Monthly Archives: December 2015

My friend Bonnie, who isn’t JUST my friend, she’s also My Captains’ best friend’s sister, and was Critter and Varmint’s 3rd grade teacher back in The Day… recently opened a little curio/antique shop near us…

called Mrs. Brown’s Attic, in Barnesville, Maryland.

It’s adorable.

Housed in a century old store…with original floor and windows and shelving,

all it’s missing is the wood stove that no doubt heated the place a hundred years ago.

She even has food out for anyone to share…usually her homemade macaroons and chocolate pretzels.

Well amongst some of the cool finds at her store was a pottery/stoneware/plaster bust of Ceasar.   Complete with faux gilding.  This thing was something else, let me tell you.

My Captain’s best friend (and Bonnie’s brother), Ty, thought it would be funny to buy it for Varmint, just because it was so weird.  He didn’t actually do it, but he did chuckle to us that it would be funny to give it to her for Christmas.

We shared this with Varmint, who figured it would be even funnier if she gave it to HIM for Christmas.

And Mrs. Brown approved.  We love Bonnie’s sense of humor!  So we hauled Caesar into the minivan and took him home.

Behold Caesar in my kitchen!

Behold Caesar wrapped in paper!

Behold Ceasar under Ty and Maggie’s Christmas tree!  (He’s at work tonight at the fire station, so Maggie let me in to set up Caesar!)

In all honesty, we don’t know WHO the bust is supposed to be. And he doesn’t really look like the Caesar we all have seen in history books, but, “Behold Brutus!”  or, “Behold Schmitty!”  doesn’t work for me.

Tonight, Ty came home and found Caesar under the Christmas tree.

Didn’t even have to open it.

Knew immediately he’d been had.

When he saw Varmint, the only thing he said was, “Oh, it’s ON.”

She looked him straight in the eyes, and simply smiled.

That’s it.  She just smiled.

It scared the heck out of me.  A 14-year-old calmly smiling?  Oh HELL no.

This will be interesting.  I honestly have no idea how this will play out!

Who would you root for?

He had forgotten his black belt.  You can’t wear a Tux without your belt, especially when the beat drops and you’ve got no choice but to get your Jam on.

Look, I’m white bread, with mayonnaise, and I have no idea what I just said about dropping beats with jam.  It’s hard to act cool when you’re a confirmed Master Dork.  Don’t judge.

My Captain and I had run up to the middle school so we could deliver said black belt, and peeked inside the dance hall (aka, cafeteria) to see how the middle schoolers were handling their first dance.   It was about what you would expect.  All the girls were on one side of the room, all the boys were on the other, and what dancing there was going on resembled something between a grand-mal seizure, and a toddler tantrum.

We were about to leave, after depositing the belt to a grateful, and very dapperly dressed Critter, when another parent asked us: “Can you stay? We need more chaperones.  Specifically Men with booming voices.”

My Captain gave me a pained look, but I knew that OF COURSE he would stay.  He never, and I mean, NEVER denies a request for help.

He went to the gym where basketball was being played, and I stayed in the dance room.  But after a while, and after I had said, “No,” and “No!” and “Oh HEELLLLL NO!” to various munchkins several times, I went to My Captain’s room and asked him to switch.

He had the kids well in hand in the blink of an eye, which left me fuming in my impotence.  He comes off as strong and in-charge to the kids, and I just come off as a meanie, nagging, barking bitch.  Why?  Why is that?

By the end of the evening, we were both drained.  I had grown a greater respect for the staff at that school, as well as a keen curiosity as to what in the holy hell would make anyone want to be around several hundred punks of that age every day.  It boggles the mind.

One thing made the evening’s effort worth it, though.  And that was this:

Have I mentioned how much I love my Critter?  He looked like Cary Grant and Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes, all in one writhing, gyrating, beat-dropping bundle of energy.

He would have made an excellent Solid Gold Dancer.

When I posted my previous post about having difficulty getting the top of our outside Blue Spruce lit for the Christmas season, I honestly did NOT think I would come off as nagging.

I don’t need a blog to come off as nagging.  I can do it live, any day of the week, and twice on Sunday.

I had one of my awful headaches today…the kind that makes light too bright, sound too loud, and any smell nausea inducing.  It was one of THOSE headaches.  Fortunately, I have some high powered meds for both the pain, and the nausea, and had promptly taken those as soon as I realized it was going that direction.  Problem with those meds, though, is they make me fuzzy-headed. We’re talking seriously fuzzy-headed.

More than I normally am.  A lot more than normal.  We could even call it hairy-headed, because we’re not talking run of the mill fuzzy.  What I’m saying is that when I’m on these meds, I can’t even wrap my tongue around my own name.

The best thing I can do when it gets like this is climb into my bed.  Which I did, whining that I couldn’t afford to spend the afternoon in bed because I NEED to get the Christmas lights up on the outside tree!  I NEED TO, I tell you!  (Remember, I’ve got a wager on this with the neighbor who owns the orchard down the road!)

After about an hour in bed, I dragged myself out from under the covers, pulled on an old raggedy sweater, and blinked at the light as I crept gingerly downstairs.  The kids had come home from school and were outside with My Captain and his best friend, Ty, stringing lights on the outside tree for me!  Apparently My Captain had texted Ty and asked him if he could spare an hour to help him with something, and Ty’s immediate thought was, “This is about that freakin’ tree, I bet.”

Proving two things:  1) My previous post DID come across as nagging, much to my chagrin, and 2) Ty reads Mama Boe, which means he is SERIOUSLY hard up for entertainment, and now I feel obliged to be as entertaining as I possibly can so I don’t disappoint My Captain’s oldest and best friend and that is some serious stress, because how the heck could I possibly live up to that kind of expectation? Who could?  No one, that’s who.

So now, obviously, I wish I’d never said anything about the freakin’ tree in the first place.

But….

It is awfully pretty.

One of my favorite things about lighting this tree during the holidays is that The Little Cottage is nestled in the woods around the bend of a lonely country road, and the night is SO VERY dark all around us.  And if you are driving down that quiet country road at night, and round the bend, you see a beacon….

of sweet light…

that boldly exclaims, MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!

Because subtlety has never been my strong suit.

And if a bright, joyful light breaking through the darkness doesn’t perfectly honor the birth of Jesus, I don’t know what does!

Thank you, My Captain, Ty, and Varmint and Critter!  This was the best Christmas present ever!

Love,

Mama

This year has been a real struggle to get my act together for Christmas.

I’m late getting my rum balls made.  I’m late getting my gifts wrapped.  I’m late getting my cards out.  The only thing I have NOT been late for, is putting extra holiday pounds on.  I’ve nailed that.  You could even say I’m early.

How many Xs can you put on a dress size before it’s obnoxious?

Never mind.  I don’t really want to think about it.

I’ve had a problem getting the lights up on the Big Blue Spruce that is out in front of the Little Cottage this year.  It’s always been a production, because of the height of the glorious evergreen that the previous owners of the Little Cottage kindly planted over a decade ago, but this year the height is proving to be too much for our little operation.  We have long poles, but not-long-enough poles.

You see the evergreen behind the moose? That’s the one we light. It’s the only thing outside that we light, and we tend to do it RIGHT.  Like, a kagillion lights go on that thing.  No joke.

This year I begged some neighbors who have bigger apparatus to help us.  One of our neighbors owns a sign company, and I asked him if he could use his cherry picker to help us reach the top.  But guess what….the guy has a LIFE, and I can’t get him to drop everything to service my tree!  I have a feeling if I could get him to squeeze us into his busy schedule, his wife might have a thing or two to say about getting their own lights up!

Then I did something REALLY stupid.  In a fit of holiday excitement, I bet the son of another neighbor, who owns one of the orchards near us, Lewis Orchards,  that we could light our tree with more lights than he would light the Lewis Orchards trees with.

We agreed that if I won at the end of Christmas, I would get to demand his help with getting our tree lit next year.  And if I lost, I have to make him extra rum balls this year.

You’d think that would be motivation enough for My Captain and I

to get the dang thing done.

But the weather has been cruddy, and my attitude has not been exactly elf-like, and so the beautiful Big Blue Spruce in front of the little cottage only has the bottom half strung with lights.  The lights only go up as far as the not-long-enough poles will reach. I’m telling you, it looks half-dressed.  That’s about par for the course with me this year…..

I’m considering just putting ALL of the lights on the bottom half.  Technically I could still win the bet, because we never said HOW I would ‘light it up!’ more than he did.  We were talking volume, not aesthetics.

Just picture a kagillion lights on just the bottom half of the tree. It might not be pretty, but it might just win me the help for next year.   What do you think?

Don’t judge.

Look how far we are getting on the Mud Pit/Patio/Walkout Basement project!!!  (And by ‘we,’ I mean ‘My Captain.’)

Isn’t this exciting!?

We’re almost ready for the siding!  After painstakingly prepping the underlayers, the final steps are upon us!  (And by ‘us’, I mean ‘him’).

What will we do with our free time when we complete the siding?!  (And by ‘we,’ I mean ‘he’.)

Critter points out that all of My Captain’s Sawhorses stare at us.  They’re happy, though.

I just love that My Captain has accomplished this task.  He’s worked for four years at it, from breaking ground to this.

It’s been squeezed in between living lives with kids and a demanding job, and an ADD wife.

He never stops.  He just keeps at it.  Chipping away at what needs doing.

He is the complete, and total bomb.  Look at him sporting the Police Recruitment T-Shirt so effortlessly.  If I wore that, people would think I was a fugitive.  He wears it like some kind of ding-dang poster boy for Heroes.

I just love him to death, my true-blue, hard working, noble, honest, rugged best friend.

Sorry.

Sorry again.

He’s made so much progress.  I’m always amazed how far he’s come.  I never seem to make as much progress as he does.  I always get stuck right about…..

here.

Don’t judge.