Last year I was so stressed from moving that I didn’t decorate AT ALL for Halloween. Which made me sad (and guilty) because I like Halloween and decorating for Halloween (and because I failed to make Carla’s first Halloween in the new house Fun and Homey). This year, I’m feeling very excited about decorating for Halloween and have already been scoping out décor for weeks.
My favorite Halloween decorations are ghosts. But not scary ghosts. I prefer happy, or at the very least apathetic, ghosts.
I came across these AMAZING ghosts, the ghosts of my heart, at a local garden center.
But my husband played the role of Frugal Spouse (we take turns) and persuaded me that $50 and $100 respectively for these ghosts was too much to spend. I perhaps disagree, but I am also cheap frugal so I did not buy the ghosts. I still think about them, though. Maybe they will go on sale and I can snap them up?
Ever since I declined to bring those beautiful ghosties home with me, I’ve been searching for the perfect reasonably-priced alternative, with very little success. I have two goals: Outdoor décor and indoor décor. I need much less indoor décor.
Want to join me on a little online ghost perusal????
I love the IDEA of these tree-wrap ghosts… and have some good place to hang them. But I’m not sure if I love the ghosts themselves? They appear to be singing, but sarcastically?
This is a cute sign for our porch, and much more reasonably priced, but I don’t LOVE it.
These light-up ghosts are nice and tall, and meant for outdoors, and I like how they could be bemoaning their deaths or simply yawning… hmmmm. I mean, I do prefer sleepy ghosts to scary ones. I’m on the fence here.
I suppose I could make my own porch ghost… but do I want to do that? And is a sheet really going to stand up to October weather patterns?
These little lights are cute. Maybe I could use them to ghost up my porch trees?
This choir of lawn ghosts is quite charming and is supposedly meant for the outdoors. I can’t tell what they’re made of though; will they melt the instant snow falls?
I find these glow-in-the-dark ghosts quite adorable. And when they are all in a group, the scariest one just looks grumpy.
I like the idea of this stack of ghosts (which also glows) but I can’t tell what it REALLY looks like, and that makes me a little leery, you know? (The one review with photos still doesn’t adequately show the size.)
One of my favorite things to put up each year are my wall bats; so it makes sense that I find these wall ghosts deeply appealing. Do they seem a little whiny though? Would they detract from the bats? How many walls full of stick-on creatures will my husband tolerate? (I hang the bats with wall-safe sticky putty.)
This snow person has nothing to do with anything, but I found it on a walk recently and it is a real vibe.
A person can both Not Really Want, At All sweeping romantic gestures and glittery jewelry and giant bouquets of flowers and fancy heart-shaped boxes of chocolates, while still feeling a little disappointed to then not get those things. It is illogical, but such is the human heart. This past Valentine’s Day, I managed to override whatever part of my system feels sad and melancholy over not having the Hallmark Version of the holiday, and instead feel pleased about a) sending Valentines (although they ALL seemed to reach their recipients MUCH TOO LATE; note to self, start MUCH EARLIER) and b) making cookies and c) delivering said cookies to a few dear local friends and d) buying flowers for myself and e) supporting Carla in her desire to paper the house with hearts. It worked, truly, and I felt pleased and cheerful rather than resentful and pouty.
Today: I bought myself some yellow tulips that I am hoping will open up as the day goes on. I do love a cheery yellow tulip. I am making vanilla cupcakes with lemon curd filling and cream cheese frosting because, as Engie noted, why would I pass up a perfectly good opportunity for a baked good?! Also, I am using boxed cake mix because the cupcakes always turn out better than homemade, PLUS they are easier. I am also making tacos for dinner and I am going to have a GIANT MARGARITA, maybe two! with the tacos. Probably not three, because I do need to wake up tomorrow to take Carla to school, but we’ll see where the night takes us. I don’t plan on doing a single dish, although that means I may have extra dishes tomorrow, but that’s okay! It is worth it! (We’ll see if I can truly go to bed with dirty dishes piled in the dishwasher.)
Today is supposed to be both sunny and warm, so I plan to take a long, leisurely walk. Maybe I will even start a new audiobook instead of forcing myself to continue listening to the book I am reading with a couple of friends. (I am nearly 70% of the way through it, and it’s just not my favorite. Although it is improving with time. I suppose for a five-book series, I should give the author a little time to solidify the world around me before throwing in the towel.)
ANYWAY, despite all these happy things to look forward to, my husband is at the hospital and I am sort of feeling sorry for myself anyway so let’s skip right into some Sunday randomosity!!!!!!!!!! Aggressive exclamation marks!!!!!!!!
Edited to add: Turns out all I needed was to chat with you and pull a couple of fragrant pans of cupcakes out of the oven and my mood is considerably brighter. Onto the less aggressive and self-pitying randomosity!
Waiting to be filled and frosted!
1. My dreams have been highly stressful lately. Uncomfortably explicit dreams about people from my past. Not-finishing-the-assignment dreams. Last night, I dreamed that I worked at my old company, and got paid every month, but wasn’t actually doing any work. And there was an assignment due that I hadn’t yet begun, and I was kind of hoping everyone at the company had forgotten about me completely. But I was also feeling super guilty about getting paid for doing nothing. In the same dream, there’d been an Unknown Incident that resulted in needing to build a special room for my oven, but the room was in a tiny nook up several flights of stairs and it was 90 degrees in that space at all times. I think this last dream at least has some easily identifiable sources: a) I get hot to the point of needing to step outside every time I turn on the oven and b) my to-do list keeps growing and I keep not doing any of the things.
2.There are so many unappealing things on my to-do list. I think I’m going to try the thing where I list them out here, and the embarrassment of stating them publicly will spur me to do them. Come on, internet magic!
Call the electrician. How many times am I going to mention this particular pressing task before I DO IT? The reason I have not taken care of it yet is because the electrician has both a weirdly specific estimate process and a weirdly complicated scheduling process. My husband suggested I find a new electrician; that would be WORSE, because these people have already done a whole-house evaluation and I cannot stomach the idea of researching a new electrician and having them come out and give us an estimate and then schedule a real appointment. I CAN’T DO IT. Also, we get a discount with this particular electrician which has to count for something, no?
Figure out how to fix the doorbell????? Perhaps the electrician could give us some thoughts, if I ever get him back out here? I am seriously considering becoming an electrician myself because it seems like it would be easier.
Email or call the landscaper. The reason I am balking at this one is because I ignored the landscaper’s calls and emails for MONTHS before we were finally ready to sign a contract for next summer. Apparently, all you need to do to get me to spend money with your company is to badger me, politely but at regular intervals, for several months???? Anyway, now I feel like I can’t suddenly Be Available to talk about new things we want to do with our yard. Also, while I DO want to do new things with our yard, I don’t know what they ARE and I am not ready for that conversation (or the price).
Schedule a work call. This should be the easiest on my list, I think. The only thing holding me back is that I already reached out to this person and they didn’t respond, which always makes me feel like I am pestering.
Figure out who will take care of our pool this summer. Talk about a Champagne problem!!!!!!! But getting a person whose purported livelihood is pool care/maintenance to call me back and then agree to have me pay them to do the work they purport to do is extremely difficult for reasons I don’t understand and I am avoiding it like whoa.
Put last year’s earnings into my retirement account. (Another Champagne problem. I am so lucky that 99% of my problems are this variety.) WHY is this hard? It should not be. And yet.
Schedule Carla’s next dental appointment. The hygienist wanted to schedule it for me, but I didn’t know when Carla’s first day of school was, so I said I would call back once I knew… but then I looked it up while the hygienist was finishing up, and so I could have easily made the appointment, but didn’t because I didn’t want to bother her?????? So now I have to make a phone call. Yay.
Put a check in the mail to the orthodontist. We get a small discount on the price of braces if we pay in full in cash. I did not have my checkbook (why?????) when I signed the braces paperwork, but the office manager kindly told me she would give me the discount anyway, if I just sent in the check by the end of the month. She even gave me a self-addressed envelope. Why have I not simply WRITTEN THE CHECK and put it in the mail? THIS is the easiest item on my list. Just do it, Suzanne!
Figure out what kind of person addresses what looks like rot in the wood siding of my house. Probably I just need to google this. And then I will need to begin the rigamarole of calling people and having them come over and give estimates. Why did we buy a new house again? Who thought that would be a good idea?
Fulfill the giveaway I offered on my blog. Wait a second. THIS is the easiest task on my list to fulfill! Guess what?! J is the winner of the paperback giveaway! Congrats, J! I will reach out to you for your address and send you a copy of the second book in Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend series.
3. You know how, in TV shows and movies, someone will cough ominously and then three scenes later they die of consumption? Carla is upstairs and I can hear her coughing and it is filling me with foreboding. We went to a school event the other day; I volunteered while Carla ran around in a howling pack of other children. Already one friend has texted me with the unsettling news that her kid just woke up with a fever. We have so far avoided the bulk of the Winter Illnesses that have felled nearly everyone else on the planet… but based on the frequency of the coughing, I suspect our time has come.
4. There’s no way to correct someone’s misimpression about your birth date without making them feel bad and/or stupid, right? There is a person in my life who very sweetly wishes me happy birthday every year… the day before my birthday. And now their spouse is doing it, too. And it’s very thoughtful and getting it on the actual date really does not matter – TRULY – I am now forty-three years old and it’s unexpectedly lovely when people remember your birthday at all, let alone get the date right. This is just a charming quirk I should love for as long as it lasts, right?
5.The best article I’ve read in awhile is this profile of Jodie Foster. I love Foster – most recently in True Detective. What resonated with me most is the idea of simultaneously craving privacy and connection. I wonder if it resonates with you, too, if you have a blog. The idea of having someone I KNOW – even though that’s a silly categorization, because I know YOU so much better than so many people I see out in the three-dimensional world day-to-day – read my blog gives me hives. And yet I thrive on the connections I find here, in bloglandia, via our (in most cases) text-only relationships. It was validating and comforting to read about Foster, who seems to have a similar personality and a similar struggle with finding the balance between being known and being understood.
6.Instead of doing literally ANY of the things I need to do (which also include larger, longer-term projects that I did not list in bullet #1), I decided I would put together an old-school blogroll. And I DID, based on the very haphazard and unreliable methods I use to check blogs regularly. But then I could not figure out how to create a new page in WordPress. I mean. I think I *DID* create a new page in WordPress, but I don’t know where said page LIVES on my blog. So then I tried to add the new page to the menu, and got very confused, and this is all to say that I did not accomplish anything except a Word document listing many (but probably not all) of the blogs I read. SIGH.
7.In addition to cupcakes, I am contemplating another baked good. I recently enjoyed one of these muffins at a friend’s house. Subsequently, I found myself thinking about the muffin with such longing that I asked my friend for the recipe. But I have yet to break down and BAKE the muffins. So far.
8. Swimsuit season is creeping ever closer. I will be spring breaking in a place that requires a swimsuit, so I am fretting abstractedly about swimsuits. I own a swimsuit, a black two piece that includes a top and a skirted bottom. To be honest, that is probably the swimsuit I will continue to wear. But I always find myself pining for a NEW swimsuit. It’s tough to find a suitable suit, or at least a suit I find remotely flattering, when I am self-conscious of my rather lumpy lower half. It’s not just that I’m a pear shape, although the top part of the pear grows ever wider with the passing years; it’s that my hips are not a nice pleasing curve from hipbone to thigh: there’s a divot in there. I believe the young people call it a “hip dip.” I have become convinced over the years by body positive Instagrammers that this is not, as some might say, my fault; this is how my body is shaped, and I cannot control it no matter how many squats I might do or how little I weigh. (The latter, I know for sure; I remember being a 100-pound active high school student and worrying about my “saddle bags.”) But my body shape still doesn’t lend itself to a lot of the more pleasing bathing suit styles. ANYWAY, we all have our Things, and this is (one of) mine. I guess I am just wondering, what does YOUR swimsuit look like? And what swimsuit are you ogling, in case the one you own suddenly bursts into spontaneous flame?
9.My parents took me out to lunch for my birthday! It was SO DELIGHTFUL. I cannot remember the last time I celebrated my birthday with them?!? (Okay, yes I can; it was before Carla was born.) It was just the three of us and I felt very spoiled and loved and I cannot believe how lucky I am that they LIVE NEARBY. What a gift. I think we have settled into a good rhythm of seeing each other while allowing one another to Live Our Lives (although I would like to spend more one-on-one time with my mom). I hope I never take our time together for granted.
Pile of presents from my family!!!!Plus Carla and I have been talking about our Future Hypothetical Cat, and decided that we want to name him Wallace and he will wear a monocle and will have coloring that makes him look like he’s wearing a white ascot and a brown or black suit jacket. Hence the picture she left for me this morning.
10. My holiday cards are still up. I don’t want to remove them, although my husband is making gentle noises indicating he is growing tired of them. I had enough this year to line the entire kitchen. I affixed them to the wall above the windows/doors and they make me so happy! We also still have hearts on all the walls, which also make me happy. Seeing as it’s still February, I don’t really feel a lot of pressure to remove the hearts. Perhaps I will take everything down right before Spring Break.
11. I have never really been a big Branded Handbag type of person. I don’t even really USE a handbag that much anymore. But I have recently found myself coveting a high-end handbag for myself. I blame this new desire on my choice to follow Class of Palm Beach on Instagram. Are you a handbag person? If you could get any fancy bag in the world, what would it be? A Birkin bag seems like the obvious choice, especially because they are considered a better investment than gold (!!!!), but it also sounds difficult to get your hands on one. (Please also keep in mind that there is no way I would ever buy a Birkin bag. This is pure idle fantasy.)
Tulips! You can also sort of glimpse the hearts AND the holiday cards in the background.
Okay Internet. Tell me your favorite type of cupcakes and/or muffins. And please share all your magical body altering swimsuit choices with me as well.
How many hours of TV watching is still considered “acceptable” while one’s child is on winter break? Asking for a me.
Carla is feeling nearly back to normal. No fever since Sunday, and no more sore throat. Just a little sniffle and a bit of congestion.
We have SNOW this week, which is delightful!!!!! Probably because I am not obligated to drive in it. But I loooooove snow. I think it is supposed to warm up in the next couple of days, so it may not linger. But it’s so lovely while it’s lasting.
Carla and I spent FIVE HOURS running errands on Monday. Five. Hours. It was… not pleasant. She is a real trooper, though, and maintained her good humor throughout. Me… not so much. Somehow, despite the marathon, I still need to go to the grocery store and I really really want to go to the garden center because I continue to have Porch Panic about the state of my front stoop. It is so dumb, but I feel like the dead mums (which I panic bought three days before Thanksgiving, by the way; they were beautiful and lush at that time) are emanating a Gross Dead Vibe and the entire neighborhood is whispering about me behind my back. (Going to a neighborhood Christmas party and having one of the neighbors teasingly ask why we don’t have any lights up didn’t help. THEY ARE PAYING ATTENTION.) Maybe I could just swirl some twinkle lights festively on the dead mums and call it a day???? I still would need to purchase twinkle lights though. I also have a strong urge to buy more poinsettias. I have two small ones, one of which is trying to die already, but I want MORE POINSETTIAS. Part of this is a case of Christmas Décor Envy, which I developed while attending the aforementioned holiday party: the hosts’ house was GORGEOUS and every inch of it was bright with Christmas magic. There is no point in comparing oneself to other people – and in reality, I have no idea WHERE they store all their Christmas paraphernalia, and I have only a creeping horror in my bones to hint at what kind of time and energy is required to dress the house in such a fashion – but still I WANT MY HOUSE TO BE A WINTER WONDERLAND. Poinsettias would go a long way toward helping me achieve that goal, right? RIGHT?
The real problem, I think, is that I have no idea how to decorate this house for Christmas. The living room is weird, so our Christmas tree is weird. It was kind of a battle, to be honest, to figure out where to put it. And I was the one who gave in, which makes me feel crabby. It’s a very open space, with really only two full walls: the other walls are the kitchen (which is a partial wall separating two doors) and the stairway/entryway which isn’t even enclosed; there’s a balcony that overlooks the living room. The longest wall isn’t even a wall wall, it’s a wall of windows. And the other wall is taken up by cabinets and the fireplace. So there’s no REAL place to put the tree. We ended up putting it in the middle of the wall of windows, which I think at least makes sense symmetrically. (My husband and child wanted the tree off center, which just felt wrong in so many ways.) My big idea was to put the tree up against the stairway, but my husband hated that idea so vehemently I think he might have simply declined to celebrate Christmas if I’d pushed. (I still think it would look great.) Also, we are planning to get new furniture for the space, so NEXT YEAR it will be even weirder, but my husband said not to think about that now. (Does he know me?) And that’s just the living room! It’s definitely the most Christmassy of all the rooms. The other rooms have… nothing. Which feels so unfair! (The party host had FIVE CHRISTMAS TREES. That is more Christmas trees than I could ever handle, but maybe I could handle two????) I could fill the piano room with poinsettias! What I really want to do is to line the doorways with something festive (yes, I know I mentioned this already) – I originally thought pine garland. And I have seen so many Instagram videos of people putting shower tension rods in their doorways and decorating them with pine garland and ornaments etc. that I have started thinking that’s a viable idea. (Keep off the internet, kids.) My mother suggested ribbon, which sounds not only economical but also less dusty (and less of a pain to store) than pine garland. But I am not crafty like my mother is, so who knows. I did end up buying some bow-things at Joann Fabric (70% off!) (I also got a box of Hanukkah candles for next year, also 70% off, so perhaps we will have enough candles to light the menorah FULLY every single night of Hanukkah next year lol cringe.) and a spool of ribbon and I’m going to see what I can do. It may be very Preschooler Makes a First Ornament, but it will be Something.
Where I have excelled, at least in volume, is baking. I have made not one but TWO batches of cranberry crumble bars, and they are still by far my favorite Christmas treat. They are just the perfect combination of buttery/tangy and crunchy/chewy. Carla wanted to bake, and her very specific baking request was snickerdoodles with buttercream frosting, so she made those. She really wanted colorful buttercream, and while she was rummaging around for food coloring she found the box of candy eyes we used last year and so she went wild with the eyes. Very Christmassy. I wanted to make molasses cookies, but they turned out a) completely smooth, not crackly like molasses cookies are supposed to be and b) very dry and crumbly on the inside. I tried to save them by adding an eggnog glaze, which I think does help, but… meh. From my online troubleshooting, it seems like my oven is the problem. (My understanding is that the crackly tops come from a combination of rolling the dough in sugar to dry it out, and having a nice hot oven.) I am pretty irritated with our ovens. Yes. We have TWO OVENS and neither of them seems to heat appropriately. SO FRUSTRATING. You should have seen how pale our Thanksgiving turkey was. It was cooked through, but it needed some time on the Jersey Shore with a bottle of baby oil.
During our marathon errand day, Carla came across a selection of dog toys. She promptly burst into tears because she wanted to give them to all the dogs in our old neighborhood. Listen, I am a heartless bitch when it comes to I Really Need That tears. But I got a little misty, too, and I allowed her to buy them. She wanted to use her allowance, but then I had a discount situation that made them free. A Christmas miracle! She wrapped them and I texted our old neighbors and we spent an afternoon going from house to house, giving dog toys (and cookie plates) (although they were last-minute cookie plates, so they were on Hanukkah dishes because that’s all I had) and lots of pets. It made Carla’s day, although I think it also made her sad. It’s so hard to find a balance between honoring her grief by allowing her to visit these old neighbors, while also helping her to move on. I don’t think I’ve got it right. But it was lovely to see our old neighbors, who EACH had a little gift for Carla.
Stocking stuffers have been procured. I feel as though I didn’t give you the full story, on Monday, when I alluded to shopping for stocking stuffers and how difficult that would be with Carla in tow. The thing is, I ordered stocking stuffers for Carla (and for my husband) long ago. Or at least long enough ago for them to have arrived already. However, my parents are spending Christmas Day with us, and I feel super awkward about them coming to our home and NOT having stockings to open. It is probably very silly, especially because they are minimalists at heart. But my desire to have Stocking Equity overruled my knowledge of their minimalism, so I got them stocking stuffers. (We have anonymous stockings that we set out for guests, so they will have stockings as well.) And also, I had NO IDEA what I wanted to get for stocking stuffers. The only thing that I really wished I’d learned about earlier was this flexible screwdriver bit. My dad would use the heck out of that bit! It’s so handy! But alas, I only learned about it on Monday when a YouTube ad interrupted my workout video. Next year, for sure. What I really needed to do was wander around a store and happen across the exact right stocking stuffers. And I got the chance during Carla’s music lesson and found a bunch of stocking stuffers that will hopefully be fun and/or personal-ish enough while also not making the recipient feel too guilty about throwing them out. So now there will be Stocking Equity and I am super relieved.
Kohl’s is the place to go for stocking stuffers. I also got everyone candy. And Carla, shockingly, will get a bunch of other stuff because she is spoiled beyond belief.
Well, that’s it for me before Christmas, I think! I still have the grocery store/garden center to visit, and I still have to wrap some presents. (And Santa has to wrap gifts AND stocking stuffers – WHY, Santa, WHY did you begin such an arduous tradition????) (Then again, maybe this is the last year Santa will visit our house, and I will henceforth be sobbing about NO SANTA GIFTS????? Parenting is so fun.)
Oh, by the way, I just have to include this here. Carla went to the orthodontist this week (yay, braces in our near future woo) and the orthodontist was very chatty about Santa. He said he sets TRAPS for Santa, to which Carla reacted with scorn. “Do you want to HURT Santa?” she asked, voice dripping with disapproval. No, the orthodontist just wants to SEE Santa, in person! “Why don’t you set up video cameras?” Carla suggested. Oh, but the orthodontist has tried that. And it didn’t work! Didn’t capture a thing. “That’s because Santa deletes the footage,” Carla said, and she might as well have added, “you idiot” because that’s what her tone conveyed.
SANTA DELETES THE VIDEO FOOTAGE. You heard it here, folks. Don’t try to mess with Santa, even via digital surveillance methods.
