner picker!) and boxes of lemons will be winging their way toward you both on Monday, December 14th priority mail.

And now I am off to sit by the fire and recover from watching three little grand-dynamos for the past three days.

If any of you are bored and want to come by and clean up the damage left behind from Hurricane Granddaughters, feel free to just stop on by anytime.

And good luck to you all!