Christmas Checklist - 2005

Here’s a checklist of some pretty standard Erin-Christmas traditions. How many of these things happened to you?

• Eggnog lattes: 3 this weekend. Home made. Actually discovered that I have yet *another* half gallon of the stuff in the back of my ‘fridge. More nog for next weekend!

• Number of days 70 degrees or warmer: 3. Put this under my list of “why I hate Texas, reason # 537”. Sure, it snowed here last year when we were in Idaho, and ironically had zero white flakes up there. This year, 70’s and sunny. Blech. It doesn’t seem like Christmas when you’re wearing shorts and sweating….

• Kitchen accidents: 2 burned fingers, one on my hand, one on Will’s. Turkey recipe called for the turkey to be roasted at 500 degrees, back-side-up for 30 minutes. Then to take it out and flip it. Not an easy thing to do – especially when everything is 500 degrees! And flipping a 12 lb bird is awkward. Methinks I’ll be skipping that step next time I make this recipe. To top it off, the skin from my burn blister peeled off, so now its even more sore. Fun!

• Smoke alarm soundings: technically twice, but it was from the same incident described above. Boy was that a fun 10 minutes. Bring out this fiery pan from the oven with the herbs and onion and drippings already black and smoking. Have 2 people attempt to flip turkey over, burn fingers. Begin yelling at each other b/c you both have burned fingers and the turkey STILL isn’t flipped. Have smoke alarm go off. Yell at husband to leave the turkey flipping to me and TURN OFF THE DAMN ALARM. Alarm goes off a 2nd time. Yell again – TAKE THE BATTERIES OUT!!! Followed by husband cursing at wife and fire detector at the same time. The batteries are still removed from the smoke detector. Its probably safe to put them back in. Hey, at least Will didn’t light the marshmallows of his Sweet Potato Surprise dish afire as he’s done in past years. Of course, that could be because we didn’t make it this year, either.

• Home improvement project: 1. Got my cabinets sanded down. 1 trip to Home Depot to buy sander (I had gift cards), 1 trip to Lowes for more sandpaper (its closer to my house), another trip to Home Depot to return sander when it inexplicably died on Day 4 of project, another trip to Lowes to buy 2nd sander, b/c HD did not have another one readily available. Quality time spend with the sander: 15 hours over 4 days, plus 2 hours of down time b/c the sander broke and had to be replaced. Quantity of sawdust inhaled: who knows, I just know it was probably more than is safe. Injuries: none (go me!). Emasculated husbands: one. I wouldn’t let him touch the sander. I figure he had his opportunity several years back when he was laid off and I asked him to do this – and he refused. Besides, this is a detail oriented project. I could see him getting bored with the amount of time it took to a)remove varnish and b)remove stain, thus resulting in me basically having to go back and re-do the sanding. Besides, he seemed to prefer playing computer games all weekend.

• Bottles of wine consumed: 3.5 (2 during a party). Hey, considering it was only the 2 of us for most of the weekend, and I spent most of it covered in sawdust!

That was pretty much our holiday weekend in nutshell. Really pretty boring. Hope the rest of you had more fun that we did!