Hopeful

2010 is about to end.  In 5 short days we will ring in 2011.  With the new year comes hope, promise, possibility.  Resolutions are made (and usually broken).  There is a possibility that the negative things in your life will improve, that things will look up, that this will be your best year ever.

I always start the new year with hope and excitement.  This will be there year I will lose the weight.  This will be the year I will get recognized at work.  I will get a raise, go on vacation, enjoy every moment I have with my loved ones.

Not to say that 2010 was a bad year.  It wasn't, but it was hard.  There were quite a few difficulties to overcome.  But now is not the time to remember the frustrating complications of the past year.  Now is the time to reflect upon the positive moments of 2010.

-A cross country trip
-A visit to Texas
-Eating Crawdads and oysters in NOLA (and liking it!)
-New Jobs
-My goddaughter
-A new home
-New babies (kangaroo)
-Internet friends
-New York
-Saying goodbye to a family legend
-Getting hitched
-A new last name
-A tropical vacation
-Scuba Diving
-Green license plates
-Plenty of weddings
-Even more engagements
-A fireplace
-New Baby Mac
-P dub
-Foliage
-Tattoos
-Bougie
-Hobo, Olio, Buddie, and Princess
-Being within driving distance of about 70% of our friends again
-Pancetta and Leeks

Here is to a healthy, happy, safe, exciting, joyous, memorable, touching, EPIC 2011!

PBG's

Christmas is a week away.  That means, lots and lots of family.

Which is a good thing, in small doses.  Mr. G and I have been out west in the land of wonder for the last few Christmas seasons, and so the HUGE amount of family that we are seeing this season is a nice balance to the lack of family for the last two years.

My sister is coming home from NYC this week.  She is my antithesis.  She lives in NYC (clue #1 that we are opposites), she stays out until 3 am on WEEK NIGHTS.  She has long beautiful hair.  She is involved in everything under the sun.  She thinks I am trying too hard to be middle class (she is wrong.  I am trying way to hard to be upper class.)  We will likely argue about everything under the sun, but we will sit and relax and sip wine too.  She will pick on me for how my house is decorated, I will pick on her for sleeping til 2 pm.  And then we will hug, put our heads on each other's shoulders, and say "Lalloo."

Although this will be my first married Christmas away from the PBs I can already tell you what will happen on Christmas dinner with the whole fam: the cousins will all come over.  Some will bring their Boyfriends.  Said boyfriends will be thoroughly embarrassed when the entire family goes around after dinner but before dessert and tells their "war stories."  This is when everyone goes around and tells their funniest drug and alcohol related stories.  It is a hoot.  Bubbie and Popop ended up in the ER once from a wild party my mom and aunt threw.  Beat that, kids of our generation.

Yesterday was my in-laws annual Christmas party.  It was fun, but there were 7 screaming kids there (it sure felt like more).  It was great birth control.  Mr. G's cousin (I guess he is now my cousin too...?) Isaac was there.  We like to argue.  A lot.  See, when it comes to politics, we disagree 99% of the time.  99% of the time, I am right (aka, Dem) and he is wrong (aka Rep).  The other remaining 1% of the time, we agree (he is sometimes smart/right/Dem).  Last night, we successfully made it an entire evening without arguing.  Which was good, because I was too tired to form a coherent argument.

At the holiday party yesterday, my in-laws have this tradition--every family takes a line from the 12 days of christmas.  And then the whole family sings it.  So the person who picks the "1st day" sings the "partridge in a pear tree" line every time we get to that point in the song.  Nobody ever wants the first few days of Christmas, because nobody wants to sing those lines over and over and over.  This year, it just so happened that two sweet little cousins got days 1 and 2.  And they were pumped about it because they are only 7 and don't know any better.  (Mr. G and I totally lucked out and got day 11.)  I won't lie, my blackened heart melted every time I heard those precious girls sing "two turtles" (she forgot the dove part) and "a part in a pear tree."  Oh, family.

There are new crawling babies, kids galore, aunts, uncles, and a million cousins.  And I have seen all of them/will see all of them in a 7 day period.  I will have hit my family quota for a few months at least.  But I am enjoying this time with them, and will continue to do so.  I need to remember that nothing lasts forever, and I need to cherish what I have while I have it.  So I will argue, bicker, be embarrassed, laugh until I cry and savor every minute I have this crazy holiday season with these crazy people I call family.

Happy Holidays!

Sweet sweet Fantasy, Baby

Sometimes around the holidays, it can be a little depressing.  You don't have all the cash you want/need to buy the gifts, do the baking, travel, etc.  It can make it hard, especially when you hear how well other people are doing.

If you are one of those "other people" who is doing well and getting big bonuses and buying a house and has no debt and can go clothes shopping whenever you want, then this blog is not for you.

Anyway, if you are like me, and the majority of my friends, then, like I said, you might be a little depressed this time of the year.  Well, Mr. G and I have a game (stolen from our dear friends Uncs and Brows) that we play to make us feel better.  It is called "Fantasy Shauni and Mr. G."  Here is how you play:

Fantasy Shauni has the body of Gisele Bundchen.  Let's just get that right out of the way.

Ok, but really, Fantasy Shauni and Mr. G have a beautiful home in the mountains with a wrap around porch, a huge sunny deck, 4 acres of private property, 3-4 bedrooms, a sunny BIG kitchen, and all hard wood floors.  Fantasy Shauni drives an Audi or a Subaru, Fantasy Mr. G drives a big Ford Truck AND has a motorcycle.  (In Fantasy world, Mr. G also has his motorcycle license.)

Fantasy Shauni and Mr. G have a little boat for the lake.  Nothing big, just a nice, clean, 35 footer. And 3 kayaks (one for each of us and one for our perfect Fantasy Child).  We live close enough to the lake that in the summer we can go on weekends.

Fantasy Shauni and Mr. G also have a second home.  In the tropics somewhere.  We go once a year.  And even though we live on a mountain (in VT.  Where it snows.  Even in fantasy land...) we also take another yearly vacation out west to go skiing.  Plus a weekend away just the two of us every now and then.

Fantasy Shauni does not have allergies to everything under the sun, and so Fantasy Shauni and Mr. G also have a golden retriever.

Fantasy Shauni doesn't have to work full time.

Fantasy Mr. G loves his job.  He comes home happy after work every day, and often brings flowers for Fantasy Shauni (ok, that last part may not be Fantasy Mr. G's idea, it might be mine...)

Fantasy Shauni and Mr. G live happily ever after with their Fantasy Child and Golden Retriever, Ollie.

The end.

And on another note, since my dear friend Uncs taught me this game, I would like to do a special birthday shout out to her.  HAPPY BIRTHDAY, dear uncle.  Hope you have a wonderful glorious day!

shlamazel

Tis the season, so they say.  You know how I know the holidays are upon us?  There is static in the air.  I shock myself whenever I touch anything.  It is 18 degrees out.  There are ice chunks floating down the river.  The radio is playing AWFUL Christmas songs (so is P. Chops).  I am afraid to go into town on the weekend for fear that it will take me 6 hours to go the quarter mile to get anywhere.

Nope, I have not been bitten by the holiday bug this year.  As a matter of fact, now that the 8 days of Hanukah have come and gone, I realize I did not even take the menorah out of storage.  I didn't make a single Latke.  I have yet to unwrap the cellophane from the advent calendar that my mom still insists on giving me each December (sorry mom).

It's not my fault that I don't feel the holiday spirit.  I want to.  I really do.  But we are lacking two very important things that make the holidays really fun.  The white stuff and the green stuff.  No snow.  All around us people are getting hammered with snow.  And trust me, I usually don't mind not having snow.  But if it is this cold, and this close to the holidays, a couple of feet is fine.  In fact, it is welcomed.  Especially because my neighborhood is starting to look really brown and ugly without it.  And secondly, we are flat broke (please refer to the new Mac addition to the Goodwin household.  And wedding.  And move across the country.  And getting new snow tires for the cars since eventually there will be snow...)  It is hard to get all freakin' festive when we cannot afford a tree, a tree stand, gifts, stamps for our holiday cards, the ingredients needed to bake with, etc.

I have faith that this weekend, when I go to START my Christmas shopping (I am a little behind on this, I know.  Again, please refer to the awful holiday traffic and the new Mac and you will know why I have yet to start this process.), put up the tree, play a select few Christmas songs, and bake for 12 hours straight that my blackened heart will begin to melt and I will start feeling festive.

Love,
Grandma the Grinch

whoops

Let me just embarrass myself by saying this: the healthiest thing I ate this weekend was home made air popped popcorn.  Not a good sign.

This weekend I kicked Friday night off with a Hanukkah feast: I ate enough latkes, roasted lamb, and CAKE to feed 4 grown men.  Not a pretty sight.  You know things are bad when you eat more for Hanukkah than you do at Thanksgiving.

Saturday, I may or may not have had a slice of New York Style Bacon Chicken Ranch Pizza for lunch.  Followed that up by making some delicious home made pasta alla vodka for dinner.  If you have not made this, you do not know what you are missing.  So easy.  So delicious.  Even Mr. G liked it.  I then attempted to make muffins.  No, not healthy bran muffins.  Sweetened cream cheese filled pumpkin muffins.  I started the process Friday night.  Ate some batter, took a break to watch TV, fell asleep.  Mr. G was nice enough to clean up for me and put my batter in the fridge for me to finish the muffins in the morning.

Cut to: Sunday morning.  I make the muffins.  And then ate 2 of them in record time (I think maybe 45 seconds?)  Then I went to the gym for awhile to burn off said muffins.  Got home, got showered, made the homemade popcorn, put it in my purse, and ran out to see a movie with Mr. G.  Noshed on the popcorn. Things were on the up and up--I just ate "healthy" at the movies!  But then we headed out to a local seafood restaurant to order a nice basket of fried shrimp.  FRIED.SHRIMP.  It was amazing.  But obviously, not enough.  Although I proudly did not finish the fried greasy goodness, I did come home and top off the day with 2 slices of Cheddar Cheese (Cabot Hunter's Seriously Sharp).

So yes, the popcorn was in fact the healthiest thing I ate all weekend.

Please excuse me while I go to the gym for 16 hours this week.

SHALOM BITCH

As many of my close friends will tell you, I am pretty Jewish.  I like to nag.  I like to cook, and I am generally offended if you don't want to eat an entire 3rd portion of whatever it is that I cooked.  I say "oy-vey" on the reg.  My nick-name for a lot of years was Shaunikah.

And I often greet people with the phrase "Shalom, Bitch!"  I love to say it.  I say it when I answer the phone.  I say it when I skype.  I text it.  I sing it.  Sometimes I will even throw it out there at the grocery store to the person bagging my goods.  Just to spice things up and give the nice (white, anglo-saxen) folks at the upper valley P. Chops some diversity.

Well today, my loyal friends, I say SHALOM BITCHES to all of you.  For today, at sundown, is the first night of Hanukah.  Or Chanukah.  Or the damn festival of lights.   It all means the same things--latkes, menorah, presents, and Adam Sandler on the radio singing about 8 crazy nights and marijuanakah.

Being the great and perfect Jew that I am, tonight, Mr. G (being the good Goy that he is) and I will light the menorah.  But then the jewishness stops there.  We will not make latkes.  We will not spin a dreidle.  We will not read "Hershel and the Hanukah Goblins."  We will not exchange gifts (Ricky the Recession Rat will not allow it.  He was already pissed about our new computer purchase without his approval).  We will most likely eat non-kosher shrimp on a salad or, god forbid, eat some pork (best food ever, Jews be damned) and watch TV.

Actually, the TV part is quite appropriate, as my people own the media.  We are the agents, the actors, the producers, the directors, the entirety of LA.  Watch a movie or a show and read the credits.  So really, I am doing my part in being a Jew and participating.

We also will likely talk about money and tell a few Jewish jokes (we are allowed to, we are Jews).  So all in all, we will be good Jewish and will honor the holiday quite well, I think.

So sit back, have a glass of Manishewitz, eat a pot roast, have 6 latkes, spin the dreidle.  Or at least watch TV.  And celebrate Chanukah.

Mazel Tov,
Bubbie Moisha