No Sleep For You...Come Back One Year

Tonight is Christmas Eve and since I have been deemed "Santa's Little Helper" by my sister, there will be little to no sleep for me tonight. Each year, it never occurs to anyone to plan to finish all the late night Santa-like activities in advance, so yet again, we will burning the midnight-sugar cookies.

My family has always had a very large Christmas. In fact, it involves so many toys for everyone (including the adults) that we usually end up getting no sleep that night either....thus my affinity for the Christmas day afternoon nap.

Tonight, however, my sister, mom, niece and I will stage an elvish assembly line of wrapping for an endless string of misshapen PlaySkool toys that require the development of new methods for cutting and taping (and a few little fights with gravity). This goes on into the wee small hours of the morning, until my mom can no longer form coherent sentences.

So the next morning, when all the little ones are bursting with excitement to see what Santa has left, we are all in the corner, sucking down Dr. Peppers and desperately trying to keep our eyes open. If it wasn't for Reese's Peanut Butter Trees and the squealing of 5-year-olds, none of us would make it through the morning.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night...i mean, morning.

Mysteries of the Universe

I used to think that "self-scan" lines in stores were a stroke of genius...until I stood behind six people at a self-checkout line at Wal-Mart, wondering why the other two self-checkouts were closed. (Really, what is the point of having them?) And why, like the ATM, movie ticket machines, or the doctor's office, these scanners are yet another version of the post office line...where time stops while other people take weeks to process their transactions and I take about 35 seconds. I also started wondering why stores have 30 checkout lines in the first place when they only actually use a handful of them at any given time. 'It's Saturday--in December--at Wal-Mart.' If you don't use them all then, when do you??

My mind started jumping to all the other great mysteries of the universe. For example:

- Drivers in Utah. I just heard that my cousin had a wreck while making a left-hand turn. The guy next to her decided to make a U-turn from the right-hand left-turn lane. How did this dude get a driver's license? (Actually, I fear that I might know this guy....)

- Lunch fiascos. How come, at Apple Spice Junction last week, I ordered the ASJ (ie: "Apple Spice Junction") Signature Salad only to be told that they don't carry it anymore. Wha?? The "Signature Salad" you don't carry?

- Diet, low-calorie water. Apparently, this is real stuff. Seriously....huh?

- My friend Bryan's "Theory of Project Addition" (http://wreckedbyreality.blogspot.com/) It's not really that I don't get it. It's just a mystery to me because it's an unavoidable phenomenon. Sorry, Bry, no amount of listing or planning will protect you from this fate. ;-)

- Serial television show writers. Without fail: I watch a new favorite show and marvel at how the writers come up with all that crazy stuff, and after a few seasons, I start to wonder what sort of crazy stuff they are on... (like the Alias writers: really, why amnesia, why??)

- Uncooperative shower drains. How is it that my shower won't drain and won't plug?

Welcome to life on the event horizon.

Bring on the milk!

One of my all-time favorite children's stories is a cute little book called "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie..." For those of you that never read it, it's about a little boy who gives a mouse a cookie, which then makes the mouse want a glass of milk. In a marvelously accurate representation of how life works, the story snowballs until the mouse is asking for everything from brooms to scotch tape. This has happened so often in my life that "if you give a mouse a cookie" has become a catchphrase for situations that play out exactly that same way. Allow me to demonstrate......

In a most wonderful, much-anticipated turn, I finally bought a new mattress set!! (**collective applause**) It is a delicious little piece of heaven, and upon waking up this morning after my first night of snoozing on foam-topped splendor, I was ticked that I actually had to remove myself from my own little cloud.

In true glass-of-milk-needing-status, I didn't anticipate that this new bed would also predicate multiples of new needs. For example, a queen bed requires new sheets, a new mattress pad, more pillows, new bed spread, etc...which i guess is kind of to be expected. What I didn't expect is that my new cloud is enormous and dwarfs all of my other bedroom furniture. My 'princess and the pea' nature is loving the fact that I have to physically climb up onto this new sleep entity, but I'm sorta looking down to see my tv. So now I need a bigger tv stand. And a new night stand. And maybe a bigger dresser. And since I need a new bedspread, maybe I should abandon my beachy-palm tree-inspired design and start over with new decorations...which will then spread to my connecting bathroom....oh dear.........

Maybe I should just start with a glass of milk. ;-)

Isn't it ironic!

I've had a rather healthy dose of irony in my life lately, which come to think of it, really isn't entirely unusual. The subject matter I am about to discuss is relatively uninteresting, but I figured it was a perfect example of the "what-is-up-with-that?" nature of my world.

The bathtub in my bathroom is tragically small and much too short for an adequate bubble bath, but despite its constant shortcomings, it has recently developed a new one. The drain hasn't been draining during showers, leaving an annoying pool of sudsy water swirling at my feet. Sadly, this is not the only problem. A few days ago, while trying to plug the drain so I could soak in mounds of vanilla-scented bubbles, I discovered that this heinous drain will also not fully plug...This means that it won't drain when needed and will suck water out by the gallon when I'm desperately trying to fill a much-deserved bath.

Something working when it shouldn't and crapping out when it should be just peachy...story of my life. Just ask my (sixth) hard drive. ;-)