Christmas morning

It seemed like such a great idea at the time.

But only ended in tragedy.

Infamy

And this Christmas will go down in infamy as the year my children received frozen dead caterpillars for Christmas.

Yep, forgot to check the mail yesterday and of course the caterpillars for the Butterfly Garden came. Whoops.

Omen

I know many of you can't understand my fear of flying. In fact >> I << don't really understand it. I understand numbers and statistics, etc. but for some reason my fear is ever intensening even though reason tells me I am safer flying than eating cheetos.

Just to give you an idea...when someone says to me "you know, flying is actually safer than driving" it would be the equivalent of someone telling you that "walking on a tightrope between two skyscrapers is actually much safer than walking across the street on the ground". You think "YEAH RIGHT!" and even if it is safer, you don't want to go through the anxiety and the stress of actually having to walk on that tightrope. You want to keep your feet firmly planted on the ground, you're comfortable there, you are in control there. It's safe. No anxiety.

When my parents announced over a year ago that they wanted to take the entire family on a cruise, I was SO excited! Especially because we were living in Austin and Houston was a mere three hour DRIVE away. It was so perfect!

Well...here we are in Utah and the cruise is about three weeks away. I simply cannot bring myself to book my airline tickets. I was really close the other day, I had the tickets up on the screen. I was about to call and then my chest would tighten up so I could hardly breath, and my heart was beating so fast it hurt.

Some things that I go through that you might not when booking airfare...

* I stew about which flight I choose becaus I am choosing my destiny! What if I pick the wrong one and it is a horrible flight?
* What is the weather going to be like? Houston has lots of thunderstorms, I want no part of landing or taking off in a thunderstorm!
* I research the type of plane that each flight is...what is the plane's safety record? Etc. It's really awesome (not) how wikipedia articles about different types of planes list all of the accidents and incidents that type of plane has been in.
* What time of day is the flight? I don't want some pilot who was out drinking the night before flying me out at 6AM. Nor do I want an exhausted pilot who has flown 24 hours straight to fly my plane at 11:00PM.
* What if the pilot has a death wish?

I know these things seem silly to you. I really can't explain it. Certainly you are slightly crazy in your own little ways too. And your fears probably seem irrational to me. For instance, what stresses Blaine out about flying is making sure he checks in properly and finds the right gate. Are you freaking kidding me? What is scary about that? Finding a gate number???

We watched a 20/20 recently about Howie Mandel and his battle with being OCD. The guy washes his money. He was on a vacation with his kids and one of hids kids pants brushed against his hand (or something!) and he had to go back home to shower and change. So he goes through all of this angst and horror in his everyday life and then has no problem hopping on a personal jet and flying 300 days a year. I cannot understand that!

I cannot understand his personal fear, but I can relate to the dilemma.

Anyway. I finally sucked it up, again. I was going to book the ticket. I was driven because I had missed so many sales and the airfare price went up AGAIN and I know that soon I am going to have to fork out TONS of money for these tickets. So I log on and prepare for the battle to purcahse tickets, which certainly will take most of the day ... and first I check the news. Awesome.

Now I physically and emotionally won't be able to do it. At least not for a while.

Anyway, pray for me because man, I HATE THIS. I don't like being this way. I want to be excited about my cruise but I can't be until I am there because of this ridiculous obstacle. That's right, I know it is ridiculous thank you very much : )

Merry Christmas !

This can't be sanitary...

I used to have no good reason for why my behind was glued to the computer chair all day, at least now I can say, "because when I leave the computer chair Bentley takes off his diaper and pees on it.".

I'm an eternal optimist.

Proof

And this is so ironic given my last post, but my day went something like this...

9:30AM : Ho hum, I suppose if I am going to order any Christmas presents online I better order them today or else they wont get here in time.

9:30AM-10:30AM: * mulling over gift options *

10:31AM: Eureeka! I've got it! I'll order him a book of LSAT tests...hmmm...there are two different options..."10 Actual, Official, LSAT Preptests" and "The next 10 Actual, Official LSAT Preptests". Hmmmm... I don't think he has one of these books but just in case, I will order "the next ten".

10:32AM: Place Amazon order

11:30AM: Email from Blaine "here are a list of books I might like to help me study for the LSAT...blah blah blah... oh and a book of official LSAT tests, I already have one so be sure to check and not order the same one

11:32AM: * open the nightstand drawer to see The Next 10...."

11:33AM: Lots of stomping and mormonized cursing

11:40AM: Log back in to amazon, maybe I can cancel it! Nope, it is already being prepped to ship! How did Blaine's LSAT book become Amazons #1 priority this morning? I have no idea.

Grrrrrrrrrr.

GRRRRRRR.

The end.

Torn Soul, er...sole

I hate when Blaine ruins surprises. The funny thing is that he never tries to (like me). He just innocently says something like, "wow, it would be really awesome to get some new socks for Christmas this year". Then I throw my hands up in the air, roll my eyes very exaggeratedly and storm out of the room. I throw myself upon the bed and cry out, "Why! Why do you have to ruin everything! WHHHHHYYYYYY!" Then I grab the tube socks out of the drawer and thrust them into his arms and pout "here, here's your dang tube socks! I hope you like them". And then I don't talk to him for the remainder of the day and he is left with a puzzled look on his face and a bruised ego.

Yeah, Christmas time is stressful at this house. I'm not sure where my freakoutedness comes from. I, for one, am all about sneaky around and finding my Christmas presents early. It's a habit I developed early in my youth when my parents would sleep in until some unearthly hour on Christmas morning, like 6AM, and I simply couldn't stand it, so at 3AM I would go sort through my stocking and have my own little pre-Christmas show.

But whoa baby, if I get you a present you better not guess what it is. Or it is sooooo over.

Yesterday we were forced to walk through three feet of mooshy snow slush to get to church. It was awful. I was wearing dainty little flats and Blaine was wearing his decade old Sunday shoes which are cracked right down the sole. We may as well have just had our feet sitting in an ice bath all Sunday long. He said, he needed new church shoes. I demanded he carry me and all three children directly to the shoe store to buy boots, the ox was definitely in the myer. (meyer? Mier? My-errrrr). He wouldn't concede to that. I happened the mention that maybe someone would get him Church shoes for Christmas. I like to mess with his mind like that.

So today I sent him this email...

"So um.....I am writing this blog post about shoes and I was just wondering your opinion. In general do you prefer black shoes or brown? Do you find that regular shoes wear out as fast as dress shoes? As a shoe wearing person, do you prefer church shoes that can double as regular shoes or definite, shiny, blatantly obvious church shoes? Thanks, your information will definite help with my...blog post".

He for sure thinks he is getting shoes for Christmas, and all I have to say is....I hope you are all excited for this blog post coming down the pipes about shoes, cuz, whoa doggy, it's gonna be good.

17 Again

Dear Body:

We're 28 now. I've noticed you've started producing a lot of gray hair. I've also noticed you are still pretty gung ho about the zit thing. I demand you choose one or the other. Zits or Gray hair. Not both. Seriously.

Yours in eternal puberty,

Kristi

Matthew

So the good news about being a fence sitting granola is that I only have to be granola-ish when it is convenient for me. Never was that so evident as today when I was looking in my shopping cart and noticed the irony of having aluminum-free deodorant sitting next to my hair-dye, which I am pretty sure has far worse things in it than aluminum.

Speaking of aluminum free deodorant...isn't facebook awesome? One night at 1:45AM I was reading reviews for aluminum free deodorant, I posted something on facebook about my voyage. By morning an old friend from highschool had responded that he worked for a company that makes aluminum free deodorant and it happens to be in Lehi and could he drop me off a sample of it? (sample meaning two full size sticks that retail for like eleven dollars a piece). Now if that isn't amazing I don't know what is.

The unfortunate thing though is that when he came to drop off said deodorant (that same day!) I was gone and he left it in a planter box. Then a blizzard came through, and by the time I got to the planter box the deodorant was gone and the sack ripped to shreds. Kind of makes me nervous that there are bears roaming the neighborhood or something. But you can't say he didn't try... and luckily I had read some reviews and had found that Walgreens carries a highly rated aluminum free deodorant. And they have it for a normal deodorant price, not the outrageous price posted on the amazon link.

Anyway, I am interested to hear what little things you are doing to try to keep your family healthy and cancer free! I will try to do it too if it doesn't inconvenience me too much ; )

P.S. Matthew Mcconaughey doesn't wear any deodorant at all. Not even the crystal weird goopy stuff. Kind of gross.

Odd

Yesterday we had a family in our ward over for dinner. I had noticed earlier in the day that one of their daughters had my same birthday. Later that night at dinner we were talking about birthdays and get this...

Their daughter and I were born on December 9th
Their other daughter and Gwen were October 23rd
The wife and Blaine are both September 23rd

Someone please tell me the odds of that happening : ) I am going to take it as a sign that we are meant to be friends. Ironically that cancels the negative sign of my awesome cheesecake turning out to be nothing more than a hot pudding pile at dessert time.

Luckily there was one more good sign... it turns out that they know the Worthington's...and if you'll recall, we have really good luck with people who know the Worthingtons :)

The Butterfly Garden

This is one of the toys that we are looking at getting Gwen for Christmas. Since her only wish is for binoculars (?!?) we decided to run with the "discovering nature" theme. So I was reading reviews about this thing (you get the kit and then fill out a form for them to send you real live catepillars, etc.), and everyone loves it, and then I cam across this totally random snarky review...it made me laugh.

October 28, 2009 The Catepillars are not meant to be eaten!!
by Ryan G.

"I really cheated myself out of the best part of the butterfly garden by devouring the caterpillars mercilessly before they reached the cocoon stage."


What the?

Cheapskate

Janssen posted today about how much she loves me. It's a good feeling, and it's all because I told her about ebates. Surely you remember ebates, right? I guess I haven't shameless plugged them in months, maybe even a year. Anyway, tell them I sent you (unless you know Janssen and you like her better, in which case tell them she sent you). Anyway, the point is, I want more people to love me, so I am going to tell you about another website that saves me money!

One day a long time ago an instant message popped up from a random friend on gchat. "I just bought like a million diapers for cheap!" I inquired how she got such a fabulous deal. And she told me about fatwallet. And then my life changed.

Fatwallet works much in the same way that ebates does, though to be perfectly honest, I've never used their cashback links. It's probably worth checking them out to see if the offer a higher percentage cash back than ebatest for the store you are shopping for.

But what the really great thing is about fatwallet are the forums. If you go to the page, click on forums, then click on hotdeals. Then click on the categories that you are interested in. I am lazy and I look for deals with lots of green by the titles, that means they are awesome. Red means they are not so awesome.

The diapers? Way green. Bought like a hundred packages, still using the ones I bought, nearly a year later. It was an online deal from Walgreens, I think I wound up paying about $0.09 a diaper, shipped, to my door.

Other green deals?

Dress shirts from Lands End for $15 - shipped.

My new digital camera for $350, normally $500!

And today?

an 8.5oz package of Godiva chocolate covered cashews for $1.50 a package.

How do these random people find these deals? I don't know. They are totally random. Guess where I got the Godiva chocolate? Staples. That's right, the office supply store. Those suckers were normally $15 a pop (who would pay that, I have no idea, but they are certainly worth more than a buck fifty, even to me!).

So that is how I got a lovely Christmas gift for Blaine's boss, Gwen's preschool teacher and Blaine's Dad for a buck fifty a piece.

They even had these compiled spread sheets to make your black friday shopping easier. A whole document just on deals on giant TVs all organized by size and store and price and awesomeness. I can't imagine devoting that much time to the greater good. But I'm sure glad other people do!

Go and relish in the fatwalleters.

Not sure if they give referral bonuses, but if they do, tell them I sent you (kristi.bassett@gmail.com). Duh.

; )

Clean Slate

So, here it is December 1st. 48 days until the cruise. Judging from my last (and only) cruising experience, a cruise is nothing but a 24 hours a day, 7 days a week non-stop eat-fest. You may recall me announcing that I was going off of sugar for the month of November. You may not know this but...I failed, miserably. It's almost like because I set that goal I ate more sugar than usual. I am very disappointed in myself. Very. But, it's December 1st! I have a clean slate, and December is probably the hardest month to go without sugar, which makes it the most important month to go without sugar.

But what are the holidays if you can't sip hot chocolate, topped with a mountain of fluffy whipped cream, by a crackling fire with all your loved ones gathered near? And what is a holiday party withought eating chocolate covered pretzels and pies and candies and fudge and...well, you get the idea.

So I am in distress. I've got to do something! The way I see it, I go on a vacation sans children once every...I dunno, ten years or so. I've got to make it count. I've got to be on my A game.

So here are some ideas. And just pretend you are emotionally invested in my success or something.

1- No sugar at all. No artificial sweetners at all. Nothing. Zero. Zip for the entire month of December.

2- No sugar at all, except one serving of one type of dessert per holiday party (holiday party constitutes something that Blaine and I are at together with 10 or more people)

3-Screw it. All the sugar I want, all the time, you only live once!

4- Open to other suggestions.

And on a much happier note. Anyone ever been to Jamaica, Grand Cayman, or uh....is it Cozumel? I think. I am chalking away Grand Cayman for scuba diving, but if you've been to the other ports of call...what do you recommend doing?

I'm so excited!

$5

Because when it only costs $5 to ride a camel in a parking lot

why on Earth wouldn't you?