jennanddave.com

Only I could turn an innocent trip to the bathroom into a scene of emotionally charged high drama that closes with me vacuuming up broken glass in the kitchen.

To set up the action, I'll just say I have a pressing need that requires the use of a bathroom. When I walk in, I spy a very menacing looking spider lurking on the wall beside the toilet, no doubt hoping for a bare bottom to uh, bare itself so it can take a nice bite and have something to tell the family when it returns home and the wife asks "How was your day?" Every time I encounter a spider in our house, my instinct is to grab the nearest wad of anything and goosh it, giving the briefest moments' ceremonial pause just before dropping the works in the trash. And every time I'm about to act on my instinct, I hear a faint "STOP!" The "STOP!" would be my grandmother who thinks it's a very bad idea to kill a spider that's in your house. In fact, the way she tells it, killing a spider in your house could bring bad luck the likes of which have never been experienced by anyone on the planet ever. Whenever she's visited here and someone spies a spider, she tells us all not to kill it, so we don't. This belief has become so ingrained within me that now I have moral dilemma over spiders, spiders that lurk next to toilets waiting to bite me.

Usually I goosh, tonight, however, I took pity and got a glass from the kitchen. I also brought a very large piece of paper with which to cover the top of the glass. Once the spider was securely ensconced within the aforementioned glass, I headed for the kitchen door. Apparently I was jittery despite the precautions taken to ensure the spider could not so much as reach out and twang a knuckle hair, because after I opened the back door and kicked open the storm door, I fumbled and watched the glass fly through the air, finally meeting its demise on our sad self-stick linoleum tiles. Even worse than the prospect of stepping on broken glass was the fact that I was now holding a piece of paper with a spider on it and nothing to keep it away from me except for air. I ran outside and whipped the paper a couple of times, then ran back inside, suppressing the thought that maybe when I was maniacally flinging the paper around the spider landed on me, and proceeded to scoop up the big shards of glass, eventually bringing out the big dog (our old Eureka canister vacuum) to take care of the little bits.

Then, finally, I went back to the bathroom and closed the door on that particular episode of my life.

Posted by Jenn at 05:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We got back from Virginia yesterday afternoon after spending five or six days hanging out with Dave's family ("hanging out" being code for "eating copious quantities of food"). When we opened the fridge to see if we had anything that could be considered dinner, Dave was utterly distressed at the state of uncleanliness that was found within. Thus, after tossing frozen Thanksgiving leftovers into the oven, he spent the next hour washing the inside of our fridge while I unpacked and Henry wreaked general havoc. You should see it. It's gleaming.

I married well.

Posted by Jenn at 01:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We've been pretty busy gearing up for the holidays over here, hence the lack of posts. To make amends, here's a little something I hope you enjoy. My dad thinks it's creepy, Mel thinks Henry's got a nice rack in it, and Dave thinks it's hilarious.

Like I said, enjoy! And happy holidays!

Posted by Jenn at 10:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Megan and Leo came over this afternoon to hang out. After they left Henry settled down to watch a little pre-nap Elmo/Stomp on the TV while I checked my email real quick. When I went back out to the living room there was no Henry to be found. I called out his name, heard a thump-thump-thump overhead, and headed over to the staircase to see what he was up to. He started coming downstairs asking "Megan go? Megan go?" Apparently he was searching high and low for Megan. I told him she went home and he said "Megan went home," somewhat forlornly. He perked up though when I mentioned we'd be seeing her again tonight.

This evening we're all going over to visit Mr. L at the nursing home with a big tin full of Christmas cookies. Giving up the tin is quite the sacrifice for Henry because he loves using it as a drum. The lid has lots of little dents all over it. After that, we'll have some dinner, open some presents, put the kid to bed, then hopefully watch Mr. Bean's Christmas special, which I haven't seen in a couple of years. Maybe Dave'll agree to rent "Love Actually" (or is it "Love, Actually"?) and we can have a snuggle on the couch. What are the chances?

Posted by Jenn at 02:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Today's going to be a pretty low-key day. So far we've watched "Frosty the Snowman" and "Charlie Brown Christmas" (Henry's a Frosty/Charlie Brown addict), the viewing of which was precipitated by some fine behavior displayed by the young man while having to spend some quality time with his brand-new nebulizer. He's still leery of it but he's handling it like a champ.

It's gray out and since it's also cold, I'm hoping for a little snow. I don't know if it's in the forecast, and I don't want to check to find out because I'll be disappointed if it isn't. We should really move to Vermont. I hear it's beautiful this time of year, with all that snow.

Posted by Jenn at 11:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

I just finished paying some bills and now I'm in a grumpy mood. We started Christmas shopping way back in October so we haven't been hit too hard all at once, although honestly which is better, getting hit in the knee with a banjo or having a band-aid made out of duct tape slowly ripped off of your hairy arm? I'm starting to think the banjo option is better because you get all of the pain over with at once. By that blazingly brilliant logic, I've decided that next year I'm not going to start shopping until the 15th of December.

In the past we've made regular contributions to a state environmental group. They're a little brazen with their tactics re: shaking us down for money and they're still misspelling my last name which, after four years of trying to fix it, is getting pretty darned annoying, admittedly more annoying than that particular faux pas merits, but it's all for a good cause so I keep writing them checks. And correcting my name. They called again last week, giving us the hard sell, which isn't too hard when you have a toddler running around the house who's about to inherit a planet that's been pretty well screwed up by all the burping cows and belching tailgates. The guy on the phone said that last time we donated we gave $-- and would I please be willing to do that again and send the payment in within a week since I didn't want to give them my credit card number? I said sure, then hung up, plagued by the sense that I'd just been had. Dave and I aren't rich. We're more like sort of comfortable and frankly, $-- sounds like a lot more money than I'd ever commit to donating given our financial situation. So I looked and sure enough the last time we gave to them, it was less than what the guy on the phone said we had given. So when I got the pledge letter today I scratched out the $--, wrote in what we had previously donated, and sent them a check, along with the correct spelling of my last name and some strongly worded threats about me putting them in the naughty corner if they ever pull a stunt like that again (the last bit being spoken into the envelope as opposed to written down because I'm a wimp). I'm a little irate. And I'm feeling guilty because, dangit, it's for the environment and aren't I being just a bit petty? On the other hand, I'm spending a little more money on earth friendly household products, etc, so it all probably works out somehow in the end. Right?

In other news, last night I went to a friend's house to knit and watch a movie. We watched the third installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean saga. There were five or six ladies there and let me just say, you would not believe the swooning that was going on over Orlando Bloom. Orlando, if you had been there with us last night, you would have been blushing. And running for cover. Of course, because I dare to be different, I had to part ways with the masses and stoke the torch fire that forever burns for Johnny Depp. I mean really. There's no contest there as far as I'm concerned. Attractive male actors aside, I had seen the movie with Dave about five minutes after it came out on DVD and to say I didn't understand half of what was going on would be putting it mildly. I asked four thousand questions. At one point I think Dave was seriously considering kicking me in the pants. Last night we watched it with the subtitles on. I can't begin to tell you what a revelation that was. I totally got it. All of it. This is a movie that should be read and not seen. Except for the parts where Johnny Depp is on screen. Those parts have to be seen.

Also? I don't know what my kid is doing right now, but it is most definitely not napping. It sounds like he's bumping out the wall to make his room bigger.

Posted by Jenn at 03:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Back in September I signed up to make a monthly donation to our local PBS station. Today our free gifts came in the mail, an Elmo doll and a Sesame Street "Let's Make Music" dvd. Henry eschewed the doll as if it were a box full of socks unwrapped on Christmas morning, then dug around in the envelope until he pulled out the dvd. Once he spied the tuba on the cover he was all "Watch this! Watch this!"

It features some of the cast from "Stomp!" which means there's lots of drumming rhythms. Henry's got a holiday tin and a round box that used to hold molten chocolate cake mix arranged in front of him on the coffee table and two drumsticks in his hand. I'm pretty sure the word "heaven" is one that he would use to describe the state he's currently in, if he had any idea what feelings the word "heaven" intimated.

Christmas came early this year!

And poor Elmo! Never has he been so spurned by a member of the toddler set. Tsk, tsk.

Posted by Jenn at 11:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The nor'easter is not being very nor'easterly in our neck of the woods. Last night sleet started falling around 9:30 and carried on for most of the night. Our bedrooms are in converted attic space right under the roof so when it rains or there's sleet at night, we can hear it pretty clearly. There's no better sound to fall asleep to, with the possible exception of ocean waves. Soon after we got up this morning it started to rain. About two hours ago I tried tuning in to our local channels to see what else we might be getting out of the storm but all I got were five channels worth of blank screen time. We still get Fox News so we'll at least be able to stay misinformed about the world in general. (Ouch! Couldn't resist I guess.) I can only assume Scranton/Wilkes Barre must be getting some pretty interesting weather if it's knocked out their ability to send out a signal.

With luck the rain will turn to snow and we'll get a few feet of the white stuff. This is entirely wishful thinking, but it's my blog and I can dream if I want to.

Friday night our town had a late shopper's night. It was a madhouse, which was great because it's never a madhouse downtown. It makes a person feel like they actually live somewhere. Anyway, Libby had a sale so I went in and picked up a few skeins of Lonesome Stone Fibers yarn in Hot Rod Red. The picture doesn't do it justice. It's got some black in there, as well as a hot pink that matches my wool coat perfectly. You get 400 yards per skein. I bought two. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with them yet. Maybe a scarf and matching gloves? I spent some time flipping through Vogue's knitting bible looking for some inspiring lace patterns. The yarn's fairly delicate so I was thinking of doing something lacy with it on bigger needles than the yarn's gauge calls for, at least for the scarf. Then I was thinking if I planned it out properly, I could duplicate the lace pattern on the back of a pair of fingerless gloves because who doesn't want to be all matchy matchy? That's the idea for now. Maybe later I'll see something that will inspire me to head in a completely different direction.

Posted by Jenn at 11:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So, have any of you seen the show "The Big Bang Theory"? It's about a bunch of really, really, ridiculously smart guys (I'm not going to use the term geeks because of where I'm going with this post) and their hot blonde neighbor? It's very funny. While Henry and I were in Boston my mom mentioned she had seen the show, and there was one scene in particular that she found pretty funny that involved the hot neighbor wanting some help in assembling an entertainment unit she had purchased from Ikea or some such place. The really, really, ridiculously smart guys (not geeks!) looked at it and said they could improve upon the design, and then headed out the door to go to a scrap yard to get some materials for doing just that. When my mom finished describing the scene, she asked me if living with Dave was like that.

Last week we went out and bought our Christmas tree. We went to one of those chop-your-own places. It was the first time we'd ever done that, and it was so much fun. In the years before we moved to Central PA, the tree stand we used was the kind where you turn four screws until the tree is securely in place. Then we moved here and discovered the tree stand of choice is the kind that has the spike you insert into a pre-drilled hole in the tree trunk, so we bought one of those instead. The chop-your-own place didn't have a machine for drilling the hole in the trunk, so we brought our old tree stand out of storage.

We had invited some friends over to help decorate the tree, and they were due to arrive in approximately one hour. I asked Dave to take care of the tree and the stand while I cleaned up the kitchen and got some food ready. Half-an-hour later, I looked outside and saw our tree still bundled up and leaning against the side of our house. What was taking Dave so long? I headed out to the garage to see what was going on. There was Dave with our old tree stand which was now screwed to a big slab of wood. Attached to the underside of the big slab of wood were four smaller square pieces, each of which had been capped off with a square cut out from the leftover self-sticking linoleum we had used for our kitchen floor a few years ago. Dave looked up at me and said "Look! Isn't it awesome? And look, I even put some of the leftover linoleum on the bottom of the feet so they won't scratch up our floors!" All I could say was "You made a Christmas tree stand stand?!?"

So, to answer my mom's question: Yes, living with Dave is like that.

Posted by Jenn at 04:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I'm feeling a mite uninspired, yet still have the desire to post something, so how about another rendition of random stuff? Okay!

- I have a hair appointment for 3 this afternoon. The last time I went I told my...uhhh...good grief, I've completely forgotten how one refers to the person who cuts one's hair. Hair cutter? Hair stylist? Probably I should skip the cut and go straight upstairs for a nap. Or I should start playing Brain Age. Anyway, the last time I went to the salon (circumvented that little snag, no pun intended) I asked for an angled cut, but when it was all done there was nary an angle to be seen. I'll give it another shot today. Can't annoy this particular stylist because after much trial and error, she's the best I've been to around here.

- Took Henry back to the doctor's yesterday. He was diagnosed with asthma that's triggered by colds. We now have a nebulizer sitting in a box on the floor of our dining room. I swear, this kid gets more expensive everyday. I'm going to have to work hard so our expenditures for him don't eclipse our expenditures for me. I'm a lady after all!

- It's snowing out right now. It's very pretty. I'm looking forward to walking to the salon this afternoon.

- I just discovered this website: Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog. It's very funny. Plus they have awesome t-shirts for sale.

- Yesterday I made 12 billion molasses cookies for the playgroup cookie exchange, which was ultimately canceled due to the bad weather. There's a possibility it'll be rescheduled for next Tuesday. What are the chances there will be any cookies left by then? It's a mystery.

Posted by Jenn at 02:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Henry's sick. Again. For those keeping count, this is the third time in six weeks. All I have to say about it is: AAAAAAUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

Posted by Jenn at 02:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

While we were in the car yesterday, I was telling Dave about how one of the playgroups Henry and I go to is doing a cookie exchange. I was thinking out loud about what kind to make, eventually settling on my great-grandma's molasses cookies, that way I could make a double batch and have some to give to our friend Mr. L, or to send to my mom, or whatever. Then I said:

me: Or, I know, I can bring some Christmas cookies to your parents' house again.
dave: That is such a good idea. They were a total hit last year. Didn't somebody eat them all? Was it my dad? Or my brother?
me: Ummm... I think it was me.
Dave: OH YEAH! YOU ate them all!

Then he proceeded to whack me on the arm while I sank further and further into my seat, completely and utterly embarrassed, and yet probably destined to do the same thing all over again this year.

Posted by Jenn at 01:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

A classy holiday lawn ornament! Don't tell Dave, but I've already order 10 of them. We're going to have a forest of legs on our lawn this year. Santa's *definitely* not going to pass us over.

Posted by Jenn at 11:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

I read an article somewhere that talked about how many chemicals we're exposed to in everyday items such as beauty products. Being someone who is all about beauty products, I decided to go organic with them as I ran out of things. First items were shampoo and soap. I bought Kiss My Face olive oil and honey soap. I used it twice three weeks ago and I'm still recovering from how badly it made me break out. Fortunately I didn't use it on my face. Instead of bar soaps, I'm going to give an organic body wash a try as soon as my Softsoap that smells like Playdoh runs out. Dave says he likes the Kiss My Face soap, so if you don't have my skin, he recommends it. The shampoo I bought was pretty bad too. I couldn't remember the brand a friend recommended so I went ahead and winged it when I made my choice. When I'd lather it into my hair, it actually didn't lather at all, and within 20 seconds my hair was a big, massive, knotty mess that could barely be rinsed. It also didn't clean my hair, although it dried it out nicely despite the application of lots of conditioner. No one wants an itchy scalp two hours after you wash your hair. Today I went back to the natural food place and got Giovanni brand shampoo and conditioner (See? I remembered!) so I'm hoping it works a lot better than the other stuff. I'll let you know.

Meanwhile, for the last couple of days I've been wanting to listen to music that I know all the words to but which I haven't heard in a while. I tried to get "Ritual de lo Habitual" on iTunes but they only have a partial album. Bob Marley's "Legends" it is. Suddenly I'm 16 again and getting all daydreamy about that cute college guy I work with.

Posted by Jenn at 03:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

We tossed down some dinner when Dave got home, hopped in the car, got some hot chocolate/coffee/donuts to go from DD's, then meandered around town looking at Christmas lights. Henry seemed to enjoy it. I think his favorite house was the one that had all blue lights. Flash wishes that Dave had taken the curves a little slower. She also wishes Henry had been a little messier with his donut. There's a rumor that our dentist has a leg lamp a la "A Christmas Story" in his front window. We drove by his house to scope it out but we didn't see it. Maybe his wife made him take it down. It's happened before.

Posted by Jenn at 09:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The drive home yesterday was long but everyone was a trooper and we made it. It's easier going to Boston because you can leave as early as you want without having to worry about things like hitting rush hour traffic. Because no one lives here. I wanted to put that last sentence in all caps but you guys really don't need me yelling at you. Although it's less "yelling at you" and more "talking loudly in a panicked way". But whatever.

So yesterday we had to take into account rush hour traffic in Boston which starts at 6AM and tapers off to a somewhat congested flow (but a flow nonetheless) around 9AM. We left Cambridge around 10:45 and got home around 6:15. Not too bad, but the timing of everything was enough to make it feel like we spent the entire day in the car, especially since we arrived home in the dark. It started snowing one mile outside of the Pennsylvania border and continued to do so until about an hour after we got home.

The best part was when I asked Megan how she and her husband met (think along the lines of the lyrics to Some Enchanted Evening as sung by Dean Martin because who does anything better than Dino? Okay, maybe Bing. But Dean's just soooo romantic. I'm sticking with Dean. Gah. Now I can't decide. How about a Bing/Dean duet?) and she got so swept up in the romance of it all she decided to just get off the highway altogether. Both of us would apparently rather get lost in the wilds of the suburbs of Wilkes Barre/Scranton than have to backtrack half a mile so we took an alternate route that I declared was going to be "totally genius". It would have been too if it hadn't been snowing and we hadn't been stuck going downhill behind a couple of oil trucks. Next time we're coming back from MA/NH and I'm doing the driving and talking about how Dave and I met and I veer off the interstate at the same exit, I hope it's summer, because I wouldn't mind taking that route again in better weather.

Posted by Jenn at 03:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I've been tagged by Kitty at New York Portraits to do the following meme: fill in the blanks using the first letter of your name. "J" was hard.

1. Famous Singer: Jimmie Rodgers
2. Four Letter Word: jump
3. Street: J Street. I've never heard of it, but there probably is one. Somewhere.
4. Color: java brown. heh.
5. Gifts/Presents: jewelry
6. Vehicles: Jeep!
7. Things In A Souvenir Shop: Jackelope postcards
8. Boy Name: John
9. Girl Name: Juniper
10. Movie Title: Jarhead
11. Drink: julep of the mint persuasion
12. Occupation: jackhammerer
13. Celebrity: J. Lo
14. Magazine: JPG Magazine
15. U.S. City: Jacksonville
16. Pro Sports: How about the high jump? It's an Olympic sport anyway.
17. Fruit: jujube
18. Reason For Being Late For Work: traffic jam
19. Something You Throw Away: junk
20. Something You Shout: Jinkies!

I'm going to go ahead and be a good friend and tag Mel to do it too.

Posted by Jenn at 02:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

A couple of inches of snow fell last night. My mom and I attempted to take Henry for a walk in it. He refused to put even one foot down on the ground outside. We ended up pushing him through slush and over unshoveled sidewalks in an umbrella stroller. I say "we" but mostly it was my mom. An umbrella stroller is not the best all-weather mode of transporting a toddler. It was seriously hard work.

Meanwhile, Henry's thoughts on snow can be summed up thusly: good from far, far from good.

Posted by Jenn at 07:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dave and I finished up the stove the day Dave's parents left to go home to Virginia, which I probably already mentioned, but since my camera's hopefully in queue to be repaired I wasn't able to take any pictures. Until Megan lent me hers, that is! She dropped it off at my house around 4PM, I took some pictures, and then I gave it right back to her a few hours later at belly dancing because 1. her camera is super fancy and expensive and 2. I have a really bad track record with cameras right now and 3. her husband would KILL me. I'm sure of it. So anyway, she downloaded the pictures and forwarded them to me so now I get to share them with you!

I'm estimating, but I'm guessing the whole thing cost under $20 because the cardboard was free and almost everything else either we had or Dave's dad had. Yesterday while out and about in Porter Square we stopped in a toy shop to do a little hands-on window shopping. I spied a really cute wooden play set that was similar to ours in that it was one free-standing station. It had a sink, microwave, and oven. It was $199. Smug smuggity smug. I think I'll head off to, say, Sephora and blow the $179 we theoretically saved. Although I should probably spend it on Dave's dad since he did all of the dirty work.

I also took advantage of having a camera to take some pictures of the felt cookies I made:

Yesterday I saw bags of felt farfalle and linguine. That might have to be next on the list.

There's a storm moving in later today. The skies are already dark and gray. I hope we get a lot of snow. Or *some* snow anyway. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

Posted by Jenn at 08:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)