Author: Melanie

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Things to Be Happy About, Vol. 8

Melanie

The best of all gifts around any Christmas tree: the presence of a happy family all wrapped up in each other.
— Burton Hillis

Merry Christmas to those of you celebrating the holiday today (and Happy Tuesday to those of you who are not!)!  I am in Richmond, staying with my brother and his family.  We will open presents shortly, then get ready for my parents and grandparents to arrive from parts north.  After what will surely be too much food and not enough time, I’ll head back to NoVa tonight.  I was going to be off tomorrow, but I’m going to Western New York this weekend, so I switched tomorrow’s day off til Friday.  I’ll drive to my mom’s in PA Thursday night, then make the 4-hour trip from there to just outside Buffalo Friday morning in anticipation of a mini family reunion that night.

I’m planning to come back Sunday, even though plans for New Year’s Eve aren’t set yet.  I bet you anything I end up drinking champagne straight from the bottle (try it, if you never have – it’s kind of awesome), alone in my apartment, watching sappy movies.  Honestly, I can think of worse ways to ring in the new year.

Ok, since I missed last week’s list, here’s a double shot of things to be happy about over the holidays:

1. giving lots of little gifts instead of one big one
2.  Christmas lists – not what you want, but who to shop for
3. going to church on Christmas Eve [I don’t think I ever feel a greater sense of community than at that time]
4. the feeling of Christmas in the air
5. Christmas carols [and going caroling]
6. Santa Claus
7. Papa Noel – the “Spanish” Santa Claus
8. setting the official time for opening gifts on Christmas Day [when we were kids, this was inevitably super-early; as we got older and learned the value of sleep, it gradually got later]
9. the first snow
10. when the snow sticks
11. turning off all the lights and watching the Christmas tree glowing in the darkness [this is my absolute favorite thing to do on Christmas Eve]
12. driving through the Maryland countryside after dark, seeing the farm houses lit up with Christmas lights from a distance
13. homemade Christmas gifts
14. a cookie baking marathon extravaganza with a good friend
15. the downtown Richmond skyline at night during the holidays, with all the big buildings outlined in white Christmas lights
Edited to add (12/26/07):
16. the way my almost two-year-old nephew says “Ho ho ho” when you ask him what Santa Claus says
17. decorating cookies and making pine cone “favors” with my three-and-a-half-year-old niece

I hope you all have a wonderful day, however you’re spending it!

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So Much for That Idea

Melanie

Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings.
— Jane Austen

Sorry I didn’t return to regular programming – I got busy dealing with the body shop, the insurance adjuster, a lying student loan company supervisor (Oh, you’ll call me back in 48 hours, max?  Really?  I think someone’s pants are on fire.), and crappy apartment maintenance people (Oh, you can’t come today like you said you would, but you’ll be here first thing in the morning?  Really?  Oh, you’re sorry you couldn’t make it this morning, but it’s after hours now and a dishwasher is not an emergency but you promise you’ll be here tomorrow?  Really?  Oh, you couldn’t make it again today, but this time you super-duper promise you’ll make it tomorrow?  Really?  Suck on it.  If I get West Nile virus from the nasty, standing water in the bottom of my dishwasher, I may go all Lawyer on you.) – and frankly, was not in the mood for Things to Be Happy About.  But don’t you worry, I have a bang-up Christmas edition all ready to go for you – it will be like an extra present for you to open Christmas morning!

So the car: remember how I said how thankful I was that the damage wasn’t extensive?  Either I know nothing about cars, the body shop and insurance adjuster are ripping me off, or I jinxed myself.  I think it’s the first one, but I’m not positive.  We’re up to $2200 and they haven’t even put the car on the lift yet.  Awesome.  Thank god I wasn’t one of those people who said “Oh, I never get in accidents, so I can handle a $1500 deductible.”  I know myself better than that, and went for $500.  That hurts, especially at the holidays, but it could be worse.

Remember also how I said how great my boss is?  He gave us Christmas presents yesterday, which I was not expecting at all (we already did our “annual round robin gift exchange,” you know).  Two words: Coach wristlet.  If you know anything about me, you know I do not care about labels and I would never buy myself Coach anything, but I was amazed at his generosity.  It’s beautiful and classic – plain black leather – but I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with it.  Does anyone use one of these?  I’m stumped in the face of such a thing.

Speaking of gifts, I am officially done, and everything is wrapped, as of last night.  Actually, that’s a lie.  I left one thing for my brother unwrapped because I may have to exchange it after I get to his house tonight and see if he already has it.  He won’t be there til Sunday night – he’s on an out-of-town job – so it will be safe.

And speaking of my brother, welcome him to the blogosphere, won’t you?  He’s not a great speller, but I love him anyway.

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Crash

Melanie

“I started to slow down but the traffic was more stationary than I thought.”
— real statement on an accident claim form, borrowed from Funny Insurance Claims

We interrupt your regularly scheduled Tuesday programming to bring you this breaking news update:

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Seriously? I’ve had my car exactly five weeks today, and some jackass stops IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD to wave at his friends on the corner, causing three cars behind him to stop short, which resulted in my hitting the guy in front of me. I’m fine – a little achy, and my head hurts, but that may be from the crying I did at the scene at first as well as the stress and frustration of being in an accident, so I’m keeping an eye on it and will definitely head to the emergency room if I start to feel worse. My brother has assured me that it’s a concussion, not whiplash, where you sometimes go to sleep and don’t wake up, so that’s comforting. The other driver is also fine, but achy as well, he said.

Unfortunately, I was the third car – I’m never “lucky” enough to be the one who gets rear-ended, I’m always the one doing the rear-ending (shut it, dirty girls) – and the jackass didn’t get hit or stay behind after the accident, so I’m on the hook for it.

I hit a Mercedes. The last guy I rear-ended (2005) was driving a Mercedes. I’m sensing a rivalry between my Saturns and all Mercedeses in my path. But the driver, a young guy, could not have been nicer, especially after a witness (who was in car #1 that had to stop short) came back to the scene after having trailed the jackass and gotten his plate number and make/model of his car and explained what happened. She also waited with us for the police and offered to speak to our insurance companies as well. The friends the jackass was waving to didn’t bother to stick around as witnesses, which is no surprise, I suppose, but still sucks.

We called the police, and the officer was a bit of jerk at first, but mellowed out by the end. After some ersatz CSI-ing, he determined from my skid marks that I was only going about 20 miles an hour when I hit the brakes. As you can see from the picture, the damage honestly isn’t that bad, I’m just pissed because I love my car so much and driving a car that has body damage makes me feel like a loser. The Mercedes has similar damage on its rear bumper – you can tell how hard I hit the brakes because of how high the damage is on my bumper and how low it is on his.

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So, boo. I called the insurance company and filed the claim. I gave them the jackass’s info and the witness’s name and number, and we’ll see if they do anything with it. I just know my rate is going to go up, which bites, and it’s going to be a pain trying to get this fixed before the weekend – I’m going to Richmond Friday night, but I think my radiator is leaking because of the accident, so I might have to get a rental to drive that far. Thankfully, my boss is very understanding, so I have the morning off (and the day, if I need it) to get the car to the body shop for an estimate. Hopefully the adjuster will come soon and I can get everything taken care of quickly. And, on the bright side (it is Tuesday, after all), no one was hurt, the guy I hit and the witness were lovely people, the damage is not extensive, and I have good insurance.

Your regularly scheduled programming will return tomorrow.

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The Best Three Minutes of My Day

Melanie

Art is not the application of a canon of beauty, but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon.  When we love a woman, we don’t start measuring her limbs.
— Pablo Picasso

This is gorgeous – a video of women depicted in Western Art in which each painting or portrait morphs into the next.  There are some that are very familiar to me, but many more that I’m sure I’ve never seen before.  I think it’s beautifully done and worth three minutes of your time.  It ends on Picasso’s “Francoise,” which I only recently discovered (through my grandmother, who sent me a Smithsonian article about it with a notation at the top: “She reminds me of you; think it’s the eyes.”), but love immensely (Picasso is by far my favorite artist).  Enjoy!

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Did Someone Say Cookie?

Melanie

“C” is for cookie, that’s good enough for me!
— Cookie Monster

So the marathon baking day came and went yesterday, and I’m left with approximately 12 dozen cookies to be shared with family, friends, and co-workers over the next week or so. I really wish that I believed in digital cameras, because the bounty truly was immense, and it just won’t be the same after waiting until the other 20 pictures on my roll of film are used up, and the film is developed, and Kodak kindly provides a CD, to post a picture. Karen took a couple with her (digital, thank god) camera, so maybe she’ll be kind enough to send me one and I can share that one with you.

[Edited, finally, to add a picture]

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It only just now, after all the cookies are packed up and half sent home with Karen, occurred to me that I ought to have attempted some Smitten Kitchen-style photos of the process and the end results, rather than settling for the rather unceremonious heap-o-cookies-on-Melanie’s-dining-room-table-with-errant-lunchbags-and-not- yet-hung-artwork-in-the-background photos. Maybe next year.

The results are in, and of all the cookies we made, my favorites are the Kris Kringle cookies. Who knew white chocolate, dried cranberries, and chopped pecans could do so much for a standard cookie dough? I only got 5 dozen, not 6, out of the recipe, but that is still a boatload of cookies, so I’m happy.

I was the least impressed with the no-bake Peanut Butter Nanaimo bars. For all that I love the ingredients individually – peanut butter? Check. Chocolate? Double check. Coconut? Check. Graham crackers? Check check. – the combination of the them in the bottom layer was not spectacular. Plus, the top layer of chocolate didn’t stick to the peanut butter layer. Maybe that’s because I didn’t wait long enough for the chocolate to cool before I spread it over the peanut butter, I don’t know.

Karen’s cookie to be named later turned out to be peanut butter cut-out cookies, essentially a different version of the standard sugar cookies people make at the holidays. Her sugar cookie recipe uses cream cheese – yum. Unlike Jane, I love to roll out dough and use cookie cutters. I scored a whole container of holiday-themed cookie cutters at Goodwill about 2 years ago for, I think, 50 cents, and this was the first chance I’ve had to use them. We overtaxed ourselves though, with a mid-day shopping break at Target, so we ran out of energy to make icing and decorate the cookies last night. Oh well. People will eat them plain and like it, I say.

Now, off to the store. I’m out of milk!