And So This (Was) Christmas

Last week of school before Christmas break- I actually had time to go out! A pre-Christmas miracle. Also, we look photo-shopped and insane.

Festive downtown

Tree, inside, before (we suspect) it tried to kill me.

Bobby came home from Texas bearing stocking gifts

We checked out the lights display at the park on the way home from the hive-free haven of our friends' house.

Blueberry Lemon Baked French Toast on Christmas morning- I managed to take the most unappetizing picture of it ever. Recipe here if you're interested.

White Christmas!

The hot tub in our new place wasn't up to par, so we drove over to our old apartment and used their facilities.

Antici....pation

Christmas hot tub needs to be a permanent tradition.

I came home and cooked for about two hours. Poppy seed crusted butternut squash and pomegranates in kale salad with homemade dressing; roasted brussels sprouts; pan seared wild caught salmon; roasted fennel with red onions, oranges, and mint; Stove Top Stuffing out of a box (just to mix things up)

After dinner Bobby made a fire, so we could sort of enjoy the tree by the fire. I took a shower and curled up in my robe in front of it with all the lights off and candles lit while Bobby cleaned up after dinner. Then we stayed up talking for a few hours.

Christmas 2011 was great, hives and all.

Christmas Plagues, Hurray!

I've been eagerly awaiting Christmas break for a good while now. I have an entire month off of my graduate program, and I have 17 days off of student teaching. Here's how I planned it out- I would leave school on Friday, December 16th, attend two Christmas parties, and then do some things for my teaching certification (I have to submit scads of paperwork and evidence, it's obnoxious). I figured I'd be disgustingly lazy on Saturday, sleeping in, screwing around on the internet, eating crappy food, reading books, squandering time like a champ. Sunday I would clean the house from top to bottom, do all my laundry, finish up my evidence submitting for school to the CDE, and then Mon/Tues/Wed I would do the semester planning, syllabus writing, lesson planning (a huge project). This would, theoretically, leave me with 10 straight days during which I had no worries, cares, responsibilities, or deadlines/projects looming over my head.

So, everything went according to plan until Sunday night. I went to bed, happy and tired from a productive day, ready to wake up early and hit the library. Instead, I woke up at 4 a.m. itchy and fuzzy headed. There was a huge welt on my elbow, and on my knee. I thought I had been bitten by something. Bobby told me it looked liked hives (which I've never had). I went back to sleep, only to be awoken at 6 a.m. to lumpy, swollen hives all over both of my arms, my side, and my leg. Here's an idea, just picture this, you know, all over-

I took this picture and sent it to my mom so she could tell me if I was going to die. I'm only kind of kidding.

 We decided to head to Urgent Care, which opened at 7 a.m. By the time we got there, most of them had faded. I chalked it up to the cleaner I had used the day before during Winter Clean-a-thon 2011, the doctor gave me some steroid cream, and I went along my way. Later that night, they came back with a vengeance, this time all over my upper body, with huge dinner plate sized welts covering my stomach. I chugged Benadryl and conked out, sleeping from 6 to midnight and then from midnight until ten a.m. Vacation was off to a GREAT start, lemmetellya. Tuesday I spent the day at the library in order to stay out of the house. I came home, and promptly broke out in the worst hives yet covering my entire body and making me feel like my skin was going to burst it was so swollen, prompting Bobby to say "I didn't know it was possible for hives to look like that". It was gross. At this point we decided that I needed to leave the house and go to a friends' place. In the time it took us to drive 10 minutes, half the hives were gone, and by the time I had been at their house for half an hour, I was hive free. Clearly, our apartment was trying to kill me.

Bobby spent about 7 hours re-cleaning the house from top to bottom to get rid of the cleaner, as well as buying new pillows/comforter/towels just in case it was some funky dust allergy. I came home to find our tree on the back porch, visible only through the safety of the sliding glass door.

Banished, for crimes against my skin and immune system

I was hive free, but I had wasted 4 nights and 3 days high on Benadryl, getting little to nothing done because my brain was on a puffy cloud of medicine, sleeping up to 15 hours out of 24, and being woken up two or three times a night by the return of the hives when the medicine wore off. To say it sucked would be a bit of an understatement. I was www.Grinch-fest.com.org.edu.screwchristmas after the first day, once the "this is ridiculous but what can you do other than laugh?" roll with it optimism wore off. Since Wednesday afternoon of last week I've been hive free, but, just to make up for it, I've had one day of a crushing sinus headache that lasted all day, and today I've been in bed after puking my guts up randomly this morning and then having chills and nausea all day. I am falling apart here, people! I read some David Sedaris to make me feel better about not having to work as a Christmas elf, and yeah, it helped a tiny little bit, but not much.

Good news is that the holiday weekend, including all day Friday, was great. Christmas Eve was spent with a good friend and Christmas Day proper was absolutely wonderful. So, I'm still grateful, if a bit bitter. It's like an 80/20 mix. I fully realize that having hives from a cleaning product and/or a totally unnecessary Christmas decoration in the form of a dead tree are pretty much standard first world problems, but hey, they're mine, and they tried to Grinch-snatch my Christmas vacation, so there it is.

Let's Talk About Thanksgiving, Since It's Almost Christmas

Bobby and I spent Thanksgiving in Dallas with our families and friends. Every time I go back to Dallas I'm reminded of just how much history I have there. My father has lived there since my parents divorced when I was 8, so I spent lots of summers and weekends and holidays there. Then I went to undergrad and graduate school at UTD, picking up the big group of friends I've had for a decade now. Entire neighborhoods hold an emotional history several layers deep, I have more stories than I can even remember that revolve around UTD's campus, and the bars/clubs/concert venues around Deep Ellum all have their own cache of good/bad/ridiculous memories. I don't know if I'll ever live in Dallas again- something about it feels "done" to me, as though I've had my time there and it's finished- but I do enjoy visiting. The night before Thanksgiving almost all of "The Group" got together at Vickery Park. Everyone was sober, so there is really no excuse for these pictures other than the fact that we tend to act like idiots when we get together. In a good way.

 We tried to go to this place called Urban Crust in downtown Plano, but they kind of laughed when we said we needed a table for about 20, which was apparently a two hour wait. Luckily enough, Vickery Park was across the street and has a) nicer staff b) a huge room in the back that does not have to be rented out and c) delicious food. Sometimes the manufactured snootiness of Plano makes me chuckle. Dear Urban Crust- You're not that special, or that fancy, or that cool. Love, All of Us

 They truly didn't try to match.

 Typical.

 This is about right...

 as is this. Again, we're all sober.

 I told Brooke on FB that her shirt tastes like My Little Pony Lumberjacks

 Love connection

 Staged. We're available for hire at your next get together.

 Security. This is what it looks like.

 We're good customers. Someone broke a glass, so Kate cleaned it up. We're thoughtful.

 Except for when we stand on the booths

We don't really think planking is cool. We are mocking it.

Triple stack mockery

 Jennifer is *not* impressed.

Apparently owling was in for a while, too. Mocked.

If there is one thing I never tire of making fun of, it is the hipster obsession with mustaches and "cute" (no, ladies, it's really not) scrunchy faces in pictures.

Thanksgiving Day proper kind of sucked due to some family drama, so I'll just leave it with the Pre-Thanksgiving Friendsgiving. Oh, and here's a picture of Bobby, Chris, and Brooke the next morning, running their own lil' Turkey Trot around the neighborhood:

 So committed!

 Right after this picture was taken, Kate and I hopped in the car for our own run- to Starbucks.

4th of July Weekend, or, I Discovered the Filters on My Smart Phone

I cannot tell you how glad I am that Bobby and I did not spend 4th of July weekend in Santa Fe. We were crazy lazy, sleeping in and staying up late and I didn't cook one time. Thanks to all the local restaurants for feeding us. We played in the pool and local toy stores, read books, worked out a few times, rode our bikes a bit, and had an excellent 4th of July.

 These puppets were grossly over priced, and had the most condescending faces. At least Bobby's was funny.

 Mine was kind of terrifying. Like he's muttering "Don't MAKE me do something I'll regret". Got it, bunny.

 Here's another reason I'll never have thousands of followers. I had never been to a frozen yogurt- sorry, fro-yo!- place, so we went last weekend. It was tasty, but I'm still not understanding the fro-yo obsession. Maybe it's the adorable over lapping hand hold that makes it crazy delicious? Or maybe it's pretending to kiss it while having your significant other take a picture of your fro-yo love? Who can say. Was it good? Sure. Is it deserving of more than one picture on any blog on the internet? I would say no, but that's just me.

 On the 4th, we noticed that no one was at the pool. How did we get the place to ourselves on the 4th of July? Who can say, but we were happy.

  Yeah America, let's go cowboy hats. The pool was deserted the entire time we were there, and after a few hours we decided to mosey into some dry clothes and grab some grub. We had already decided that parking 2 miles from City Park and schlepping ourselves + any creature comforts to a park filled with 4th of July celebrants was not on the agenda. Here's why (the following is slightly sarcastic and tongue in cheek, but mostly just brutal honesty). 4th of July revelers usually fall into two diametrically opposite camps- drunken assholes who are way too loud, too drunk, and wearing far too few items of clothing, or harried, stressed families dragging a bunch of kids out way past their respective bed times to watch fireworks that will either a) bore them to tears or b) scare them to tears. Now, of course, I'm being a bit hyperbolic and over simplistic. There are certainly many people, drinkers and families alike, who do not fall into one of those two groups. But those two groups tend to dominate the energy because they are mortal enemies. So the sloppy drunk college girls piss off the parents who really don't want to have to explain to their 4 year old those kind of age inappropriate things, and the parents piss of the sloppy drunk college girls for trying to ruin their good time. On top of all that, it's generally hot, crowded, and there is an unacceptable port a potty to person ratio. Then, when the fireworks are over, everyone willingly takes part in an ungodly traffic jam that rivals any Wednesday morning rush hour situation, and we all sit in our respective cars in bumper to bumper traffic, listening to terrible music from said sloppy drunk college girls, watching people get arrested, and trying in vain to just get home because we're hot and tired. Don't get me wrong, I love watching fireworks. I've also had excellent 4th of July experiences in parks, with strangers, despite all of the previous. But we weren't interested in looking on the sunny side of things while ignoring the bad, so we decided to just skip the potential bad altogether and have our own little celebration.

We did drive around City Park, just to check out the situation, but it was already madness a full two hours before sunset. People were parking miles away, and it looked like a fireworks march to Mecca. This confirmed our plan to do our own thing. We changed course and drove out towards the reservoir. There's a convenience store at the base of the foothills that services the boaters and campers that are heading towards the reservoir, and it had a huge fireworks tent set up.

These took me way back. They were my favorite as a kiddo

 We snagged the hen and a box of colored sparklers and then continued on our way up into the foothills. A lot of other people had the same idea, but even with cars lining the shoulder the hectic, packed feel of the City Park celebration was absent.

 After the sunset (which was beautiful in its own right) the horizon started lighting up with fireworks. From the hood of our car on the shoulder of the road we were able to see 3 or 4 shows at once.

I spent my time watching, not taking pictures, so this is the best one I got.

 We also played with our sparklers, which was nostalgic fun. I discovered the filters on my smart phone, that night which created some neat images. I put them all into overexposed black and white, and I really like the way it turned out.

We left our shoulder side spot and headed back home right as a storm started up. The hen was shot off in the parking lot of our apartments, a fact I regretted a bit once I was reminded that it made a shriek (sorry neighbors!). The rest of the night was spent on the back porch, sitting by candle light and listening to the storm blow through the enormous aspens in the courtyard behind our apartment. We didn't plan one bit of it, and it couldn't have gone any better.