christmas is over. the dreaded journey is over. i am very happy now. today i will take down the tree and put it all behind me. the trip to mikes parents was very uneventful. the weather was great, not a single flake of snow. for which i am very grateful. we rented a car because my car is unreliable..it runs well, but lately there has been a funny burning smell under the hood...is that a good thing? i think not, unless one is roasting weinies or marshmallows over the carburator. but the car we got was a pt cruiser!!! it was a very nice ride, plenty of room for booboo in the back seat. speaking of booboo, she was the hit of the party at the big family wing-ding. she got more pets and pats than a playboy bunny at a monestary. but, let me tell you about the BIG BUFFET!! it was incredibly disappointing. i did not lose any wieght and i just knew people were looking at me thinking "my god, what happened to her?" but i sure didn't gain any weight while i was there. we took down two 7 pound spiral hams and his mom said that was too much, so she only used one, then there was this little platter of roast beef and a little platter of turkey (when i say little i don't mean the platters were little..they were actually platters...there was just a little meat on them). she had a little chocolate cake and a cheesecake. then someone brought some cookies, and a tray of horsdeurves (sp?) ..they were nasty..cream cheese with a pecan on top sitting on a corn husky thing. all this massive(?) amount of food for 25 people!!! my mom puts out more than that for 6 people. mike ranted all the way home about how disappointing the buffet was and how he was glad tim didn't go with us after he had told him about the masses and masses of food there always was. and to top it all off, i wanted to bring the ham bone home for badger and berit, so when mike asked his mom about it she said she had it in the freezer to make split pea soup. personally, i think that she put it in the freezer so no one at the party would fight over it or break a tooth gnawing on it for just one more morsel. and then there was the big family photo, they do that every year. and me being one of the shorter ones, i had to stand in the front. but thankfully after that we got to leave, everyone else hangs around til 11 p.m. but i had the great excuse of having to be home christmas morning. so we went about 2 hours and found a nice motel 6, then got up the next morning and headed for home. we got here around noon, and the kids had the house looking really great (they really wanted those presents). then we ripped into those and in 10 minutes it was all over. i think everyone is happy with their gifts (i got them all the things on their list, so i guess they should be). and i know i am. mike got me a kindle, just like i mentioned before. and a case for it. i looked and looked trying to decide what my first book to download would be. then i went ahead and ordered the dome, by stephen king. i already have it in hardback ( a big 60 pound hardback), but it was the book i am reading. one of the really cool things on the kindle is the progress meter. it gives the percentage of the book you have finished. i have read 22% of the dome. this has to be about the coolest gift i have ever received. (it's right up there with the etch-a-sketch i got for what must have been my 6th birthday)and it really does only take about 45 seconds for a book to download. so, tim got the basketball book he wanted, a battery pack charger for his xbox and a new monitor for his computer (a very nice one..wonder if he would notice if i swapped with him). emily got 3 video games she wanted, a gift card for i-tunes and a wireless headset for her xbox (still being repaired by microsoft), and mike got a new flight jacket, a gun bag with hearing protectors, safety glasses and a years membership to the rifle and pistol club. i gave ben cash and grocery gift cards because he said thats all he wanted and he gave me 2 elvis collector plates, an elvis cup and an elvis guitar to put on my elvis shelf. they are all aloha 70's elvis which is my favorite. younger elvis is ok, but not the sexiest..and he tells me they don't make memorabilia of fat elvis....good thing he died, he would have looked as bad as me in the gardener family photo.

ok, susan powell from utah is missing. a very pretty mother of 2 small children. gone..poof...keys at home, cell phone at home purse at home. husband joshua went camping at midnight with 2 boys and when he gets back next day she is gone. i saw the guy on fox news..he isn't even a good liar. in the words of every famous detective ever "he dun it". i think child abusers are the lowest form of beings on earth..as i have mentioned, but i am just sick and tired of these stories of wives that have just "gone missing". remember lisa stebic? remember staci peterson? remember laci peterson? remember nicole simpson?? why don't these men just get a divorce or give a divorce? but, using my own very unique sense of justice, i have the perfect solution to this growing epidemic. whenever a man and woman even begin a relationship (and i am not being homophobic here...it's just that this seems to be mostly a man/woman phenomenon), the man has to sign a paper that says "if this woman "goes missing", you go to jail until she is found..because we know you dun it. and if we find her dead..you go to jail for a very long time". don't you think that would make most men take every extra precaution to make sure their significant other never "goes missing"? mike really hates it when these stories come up, because he knows i will just start ranting again. i say the same things every time, but i just am sick and tired of these assholes getting away with murder...because we all know they are guilty. and then there are the kids, whom i really feel sorry for, but i think most kids would never believe daddy killed mommy unless they saw it happen, so i think the kids adjust, as much as they can when mommy disappears. but the people i really feel sorry for are the family of the wife. they must know the guy killed there daughter, sister, niece. and know the murderer is raising their grandchildren. how do you deal with that for years? i mean..crap. the whole thing just really upsets me for days..months even. i have made mike promise that if he ever gets tired of me..just go away. don't shove me in a blue barrel, or rent a wood chipper to mulch me up and don't bury me in my rose garden with all my deceased pets. maybe i should write my senator with my "jailed upon the disappearance of spouse" idea. but they are both men here in oregon...and they are both politicians...so how far would that idea get? and then of course we have the grand poobah of all asshole husbands. the guy who gets away with murder and then goes to jail for assault and kidnapping...and robbery. i watched the oj trial years ago, and the day he was declared innocent i almost put my foot through my tv, yet both my parents thought he was innocent. i don't mean to sound racist here, but if the jury hadn't been predominantly black and if the wife had not been a blond white woman, i think he would have been found guilty. but we will never know. and am i comforted by the fact that he is in jail now? No, not really. two people are dead , he had years of freedom and he is still alive. where is the justice there? it's just a crying shame he went to jail before he finally tracked down the "real" killer.

not a lot going on (seems like i always say that). i have been off from bear creek since tuesday, and i go back next tuesday. it's sort of an "on-call" thing. even winco is pretty slow in the demo area. just 6 hours this wekend and none next week. time off is a good thing. i get to do my useless workout every morning because my foot isn't killing me. i also keep the house cleaner. and get this..I ALREADY HAVE MY CHRISTMAS TREE UP!!!! mike asked me to put it up early because he loves my tree topper. it isn't an angel or a star. i got it from avon a few years ago. it's a santa in a sleigh being pulled by one reindeer (i assume rudolph, because he has a red-nose), or it could just be a tanked up blitzen??anyway, he goes around and around the tree. so the other day mike says "how far do you suppose he goes?"...well, the challenge was on. i got a tape measure and measured how long the bar is that holds it away from the tree, then i figured out the circumference (had to go on line to find out how to do that),then i had to time each revolution, and from there it was all calculator. so just in case you are wondering, santa goes 25" every 10 seconds, which is 150" minute, 9000 inches an hour 216,000 inches a day or 18,000 feet a day or (drum roll please) 3.4 miles in 24 hours. which all goes to prove one thing...sometimes too much time off is not a good thing. when i gave emily all this vital information (someday she may be married, with children and have this collectible on her tree and one of her darlings will ask just that very question), do you know what she said? she said "and you want to know this because...?" all i could say was "it seemed important when i started". oh, i also have just about all my christmas shopping done...God, i love Amazon. i found just about everything i wanted, for a lower price than downtown and almost all was free shipping. the only thing i am getting downtown is a new monitor for tim (pc kind, not lizard kind), and mikes jacket. so almost everyday i get these brown boxes by ups or mail and i just keep putting them under the tree. emily asked me the other day if i was going to wrap them or just leave them that way. SAY WHAT??? apparently she didn't learn much from the "box, instant, canned, frozen, package" thanksgiving dinner i prepared. but, in getting with the spirit of the thing, i bought wrapping paper and bows today. i hardly ever buy bows, it just seems so wasteful. but they looked kind of pretty. i already know what mike is getting me. and as much as i hinted and came right out and said it..it isn't the PET HAIR ERASER vacuum. he refuses to get me an appliance. so the other day i was sitting here (right here in this very chair) on amazon and i said "here's what i would like..a kindle". i was truly jesting..not about liking to have one, just about him getting me one. so after explaining what it is, he said ok. HELLO!!! $259!!! I said no way..too much money, but he said it was either that or the shitty gift he was going to get me. I am glad we went with the kindle, i wanted one last year but they were over $350 then and impossible to get. he told me he was going to get me another heat conductor. it was a black hills gold ring. we call them heat conductors because when i do cinnamon swirls at work, if i forget to take of my wedding ring i end up with a red burn mark all around my finger for days. so my kindle is here now..in another brown amazon box under the tree. i am pretty excited about this. i researched it a lot, and it appears to be the best e-book reader out there. and bestsellers are almost all $9.99, not $20-$25 like at barnes and noble. one of the down sides is that if a book goes out of print or something, amazon will remove it from your kindle..even though you paid for it. kind of "big brother" but how often does that happen? most authors want to keep selling books. he is going to want me to open it early, but i won't. it's the only present i will have under the tree..so i am waiting until christmas.
and then there is the big christmas trip....no weight loss that i can see, and only 3 weeks to go. i knew this would happen. but as doris day said "que sera sera". (my sister always pronounced it kay sarah sarah, so that's how i always think of it). if i look fat in the family photo it's because the camera always adds 50 pounds gee, i hope they only have one camera.
so, am i going to put up christmas lights outside? I do not know. i leave them up on the eaves all year, so those are all faded now, but i still have to get up on the ladder and clean the leaves out of the gutters. and i usually put lights along my front fence and on my windmill. but it has been so friggin cold here. since last week it has been in the 20's and foggy..foggy...foggy. then, since we live so close to the airport, they are always "seeding" the fog, so every morning it is a white icy frosty mess. tomorrow the fog is supposed to be gone and it is going to warm all the way up to 33. i am just not a winter person, never have been, never will be. don't like fog, snow, ice or cold. i won't even eat ice cream in the winter as a form of protest against mother nature. so, depends on the weather on if i decorate outside. some people really get into that outside stuff. there is a house in town that must have about 10 of those big balloon decorations from walmart (the kind that run a motor)
hey, i will be the first to admit that they look really cool at night, but these people turn theirs off in the day time, so when you drive by, it looks like some kind of balloon wounded knee. big heaping piles of dead balloon carcasses all over the lawn. actually, even at night it has more of a sleazy carnival look, than a christmas look. santa as the bearded lady, elves for the perverted dwarf that every sleazy carnival has, snowmen for clowns and i don't know where the penguins fit in.
and lastly, there is MONK, or should i say there is no MONK. i watched the finale last night. no trudy in the witness protection program. the ending was actually ok. he got trudy's killer, he met trudy's illigitimate daughter and he keeps working..and in the end he isn't even wearing a tie. the new laid back monk. i haven't been this upset about a series ending since magnum p.i. went away. i think i will just sit here and contemplate a magnumless, monkless world and watch santa do his 3.4 miles.