Menu planning....

We are staying home for Christmas this year.  For the first time ever, my children will wake up in their own beds on Christmas morning.  This is only the second time in my whole life that I have not been at my parents' home on Christmas Day.  To say it will be different is an understatement.  While we will miss my parents and my brother and his family this year, it will be a chance for our family to be together in a very meaningful way. 

So the downside, or maybe I should say the scary part, is that we have to eat.  And because it is a special day, a holiday, we feel like we should celebrate and eat well.  This means I'm cooking.  I generally don't really like to cook.  Most of the time, I don't see the cost/benefit tradeoff leaning in favor of cooking.  Especially when I am working and taking classes.  But this is the rare time of year when I am on vacation, and I'm out of class for the semester. 

My husband and I planned the Christmas Eve and Christmas Day menus last night.  We chose things that a) we like to eat, b) don't get to eat very often, and c) that I'm relatively confident I can make.  Since point c. narrows the list of options considerably, it wasn't too hard to plan 6 meals.  Then we had to come up with a grocery list, and go to the store.  Check, and check.  I'm going to start cooking tomorrow, as there are several things on my list that can be made ahead and I really don't want to spend all of Christams Eve and Christmas Day cooking.  In addition, I got a nice promise from my husband that he's going to be cooking with me, and will continue to help through the clean-up process.  I have to say that I don't mind cooking as much when I have someone to share the WHOLE process with......I will post again with results.

But altogether, I am feeling very with it this Christmas season.  I got cards out (and early) thanks to a Creative Memories consultant/friend who really wanted to help me out this year.  I did much of my shopping online starting on Thanksgiving Day.  I went on an overnight shopping trip with two dear friends that was both very fun and helped me out A LOT, and I've had some time this week to get my last minute things done.  I don't feel this way every year, but for now, I'm savoring the moments of having "it" together!

P.S.  My husband thinks he smells something funny again.  I've already checked the dryer vent which was (thankfully) clear.  I'll let you know if the smell turns into something....

Basketball

I loved to play basketball.  I played in high school for awhile, until my knee hurt too much.  I wasn't all that good - I was never a good ball handler, and I wasn't a scorer.  I liked defense, but I didn't have much meat on my bones back then.  But I did love to play.

I played intramurals in college.  If I remember correctly, my team won the all-sorority tournament.  I'll leave it to you all to judge how impressive that was.  I had a few more pounds on my frame by then, and my knee cartilage wasn't as inflamed because I wasn't playing regularly.  I still wasn't a good ball handler, and I still wasn't a scorer, but I think I was a pretty fierce defender.

So - both of my children play basketball.  I like to watch them play, and I like to see them improve.  They both had a game Friday night.  After the game, they were shooting around, and playing each other one on one.  They were having such a good time, I wanted to join in.  I challenged them to two on one - them against me.  There will be a day when both of my kids indivually can smoke me on the court, but Friday night was not that day.  My son said that I was playing some pretty tough D.  My daughter tried to play me close, and unfortunatley got a little too close.  She got clipped on the chin, but no harm done.  It was a  great time, and I guess I had forgotten how it felt to be out on the court. 

5 minutes later, my lungs gave out, so I told the kids it was time to go home.  On the way home, my son commented again on my defense.  I replied that if I could play him like that at 40, just think of how I played at 20!  The look on his face was priceless.  He was impressed, and I think I found just a little bit of my youth for a moment. 

The Tale of the Guacamole....

I had an epic failure in the kitchen this week.  Guacamole, based on my previous experiences, should not be hard to make.  I promised to make it for a department Christmas lunch.  In the end, we ended up with salsa. 

In a nutshell, this is what I learned:
1.  Ripe avocados are key.  Putting unripe avocados in the little chopper gadget does not mash them properly.
2.  Add the lime juice AFTER the avocados.  Otherwise, it's pretty easy to get too much.
3.  If you have unripe avocados and too much lime juice, your guacamole tastes awful, and 3 hours later, you'd really just like to drown your failure in a couple of oreos.

I found something.....but wish I hadn't

Those of you who know me know that I don't have the best sense of smell.  I can't smell a thing unless it hits me full in the face!  I very judiciously married a man who could sniff out anything.  This has served us well over the years.  He asks if I can smell *whatever*, and I always say, "No."  I don't know why he keeps asking, but he does.  I guess he's trying to figure out how strong the scent is......Sooooo, when he started asking on Friday if I could smell something when I walked in the house, I figured something was up.  He says, it smells rotten.  I say, I can't smell it. But I humor him, and run the dishwasher, put one of those garbage disposal cleaner things in the garbage disposal, took out the trash, and stuck my head in the trash cans.  I did sniff up in the kids' rooms too.  By today, he said it was so bad that we needed to open the windows and air out the house.  Given that it only probably hit 60 degrees today, that was pretty drastic. 

When I started the kids' laundry this afternoon, I thought about this elusive smell.  I stuck my head inside the washer, and........fresh as can be.  For the sake of being thorough, I stuck my head in the dryer as well, and instantly regretted it!!!!  Holy cow, what a stench!  How could a dryer smell so bad??  After I dismantled the vent on the back of the dryer, I found the reason......decomposing mouse.  I'm pretty sure we need a new dryer vent cover - one that actually seals.  Yuck!!!

Sometimes, it's better to be good at losing it and not finiding it.  But I really would like to find my underwear.

Help - I've lost my underwear!!!

So this is a physical "losing it" -  a whole week's worth of underwear has disappeared.  While I was out of town for a week, my wonderful husband did all the laundry.  When I came home, everything was clean and folded.  But no underwear!!!  I swear I wore some the week before I left, he swears he washed and folded them.  The children swear that no stray underwear has shown up in their stacks of clean clothes.  We have looked everywhere, including behind the washer/dryer.  So my question of the day is, how on earth do you lose a stack of underwear????  What kind of cosmic forces are conspiring against my undies?

Interestingly (at least to me), this connects with my wish for a super power.  If I could have any super power, I would chose to be able to find anything that is lost.  I've thought about  this for years, because I get so fixated on trying to find what I have misplaced that I can't concentrate on anything else until I find it.  Having this power would improve my efficiency, which means I would get things done faster, which means I would be less stressed.  Which means I might be finding it more (literally) and losing it alot less!!!

So if I seem distracted to you the next time you see me, it's because I'm still looking for my underwear!!!

Did you know.......

Did you know that it is physically possible to put two contacts in the same eye?  Did you know that this results in:

1. Not being able to see very well out of the eye with two contacts, and
2. Not being able to see very well out of the eye with no contact?

And since you asked, no, I did not do this little experiment on purpose.  I'm just reporting the results.

Are we too hard on ourselves?

I was talking to a friend today about my new blog - I am still quite excited about it - and she asked me for examples of what I would write about for both a "losing it" and a "finding it".  As I briefly described my first two posts, one of those big life questions hit me. Are we, as women, too hard on ourselves?  Or do men have these same questions, and I just don't know about it, and in essence, the question is: are we too hard on ourselves?

So here's my big confession.  I wrote about my "losing it" moment, which was, in fact, the inspiration for the blog, and I wrote about my "finding it" routine.  I wrote that I was losing it after a 5 minute episode, but I didn't immediately recognize my finding it routine - something that my husband and I have been doing very successfully for 10+ years, ever since our children were born.  We rock at mornings.  Is it just me that thinks that I have to prove (to myself, to everyone?) that I have it together - and I have to have years of evidence to back it up???  And yet, I'm willing to put it out there that I'm losing it after a brief interlude with misplaced shoes! 

Having said all that - I'll put this out there.  On balance, I think I have it together more than I don't.  And, I'll try to recognize that more often.  But I also recognize that losing it moments are just funnier!!!!

Found It - a little

I was just thinking about our family's regular morning routine, and I think this is one place where I found my groove.  I'm not writing this for any other reason than to celebrate the small things that make life work.  If I may say so, I think that we have a pretty good thing going in the mornings.  Everyone does what they need to do, when they need to do it, and most mornings, we are even ready a few minutes early.  But if one thing just doesn't go right - just one person not holding up their end of things, it doesn't work too well.  It's interesting that there's such a fine line sometimes between finding it and losing it!

One of the things I like best about our mornings is that I'm NOT the first one up!  I hate getting out of bed, and being the first one out of bed just makes it that much worse.  So, hubby gets up first while I grab a couple more zzzz's.  And then the well oiled morning machine in the Holloway house really gets going.  Most mornings I even get my tea made for me.  There are things that we have thrown out from the regular morning routine - I don't cook (Ha - I barely even cook at supper time, no way that's gonna happen when I'm not fully awake yet!), lunches are packed the night before if they are needed, backpacks are loaded the previous evening, and instruments are ready to go.  This is the first year of band in our house, and I gotta say, I'm not real fond of the 7 am start time two days a week.  But in the end, the morning routine has adjusted to that early start, and I'm shocked most band mornings that my family, none of us being morning people, are all ready on time.

And maybe that's what makes me feel so good about my "finding it" - the fact that if given a choice, all of us would stay in bed until we woke up naturally sometime between 8 and 10 am.  We are not a family of morning people, and we all love to sleep in.  So the fact that we work so well together in the morning and don't really struggle to stay on time is a major accomplishment.  So yeah for team Holloway! 

Losing it!

Ok - so I thought I'd start this blog out with a finding it.....because I really like those moments when I feel like I have it all together and my life is in order.  But really, isn't it easier to think of the losing its?  And, if I may be honest here, don't they happen more frequently?  I promise I'll publish a finding it when I can, but for now, perhaps you can relate to my losing it.  (Or maybe this will make you feel better about yours!)

I was sitting in my office recently near the end of the day.  I was thinking about all the things I had to wrap up before I went home (i.e. everything I had to write down so I didn't forget about it for the next morning), and everything I had to do that evening (i.e. who had to be where by what time).  And then it hit me:  I couldn't remember if I had walked to work that morning, or if I had driven!!!  I sat they for what felt like 5 mintues trying to remember my trip into work that morning.  I looked in the corner of my office where I ususally keep my walking shoes - empty.  I tried to remember (again) my trip into work that morning.  I went and asked two of my co-workers if they remembered how I got to work (they did not - they have their own worries!).  I tried to decide how much my children would make fun of me if I called home and asked them to look in the garage to see if my car was there.  And if I really wanted to appear that scattered to the sitter.  As I was debating, I saw my shoes.  They were in a different place, but the evidence was clear - I WALKED. 

If that's not a "losing it," I don't know what is.  I'm glad I can laugh at myself about this.  I hope you laugh with me.