Rambly Shambly Style

I know I have not been around for a while. So much is going on and I have been so tired at night that I have been falling asleep really early. On the couch. 

The ice storm really wreaked havoc on our little part of the world. So many people still don't have power. Trees are down everywhere. Some towns have closed down their schools until January. Not our school thankfully. BUT this kids have not had school since last Thursday. Well, they did have school on Tuesday...the day I work for free at the school so I could not get anything done at home. Then we had a little snowstorm so they closed again today. The boys have been great, but it is not as easy to get stuff done with them home. I really need to start wrapping presents for them as I am not going to have any time later. 

So here's the deal with what has been going on:

Friday, the day after the ice storm, with no power and everything a big mess, we happened to have matinee tickets for the Boston Ballet's Nutcracker at the Opera House. Now there was no way we were going to miss that. Believe me, we nearly did. Everything was going against us. All I can say is thank God I took a shower the night before so I was slightly presentable. Really. It had been days since I took a shower and I was going to just take one Friday morning, but at the last minute I decided to take one the night before. I had just had my hair cut and colored the day before so it was reasonable looking. 

We are driving past electrical wires and downed trees everywhere, trying to find a place for a cup of coffee to have on the way in to Boston. I was dying, man. I really love my coffee. I started out as a snob, not wanting to go to a Dunkin' Donuts because I hate their coffee. Didn't matter because the lines were 20 and 30 people deep. Seriously. Tom's says he can wait until we get to Boston. I just looked at him like "I can not do that." Finally get some coffee...if I had an intravenous needle, I would have shot it up. 

Then when we got to the outskirts of the city in Newton, Murphy says his belly doesn't feel good. I say 'maybe you need something to eat.' Um, no. That is not it at all. Major barfing going on...with my quick thinking, I empty the lunch bag filled with snacks and hand it to him to throw up in. Jack is next to him with a horrified expression and a few smarmy comments. There is not much vomit on Murphy because of my little lunch bag save (for the record, I threw the lunch bag out. Totally not worth cleaning.) We don't know what to do. We are an hour from home. We are practically at the place. Do we stay or do we go home? Murphy says he feels a little better. It had to have been car-sickness, not an actual stomach bug (which would have been nasty and embarrassing if he had done this inside of the Opera House.) We decide to try to go still. We are now running really late, but hell, we have come this far. We miss the first part of the show, but I am so glad we went. It was a beautiful theater. The music was great. At first, Tom and I thought we should go to the Nutcracker every year as a tradition...but by the end of the performance, I realized that we are not a ballet family. We need more singing and dancing. It was really bizarre to be seated in front of two moms and their girls who were hooting "whhoooo whhooo" to parts of the ballet like they were at a sporting event. Bizarre. Plus, here I was so careful to have none of us make any noise....I unwrapped a bunch of Werther toffees for the boys before we got into the show so I would not make a peep and these chit-chattering moms had a box of Whoppers going behind us. Tom and I were totally cracking up. You have to realize that we were not at the local High School production. We were at the Boston Ballet.

Here's what else is going down:  With one week until Christmas, Tom and I thought that now would be the perfect time to do a little home renovations. Yes. Let's strip wallpaper from the mud room and back stairway. Let's patch up the walls of this 100+ year old house. Oh, hey, that's been fun...rip up that rust carpet on the back stairs. Oooh...let's see what's under that. Nice wood stairs with a few coats of totally LEADED paint. Oh look, there are five million hard staples on the stairs. Well, we got to get rid of those. All the while, the kids are home because school keeps getting cancelled. Then in the middle of it all I decide that the boys and I will make my super delicious thumbprint butter cookies and some sugar cookies. Just let me rinse the lead dust off my hands. I decide to double the recipe in hopes that I can bag a few dozen to give to the garbage man, postman, a neighbor who gave me his latest poetry book...the cookies keep coming out totally flat. WTF is going on? They taste good, but are not fit for gift giving. They are too thin and crispy and would crumble on contact. Then I realize that we doubled everything in the recipe except the flour. Crap. I tried to add flour, but I got greedy, wanting to get as much out of this batch as I could with what batter was left so I added way too much flour and I baked a bunch of tasteless white rocks. If there is too much flour in a cookie, it doesn't lightly brown like it would if there was a proper amount of butter. I just learned that. 

Oh, that's right, so this is all going on and we will all of Tom's family coming on Christmas Eve day for a sit down dinner. That's 11 of us total. And then later that day, my parents and my brother and his wife will be coming for dinner and staying over. Then Christmas day my sisters and their families are coming. We will have 13 total that day for dinner and presents, etc. So we HAVE to get this fucking work done. We have the entire mudroom contents in our dining room. We have tools, paint, bags of ripped up rug and tiny scraps of wallpaper everywhere. The house is in total disorder. Did I happen to mention that we are hosting two Christmas dinners?! I have five million presents to wrap and my house is complete disarray. 

Hmmm...what did I eat today? A small bowl of some really good for me cereal with a few banana slices. A latte. A bunch of cookies. A huge hot chocolate. A slice and a half of pizza. I feel dehydrated and gross. 

Last thing....want to know what I was most concerned about having an extended power failure? Not that the pump in the basement was not working so we had a foot of water. No, no, no. I was worried about the milk I had bought the day before. All $16 worth of organic milk. I have finally gone totally organic with the dairy. The milk cost is double, but I feel it is worth it for my kids. I guess even for me, too:) Okay, for Tom, too.