More Holiday Thoughts

The holidays are filled with hustle and bustle with nary a break in sight. And, if you’re a dedicated DIYer, you’re no doubt cranking on a project, all the while working against the calendar. (Unless you're me and let the mother totally wimped you out of even trying to finish the bathroom this year.)

Maybe you haven’t even had time to put a tree up yet. (Whew! That one we've got covered.)

Well, Lowe’s may be able to help you out by giving you a chance to trim the tree without dragging out a single ornament. With their Super Elftacular site, you can decorate the tree and then share it with your friends and family via email, Twitter or Facebook.

You get all the fun of hanging ornaments (with the help of elves on a variety of creative machinery) without the mess.

And, neither cats nor kids can wreck this tree! While we're on the subject of wrecks ...

As if their version of Bohemian Rhapsody wasn't enough, the Muppets are back again! This time, it's Beaker, the Swedish Chef, and my personal favorite, Animal, giving us The Carol of the Bells.
If you can watch either of these and not just totally laugh yourself silly you truly have NO sense of humor.

And my pity.

Thanks to Dominik at Fall of Because for posting Carol of the Bells on his blog!

Merry, Merry Madness

Once, several years ago, the mother sent me to a local mall on Christmas Eve for a last-minute gift. It took me three times as long to get in the mall lot, find a parking space, and then get off the mall parking lot as it did to dash in and get the solo gift, I vowed never to do it again.

I’ve kept my word. In fact, in the week or so before the holiday, I still don’t go near a mall. I try to not go in any stores at all during those final, frazzled days. So it was with much dismay that I realized a shopping trip was inevitable. Not at the mall, thank God, but worse still, the grocery store and Wal-Mart. The mother has been eating and drinking cleaning supplies, so I had to get more as we start to approach the home stretch. The groceries? I needed to get ingredients for the mock soufflé for Christmas with the family – away, that my pure genius forgot about Thursday night. And, I got some more things for post-Christmas with family friends – home, the visit that has touched off this mad bout of cleaning.

I also had to pick up more Christmas cards at Walgreens which I’d ordered online. I thought I’d have enough, but apparently Ozzie is a more popular dude on YorkieTalk.com than I gave him credit for. (He continues to get all kinds of cards from all over the country – even the world – daily. Three more came yesterday.) I’ll apologize now for the tardiness of this last batch which includes some of my local, real-life pals. I figured those would only need a day or so at most to arrive so I saved some of those for last.

Wal-Mart was the insane asylum one would expect it to be with less than two days left for shopping. I was glad to escape it. The soundtrack of screaming children put my teeth on edge. I stopped off at Walgreens to get my cards but they weren’t ready yet. The machine had broken down so I was about sixth in the queue. Great.

I went grocery shopping. Almost as maddening as Wal-Mart, but not quite. The most frustrating thing? Some of the key things I went for couldn’t be found. So, off to the grocery at the other end of the street. Things were only a little better there, but at least it wasn’t as busy.

I grabbed some fast food (pot pies at KFC) and back to Walgreens. Success! The cards were done. It was buzzing in there, too, so I was glad to make a relatively quick exit. Once in the car, I opened the box. Thank God I did. This wasn’t the design I had used before. And wait. Who ARE these people? My card doesn’t even have people. It’s a pic of Ozzie and Toby. Sh*t!

I looked at the box. Wasn’t even MY name on the box. I dashed back inside where the girl in photo apologized profusely. She’d just grabbed the wrong box. (They only had about 30 of them on the counter. Clearly, I wasn’t the only last-minute card purchaser. And, of course, they now have 10-cent prints going on. You know I’ll be all over that this week.)

The moral of this little adventure is this: It’s NOT a pretty sight out there. Get what you have to get – and only what you have to get – NOW. I suspect it’s going to get a whole lot crazier really fast.

Playing Santa

They weren't going to put up a Christmas tree.

After recently losing their home in a fire and what little belongings they had to start with, the man and his two teenaged children were going to "skip" Christmas.

That's what the social worker told me today. "Bill" didn't want a tree because "he didn't want to create the expectation that there would be anything under it." Bill, a member of the working poor, can't provide enough to properly care for his disabled 19-year-old son and his 15-year-old daughter. And he was exasperated.

I'm happy to report that the social worker convinced him to put up a tree. And, in as much as I could jam into Ladybird this afternoon, there are presents to go under it. LOTS of them. And there is food. There are gift cards, cleaning supplies, cooking and kitchen supplies. In fact, between this family, and the family that my floor adopted, I couldn't fit all of it in the car! Ideally, many of the things this family finds under their tree will not just be helpful at Christmas but for some time to come.

Unfortunately, none of the good will and the warm fuzzies are doing much to soothe my aching back or throbbing feet. Oh, it was plenty worth it. I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

Playing Santa is exhausting ... but damn is it good for the soul.

Down to the Wire

If you’re still looking for Christmas gifts, I’ve got a couple of last-minute suggestions.

Since you’re running out of time, you might take Todd’s advice over at Helpful Advice for Home Construction Improvement and consider an Amazon.com gift certificate. You can even send one of these electronically. No gift wrap or post office line! And you’re giving a really versatile gift that any DIYer, or anyone for that matter, is sure to love.

Here’s another idea. Our friends over at One Project closer are giving away TWO $100 Home Depot cards – but you have to hurry. The contest ends TOMORROW, so if you win you have an instant gift – or plenty of time to shop for one before the big day. And with that kind of cold cash, you might even have enough to buy something for yourself, too. Here’s the rules. Blog about it and get 75 chances! (That’s what I’m doing.)

As for me, I’m still holding out for some beadboard. That’s where at least a good chunk of my gift card would go, if I were to win one. I’ve got it already for the mother’s bedroom but not for mine and redoing those two rooms are at the top of the list for next year.

So give it a try. What have you got to lose?!

Call the Red Cross

We need to declare This D*mn House a disaster. The house looks like a cyclone hit, so what should we be preoccupied with? Decorations!

Well, of course. Isn’t that the most important thing when one’s abode is jam-packed with crap and in need of a seasonal cleaning?

Chalk it up to that old somewhat altered analogy: When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping.

That’s right, The clock is ticking and the mother wants to … go shopping. It’s a vacation day for me (thanks to our recently added day after Christmas holiday) so why not?

I’ve always had a hard time getting her priorities and God help me, I’ll never understand the way she works at things. She picks the oddest things to obsess about when faced with an overwhelming task. Stuff I would no more give a second thought to, until maybe, and that’s a big maybe, everything else was already in place.

Me? I’d be ready to dive in and start the pitching, organizing, and cleaning. Granted, this weekend is supposed to be unseasonably warm, so we DO need to hit the outside while we can, but …

It’s not that she’s a procrastinator – that’s my department. She and I just work completely different. Where I like to work on one, maybe two things, get those done and then move onto the next, the mother wants to tear the whole thing apart all at once and work on EVERYTHING! Complete and utter chaos. She always gets it done, mind you. It’s just a matter of approaches, I guess. I prefer the less chaotic route.

For now, I’m just shaking my head and playing along. I know it will all get done. I don’t know how. I’m pretty sure about when – about 5 minutes before the guests hit the front door if history is any indication.

But today, I’m not going to worry about it. So, let the fun begin.

Delayed Decorating

Today’s scene is a lot different than yesterday’s, that’s for sure! Where it was ice, today it’s only rain as it’s about 10 degrees warmer already this morning. We’re going over 50 again today, but it’s supposed to rain on and off throughout the day, with temperatures plummeting between afternoon and evening.

Snow is on tap for tonight, though they say it’s not supposed to amount to much. I guess we’ll see. All I know is that if it doesn’t dry up any before it hits the low of 26 this evening, it’s going to be a skating rink again.

So that’s put a damper on outdoor decorating. I still need to get a smaller outdoor cord (I’m thinking 25 feet, like one I saw in this week’s Target ad) and I’ll need to get some of those clips, too, to see if I can tuck it up along the bottom of the siding as the mother doesn’t want it on the ground. That will get my two lighted trees hooked up on the porch.

While I unloaded the extra bricks we bought last weekend – so I could make squares in the two bare middle patches along the front to match the ones currently on either sides – they were frozen in yesterday’s adventures in ice and now they’re in small pools of water. Then, I need to unload the marble chip that will be placed in pots to keep those sorry ass Martha Stewart trees in place. Those won’t be lit. Then, those pots will go on those squares.

And then, there’s even something else to get lit up beneath the carport. But all that stuff is contingent on the weather. It has to dry out and warm up a little first. Luckily, that is supposed to happen later in the week – and I’m off on Friday!

The problem child then in this little misadventure are two wreaths. The mother wanted to light them with battery-pack lights. We have some tiny, tiny sets of which you’d need at least two for each wreath. We found some slightly bigger light packs for $1/set. Unfortunately, you get what you pay for.

Because they take two C batteries, the packs that energize them are heavier than hell. That’s going to make them really tough to attach to the wreath and the complicate getting the wreath to hang on the door. Not all the lights work. And, if you jiggle the poorly-constructed powerbox too much, none of them will work. Frustrating.

I guess I have to be a victim of Walgreens then and their prices, as that’s the only place I’ve seen the other tiny light sets (that take AA batteries) like we had before. At least I know those work and they’ll be lots easier to manage.

Sometimes, Life Sucks

There’s a grandmother who doesn’t live that far from me. I don’t know her name. I don’t know how old she is. But I know that this grandmother is dying. I know that she is suffering. And I know that after she is gone, four little children will continue to suffer on her behalf.

This grandmother is raising four grandchildren – ages 2 to 12 – while simultaneously battling both bone and breast cancer. Even as she prepares for a second mastectomy in the months ahead, her prognosis is not good. This may very well be her last holiday season.

The good news, as if there can be much in a situation this grave, is that her little family is among those to benefit from our office’s holiday charity program. Why, you may ask, is that good news? Well, I just happen to work with not only some of the smartest and most dedicated people in the business, but many of them just happen to have hearts of gold, too. Several of them have been touched just as deeply as I have by the tragic plight of this family.

One colleague has asked what, if anything, we can do for grandma. I have repeatedly tried to pry something out of the social worker that we can do just for her, but all she wants is some new clothes and toys for the children. (Well, she’ll be getting that in abundance. Plus, there will be lots of groceries and cleaning supplies as well as gift cards for whatever we don’t get that she may need. We can’t heal her, but boy can we make sure she gets what she has asked for those kids.)

This colleague and her family have made helping this family and some of the other sad cases that we’re helping, how they will celebrate their Christmas. “My family doesn’t really need anything and we’re so blessed,” she said. “We just think it’s more important to help those who aren’t so lucky.” I nearly wept.

I’ll admit, I was worried about our program this year. Even at a big company with many employees who generally make a good living. I was afraid that because each of us is feeling the economy’s squeeze in a variety of ways, and because this effort was quick on the heels of a hugely successful United Way campaign, that people would just deem it too much. It would be more than they could do.

I’m happy to report that I was wrong. Nearly half of the gift tags for our floor’s tree were gone before they were even put up. Gifts are already piling up in a corner of my office. And a handful of my colleagues have simply handed me money. “Get whatever we need,” one said.

I even got an email this week from a contractor – someone who isn’t really a company employee, doesn’t even work in the office – asking if he could contribute to the program.

Some of the other floors are moving a little more slowly while others are going about as well as ours. I have complete faith that by the 18th, when the program wraps up, we’ll have what we’ve asked for. And probably more than that. How can I be so sure? I think another colleague said it best.“There’s an awful lot of need out there,” he said. “I think that just makes people want to give that much more.”

My colleagues already are proving him so right.

Window No. 3

Continuing to share photos of the "Yes, Virginia ..." display in the windows at Macy's, we now come to the one I love. The family in the parlor in Window No. 1 is second only to this.


It must harken back to my old newspaper days. While the buildings I worked in during my 12-year print career were never this pretty some of them were from this era.


And come to think of it, so was some of the equipment I had to work on ...

Yes, Virginia ...

My reward for coming in even earlier than early today is a beautiful sunrise. It's shaping up nicely with a multitude of shades of red, pink and purple. Alas, no camera.

It was a comforting sight after being a little freaked out driving across my beloved bridge this morning. Three people died there last night in a head-on collision. Makes me shiver to think of it.
On to happier thoughts .... I did, however, have a camera handy to capture the windows at Famous, er Macy's. (Old habits die hard.) The historic tradition that Famous-Barr had carried on for so many years before dying out sometime in the 1980s has been revived by Macy's. Animated windows tell the story of little Virginia O'Hanlon and her infamous letter questioning the existence of Santa Claus.

I can remember being very small and coming down here to see Santa Claus. Going around and looking at the first floor windows was just part of the adventure. Kudos to Macy's for bringing back this piece of nostalgia.

Here's some shots from the first window. I'm blown away by all the details.

Christmas at the Door

OK. No doubt, Ann is fainting at the very mention of Christmas.

It’s still two months out, but the Christmas packages are starting to arrive at This D*mn House. Yesterday, the Apple order arrived bearing engraved Shuffles. I know those things are small, but MAN! Just TRY to read the engraving. When I unboxed each one to check it, I had to scurry for my glasses because I couldn’t have begun to tell you what, if anything , was on them! Another point size or two would have helped. And believe it or not, there’s more than enough space, even on these smaller-than-a-matchbook models.

Another order, this one from a catalog/online site, is about to ship. Or, at least most of it is. As happens every year, there is always something that’s already on back order. Even in September and October. It’s stuff for my cousin’s kiddos (three of the four of them), so here’s hoping it will show up.

Our living room is already lined with shopping bags (from Cracker Barrel, the Bread Co., 54th Street) with each one representing a family member, with their respective stuff placed in each. But before I can move all that crap out of the livingroom, I have to locate the family room again. (It’s littered with stuff waiting to go into the still-to-be-remodeled bedrooms.)

Bah freakin’ humbug.