Baby, It's Cold Outside

Having spent most my life in Georgia, snow is a relatively foreign thing to me. I've lived here for nine and a half years now, and still have not mastered the art of layering clothes. Or even wearing a coat some days. We had already decided that we would be getting our Christmas tree today. So, I was delighted to wake up to snow. It'll be so fun to get our tree in the snow, I thought.

Then, we went out and did it. It was cold and wet. And my Georgia roots have me believing that I won't need serious winter outerwear until January, so I couldn't find my gloves (thanks to Jazzy Sis Mary, Ashlyn did have some!). It was kinda neat to bring in a tree with snow on it, just like in the movies! Until I realized that meant the tree had to thaw out in the kitchen, meaning we had a river of water on the linoleum. But it all worked out. Ashlyn had a great time decorating it. She keeps closing her eyes and pretending to be surprised each time she opens them and sees the tree in our living room. Ah, to be four again...

This year was memorable in that it's the first year John and I did not squabble over whether we should have a fake tree or a live tree. I'm not sure if it's because I grew up in Georgia or what, but everyone I knew ALWAYS had an artificial tree. They still do. John is a live tree purist. Which leaves me cleaning up pine needles needlessly and worrying that the tree is going to catch on fire (I've seen the YouTube videos). But this year, I decided to just embrace the pine. O Tannenbaum...

Tall Tales

I am reading a book that I wish had been around when I hit 5’9 in the 6th Grade. Arianne Cohen’s “The Tall Book, A Celebration of Life on High” makes me stand a little taller. I know my shorter friends will roll their eyes when they hear that the book explores why us talls are smarter, richer, healthier and more likely to be president. That’s because they don’t get that us talls need pep talks. It’s not always easy up here. You’re not the only ones who are vertically challenged. The challenges are just different.

I never got to lament my height, which topped out at 5’10, because all of my friends were shorter and whining about having to hem pants and not being able to reach the top shelf. But here’s the thing. You COULD have your pants hemmed. I didn’t actually choose to go through much of middle school wearing “floodwater” pants, a phenomenon made even worse by the silly fad of tight-rolling your jeans.

Nor did I have anyone to turn to in my family for advice on this tall body because guess what? I am taller than everyone! My mother was 5’2. My sisters aren’t much taller than that. Even my dad is shorter than me, and has been since I hit middle school! I grew up with my short family making jokes about how they should just stop buying the shoes for me and give me the shoe boxes to wear. Adding insult to injury was the fact that my mom gave my cherished size 7 boots to my married, 20-something sister when I was 11 years old because I outgrew them in less than a month.

I plan on gifting Cohen’s book to my daughter when she hits that awkward “I’m taller than all the boys in my class (and also the teacher)” stage. Because in addition to explaining why us talls are actually pretty darn cool, the 6’3 Cohen helps explain some of the reasons were not cool. A few key points.

1. I don’t just suck at yoga. It’s my body type! “Taller bodies carry more muscle mass, but the extra muscle never eclipses the increased body weight,” Cohen writes. Similarly, push-ups are darn hard for talls!

2. This doesn’t explain why I suck at all sports, but it did make me feel better to hear that every single tall person on the planet grew up with people asking constantly if they played basketball. I don’t get this as much now that I’m older and fatter, but I really wish I’d said back then, “No, are you a jockey?”

3. “Tall girls start dating in late high school or early college; very tall girls usually take an extra year or two, waiting for boys to mature enough to handle them.” Um, could someone have told me that IN high school?? Sure, being a nerd probably didn't help, but still... Oh, at the same time, older men become interested in tall girls much earlier, Cohen writes. Another BINGO! light bulb moment. The only guy who passionately pursued me in high school was 23 to my 17, and had already graduated from college.

4. That shirt in the store is most likely designed for a 5’4, size 6 woman, which is then graded up and down in sizes from 0-16. With those proportions as a guide, it never fits. Finding a blouse that’s long enough, darted in the right places, etc, is actually harder for me than finding pants that are long enough. Ever noticed there's no tall section in the department store next to the petite area?

5. I am not the only tall person who secretly gives the evil eye to tiny, little old ladies sitting in the more spacious exit row on an airplane. And don’t get me started on people who recline their seats… Oh, and guess which carrier is among the worst for legroom? Delta, where I have all my frequent flier miles, comes in at just 31 inches between seatbacks, according to Cohen.

Normally, I like to have a photo lead off my blog posting. I have the perfect one somewhere. My 5’2 BFF and I standing back-to-back for “Buddy Pictures.” Gotta love school photographers. It’s so bad though… I don’t think I have the guts to post it. We'll see if I change my mind when I finish "The Tall Book." P.S. - I still love all you short people. "Short people are just the same as you and I... All men are brothers until the day they die. What a wonderful world."

Best $5 Spent on Black Friday

For $5, she got to run off all that excess energy. Click play to see the monkey in a barrel that I always knew she was. Thank you Romp n Roll.

Snuggie-Free Zone

I decided to make a dent in my holiday shopping this past weekend, and made a startling discovery. Everywhere I went--Target, Hallmark, JC Penney, etc--I saw "Snuggies." You know, the Slanket-wannabe. The blanket with arms. Because it's so annoying to have to remove your arms from your warm blanket cocoon while on the couch to insert Cheetos into mouth.

I saw tons and tons of these things in stores. So maybe, just maybe, this means people aren't buying them. Still, I'm not so sure. I was in JoAnn Fabrics, which I don't think carries the Snuggie. The woman in front of me was buying $50 in fabric to make her granddaughter her very own ... Snuggie.

Another reason I worry the Snuggie might somehow make it under my tree this Christmas: Zhu Zhu. America loves fads. This weekend was the first I'd heard of Zhu Zhu Pets, the battery operated $9 toy hamsters that people are camping out for and forking over $40-$50 for. Really. My plan is to fake people out by selling real hamsters and telling them that their actually Zhu Zhu pets. While I am sure there are a some children who have their hearts set on a fake furry rodent, I suspect that most of the hype is from adults caught up in playing an expensive hide and seek game.

Case in point, I was in Hallmark Saturday when I heard a woman breathlessly explaining on her cellphone what Zhu Zhu pets are. She'd already been to Target. They were wiped clean. She was at Hallmark now, and they didn't have them either. "They are THE hot toy. I'm going to try Toys R Us," she told the person on the other end of the line. What cracked me up was that she then said she was waiting to hear from her daughter if her grandson was even interested in owning one. Meanwhile, I noticed that she had snubbed the $9.99 non-Zhu Zhu branded fake hamsters with rolling hamster balls on display at Hallmark. Me? I might have used the $5 coupon that I did not take from the doctor's office to pick up a faux fake hamster just in case... Yeah, I'm not completely fad immune myself.

I think everyone knows how this will end up. Anyone remember the Furby? Yeah, me neither. But I do have a solution for all those Snuggies, Slankets and Arm-Blankets that we're bound to receive. Homeless shelters are always looking for blanket donations. That's a trend I could really get behind.

Gobble Gobble

Here's further evidence that I am a crappy crafter. I got one of those new Martha Stewart scoring boards (love it!) and decided I'd try my hand at a turkey treat box. In a perfect world, it would have looked like this creation made by Mandy. Instead, it looks like this:

Ashlyn's Pre-K turkey made from her hand looks better than this. I think the problem is that I needed to add some of that ribbon I bought a couple months back! John has vetoed me making one of these for every place setting at our very formal family Thanksgiving dinner, but I bet if I filled it full of chocolate he wouldn't complain.

Meanwhile, I need to tell you that The Gypsy Spot, is giving away a free Cricut Gypsy. I am hoping to win, but if you think you can make better turkey boxes than me (and chances are, you can) you should enter too! Just follow their blog and post about the contest, like I am doing right now.

Book Club

I used to be an avid reader, devouring 300+ page books in less than a few days at times. Then I joined a book club. Perhaps if you're a fellow book clubber, you'll understand. Now, I usually take an entire month to read whatever tome has been chosen. Maybe it's because they are often more difficult reading or because I don't do well with deadlines. But I tend to think it's because the book club book is usually not one I would have pulled off the shelf to read myself. Case in point, here is the first sentence from this month's book:

"I was born twice: first as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974."

My more well-read blog readers will likely recognize this opening from Jeffrey Eugenides' "Middlesex." It's actually considered quite good, winning some little award or something called the Pulitzer Prize. Whatever that is.

If it wasn't for book club, I can pretty much guarantee I never would've thought to read a story about a hermaphrodite (today, the proper term is intersex). I'm on page 287 so my opinion on the novel is still out. I will say with a jaw-dropping opening like that I was kinda hoping by page 287 I'd have a better idea of what happened in August 1974, but that's not how book club books work. While I haven't the faintest clue how the narrator's intersex status was eventually discovered, I now have a new-found knowledge of the Greco-Turkish War of 1919-1922 (frankly, I had no knowledge previously), the Great Fire of Smyrna, the creation of the Nation of Islam, the mysterious Wallace Fard Muhammad and the 1967 Detroit Riot (eclipsed only by the Rodney King riots in L.A. in 1992).

So, while it often takes me a long time to read book club books and I don't alway enjoy them (though I have to admit, "Middlesex" is winning me over), I keep coming back to book club each month because I like how the selections often expand my world.

In case you're looking for some new reading material, here's a few of our past book club selections: "The Kite Runner," "Revolutionary Road," "The Painted Drum," "The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox," "The Inheritance of Loss," "The Emperor's Children," "Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress," and "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay." Loved some, loathed some, but all made me think.

Thrifty Thursday

I would never advocate this, but let's just say you were sitting in the doctor's office waiting room. And perhaps you've been waiting more than 45 minutes past your scheduled appointment time and are bored. You might just wanna thumb through the Dec. 1 waiting room copy of Women's Day and snag the coupon for $5 off any Hallmark purchase (no minimum purchase requirement). But I would never do that.