Three Funerals and a Wedding

What kind of crazy thing is this? I feel like George Costanza stuck in Opposite World. I’m so weary right now. I’m staring down the barrel of one more Christmas spent in mourning. If these things happen in three’s, then I’m done. I need to be done. I told Dad “no more” and he said OK. I’m going to hold him to that for at least another 20 years or something. We can negotiate later.

News has started to trickle out, but I may as well come clean here. Yesterday I lost one more member of the family: my stepmother. She and Dad celebrated their 5-year anniversary this summer. I thank God for those 5 years too. She was such a good match for my Dad. She was a fiery little Italian who knew how to push his buttons and then calm him. I saw such a transformation in him. My Dad is a nurturing kind of guy who found a good outlet in her. They seemed to be best friends that did everything together. If ever I needed a positive and realistic role model to hold up and admire, it was the two of them. They teased, bantered, argued and laughed a lot.

For the last 3 years I have had to watch my father lose such precious people. Yes, they are my loss as well, but it is so much easier to deal with my own grief that to bear witness to his. Parents never really stop teaching their children and once again I find myself playing student to his teacher in dealing with loss. As always, he is strong and positive, but it is a thin surface these days. His views on death are of a spiritual nature in that we are all energy that simply changes form. So rather than having lost these people, they have simply released themselves from the shells that were holding them. Simple yes, but comforting.

So as we all reach that point in the year where it is common to gather as a family, enjoy them. Laugh, argue, tease, and love one another.

Before I forget, the title does make reference to a wedding, and so will I. This coming summer I am attending a wedding. It also happens to fall close to my birthday, so I fully expect to be in a very celebratory mood. It’s nice to have something like this to look forward to, so thanks Katie and Chris. Here then is a picture from Dad’s wedding. It was such a fun time, even though I basically bawled like a baby. It was a special time as only weddings can be. The picture at the top was taken a couple of weeks before the wedding at our reunion here in Las Vegas.

Operation Christmas Cookie

Last night I went over to Heidi’s and “helped” make Christmas cookies. I say that I helped, although what I really did was watch her do it. My job came later when it was time to decorate them. Her daughter, Harmony and I sat at the dining room table and played with icing and sugar and generally had a fun time just being silly. I brought my Christmas DVD’s with me that played in the background. They are all the old cartoons that I used to watch when I was little. My favorite is still “The Year Without a Santa Claus.”

I don’t think Harmony had seen it before, so it was especially fun to have her watch it. When the Heat Miser and Snow Miser songs came on, I started to sing and she thought it was pretty funny. She told me many times that she thought I was crazy. And then she wanted me to do it again. That was fine with me because it kept her from wanting to watch her Bella Dancerella Cheerleader video. She’s good with the pom-poms, but still struggling with the baton. I tried to show her how to twirl it, and she seemed impressed. Makes you feel about 10 feet tall when you show a seven year old how to do something and they look at you like you just performed magic.

Between playing with her new telescope and a couple of rounds of Dora the Explorer dominoes game, she finally fell asleep while watching Frosty the Snowman for the third time. Today while I was out running some errands, little elves by the names of Heidi and Harmony left a plate of cookies for me outside my door.

Here finally, is a picture of my tree. I have been taking pictures of it for weeks. I never seem to like the way they turn out. However, I knew I needed to come up with something, so here is one that I can live with, I guess. It feels like the clock has started ticking again for me to come up with a new theme for next year. After doing the Showgirl tree for 2 years now, it’s time to do something different. Otherwise, next year I may need to bring Carmen Miranda back again. At least this way I have a whole year to look for fruit ornaments. If any of you fine people have some ideas for me, let me know. The only theme I don’t care to attempt is Elvis.

Christmas Crunches

I wish I could tell you this was a recipe for a Christmas snack, but it isn’t. Speaking of snacks, it does make me think about the stuff my grandma made with Life cereal and some other stuff. No, it wasn’t Chex Mix, but it was really good, although hard on the teeth. I wonder if I have that recipe floating around….

Anyway, this title is referring to the whirlwind of activity that always finds me (and all of us I suspect) at the end of the year. I just started a new project at work and it is going to keep me very busy for the next couple of months. It’s good to be busy at work, but I always kind of hope for things to slow down a bit this time of year in that area. I must have some real selective memory, because I think I am almost always swamped at work in December. And yes, this leads me to have to recant my earlier statement about not taking my laptop home for Christmas. Looks like the little devil is coming with me after all. Rats.

In updated travel news, United is quickly becoming airline non grata with me. Once again, on my return home last night, my bag didn’t make it. Honestly, what is the problem here? This is another excellent reason to always take a direct flight. Connecting flights are scheduled so close together that I can barely make them let alone my luggage. So last night my early flight home turned into something else since my bag didn’t arrive. Instead of coming to LAS it went to LAX. At first the nice lady at the desk told me it was coming in from the LA flight that was landing shortly. So I grabbed a cup of coffee and waited. An hour later, no bag. Apparently, it was coming on the midnight flight instead. The story has a happy ending, since it was delivered here about 30 minutes ago, but what a drag.

There were some other people in the same situation as me last night, and some of them very pretty upset. Honestly, what is the point of yelling at someone behind the counter that had absolutely nothing to do with why your bag didn’t arrive? Customer service jobs have to rank up there with some of the worst on the planet, don’t they? No thanks. I hope I never reach a time in my career where I have to go back to something like that.

In other multi-tasking news, I spent my airport time completing my Christmas cards, which are now ready to go into the mail. Now if I could just pry myself away from this thing long enough to go to the mailbox, I would feel better. Having all my presents sent is nice, but I keep wandering into my living room thinking I still have things to wrap. It feels weird to be done.

Here are more pictures of the tree. The one at the top is the theater mask I bought a couple of years ago and thought would look nice on top of the tree. I thought it would fit in with my showgirl theme because of the feathers, but it kind of has that creepy, soulless demon feel to it too. I thought maybe it was because there were no eyes, but I have to think it would be worse with eyeballs in it. Then the creepy soulless demon would be staring at me. It’s a strange Christmas topic, I know. Heaven forbid you get the impression that I’m weird. I must admit that looking at this picture, I love the way my Hello Kitty ornament is peeking in at the bottom of the picture. I guess she wanted to be sure she was represented. Here is another picture. I call this one Stip-in-the-Box. Mimi, if you thought Ribbon Girl was a little risque, check out this chick.

Christmas Tetris and other Feats of Strength

I had to pack up all my Christmas presents this weekend and ship them. This is always a fun task. I stopped in to the UPS store earlier this week to pick up some bubble wrap and one of the people working there (no, not my boyfriend) offered to have them pack up my stuff for me. No way I was going to add to the already outrageous shipping costs by adding packing costs too. I told her this and she said, “So you want to do your own form of Christmas Tetris?” I thought it was such a clever way of putting it. Yes, that’s exactly what I decided to do.

Seven boxes later, I was ready to haul all that stuff down my stairs and into the car. Somehow I managed to do all this without killing myself or dropping anything. The heaviest box weighed in at over 40 lbs. Needless to say, I took a pass that day for going to the gym.

When I got to UPS, the same girl was there to help me again. She seems nice. While she was fixing one of my boxes that needed a little reinforcement, I had one box that was going to my Mom that I needed to have them pack for me. (I just didn’t have a small enough box, so I decided to let them do it for me.) One of the other guys working there took the box (it had a gift tag on it with Mom’s name- this is important to know) and he asked me “is this fragile?” Without missing a beat I said, “no, just the relationship.” He stopped and looked at me and then started to laugh because he had seen the gift tag.

So that all worked out well. I got everything sent and I also reclaimed my living room. After that, I cleaned the apartment and then started packing for this week’s trip. Trying to leave Las Vegas on Sunday was insane. The National Rodeo Championships were ending and so the whole airport was swamped with cowboys and their groupies heading home. Once again I was stuck flying United. I am convinced that they must schedule about 12 flights to leave at the same time. I have never seen such as f**ked up system as the United ticketing area of the airport. You have to stand in line in order to get to the kiosk to check in and get your boarding pass. Then you have to get in another line to check your bags. I arrived at the airport just over 2 hours before my flight. I spent an hour and a half just trying to get my bag checked. That left 30 minutes before my flight left to get through security and to my gate. You can imagine how crazy that must have made me. I literally walked on to my flight (because I refused to run) with 5 minutes before departure.

I ended up spending my flight filling out my Christmas cards. I’m almost done, so keep an eye out for those!

Once I landed and went to baggage claim, I found that my bags didn’t come with me. Luckily there was another flight coming in later that day and they delivered my bag to my hotel by about 9pm last night. Travel can be a real pain, but I have to say that for all the years I have been traveling, I have never lost any luggage. And, this is only the second time I can recall when my bags didn’t make the flight with me. That’s a pretty good record, I think.

Heidi just today sent me some pictures of the two of us before we went to her Christmas party, so I will post one of those. When I get home later this week, I’ll have some other pictures of the tree to post. I did get a comment about posting one of the entire tree, and I will. I am still trying to take the “perfect” picture of it. I don’t like the ones I have so far.

I’d Like to Punch Murphy in the Nose…And Other Christmas Favorites

So there I was, digging through my storage room for empty boxes to box up my Christmas presents, when out of nowhere a box falls open at my feet. What do you think is inside this box? My missing Christmas cards! I knew they were around here somewhere. Normally, this would be a good thing to have found something that I had misplaced. However, I finally broke down YESTERDAY and bought new Christmas cards. So this wonderful discovery suddenly took on more of a mocking nature in a Murphy’s Law kind of way. I had clearly lost that round of hide-and-seek, and you all know how much I hate losing.

Speaking of hide-and-seek, I seem to also be missing my Christmas spirit. Maybe it’s just natural at this point in the month to be completely irritated at the Human race since we are all racing around doing our shopping and being incredibly rude to each other. I am having a difficult time also because it was 67 degrees here yesterday. I finally forced myself to load up my CD player in my car with my Christmas CD’s. Do you know how weird it is to be singing Let it Snow when I have the air conditioning on? This is still one change that I have not become used to yet since the move. Christmas doesn’t feel like Christmas. I am looking forward to flying back east in a couple of weeks.

I don’t know about you, but I have a lot of Christmas CD’s. Some of them I purchased (hello entire Time Life series) and some were gifts from ThreeL and her hubby. (Lori- for the love of GOD, will you PLEASE make another 2001 CD for me? I want Kenny Rogers singing Carol of the Bells!!!!!) I have Dick Clark Christmas collections and then individuals like Harry Connick Jr., Barbra Streisand, Nat King Cole, and even the Trans Siberian Orchestra. I do enjoy Christmas music, but I think my favorites still have to be the old, traditional songs. Do you feel another Top 5 coming? I feel it coming. Let’s Do this.

Top 5 Traditional Christmas Songs

1. I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas- Gayla Peavy
2. Rockin Around the Christmas Tree- Brenda Lee
3. Jingle Bells- Bing Crosby (I LOVE the back up singers)
4. Jingle Bell Rock- Bobby Helms
5. O Little Town of Bethlehem
   

These are fun and Christmas wouldn’t feel the same if you weren’t forced to listen to them at least once. It also seems that a lot of artists like to record their own versions of these traditional songs. So here’s another list.

1. Winter Wonderland- Eurythmics
2. Do You Hear What I Hear? - Whitney Houston
3. Santa Baby- Madonna
4. Good King Wenceslas- Loreena McKennitt
5. Oiche Chiun (Silent Night)- Enya
   
   

But I think the songs I like the best were the one from all the cartoons and Christmas specials I grew up watching. I have my DVD collection of the Christmas cartoons. I was so excited for the years that ThreeL would end up putting some of these songs on the annual Christmas CD. Here is my top 5:

1. Heat Miser/Snow Miser (from The Year Without a Santa Claus. Here is a link to listen to it.)
2. You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch (from The Grinch who Stole Christmas)
3. We Wish You a Merry Christmas- The Muppets (Miss Piggy and the bacon comments are really funny)
4. Chanukah Song- Adam Sandler
5. Dominick the Donkey- Lou Monte (C’mon, a song about a donkey that includes braying? Fantastic!)

Ok, so maybe my Christmas spirit isn’t gone. I just needed to remind myself of things other than battling crowds and traffic. The ornament picture for today covers a couple of different things. First, is the weird cut out of Ribbon Girl. I found these in Nashville, Indiana at a little shop called Grandma’s. I love that store and that town. That’s also where I picked up my Carmen Miranda cut outs. The other ornament at the top is of the Liberace Museum. The building that houses his outfits (and the gift shop) is shaped just like this. I picked up this ornament the same day I was interviewed about his shoe collection.

One last plea here: Lori- PLEASE make me another copy of 2001. I have put this request out there for all to see. Now that you are a lady of leisure, there is nothing stopping you.

Billboard Music Awards

Last night I went to the Billboard Music Awards. It was the first time I had been to an awards show and especially one that was being televised live. Because it was being shown live on the east coast, I had to be there pretty early. No big deal, but I decided to get smart finally about dealing with the crowd for these huge events. The event was being held at the MGM Grand so I decided to valet my car across the street at New York New York and then walk across the street to the hotel. It worked out beautifully.

My seat for the show was up in the balcony. If you were looking at the stage, I was to the right and up, up, up. The seat wasn’t too bad considering I bought the ticket last week. I thought it would be a sold out event, but I saw plenty of empty seats scattered throughout the place. I thought about bringing binoculars but I didn’t want to carry them, so I suffered without.

The show itself was decent. I was surprised at how short most people are. I realize the camera puts on pounds, but height too? I was also interested to see what was going to happen during the commercial breaks. Turns out, nothing much happens. It’s the time when some of the celebrities schmooze with each other and the audience tries to make a mad dash for the bathroom or food or beer before the break ends. Once the show starts back up again, they don’t let anyone in the arena until the next commercial break. Now I understand why I was seeing empty seats.

The performances were interesting. Janet was visually awesome, but I can never seem to understand a word she says. She just has that breathy quality that I find annoying. It really stands out when you compare her to someone like Mary J Blige who belted out her songs. She was easily the best performer of the night. Such a HUGE sound coming from her. The worst performance had to be Fergie. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out she wasn’t even singing. Didn’t she look weird? Like she didn’t know what she was supposed to be doing? It wasn’t any better live, I can assure you. I don’t know what it was but I was surprised she didn’t move around more. I associate her with so much more animation. It was a big disappointment. Gwen was pretty good. I was surprised she was so tall. I’m not loving the latest song, but am looking forward to hearing a song called Early Winter. Know who wrote it? One of the guys from Keane.

So the show went fine and I ended up getting home around 8. It was funny because I was just in time to see the show again, this time for the West coast. I had Tivo record it for me so I could watch it and confirm that I never appeared anywhere. Turns out my new escape route through New York New York was brilliant. There was no wait at the valet. There was one other family there who it turns out had also been at the show. We congratulated ourselves on our brilliance and then headed home.

I am a Decorative Ornament

This weekend I went to a Christmas party. Heidi invited me to go with her to her company’s Christmas Party. She invited me the day of the party. Nothing like getting some advance notice. I decided to go ahead and go. Why not?

I dug around in my closet and came up with the requisite black dress. Still had the tags on it and everything. I put it on and hated it, but I hated this one the least out of all the others I tried on and hated. Things were starting off well. The majority of the people attending this thing were hairdressers. In fact, their entire day was spent doing each other’s hair between their own client appointments. Me? I was digging around looking for a curling iron and a can of hairspray that worked. Again, it might have been nice to get a little notice. Still, it was what it was so I did what I could. Thank goodness for no humidity so my hair will actually hold a curl.

The oddest moment during “prep” time was when I decided to have some fun and wear some false eyelashes. I bought them over the summer, but hadn’t worn them yet. When I went to apply the adhesive, nothing happened. It was a solid mass. Well, off I went to CVS down the street. Not only did they have what I needed, did you know you could buy it in different colors? I went with the Noir. It felt like such a weird Vegas moment to do the emergency drug store run for eyelash adhesive. It also gave me the opportunity to see my make up efforts so far in natural light as well as give my new shoes a dry run. The result was that the shoes were great and the make up was not. (way too much) So I started over. I was aiming for Dita von Teese and instead felt like Yvonne Di Carlo. Yikes.

Having averted that crisis, it was smooth sailing. Yeah, I know the picture looks bad since I had to take it of myself, but you get the idea. Heidi took a lot of pictures, but it’s a matter of getting her to send them to me. I’ll see what I can do. I know I said my posts for this month would have pictures of my Christmas ornaments, but since I was the ornament this weekend, I decided I qualified.

The party was nice. It was held in one of the meeting rooms at the Tropicana. Also sharing space down the same hallway was a Karate tournament and some gathering we just referred to as the “Cowboy party.” Every December around this time, Las Vegas is flooded with cowboys for the National Rodeo Championships. Remember that if you are planning any trips here during that time. And if you are planning a trip here, you’d better let me know and then I’ll remind you about it.

So, back to the party. We had a buffet dinner and they also hired a DJ. It still had a weird wedding reception vibe to it, but it was fun. I told Heidi to enjoy herself and that I would be her designated driver. I think that term must mean something different here than in the rest of the world. To me, it means I don’t drink at all. To her and to anyone else that I said I was driving that night, it meant that I just didn’t drink as much as everyone else. Hmm. Some strange logic, but I decided to nurse a couple of drinks over the next 5 hours just to keep people from handing me more drinks. Keeping my drink to water ratio in check, plus a full dinner helped a lot.

Things wrapped up at the Tropicana by midnight. I had told Heidi that I would probably be going home at that point. She brought a bag with her in case she decided to stay there at the hotel that night. I told her it was up to her, but if she wanted to go, I would take her home. There were some other parties going on at other hotels. One that was mentioned was the Playboy Club at the Palms. Yeah, I decided to bail out on that and all the others. I had fun, but I was ready to go.

Heidi decided not to stay at the hotel and wanted to go home too....Until we got in the car and she decided she was hungry and wanted breakfast. She didn’t really eat any dinner, so I wasn’t surprised. I decided if she was going to keep me out a little longer then she was going to go where I wanted to go for food. We went to the Peppermill, of course. It turns out that she has never been there. So after stuffing our faces it was time to go home. I dropped her off around 2am and then headed home.

It was fun and so unexpected. I’ll try to get a picture of Heidi and me to post here. As we were posing for pictures, it definitely had a weird prom feel to it, but it was fun to get dressed up and go out on the town. Makes me anxious to get to the end of January and my vacation time with “my girls.”

The Countdown Starts

Here we go. Today starts a new month and I am going with a new topic. My Christmas tree is up and ready and I have taken some pictures of this year’s ornaments. My goal is to have a different picture for each blog entry. We’ll see how it goes.

So where am I in the Christmas chaos on December 1st? You’d better believe I have a system in place and lists galore. The list making process begins on or around Halloween. That’s mainly for the people I haven’t already purchased something for throughout the year. The list is more of a preliminary Christmas card list too. Since Christmas crap starts appearing right after Halloween these days, I try and buy my new Christmas cards then.

This year, I know I have Christmas cards somewhere, but I don’t have the first clue what I have done with them. Apparently my Spring-cleaning was so thorough this year that I have misplaced my Christmas stationery. At the moment I am being stubborn and refusing to replace them. Meanwhile I keep looking in the same places hoping the outcome is going to be different. So far the outcome is the same, but I haven’t looked again today…

So let me talk about the tree. I went with the (gasp) same theme as last year. I know, I know. Some of you have come to expect brand new creations each year. Yeah well, my storage space is pretty full and it’s mostly Christmas ornaments. I did make a couple of small changes this year. The first is the garland. Instead of the regular tinsel garland, I decided to switch it out for feather boas. It’s freakin’ awesome. My white tree with its white lights looks fantastic with hot pink feathers. I also came across some showgirl ornaments. I couldn’t believe it. So, that’s the first picture I will share with you about the new tree.

As for gifts, I have the majority of large items that I need to wrap and ship out done. I sat on my living room floor the other night and wrapped almost everything. Everything needs to be boxed and shipped by next weekend. Since I live away from everyone, I can’t afford to be a last minute shopper. And, if you are going to have a prayer of affordable shipping costs, the earlier you send it the better. Of the things I have left, I still have this weekend to get them and get them ready to go. I believe that I am going to be just fine.

Report card for December 1:

Tree: Assembled and decorated! A++
Cards: I know they are around here somewhere. I’m still looking. C
Gifts: Still working on it. I’d say about 80% done. B
Miscellaneous: While I was at the bookstore buying things for others, I bought a couple of books for myself on fashion. I love these things. Anything that makes me take a critical look at the closet is nice. Anyway, after finding this book’s version of my body type, I read through the description of the kind of stuff I should be buying. Turns out I have a lot of that stuff. How cool is that? I am thinking of taking pictures of outfits that I like and feel good in so I can try to avoid the “I have nothing to wear” scenario for the future. I give kudos to Marilyn Bolton for the picture idea. I’ll keep you posted on how it turns out.