Life As I Know It

in which it becomes clear why I don't send out those saccharine-braggy holiday letters

So, my Thanksgiving weekend: we plan to go up to my folks' Wednesday evening. Around 3:00 Wednesday afternoon, I discover that the fridge isn't really working, for the second time in two weeks. I call the appliance service people. A repairman miraculously shows up 40 minutes later. I go back to pie assembly. I finally put the pies in the oven around 6:30. Around 7:15, I discover that the oven isn't really working. I take the pies up the street, put them in my kind neighbor's oven, call my folks and eventually agree we should come in the morning. We plan to leave at 9 Thursday morning. Around 10:15 we pull out, barely fitting ourselves in our smallish car because our van has developed brake issues, especially on wet pavement, and we are experiencing a fourth straight day of rain. Luckily traffic is light, because they can't start the turkey until we get there with the roasting pan. We do get there, and dinner proves to be quite successful.

On Friday my sister Becca, Miss B and I decide to hit Tarzhay for new rain boots and then drive into nearby Brunswick for Indian takeout. At Tarzhay we buy scads of stuff we actually need, including the rain boots. We congratulate ourselves on our mad shopping skillz and head for Brunswick. I ask if we can stop by Halcyon Yarns; Becca points out that it's in Bath. Well, they both start with a B. Since we left my folks' I've been playing with Becca's iPhone and having a terrible time with the keypad, always typing a letter one away from what I want. Becca says I need to file my fingers to sharp points. "Including this one?" I ask. I persevere, doing my best to ignore Miss B's mockery, and eventually managing to find Google and type "yarn brunswick maine" into it. It spits back Purl Diva. I knew there was a yarn store in Brunswick I wanted to visit. According to the iPhone's GPS it's about half a mile away. We start to walk in the rain (by now Becca and Miss B are both wearing their rain boots), then decide to take the car. We drive in circles for several minutes, until we hit on the bright idea of actually calling Purl Diva — you can use an iPhone to call people? who knew? — and get the owner, Ellen, who very kindly guides us to her store over the phone, even though it's almost closing time. Luckily it's close by, although not in the direction the GPS wanted to take us (it had in mind right street, wrong town). It's worth the visit; Ellen is a sweetheart with a phenomenal memory — she met me for five minutes three Fiber Frolics ago, and she remembers me by name and blog — and a phenomenal collection of sock yarns common and rare. (Yes, of course I bought some; pictures later.)

The Indian food is yummy. Nothing else of interest happens until the following (yesterday) afternoon, when I pour all of Taz's dose of water (he is eating pretty much everything he needs by mouth now, but drinking, not so much) on my parents' living-room rug instead of into the boy. We decide to leave after dinner so as to minimize my chances of screwing anything else up. We pack, and Marjorie starts dinner, or rather tries to — only to find that their oven isn't working. Obviously I am contagious. We bid everyone a fond farewell and catch dinner on the road.

We arrive safely and get ourselves, the cats and our stuff into the house. We haven't been home five minutes when I manage to take out the downstairs thermostat. I bumped into it somehow, and the thing basically disintegrated. We have yet another phone call to make tomorrow morning.

Now imagine getting a Christmas card containing a whole year's worth of this. Right, I wouldn't either.