Apparently I Shouldn’t Be Trusted With Wine, Either

Last Saturday night, I was invited to a wine party hosted by a friend, where we would be participating in a gift exchange involving ornaments. We had a great time, and if anyone ever gets the opportunity to form a wine club, do so!! Yes, it’s mostly ladies who meet, but the gentlemen also have to opportunity to be fawned over and treated as kings of the moment.

Wine does that to women, you know.

Anyway, because I am the only one of the group that doesn’t live in the neighborhood, I have to drive, so my alcohol intake is very minute. At most, I drink maybe half a glass, and then just have water. When I get home, I will then have a glass of wine before bed. That’s pretty harmless, unless you happen to get a phonecall from a friend.

Friend: I was wondering if you could do me a favor.

Me: Sure, what’s up?

Friend: I have a gift exchange coming up, and I would like to give something more personal than a gift card.

Me: What did you have in mind?

Friend: Well, one of your canvases would be perfect.

Me: Oh sure! I can do one. Any theme in particular you would like?

Friend: Christmas, or Harley Davidson?

Me: Christmas it is…

So now I have yet another project to do this week. That makes about 20. But most of them are ornaments like this one:

Busy week for me, but at least I’ll be doing something I love, right?

I just hope I don’t glue myself to the chair…again…. 😉

The German Pickle

I have a quandary. This being a Hungarian-Puerto Rican family here, we obviously observe a faux German tradition*. We are extremely hoi polloi here. Anyway, tradition holds that you hang a green pickle ornament on the tree on Christmas Eve, and whichever child finds it, gets a special gift.

Found here!

This year, a complaint was filed by Little One against this so-called tradition. You see, her sister is 5′ 8″, and her brother 5′ 10″, and she is still in the “Pocket Venus” range of 5′ 2″, putting her mad searching skillz at a disadvantage. In her opinion, such a tradition is severely biased against the shortest member of the family and, as such, should be banned.

I told her this is the Empire of Aggie™, and the ACLU has no jurisdiction here.

She wisely relented, but asked that I give consideration to her plight, which translated means that she whined until I told her to shut it. But since they all want a shot at the special gift, I have decided that the pickle shall be hidden somewhere in the living room, giving everyone even odds of finding it.

And giving me peace and quiet around here 🙂

*It is celebrated here in the US as a German tradition, but oddly, my friends in Germany have never heard of it, and I found no stories in Bavaria to account for it.

Saturday Sithy

FOR REAL!!!!

Want like BURNING!!! 😀

Chatty Sithy

In what has been a rude awakening for me, it has been brought to my attention that I tend to talk a lot.

ME!!

And lest you think it was done in a subtle manner, by a well-meaning friend, it wasn’t. It was my mom, and it was done out of tough love.

This past Thanksgiving, I drove down to my folks to pick them up so they could spend the holiday with my sister’s family and mine. I live five houses down from my sister, so it’s more convenient to bring up my folks than to caravan down to their place. Also, they get to enjoy the holiday, instead of my mom cooking and cleaning for twenty people. On the drive back from their home, I kept up what I thought was an intelligent conversation about the happenings with the kids, changes in Hubby’s schedule, my new vehicle, etc., when suddenly, my mom pipes up:

Mom: My goodness, (Aggie)! You just don’t shut up!

Me: Wha…??

Mom: You have been talking non-stop since we left the house!

Me: Well, I have a lot to say, mom.

Mom: Why?

Me: Because I don’t get to talk to anyone!!

Mom: But you never talked much growing up…

Me: That’s because my sisters never let me.

Mom: Hm…that’s true.

So yes, I do talk a lot. I make no excuses for it. I am simply trying to catch up after 35 years of being a relatively quiet person. And now that I have a blog, I can type as much as I want! 😉

For the Birds

I am a big mystery fan, especially old school stuff. I can read Hammett and Christie and everything in between over and over again. The same applies for movies. The older stuff, grainy black and white, suspenseful music…ahhhh, that’s just classic.

A few weeks ago, one of the networks had an Alfred Hitchcock marathon. Y’all can imagine how jazzed I was! Four classics back to back, and no, Marnie wasn’t one of them, thank goodness. Psycho, Rear Window, The Trouble With Harry, and Rope. I got my tissues*, my cup of coffee, and my cozy throw, and sat next to Little One, who was home sick with a tummy bug. I had asked her if I could watch them and she was gracious enough to let me.

This is where y’all roll your eyes, just like I did.

First up is Psycho, and I’m enjoying it immensely, when I notice that Little One has turned over to face the TV and watch the film. I warned her that it was suspenseful, and a bit scary, but she told me she could handle it. And boy, did she handle it. At the end of the film she was raving about how awesome it was, and how we should get the DVD for it (I have it, but didn’t want her to go get it and demand to watch it again, since she missed the first fifteen minutes or so). Anyway, we end up watching all four movies and she asks me if Hitchcock made any others as suspenseful as those. “Many”, I said. “Do you have more?” she asked. “But of course, but I don’t think you are ready for some of them.” “Like which ones?” she wondered. And my soul froze, thinking of the one Hitchcock film that still manages to freak me out and leave me sleepless for days!!

I told her about Rebecca, and North by Northwest, but I kept The Birds to myself. I know my kid, and the moment she finds out birds start attacking humans in a sleepy little town, she is going to want to watch it, in the dark, all agog at Tippy Hedren in her beautiful green suit getting ravaged by crows. And then she’s going to want to sleep in my bed, where I will lay in the dark, waiting to hear the flap of wings on my roof.

No, thank you. I like being mistress of my domain.

*I always cry when Martin Balsam is killed off.

Drama Queen

No, this isn’t about my friend The Queen. She abhors drama, unless it’s in a book or TV show. No, this is about Shakespeare!!

I love reading the works of Shakespeare. Very few works stir my soul as much as his do. I suppose being Hispanic and having the gift of talking with my hands lends itself to interpreting Shakespeare. Either that, or I just like living vicariously through literature. It’s a toss-up.

Right now, Eldest’s class is dissecting Hamlet. I was totally jazzed about this, because I have studied the play many times, with different teachers as well as helping other students in college with papers and the like. I was READY FOR THE CHALLENGE!!

Until…

Eldest: Mom, sorry, but I can’t let you help me with this.

Me: Wha….??

Eldest: Our teacher wants us to do this blind, write the first thing that we think of for each passage.

Me: (still not grasping the concept) But….

Eldest: (smirking a bit) Sorry mom…

Me: Sigh….

So much for me helping my kids with something I actually know. Let’s face it: Statistics drives me into hysterics and makes me want to cut someone. Ditto for Physics (stop glaring, LC LtC). Just once I want to be the one the kids seek for homework help….

Until then, I will content myself with being the lead Drama Queen around here.

SOMEONE GET ME SOME CYBER SMELLING SALTS!!! 😀

Sunday Sithy

Well, it has rained all weekend, which is a blessing around here. Like any normal woman I asked where the heck this was back in the summer. So, I am going to enjoy today with a wonderful cup of coffee and/or tea and leave you with a Sithy:

Hope y’all enjoy your Sunday!! 😀

To Bling, or Not to Bling

Every year Hubby’s work has a holiday ball. We attend, mostly because it’s the only night of the year when we can get all dressed up. This year I was not attending obviously, and very glad that I didn’t have to hunt for yet another evening gown, when my friend, whose hubby doesn’t care to go, decided on a fabulous idea: our “circle” of wives gets together, dressed to the nines, for an evening out on the town. We are talking limousine and champagne here, people!

So the question is, do I wear bling? So many gilded lilies can make people blind, you know 😉

Oh, Christmas Tree….

How lovely are your branches? Well, it depends, really. Growing up in a very small town in the mountains of Puerto Rico, we didn’t have access to Christmas pine trees, so my mom would decorate whatever potted tree she had not transplanted yet with those wonderful gaudy multi-colored Christmas lights, and some mirrored ornaments. We girls didn’t care what ornaments and lights were on it, as long as mom and dad lit that sucker up at night, turning off all the lights in the living room so we could sit and STARE at the colorful spectacle. Those were some lovely nights.

Once we moved to Texas, though, my mom decided the tree was going to be a decorator vehicle. Everything matched, and while it was beautiful every year, I still missed the days of just the big bulb lights and glass ornaments. Once I was married, though, I would be more artistic with the tree, even to the point of not having a tree at all, using a huge broken branch to hold ornaments one year. And then I got into the mom rut: making a well-matched tree. And so was the pattern established, until I read this post at Innocent Bystanders.

So, I’m digging out all of my Star Trek™ ornaments, and the mismatched glass balls, and the multi-colored lights, and the crappy fuzzy tinsel garland, and every single ornament the kids have made since they started school, and I will let the kids throw it together the way they like it.

Because I want them to sit in a darkened house, looking up at the Christmas tree in wonder, the same way I did.

Color My World

I was struck today by a beautiful quote I read by the artist, Marc Chagall.

In our life there is a single color, as on an artist’s pallette, which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the color of love.

Most of us are concrete about such things as color. Leaves are green, skies are blue, clouds are white (around here, we prefer them grey!). But emotions, charged or subtle, have colors too. When we are sad, we are blue. When we are mad, we see red. When we are envious, we turn green, unless we have had too much alcohol. Then it’s literal and not figurative. But love? Is the color of love that deep dark red that flows through our veins? Is it the soft blue of a calm lake? Could it be the bright green of the new buds of Spring? Or maybe the blazing orange of a bonfire? Perhaps, the dark glowing umber in the smoldering embers?

Courtesy of Matus at Deviantart

The truth is, everyone sees the color of love differently, because love is not as easily defined as anger, or jealousy, or sadness. I close my eyes and try to picture what love’s true color is in my mind. And as the pallette of emotions drips its paints on my heart and soul, I come to the realization that love, true love, is simply colorblind. 🙂