I'm Dreaming of a White Thanksgiving

One of the best things about living in Maine (and believe me, there are a LOT of great things about living here!) is the weather!

I know a lot of folks would disagree with me on this (even a certain member of my family - gasp!), but I stand by my love of this beautiful, snowy place.

If you're thinking to yourself that Maine is too cold, you should meet my sister Faith, who moved to Alaska, because she feels that Maine summers are too hot.  (true story!)

We got our *FIRST* snow this week!  I know that folks way down south have gotten a lot of snow already, but here in Maine, we got our first this week.

I watched flurries through the day from my office window, and when I went out to get in my car, there were a few fluffy flakes hanging out on the roof.

Lovely little flurries!

From work, I had to go to Walmart to buy some dinner food, and pick up some socks (when it started snowing, I knew it was time to stop wearing the damn flip flops).  When I walked out of Walmart, it had started snowing in earnest.  Weird snowball type things pelting you in the face.

Weird Snow Balls

Of course, none of that was still around by 10:00 the following morning, but we've been hearing about this big Nor'Easter that was headed our way.  This morning I awoke to a wintry wonderland!!! Sadly, it's rained some since then, and I didn't think to catch a picture first thing in the morning (I was too busy being sad about not having a snow day).  

Here it is - the first real snow of the season - hopefully there's lots more to come!!!

In front of my office

Thanksgiving Recovery

I've been sitting in this recliner for an indecent number of hours - occasionally getting up to serve myself some more pumpkin pie, or to make what I refer to as "turkey slop," (turkey slop recipe: Combine a handful of turkey, a couple of scoops each of gravy, stuffing, and mashed potatoes - heat on medium-high until it steams and is awesomely mushy and delicious) - I even had a bagel sometime in there.  It's been AWESOME.

Thanksgiving is great because it's all about the food.  Normally I'm as excited about Black Friday as I am about Thanksgiving, but as I have explained previously, I'm not doing big shopping this year.  But I have done some serious imaginary shopping in the past 24 hours!! 

Diane, a friend of Mom & Jeanne's, came to Thanksgiving dinner and brought her paper, chock full o' store flyers.  Were you aware that Walmart had Kitchenaid stand mixers for $150!?!?  Granted, I already have one, and I got it on super sale at Kohl's a couple of years ago for $99, but I tell you - if I were upper middle class instead of on the lower end of it, I'd be on top of that.  Why would I need two mixers you ask? Because they're fabulous and it's such a deal. 

Imagine how much of a hoarder I'd be if I were rich!!!

I had a few more near-seizures looking through the flyers.  But, somehow managed to stay in my pajamas all day watching Christmas movies.  A good time was had by all - well, specifically a good time was had by me.

Today we watched Surviving Christmas, I think Mom and I are the only people in the country (maybe aside from Ben Affleck's mom) who love that movie.  The fact is that a movie has to be REALLY bad before I'll say I don't like it.  I don't know that I've ever met a movie that sucked so badly I was unwilling to power through it (do you hear that makers of 'Vanity Fair'??? I watched your whole godforsaken film - what felt like about seventeen hours I'll never get back).  We also watched a two-episode Christmas Little House on the Prairie dvd, and 'Holiday in Handcuffs' - a delightful ABC Family made-for-TV lovely flick.

My fingers are crossed that we'll be able to find Mom's copy of 'Scrooged' tomorrow when we dig out the ornaments.  I don't know if Azi has ever seen it, and I know I haven't in a couple of years.  Probably someone should buy it for me as well.

Tomorrow we're off to the woods to chop down ye olde Christmas Tree.  Last year we tromped around Dad's property in Howland to find our tree - this year it'll be on the banks of Cain's Pond.  Cross your fingers that we find the PERFECT tree (at least let it be more like Charlie Brown's tree AFTER the application of the magic ornaments than before when it only had a few branches) - last year we had to triple up ornaments on some branches. 

Have Yourself a Winning Little Christmas

While I am definitely one of the biggest Christmas supporters ever - I have to admit, there's an extremely ooey gooey soft spot in my heart for Thanksgiving.  I love that it's not about presents - but just about spending time with your family, eating an unreasonable amount of food, and then undoing your pants and lounging around focusing on the television and digestion. How glorious is that?

In case you haven't noticed, I'm a bit of a stuff-addict - which means, to me, that the day after Thanksgiving is usually sitting up on the mantel in my mind as something great and holy.  However, this year is a little different - instead of modeling myself after the crazy lady in the Target commercials (who is completely awesome, and is my spiritual doppelganger for sure) - I'm doing what I've been referring to as a "Free Christmas."  No - I'm not trying to emancipate Christmas from the chains of commercialism and greed - I'm a HUGE fan of commercialism - not so much of greed, but the fact is that I want stuff.

This year I've decided to win Christmas.  I've actually done pretty well so far - I can't say specifically what I've won, because then the recipient might read it here!! I've been spending hours each night entering scores of online sweepstakes.  I wish I'd come up with the idea more than a month ago, as I'm actually waiting for a gift card that could have been used out competitively shopping on Friday morning, but that's okay - next year I'll be all ready for it.  Unless, that is, I've won some "major prize" (PLEASE let it be the leg lamp!!!!) that will allow me to be rich and super spendy, I will be out there early on waiting to race for the thirty cent laptops and such.

What do you want for Christmas? Maybe I can win it for you!!!!

I am a lucky girl

Had a great night last night - made a bunch of truffles to bring to Thanksgiving - did my grocery shopping for the pumpkin cheesecake (my vote's the only one that matters when it comes to my baking, and that's what I want to make) - and the ingredients for my (in?)famous 'pink stuff'. Also - I need to pick up some frozen dough balls to make rolls. I like them waaaaaaaaay better than the pre-cooked kind.

Tomorrow - I have a super fun day planned - going with Mom, Faith, and Azi down to Freeport - doing some shopping at the different outlets & dun dun dun - this is the kicker - going to the LLBean employee store. This is the main reason that it rocks to work at LLBean - granted, I like the job, and being able to get discounted gift cards & items totally rocks - however, the employee store knocks the socks off anything else. I'll be sure to tally up all of my purchases on here after I've made them and mathed them out. On my wish list are: tent poles (probably inside an entire new tent bag, but whatever, it's worth it for $10) - a super fuzzy bathrobe, some more luggage, couch/chair covers, flannel anything, pants for Peter & for dad, and whatever else I can find that is totally awesome & totally cheap.

This will be my first time going without Kathy, which makes me sad, we've always tag-team shopped, and I'm nervous about going by myself. But I'll be okay, I'm sure of it - if there's one thing I'm uncommonly good at - it's buying stuff.

On a completely unrelated topic - my beloved 11-year-old got her report card last week, and got her first C+ - we'd expected it, because she's in the accelerated math class (and apparently, these days, fifth grade accelerated math does fricking algebra, what's up with that??? I have to google how to help her with her homework - which is not making me feel any smarter). So - we knew she'd been working really hard - of course she got all As & Bs in the rest of her classes, but this was her first quarter without getting honor role, and her heart is absolutely broken. It's pretty tragic. This was also the first quarter that I rewarded her by giving her money for her grades - I needed to do something to take the sad little edge off.

Okay. I'm ready for some serious shopping tomorrow - get ready world!!!