My Christmas Fails

My original goal today was to visit the laundromat so I could have some clean clothes for my visit back home. I have a book I'm trying to finish, anyway (The Codex by Lev Grossman - oddly fascinating), and there's no better place than the laundromat to read a whole book in one sitting. The only obstacle is the owner of the laundromat who is incredibly entertaining and therefore makes it difficult to concentrate on the book sometimes.

Anyway, I drove the ten minutes to Browns Mills. Once I arrived at the laundromat I went through the difficult task of removing the giant hamper-on-wheels from my trunk with one hand while holding up the lid of the trunk with my other hand. I had already made the mistake of loading the trunk earlier and not holding up the hatch. My head is still pounding with this awful dull ache.

I managed to get the hamper out without injury and wheeled it up to the door only to be confronted with a ginormous closed sign that I would have seen from inside my car had I been looking. "Argh," I said.

Since I was in town, I decided to check out the shopping complex and stumbled upon a Dollar Tree. If you know me at all, you know that I cannot pass up anything that's cheap, even if I have no use for it. "Look! This pair of shoes that are hideous and way too big for me are only a dollar! I might need them someday."

At the store I picked out some wrapping paper then levitated to the Christmas decorations. We can't get a tree right now, so I decided to get a baby tree made of some weird metal stuff with wretched sparkles that fall off when you touch it. I also bought six feet of ugly green garland and three bunches of fake Christmas flowers to decorate the garland.

Here's another little known fact about me: I'm stupid. When I got home I untangled the garland and grabbed a pair of scissors to cut the stems of the fake flowers so I could weave them into the garland. Duh. You can't cut through wire with scissors, no matter how hard you try. So there's fail number one.

Fail number two: You can't affix garland to a wall with Scotch tape.

Fail number three: You can't hammer a tack through a stud. A tack just will not go through a piece of wood. Drywall, yes. Stud, no.

Fail number four occurred when I climbed up on a dining room chair and tried to hang some Christmas lights over the archway in the living room. I finally managed to get the tacks in the wall and hung the lights delicately upon them. It was about eight feet of lights. The archway, I'd estimate, is about fifteen feet all the way around. We don't have an extension cord. So, the lights are hanging over the archway, looking very festive (and unlit) while the cords dangle about three feet from the floor on each side, tempting the cat. It's about six feet from an outlet.

At that point I was becoming horribly discouraged, so I decided to hang the garland by itself over the dining room windows for some sort of decoration in the house (not counting the random ornaments dangling from doorknobs and cabinet hardware). Fail five: The garland is crooked and the cat's already ripped it down about six times. You would think I'd just take it down after the sixth time of putting it back up, but no; I'm not that smart.

Fail six: I put the fake flowers in a vase and set it on the dining room table. I arranged it beautifully and pulled the flowers apart and mixed them up a bit, just like Mom does. I forgot that I have to keep any flowers Joe gives me in the bathroom with the door closed because Batman likes to eat them*. Glass vase + plastic flowers with no weight + an uneven tile table = disaster. I took the flowers out of the vase after I watched him almost knock it over, then I set them in the decorative bowl with the candle and pinecones. It looks stupid. The flowers are just laying in the bowl.

I put the glittery baby Christmas tree on top of the TV. At least that's one thing I can't mess up.
Then yesterday - I will call this fail seven, eight and nine- I decided to make some country fried steak just like Mom makes. We bought some of the Tyson frozen stuff, so I popped it in the oven, boiled some potatoes and heated up the leftover macaroni. You absolutely must have gravy with country fried steak - it's the law - so I got out the milk and started to make it. The oven beeped, so I asked Joe to mash the potatoes while I finished the gravy and took the stuff out of the oven.
"Wait," he said. "How are we going to make mashed potatoes without milk?"

"We have milk," I said. "It's right here, silly." I poured a little more milk into the gravy.

"But it's old," he said. I checked the expiration date and, sure enough, it expired Dec. 7.

I smelled it (you know you have to smell stuff even though you know it's nasty) and threw up in my mouth a little bit. I looked down at my gravy and frowned. "Doh," I said.

We threw away the gravy and just put butter and pepper on our potatoes (not bad, really). I nearly cried when we were forced to put mustard on our country fried steak. At least we had the macaroni.

After I finished my dinner, a sudden thought struck me. "Uh-oh," I said. "I used that milk to make the macaroni yesterday." And guess what I did with the macaroni. Just guess. I took it into his shop for a going away dinner for a guy who's PCSing (moving on orders) to Korea. Everyone in the building ate my macaroni like there was no tomorrow because it's pretty much the best mac & cheese ever.

"Ooohhh," said Joe. "That's why my stomach's been feeling weird."

I frowned and threw up in my mouth a little bit again. Then Joe started laughing. "That one Tech Sergeant is lactose intolerant and he went back for thirds!"

I couldn't help but laugh. "If anyone asks, blame it on the flight chief's meatballs," I said.
Then I threw up in my mouth again.



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Edit: I stopped for a moment to think - something I clearly need to do more often - and came up with this:






Fail number ten: I probably should have washed the sap from the pinecones off my hands before I touched the keyboard, the mouse, the camera, the USB port, my cell phone, my face, the cat, a piece of paper I found on the floor. Argh.



*Batman likes to eat everything: My hands, feet, the couch, paper, flowers, blankets, bugs, strings, clothes, his tail. But, he doesn't like to eat hotdogs, fish or cheese. He always wants people food but when we give it to him, he just sniffs it, licks it, plays with it, then leaves it alone. I dropped a raw noodle on the floor the other day and he gobbled it right up. He's the strangest cat I've ever known.