So Long, ’17!

2017 started off pretty smoothly with no notable bumps or bruises.  Remember New Year’s Eve when I almost cried into my keyboard over how grateful I was to have everyone safe and sound? That feeling got to hang around through the Spring time change.  We got the wind knocked out of us again in April when Pop was diagnosed with lung and esophageal cancers. Mark my words: if I ever get my superhero powers activated, I’m kicking that disease’s stubborn ass.

Only a few of the photos below recount the truly memorable moments of 2017 which include not only Pop’s condition, but also saying goodbye to Lady-Bird, my career change, Victoria playing soccer for the first (real) time, becoming a three-car family because the kids are driving, becoming a two-car family again because I had a collision, and literally everything about Aaron’s senior year – right up to getting his college acceptance email. (So much for the frameable letter for my archives.) If I were to post only photos of the moments which years from now I will most likely recall from 2017, I would appear both incredibly proud and undeniably whiny. But as I have stated before – repeatedly, I think, because it’s not easily pounded through my own thick skull – this post is not where I recall the in-your-face moments of the year.  Rather, it is where I acknowledge the sacredness of the ordinary minutes of our lives.  The minutes that peer out through the emotional cobwebs to say, “Hey, remember how good this moment was? Be grateful.”

With gratitude in mind, and in accord with my end-of-year holiday custom, here is our pictorial year in review.

January

One thing I can’t get enough of: sunsets. Here’s a cold January day closing its eyes over our back yard.  Not sure why I’m so attracted to bare trees backlit by the glow of the sun, but really…who can resist those colors?

February

As a family, I think we all realize how very fortunate we are, despite the trials of the past two years. On February 4th Bob and Charolette celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary.  That evening was the calm between the storms, and it was nothing short of blessed.

March

This is Max.  To say we have spoiled him would be a gross understatement.

April

We all took a few minutes in the midst of celebrating Aaron’s Confirmation to snap some family photos.  Here are all the Mainiero kids.

May

Okay, spoiled though he is, Max was unable to escape the inevitable neutering on his first birthday.  As a retaliation technique, he spent the next four months eating items of great import to me and Dom.  Here are destroyed DVDs of LOTR and (gasp!) The Ten Commandments.  Hey, Max, can you wrap your head around “Thou Shalt Not…?”

June

We spent our summer vacation in Memphis where we sought Elvis, found Elvis and promptly overdosed on Elvis.

July

I tried not to put anything sad in this year’s post, but some moments demand to be acknowledged. More paw prints forever on our hearts.

August

There’s always one text conversation in these posts, right?  Here Victoria and I are discussing my determination to DIY repair the door handle on the kids’ car.

September

Apparently I married a funny, funny man.

October

Homecoming 2017.  The kiddos were gracious enough to let me snap close to 200 pics of them before the dance.  Here they are showing me their “Freeze with your hands up” pose.  So if the cops pull them over, my daughter will be the one vogue-ing.

November

My sister-in-law, Melissa, drove downtown with us and took Aaron’s senior pictures.  It’s really hard to choose my favorite, but I promised I’d only post one.

December

Christmas decorating our front yard at dusk by the light of the rising Super Moon.  One of the last truly peaceful moments of 2017.

Well, there it is – 2017 in all its not-so-radiant glory.  There are blessings in these ordinary days.  I pray I remember that when I later reflect on this roller-coaster year.  Just out of curiosity…is it permissible to pre-order an easier 2018?  Perhaps I should just hold on to gratitude and hope for the best.

May each of you have a wonderful, prosperous new year, and may you be blessed beyond measure.

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2016 in the Rear View: At Least We Can Laugh About It

Looking back on the year that will close its eyes in a few days, I am pleased to say it was eventful and uneventful in all the good ways a year should be. Charolette had a successful surgery in March and even though we have held our breath and kept our eyes peeled for any change, the cancer remains absent from her after a year of treatment. Victoria started high school, Aaron started driving, and they each grew at least five inches. We bought Aaron’s senior ring in November, after which I hid in the bathroom and cried like a baby.  What is it about that boy growing up that turns me into such a puddle?

Mid-year, a new heartbeat entered our home in the form of a husky/lab mix, and Mabel was so insulted she almost renounced us all.  Max has gone from being the “narcoleptic puppy” (as the vet called him) to being the in-your-face-all-the-time puppy.  He talks. Like, a lot. (My mom told us Huskies are like that.  Can’t say we weren’t warned.) And he uses his front paws for everything from holding down his own tail to slapping us in the face if breakfast is late. (Jerk.)  With his heavy-eyeliner Alice Cooper look, his my-way-or-the-highway attitude and his fuhget-about-it expressions we decided he must be a member of the mob.  Two seconds after that announcement, he grabbed his tail in his teeth and nearly fell on his head trying to tug it away from his body. We decided then that he could still be a wiseguy, but he’d have to be Luca Brasi.

OK, enough with the intro. In our customary DomAndLori fashion, I now present the 2016 pictorial year in review:

January

One of my favorite Christmas icons is the Old World Santa.  From the bygone days of her ceramic painting business, Charolette’s garage had a plethora of fired but unpainted Santas, and I set my sights on collecting and painting them in the late ‘90s.  Then I took a sixteen year break from all relaxing hobbies before finally returning to this pastime last year.  My favorite is the jovial Mardi Gras Santa who gets to hang out on the shelf until Lent.  As I packed up the decorations after Christmas, I felt compelled to line the finished ones up for a picture. I just realized they are posed so that it looks like one Santa’s hat is picking another one’s nose. I think it’s safe to say I will never be hired as a photographer.  There are twelve more unpainted Santas waiting patiently in the room upstairs. This is one of very few photos taken in January, so it kicks off the show:

February

On my way to work one morning, I sat at a stoplight and pondered the bleakness of me and everything around me.  Admittedly I was feeling more than a little sorry for myself.  We’d had a rough couple of weeks and Charolette was back in the hospital on the day before her birthday.  My spirit felt drained and I really just wanted to pull into a parking lot and cry. I stared at this tree for what seemed like an eternity, comparing myself to its barren branches, pitying our shared emptiness.  Out of the corner of my eye the light turned green, but my attention stayed on the tree because it was at that moment I recognized the sun sparkling behind the branches. I made the turn and pulled over for a photo.  I spent the next week writing about the feelings I had that morning and how the realization that the sun was shining through such a cold and prickly image reminded me that there is always hope.  I wrote it all out, read it and re-read it, then re-read it again before gagging on the Pollyanna sentiment of woe-turned-to-hope and silver-linings and promptly deleted the spewed words.  I sort of wish I had kept it because even though it was corny and ridiculously hopeful in the face of all hopelessness, well…that’s me. The words are gone, but I remember with absolute clarity the empty feeling suddenly replaced with swelling comfort, and the tears that stung my cheeks on that February morning as I conceded that there are a million things in this world that I will never understand.  And that’s okay, ‘cause look…sunshine!

March

As the days began to warm up we found reasons to be outside.  Here are the kiddos on the four-wheelers, roughly ten minutes before Victoria accidentally plowed into the back of Aaron’s vehicle, sending his four-wheeler into a ditch where it overturned.  It’s a slow-motion, heart-stopping story that aged me about five years in two minutes, but all ended well with Aaron dusty and shaken but otherwise unharmed. I notice they haven’t ridden much since then, however.

April

Aaron and I spent the better part of one morning coming up with rap names for Victoria, much to her chagrin.  “Tupac Sha-Vic” and “Snoop Vickie G” had us rolling. I continued the hazing well into the school day.  Hey – what are moms for?

May

For the second time, a yellow-tailed furball padded his way into our hearts.  At first, I thought he was a replica of Mason’s spirit because he was so sweet and snuggly, but that turned out to be a case of intestinal worms. Once cured, his independent and demanding personality emerged. Er-ma-ger, he was so stinkin’ cuuuute!

June

Of course, he grew…

July

And grew. (Although, he still hasn’t grown into those satellite dish ears.)

August

Just when I wonder if I will ever do anything right in this life, my children redeem me. Aaron announced that he wanted to join me in donating at our church’s blood drive. Watching him give blood for the first time I was the proudest mama on the planet, and I told him so on the way home. “There are a lot of things that define ‘adults,’” I said, “but giving part of yourself to save someone else, in my opinion, that’s what makes you a man.”

September

How could we possibly have a 2016 post without Eddie?! It’s not every day (thankfully!) that a pig wanders onto our property and mates with our electrical box.  The sight, the videos we took and the twenty minutes I spent doubled over in my driveway howling at the absurdity of it all will never be forgotten.  Eddie (short for Edison…get it?) made numerous trips to our yard over the next several days before the Sheriff’s office determined where Eddie lived and returned him to his home two streets behind us.  Eddie’s owners must have fixed whatever passage he was using to escape, because we haven’t seen him since mid-September. I thought I smelled him the other day, but no. It’s just as well…every time Eddie visited, Pop started talking about bacon.

October

As we entered the month that kicks off the snowball of holiday celebrations of which I am SO fond, my body orchestrated its own small-scale revolution.  I had just completed my Master’s degree, Charolette was holding her own, and my body said, “Ok, school is over and things have settled down for the moment.  You need to rest.”

“Sure, I’ll take it easy now,” I promised with my fingers crossed behind my back.

My body apparently doesn’t like me lying to placate it, because lightning struck somewhere nearby, polar ice caps instantly disintegrated and Gotham City went dark. So, by “rest” what my body really meant was, “go to the ER and get admitted to the hospital for four days.” I complained that really, it didn’t need to be so pushy.  But those who know me best gave each other sideways looks that said, “Uhh, yeah, it did.”  And that was that.

Hospitals suck, but my family makes it as fun as possible.  My Dad would determine my pain level and then draw it in on the nurse’s board each day.  Three days and several rounds of pain meds later, I was apparently doing much better.

October ranks two photos, mostly because I feel cheated by the month in which I had planned to party-hardy-marty. At the end of the month while Dom and I were flying to DC to attend a conference, our babies (ahem!) were getting ready for Homecoming.  We hated to miss it, but our moms made sure we had plenty of pics. I do believe this is my favorite.

November

Here are all the Louisiana Mainieros in a family pic after Thanksgiving lunch.  Who could ask for a better day? And why am I the only one who brings wine to photo ops?

December

You know this one had to end on a Max note.  Here he is on Christmas morning, having just opened his presents.  He was fascinated with the unwrapping of everything, but more fascinated with this super-cool chew toy!

Of course, Mabel appreciates her gifts, too.  Can’t leave out our sweet girl, so December also gets two photos…

So long, Sixteen.  It’s been lovely having you here.  May 2017 follow your lead. (Well, except for the hospitals…)

Farewell Fourteen!

If I were a glass-half-empty kind of girl, I would have to say that 2014 sucked Shrek’s big toe. Our litany of misery reads like a warped version of the Twelve Days of Christmas. One seizure (Dom), triple-bypass (Pops), four family funerals, six months of chauffeuring, and seven months without our favorite of all God’s creatures, the incomparable Mason.

True, 2014 was a roller coaster of blessing and curse, bitter and sweet. And yet, it seemed to me that each time we sunk into the valley of emptiness and grief and the fear of what could have been, our faith buoyed our souls out of shadow and into sunlight, reminding us not only to be grateful for each day we have with those we love, but also that the end of what we can see on Earth is not an end at all.

So with my glass half full, I present our Pictoral Year in Review:

January: Let’s just go ahead and start this off with the one wonky, unrelated-to-anything photo of the year.  Here is a show-stopping pic of our trampoline on the first icy day of January.  As you see, sleet does not keep my kids from bouncing, or, er…sliding.

February: Aaron was in 8th grade and getting ready to celebrate Mardi Gras in high style with the Class of 2018.  Here he is dressed to impress – or at least dressed to make me cry!  (Never mind that his Daddy was dressed EXACTLY LIKE THIS the first time I saw him!) I noticed Aaron’s height compared to the mantle’s edge as I posted this, and was pleased to show him that he’s grown four inches this year!

March: Victoria made her musical debut at my grandmother’s house by playing the water glasses.  She’s not nicknamed Gracie Lou Freebush for nothing!

April: I’m not entirely sure this happened in April, but it is in the right place on the timeline of my camera roll, so it gets the billing, even if it’s not really a “picture.” I was joking in the last line of my reply, but this really did make me proud!

May:  Paw prints and heartbreak.

June:  Headed to Grandmama and Granddaddy’s house on a Saturday.  We decided to take Mabel so she wouldn’t be home all alone.  Here she is propped in the backseat and grateful for the outing.

July: Victoria and her sweet friends gave Mabel a spa day.

August: You know those moments when you’re just hanging out, enjoying life, and you suddenly feel like you’re witnessing the present and the future all at the same time?  Yeah, this was one of those moments.

September: My boss came over and taught us and our parents how to make Italian sausage.  Primo!!!!  Here Dom and my dad are learning to case the sausage. October: My first fully-completed Pinterest project.  I started this back in March, I think.  Finished it in October.  My favorite literary places. I’d spend a lifetime on Blackfriar’s Bridge just to catch a glimpse of Tessa and Jem. November: Dom and I headed to a fancy-schmancy dinner one evening, and he asked Vic to take our picture before we left.  So glad he did.  Wish I’d had the foresight to put the ironing board up first. December: All I asked for was one sweet photo of my darling children together.  This is what I got, which is pretty typical of them nowadays.  {sigh} Teenagers! There it is, folks.  Our 2014 in a nutshell.  Come to think of it, my glass runneth over.

Ready

While at my local grocery store this weekend Dom and I stopped by the manager’s window to purchase some stamps for our Christmas cards. As I swiped my card in payment, the kind grey-haired woman behind the glass asked if we were ready for Christmas.

“Whew!” I groaned. “I hope so.”

Dom chimed in behind me, asking the lady if she was ready for Christmas.

“I’m always ready!” she beamed. Suddenly, my exasperated I hope so sounded shallow and disconnected. “I’m spending it with my mom,” she continued. “People keep asking if we’re going to have a lot of presents, and I say no. We’ll be together and that’s what really matters.”

This little lady in the manager’s booth taught me something I should have known my whole life, or at least been cognizant of for the last three weeks. Doesn’t Advent give us the opportunity to be grateful, to await in joyful anticipation the celebration of God’s love for us that is Christ’s birth? Instead of thinking about the rush of Christmas cards and tentative meal plans for Christmas Day, shouldn’t I instead be thinking during the whole year of how amazing it is that God loved us enough to become one of us, and – even more – gave us each other on which to practice love?

That sweet lady reminded my heart of its values and rekindled within me a gratitude for the true spirit of Christmas. Walking out of Brookshire’s, I felt like Bill Murray at the end of Scrooged where he’s wild-haired and giddy, exclaiming, “I get it now! I believe it’s gonna happen now! I’m ready!!”

May we always be ready for Christmas!

Ciao, 2013!

Tags

2013, photo recap, pics by the month, year in review

Is anyone else in as much shock as I am that 2013 is over?  I mean, we just got it started, right?  2012 flew by for us in uncertainty and anticipation.  2013 was supposed to creep.  Creeeeeeeeeeeeeep, I say!

But it didn’t.  It’s over.  Gone.  Just like that.  Poof!  Our first year in the new house, our first (and only) year of both kids in middle school, a quiet and peaceful year.  The year that was supposed to settle in, get comfy and stay a while slipped out like a welcome house-guest, leaving the borrowed blankets folded neatly on the sofa.  We hate to see that sweet guest go, but are grateful for the memories it left behind.

January:  Aaron’s first Social Studies project.  He’s more a Science Fair kinda guy.  But he had fun with this.

February: We finally finished building the fence.  Whew!!!!        March: Victoria’s birthday party, of course!!

April: Lady, my Father-in-law’s yellow lab, decided she wanted to help Dom mow the yard.  As you see, she’s all in!

May: The kiddos, hanging out and being sweet to each other.  (Cue collective awwwwww!)

June: You know there’s always at least one month with no notable pictures to speak of.  This is the one for 2013.  As I attempted to re-upholster the wing-back chair myself, this is one of the wounds I suffered.  I know, I know…big whoop.

July: Mabel is a food thief.  Here she has absconded with a hoagie roll that Aaron had made into a ham sandwich.  The entire hoagie, minus these two inches you see, is in her big fat mouth.

August: For the first time in Caddo Parish history, three Mainiero children are at the same school.  I had to document it.

September: Some mornings the sun shines just right through our front door and casts a rainbow on everything in its path.

October: This one deserves the video.  It just does.  We told Mabel that this is what happens to animals who steal food off of my kitchen counter.

November: I felt like the Grinch decorating his dog.  Except I think Mabel and Mason wear their antlers cuter than Max.  😉

December: The frosty, sunlit view from the deer stand. It was prettier in person.  The best part was watching the cardinals play as the sun came up.  You know, since the deer didn’t feel like coming out…

May your New Year’s celebrations be fun and safe.  And may 2014 bring you peace and joy.

Who Moved My Trailer?!!

Tags

Bad Santa, Christmas gifts, delayed delivery, FedEx, looking back and laughing, wrong address

Following up on last week’s post about my mishaps as Santa Claus, I drove to FedEx today fully prepared to have a Come-to-Jesus meeting, though whether they or I needed it more, I’m still unsure.

I had already contacted the online entity who sold me the posters and they are sweetly refunding my shipping charges.  I begged them to make FedEx find and deliver my package but like most things, once shipped, my items were at the mercy of the FedEx seas.  I was finally able this morning to determine that my package was dropped off at the main FedEx office on Christmas Eve where it continued to wait for me to pick it up.  The really fun part is that I was just supposed to know this inherently because FedEx, in all their wisdom and Christmas rush, made no further effort to contact me.  I spewed forth with unholy condemnations in the car as Dom pointed out that we were about to drive past a FedEx truck on the street near our neighborhood.

“Pull closer to him so I can flip him off!!” I demanded.  He didn’t.  So I didn’t.  It’s for the best.

I toyed with the idea of calling FedEx and insisting that they deliver my package today, but I decided knowing where my package sat was preferable to having it roam the streets again. So I drove myself to the shipping facility…fists taped, gloves on.

Once inside, I paused at the counter only to remind myself that the lady behind the counter is not the idiotic driver who failed to deliver Aaron’s gift on Christmas Eve.  She’s just working the FedEx counter, doing her job just like I would be doing mine if my office were open today.  She does not personally deserve my wrath.  Once she located my package she asked, “Do you have a new address?”  And so I launched into the whole stupid story – much like I did with you – and reiterated that the address on the package is indeed current and correct.

“I am so, so sorry for this mistake,” she offered.  Call me easy, but that was good enough for me.  Like I said, none of this crap was her fault.  I told her I would have been most happy with another phone call to alert me to the fact that my package would be available for pickup.  She agreed and apologized again.  We wished each other a good day and I hauled my four-foot long cylinder of a poster package to the car.

All in all, this goofy incident was little more than a hassle with a happy ending.  Aaron got his posters, I maintained my dignity, and the FedEx lady hopefully had an uneventful day at work.  As I stripped the cardboard cylinder of its labels containing my address I saw the driver’s reason for not delivering it, penned in the “other” category at the bottom of the adhesive label:

That’s right, folks.  Apparently my trailer was gone when he tried to deliver to it.  Like we place Internet orders all the time and then move the house before delivery.  I am thoroughly convinced that the dude wasn’t even on my street.  ‘Cause my trailer’s kinda hard to miss:

Merry Christmas!!

 

 

 

Bad Santa

Tags

FedEx, gifts, guitar case, lost Christmas gifts, motherly madness, Santa

It all started on Christmas Eve, right about the time that I was congratulating myself for not stressing out over anything, for putting the joy of the season ahead of the tasks.  I really enjoyed Advent this year.  I even took a picture of the last lighting of the Advent wreath and bid the season a fond farewell on the afternoon of the 24^th, just moments before FedEx called me.

I almost didn’t answer the phone because I didn’t recognize the number.  Except that it was a 504-area code, meaning the New Orleans area and possibly the other half of my brain (aka Stacey) simply calling from a number I didn’t have on file.  So I answered with a cheerful, “Hellooooooo!”

That’s when I quasi-met a FedEx rep who was in communication with a driver in my area.  Jackpot!!  The last gift to arrive was finally en route to my door!  It was a gift for Aaron – some fancy Lord of the Rings posters that will look awesome in his room.  (You can’t beat a map of Middle Earth.  You just can’t.)   The voice on the other end of the phone proceeded to tell me that the driver had information that I had moved.

Uhhh, like a year ago, dude.  Let it go already.

I politely asked what address they had on file, half-impressed that they would even know my address from over a year ago.  But he pulled a mind scrambler on me when he rattled off my current address.  “No, we haven’t moved,” I assured him.  “In fact, I’m standing in the kitchen of that address right now.  Tell the driver to come on out!”  And with that we wished each other a merry Christmas and hung up.

Four days later, I have replayed that conversation a million times in my head.  I wish I had asked all the logical questions, like: Can the driver find us on a GPS?  Can he find my neighbors’ (in-laws’) address instead? Why exactly does he think we moved? How can FedEx not find me when UPS has been here every day for the past two weeks?  If he doesn’t make it to my house, where can I go to retrieve my package?  Oh, hindsight, curse you and your practicality.

I was not surprised when FedEx did not show before we left for Mass.  I was disappointed when they had not come by the time we returned.  I decided to tell Aaron all about the posters and how cool they were going to be when we received them on the day after Christmas, and how we would hang them up together and make his room look awesome.  He jumped up and hugged me with a huge smile.  Totally worth it.

Fast forward five hours.  We returned from the in-laws’ where we had our Christmas Eve celebration and I proceeded to pull out the last of the kids’ gifts to put under the tree.  They’re cool with me being Santa and all, but I still like Christmas morning to hold some surprises.  So my plan was to put the two largest gifts unwrapped and under the tree after they went to bed.  Vic was getting a zebra-striped gym bag and Aaron was getting a carrying case for his electric guitar.  I reached into the upper cabinet of the utility room where I had stashed the gym bag and looked for the guitar case.  No case.  No problem.  It must be in another cabinet.

Thirty cabinets, six rooms and two hours later I was still looking for the damn guitar case, and getting quite frantic in the process.  How could I lose something that is almost as tall as I am?  I had my hands on it earlier in the day when I pulled guitar picks out of the bag to decorate another package with.  What.  The.  Hell????

I looked in every possible hiding place three times, a fact that later made my father question my sanity. “If it wasn’t there the first time, what made you think….??”  Because when you realize that of five gifts, three of your son’s are ABSENT from Christmas morning, you panic and do irrational things.  Like cry in the hallway at 1am and accidentally wake up your daughter, who gets up to make sure you’re okay and then stays awake another half hour retracing your own steps in an effort to help.  Oh, sweet child.

Needless to say, Christmas morning came and went without those three gifts.  Aaron graciously opened up his other two gifts while I served myself a steaming cup of shame-on-me and profusely apologized for losing his biggest present.  While I focused on the mishap internally, it seems no one else did, for we continued our Christmas morning with the spirit in which it was meant to be celebrated.  And I went back to the guitar shop and bought another case on Friday, with the express understanding that if I find the lost one anytime soon I can easily return it.  That’s right, people.  I have rolled up my Christmas sweater sleeves and taken measures to right the wrongs.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go throw down with FedEx.  I think I’ll offer an exchange…they give me my map of Middle Earth, and I’ll give them a map of Shreveport!!

The Vaulted Files: Treasured Ornament

Tags

Christmas, Christmas decorations, keepsakes, loss, memory, ornaments

The Vaulted Files is a series of writings I am finding as I weed through years of unpublished posts stored on my computer.  This one was originally written in January 2011. 

I set out yesterday morning with one goal in mind: it was time to put away the Christmas decorations.  Sadly, the joyous season is over, but we have the blessing of preparing for a new year, new weather, and new adventures in life.

It took most of the day, but the whole family was instrumental in packing away the décor and putting the house back into its former state.  The last remaining task left to complete yesterday evening was the packing and storing of all my china ornaments which had hung this season on a tall gold-metal rotating tree loaned to me by my mom.  As I disassembled it and packed away my most prized ornaments, Victoria appeared beside me ready to help.

Since many of the ornaments are in fact hers, I said she could help pack them away, but they were all very special and had to be placed back into their original boxes in very particular fashion.  Victoria is a pro at packing stuff away, and with a small squeal of delight she began plucking ornaments.  We would talk about each one, or make some comment about a particular set of ornaments as we worked.

When all the ornaments were placed back into their respective boxes, Vic began asking about the ornaments that didn’t come out this year.  There are very few ornaments in my “special” box that I do not display, but there is one particular ornament that I have not removed from its original gift bag since I received it in 2003.  Victoria spied the ornament inside the bag and anxiously exclaimed, “Mommy!  Mommy! There’s a pretty blue one in here!  You didn’t take it out!! Can I see it????”

I drew a deep breath and reached into the bag, feeling the familiar Limoges ornament that had only been opened one other time.  “This one is from Aunt Maxine, Mimi’s sister,” I explained.  And then I simply couldn’t say anything more.

There is something so stirring about this ornament that it brings me to tears just thinking about it.  Dominic’s Aunt Maxine passed away during the first week of December in 2003.  On Christmas Eve of that year, my Mother-in-Law handed me a small gift bag, the same one Victoria excitedly peered into last night.  As I reached into the bag and unlocked the ornament on Christmas Eve 2003, there was a tiny circle of paper inside that read “With Love from Aunt Maxine.  December 2003.”  Maxine’s daughter, Maggie, had been responsible for making sure all of Maxine’s gifts got delivered to their intended recipients that year.  I cried the night I received it, and I cried again last night.

Update:

I neglected to properly conclude the post back in early 2011, but I recall Victoria insisting that the ornament needed to be displayed.  And she’s right.  Her statement reminded me of my maternal grandmother’s conviction that even our nicest things were to be used and enjoyed regularly, not kept hidden away in boxes.  Since that conversation, the ornament given to me from Aunt Maxine hangs proudly on the Christmas tree with my other treasured keepsakes.  The small paper circle remains inside reminding me of the love Aunt Maxine had for her family.

 

Turkey Confessions

Tags

cooking, kitchen fail, paleo, Thanksgiving

Now that Thanksgiving has come and gone, I can reflect on the feast and forgive myself for some mishaps.  I loved surfing the web and reading everyone’s Thanksgiving Roundups of the recipes on their lists as the holiday drew near.  And the pictures.  OMG the PICTURES!!  I wanted to make my own Roundup post, but I wasn’t quite creative enough early enough, and truly, I decided the other bloggers’ roundups were sufficient enough without my duplicates tagging along behind them.  At any rate, I had a fabulous meal planned for the night before Thanksgiving with some dear friends who were visiting for the holiday:  Stuffed wild turkey that Dom brought home from his latest Texas hunt, baked sweet potatoes, pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread, roasted cauliflower, homemade yeast rolls, sautéed spinach and green beans…I had it goin’ ON!  Now, the kicker here is that with the exception of the homemade yeast rolls, the entire menu was to be paleo.   Yep.  Grain- and refined-sugar-free.  Dom and I changed our eating habits at the beginning of November, and I wanted to make sure that our dinner was in line with our dietary preferences.  I went to my most trusted sites for the ideas and the directions, I shopped till I dropped and I came home from work at noon on Wednesday to begin cooking.  I spent the next five hours proofing bread, stuffing turkey breasts, and scrubbing veggies.  Our guests arrived, they got a nickel tour of the new home…

And then I burned the turkey.

Yes, folks, you read that right. I burned the turkey.  I threw open the oven door and a wave of smoke poured out as we peered in at a darkened pan and some pitifully weathered-looking stuffed turkey breasts.  Oh, but that’s not all I did. Moments before my guests arrived, I had turned a half-baked pumpkin bread out of the pan, stuffed it back into the pan and continued cooking it; I failed to follow directions for a paleo piecrust, ate part of the crust by myself while I wondered how to use it in a trifle, and then chucked the idea and whipped up a basic flour-dough pie crust; I frantically and mistakenly added too much agave nectar to the pumpkin pie filling, which resulted in an embarrassingly sloshy pie; I under-roasted the cauliflower; and as I sautéed my green veggies, I noticed that I had neglected to cut the stem ends off of my beans after washing them.  All this before I had uncorked the first bottle of wine!!!  In fact, by the time we set the table and picked up our forks, the only menu items that had come through unscathed by my kitchen catastrophes were the baked sweet potatoes and the rolls.

What’s a Martha-Stewart-wannabe to do?  Well, she’s to open a bottle of red wine, apologize to her guests, fill their glasses and let it go.  Except that I’m not really so good at letting it go.  Never have been.  The only way I can really let something go is to write it all out.  Hence, this blog and your personal tour of the crazy in my head.

We had a delightful evening.  My guests, Stacey and Lee, were entirely more gracious than I deserved, even if they were a bit hungry at the end of dinner.  (I truly hope they weren’t, but I’ll never really know.)  However, I awoke the next morning with the awful embarrassment of the final results, much like a foggy hangover through which one vaguely remembers dancing on the table.  (Not that I would know anything about that, mind you.)  I texted Stacey immediately and confessed my continued mortification, apologizing again for the burned turkey and sloshy pie.  There’s a reason she’s my best friend: she has been present for 95% of my embarrassing moments.  The other 5% she knows by heart as if she had experienced the drama personally.  The only thing she doesn’t know about me is whether or not I was really trying to sing well that one day in college.  And I still ain’t sayin’!!!

I shared my culinary failings with my mother on the telephone the next morning, and it was at that point that I realized my fatal flaw for the dinner: I was serving four dishes that I had never made before, with recipes that were vastly different from mainstream holiday recipes, and I gave myself only five hours to pull it all together.  I quite technically bit off more than I could chew. Problem was, everyone at my table had to chew it too.

The wine, however, was excellent and the company even better!  I hope you and yours had a lovely Thanksgiving holiday.

2012

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2012, year in review

Originally, I wanted to write something meaningful to summarize what 2012 has meant for us.  But we were inundated with building a house, so we didn’t really take time to make a whole lot of memories outside of that process.  Now that I have my computer set up (still minus internet access, which is a pain in the butt) I took a moment to review the pictures of 2012.

Suffice it to say I am no photographer.

Most of these were taken with my phone.  I started rocking the camera app once iOS began allowing me access to the camera without entering my phone’s passcode.  Heh heh…fear me now.  Victoria tried to get me on Instagram, and I think I’m there.  Is it a bad sign that I don’t know for sure??

Anyhoo, here’s our year in review: (Drum roll….)

January:  My new van hit 5,000 miles and was due its first tire rotation.  (Bear with me, it gets better.  Um, sort of…)

February: My co-workers announced my age to my neighborhood.

March: This was our nightly ritual at the old house… we all headed up the stairs to bed, led by the pups.  Mabel would run up first and hide behind the door frame in order to attack Mason when he reached the top of the stairs.  Every.  Single.  Night.

April:  Looks like we didn’t have too much going on in April, but apparently there was a full moon one night that I thought looked cool.  (Yes, I realize now that I lied when I said it would get better. Ahem. Moving on…)

May: One random Saturday dinner after Mass.  This is Victoria with Papa.

June: Ahhh, sweet summer nights.  Let the kids stay up late and put on some coffee.  Dom slaughters us in Monopoly every time.

July: For Independence Day we visited my family in East Texas.  Kathy taught Vic how to do a headstand on yoga blocks.

August: By now we were moved in with my parents, and my sweet boy turned 12.

September: Victoria finally decided to get her ears pierced.

October:  Contractors poured our driveway, and I wrote our names in the back corner.

November: My dad bought himself an iPad, like, a week before his birthday.  Mom hates when he does that!  But here they are, happily screening out together.

December:  On the very last day of 2012 here is Mabel, looking out our office window to see what 2013 will bring.  (Yeah, right.  She’s not thinking that far ahead…she’s hoping a squirrel will skip by so she’ll have something to bark at!)

Happy New Year, friends.  May 2013 be your best year yet!!