Sleeping with the fishes and a spelling lesson in the Big D.

22 Dec

This week I’ve been working in our Detroit office so I can spend time with my family leading up to the holiday. The office is in a large office park in a place called “Bingham Farm” which I think is actually a fancy name (ironically) for Southfield.

Everyone had to work from home for a week last month because the suite next to ours caught on fire. I never heard many details, so on this visit I was poking around being nosy. Turns out, the fire was caused by a massive fish tank.

Really? Something filled with water almost burns the building down? What are the odds?

Or – as I would like to think – maybe it was the fish themselves. When I was a kid, I had a goldfish that had a death wish and routinely flung himself out of his bowl. Maybe these fish were part of a larger sleeper cell and were willing to sacrifice themselves to wipe out some humans. Maybe the head goldfish promised them 72 virgin fish would be waiting for them in heaven.

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Is it drunk driving if they’re driving horses?

20 Dec

Alan and I drove home for the holidays on Saturday, and our original plan was to finish our 9 hour drive around dinner time. As it turns out, we arrived at 2pm. You do the math.

OK, OK. Since you’re probably half-drunk off eggnog, I’ll help you out: that means we hit the road at 5am. Was that part of the original plan? No, but – as often happens the night before a road trip – I was too keyed up to sleep.

So at 3:45 am, after tossing and turning for the greater part of four hours, I nudged Alan awake and said, “How would you feel about hitting the road, as long as I do the first round of driving? I am WIDE AWAKE.”

He was surprisingly easy going about it, so an hour later we were pulling out of DC, his SUV fully-loaded like Santa’s sleigh with gifts for my family.

We made our first stop about 2 hours in, at the “Gateway” rest stop in Breezewood. If you’ve never stopped at the Gateway at 7am, here’s what you’re missing: Mennonites.

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He sees you when you’re sleeping. Or outsources it to a very lazy elf.

15 Dec

"And this, Bobby, is why you should never sleep naked." Creepy indeed.

Since I don’t have kids, I’d never heard of “Elf on a Shelf” until I read my friend Amy’s Facebook status the other night, in which she stated, “I don’t know if we’re organized enough to do Elf on a Shelf this year.”

Apparently “Elf on a Shelf” is a kid’s book that comes with a stuffed elf. The premise is that every night in December he flies to the North Pole and reports your behavior that day to Santa. AWESOME.

So much more effective than hollow reminders that Santa can see you when you’re sleeping or awake. Any rightfully cynical child these days will say, “Doubtful. The dude only has two eyes.” This elf is infinitely more plausible. And the thing that lends credibility? He is in a different place every morning to demonstrate that he left over night.

Except – and here’s what I REALLY like about “Elf on a Shelf,” – it seems that most of Amy’s friends are struggling to remember to move the elf. So the kids are growing suspicious. Or it’s forcing the parents to lie. (Which, I’d like to remind them: Santa KNOWS.)

I was laughing out loud (LOL’ing, if you will) as I read her friends’ comments, which tended to either offer advice or admissions of guilt.

For those seeking advice, we have the following tips:

I set the alarm on my phone at night to remind us to do it. UGH!

I email myself every night to remember!

And the admissions of guilt:

Our elf tends to spend 2 days in the same location. 😦

I’m terrible at it too! but, I’m becoming a better liar/storyteller as to why he doesn’t move. 😉

And by far the BEST response, which makes me want to call a publisher and get this girl a book deal to write the sequel to “Elf on a Shelf.”

We have had Elf for 3 years…this year is the first year I have forgotten…and I’ve done it multiple times….so I played it off like he is “crazy” this year….somethings wrong with him. I.E he ended up in the fridge, upside down in a stocking, half in half out of the front door, stuck on a fan blade while it is spinning. 🙂

I love that not only are these kids being watched by an elf, but they are being watched by an elf that is so mentally unstable he’s half suicidal. And you know what? Even if you’re good, he’s probably going to make up some shit to tell Santa, UNLESS you actively bribe him. Or, you might need to learn CPR because next trip back might land him in the liquor cabinet, face down in a puddle of whisky. With this guy, you just never know.

I love it. I’m just mad I didn’t come up with the concept. It’s like Flat Stanley, but with the power of mind control.

And after all, isn’t that what Christmas is really about? One month where adults are allowed to lie and kids are actually responsive to fear-based behavior management. T’is the season!

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Tip: Giving Mother Earth the Christmas gift that keeps on giving… no wrap!

13 Dec

I just finished wrapping a few presents and thought this would be a good time to advocate NOT using gift wrap.

To help make my case, a random statistic I found on some random website: If every American family wrapped just one gift a year in fabric, the paper saved could paper 15,000 football fields!

Why we would WANT to paper football fields (or how) is beyond me. And if you try to segue into asking me not to use toilet paper, you will definitely have lost a convert.

But still… I think the message is: let’s try to cut back on gift wrap because it’s a horrible splash in the pan that ends up in a landfill.

You don’t have to sell me – I actually like the way my gifts look (old fashioned) when I wrap them with grocery store paper bags and recycled ribbon:

It makes me feel a little “Martha Stewart” (minus the inside trading charges) to get crafty with my gifts like this. (Side note: a shout out to Trader Joe’s for printing their bags in way that makes them festive without turning them inside out – as evidenced by that far-right gift in the photo above.)

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My dinner is less interesting than your panties. Probably.

13 Dec

One of the interesting acoustic features of my condo is that the wall separating my kitchen from my neighbor’s kitchen is strictly a privacy shield. It does nothing to block the noise.

Fortunately, of all the rooms in my place, that’s the one in which I’m most comfortable with eavesdropping (or being overheard). A few months ago I posted on Facebook something along the lines of, “It sounds like my neighbors have a pet goat.” This weekend I got to the bottom of that mystery. It is my neighbor, singing.

Apparently the guy is tone deaf. Saturday night we was in the kitchen loading the dryer and I heard him trying to belt out some hiphop. And it sounded like a goat bleating. Bless his heart.

He interrupted the song to tell someone that it was a good thing he was doing laundry because he was out of clean underwear. He went on to inform us that he had considered turning his underwear inside-out to get a few more days out of them, but had ultimately decided that would just make his pants dirty.

Whew.

I thought about pulling up a chair and just sitting there to see what else I could learn, since the guy was cracking me up, but it was about that time my fire turned all kinds of ape-shit crazy in the living room, forcing me to run out and get my fire extinguisher.

Fast forward to Sunday night. I’m in the kitchen alone, frying up bacon, onion and mushrooms in a skillet. And I find myself saying – to absolutely no one other than myself – “Oh hells yeah. This is some awesomeness right here. A skillet of bacon, onions and mushrooms for dinner? Who’s jealous? Who’s jealous?”

Except, I wasn’t exactly SAYING it. I was kind of shrieking it because I was excited. And that’s when I heard the distinct sound of my neighbor’s dryer starting. Which means he was probably over there pointing at the wall so his girlfriend could hear me going bananas for a non-nutritional dinner.

At least he’s clear: I’m not a goat. Hells no.

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