The 12 Days of Blogmas Contest, Day 5

It's a contest! The first person to correctly identify the following well-known Christmas carol wins either a Starbucks or iTunes gift card. Each word of the well-known song is represented by an image found on a Google search.

Leave a comment to enter.

The 12 Days of Blogmas Contest, Day 4

Today we drove for about six hours, winched ourselves out of the van, hauled our crap inside, had a quick drink, and then fed cocktails and take-out Chinese food to some of my brothers and sisters, and opened Christmas presents, and laughed.

And then of course, I had to show them how I can find them a picture of Mormon Temple Garments by using voice-activated Google search on my new iPhone.^TM

By the way, did you notice something about my use of the phrase my new iPhone^TM ? That's right. I have copyrighted it. Not only that, I plan to devote my next Blog365 to blogging about my new iPhone^TM every day. And no, I'm not getting paid to blog about my new iPhone^TM every day. I'm doing it because I'm Apple's bitch.

Anyway. I do have other things to tell you about. Like new bathrooms. That's right! Stick around for the new bathrooms. The new nautical-style bathrooms! They're almost as nice as my new iPhone.^TM And tomorrow, I might even take pictures. With my new iPhone.^TM

I know. I'm acting like an iHole.

And now I leave you with the latest installment in my Uncredited Google Images Win a Starbucks or iPhone Gift Card Christmas Carol Contest. Here's the deal for those who are new: the images below represent one word of the first line of a Christmas carol. If you guess the carol, you will win a prize of your choice of a $15 Starbucks or iPhones gift card. Here goes:

The 12 Days of Blogmas Contest, Day 3

We've just arrived at a hotel in Syracuse, New York, after 12 hours of driving, but for me to whip out the laptop and get ready to compose today's Google Images First Line of a Christmas Carol Win an iTunes or Starbucks Gift card blog post took less time than it took to type that.

So without further ado

1. look at the following images
2. figure out which carol's first line they illustrate
3. leave a comment in the box

and if you're the first one to get it right, you win a prize.

And this time I picked something a little more obscure. Because I'm a Christmas carol hard-ass.

The 12 Days of Blogmas, The Contest: Day 2

I'm celebrating the 12 days of Blogmas this year with twelve days of Google images. Every day I'm going to illustrate the first line of one of my favorite carols.

And it's a contest! Every day I'll award a $15 iTunes or Starbucks gift card to the first person who correctly identifies the carol.

And why? Because I'm an attention whore. And I love Christmas carols. And I take part in Blog365, so I blog every day. Whether I have anything to say or not. That's why.

So here we go. The second carol of the 12 Days of Christmas. First one to leave a comment identifying the carol wins. Ready?

It's Boxing Day

But you might not know what that is. Because it's possible that you're not as Anglophilic as your blogging pal Poppy.

In fact, it's probable, because from time to time, we go off the deep end around here.

I mean, Christmas crackers? Really?


Really

But a girl can only be so Anglophilic. So even if in England, Boxing Day is the day you give your servants their presents, on this side of the pond, Boxing Day is the day we give Pete Wentz a well-deserved smack-down over at Mamarazzi.

My Christmas present to myself is--you'll never guess--that's right! A meme!

I was tagged. By Jasmine. And this time, it was on Facebook. Since I don't know how many of you hang out with me on FaceBook, I thought I'd publish it over here, too.

And I don't care if I'm infringing my own copyright or whatever. It's Christmas eve, and there is only so far I'm willing to go with this whole Blog365 thing.

The Rules: Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 17 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 17 random people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you.

1. Believe it or not, the fact that I'm doing this meme on Christmas eve means almost nothing.


2. In case you think I'm a big loser for doing this, my husband just asked me "is it all right if I go watch my Fellowship of the Ring for a while?" And I said sure.


3. I'm secretly relieved I got so few Christmas cards this year.


4. I've always been kind of a perfectionist about Christmas.


5. Guess who gave up perfectionism for an early New Year's resolution?


6. Except I don't really do New Year's resolutions.


7. I lost a ton of weight in 2003-04, gained some back, lost more in 2007, gained some back, and am now a blimp.


8. Maybe I should have New Year's resolutions.


9. Seriously, when I type I can feel my arm fat move.


10. blackbird called me up yesterday, and I was really touched.


11. Instead of sending Christmas cards I would love to just call up my internet friends whom I heart so much. Because I go back with some of you people longer than I do with some of my flesh friends.


12. Because with some of you it has been 12 years. Can you believe it?


13. I can't wait to open the package that has my iPhone in it. I hate cell phones and I hate digital cameras, but you know how you feel when you switch from driving stick to driving automatic transmission and your hand flops around uselessly with no gears to shift? That's how it feels to have been without a cell phone for over a month.


14. I can't decide whether being more relaxed about Christmas is a symptom of something deeper. Like succumbing to utter slothfulness.


15. Like the window boxes in front of the house. There are two. They're nine feet long. One is cleared of dead plant material and decorated with icicle lights. The other is positively hair with dead plants, and when I checked, last year's strand of lights was broken, so it has no lights. Well, I finally got around to buying a second string of icicle lights. Will I get it together and get them onto the window box? Maybe. By the 27th. In the meantime, I have named the window boxes Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.


16. Also, I was going to bake three kinds of cookies today, and I only baked one. But maybe that's a good thing. See number 7.


17. My favorite things about Christmas are the music and the decorations, anyway.

"Tick tock tick tock tick tock"

(See? I really did go to the Madonna concert.)

The tree is up and decorated. And the star is up. All the lights are working, too, which hasn't been the case for the last couple of years.

I actually mailed some cards.

I bought presents for my mother and mother-in-law. I bought presents for my kids, and they are wrapped and under the tree. There are other presents there, too. Maybe not a ton of them, but some.

(One of them is an iPhone for me from my husband. I know this because I already got the email from AT&T welcoming me.)

In non-Christmas news, my son has made it to the two birthday parties he got invited to. And brought gifts. OK, gift cards. Whatever.

I have to write a BlogHer Beautyhacks post tomorrow, and then I hope to get out to do a little last minute shopping. Because I have nothing for my husband, and Brooks Brothers is having a massive sale.

Christmas? No problem. YES WE CAN.

We've reached the time of year when nobody is reading blogs, but that's OK because I've got things to do.

And you will be so proud of me because I did a bunch of them!

For example, remember how I felt bad that I didn't make plans for a sixth grade advisory party for my daughter's class? Well, Friday was a snow day, so it didn't matter. Because there was no school! So the teachers don't even know that I had no party planned, no cupcakes ordered, no presents bought for them. And now my kids can show up at school on January 5th with presents for the teachers and we'll look like nice, normal, generous organized people!

Sometimes even the shittiest weather is your friend.

Oh, and Friday was my husband's birthday, except he was out of town in Delaware doing something legal-ly. And there was all this snow all over our steps and front walk and driveway, and I was freaking out about it, because I am not about to shovel the driveway myself, and I can't figure out how to use the snow-blower, and my kids? Are useless. Even my son. Especially my son. Because his boots are two sizes too small for him. But who can go out and buy boots when there's a foot of snow on the ground? Or make her son shovel snow wearing his Merrells?

OK, pan in on Poppy sitting at the dining room table doing a last minute Mamarazzi entry. She looks up and behold! Those annoying neighbors who do everything right have a snowplowing service plowing their driveway.

Well, for me to put on my son's snow boots (that are too small for him but fit me just fine) and run over and snag them to do my driveway was the work of an instant.

And oh my God, they did such a fabulous job and only charged me $60 for the driveway and the front and back steps. So I paid them the $60 and gave each of the guys an extra $20 and most important of all, got their business card. For future reference. We've never managed to find anyone reliable to do our driveway. I'm thrilled.

And I'm not alone. My husband, to whom I gave a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black and an iPod Classic 120G for his birthday? Thinks the snow plowing service is the best birthday present of his life.

OK, so all my weather-related stress was over. So then I sat at my laptop and ordered a buttload of Christmas presents. Nintendo DS, Wii games, Bratz dolls, you name it.

And my cards showed up from Snapfish, so I started doing them, too. And I've written about 30 of them. So there.

So OK. Still no Christmas tree. But lots of progress.

You're relieved, right?

e. e. cummings' christmas list

Do you guys realize that Christmas is in 10 days? And that I have bought not even one single present? Except for an alt.fashion Secret Santa person? And even that was supposed to be mailed last week, but is sitting on the radiator in the dining room?

I could be hyperventilating over all the shit I have to do. So I'm listing it using lower case letters, as that way my list seems cute and non-threatening and not nearly so overwhelming.

Ready? What Poppy Has To Do In The Next Ten Days:

1. buy shit
   
2. wrap it
   
3. send out the fugly Snapfish cards I ordered on December 12th. when they get here. which hasn't happened yet.
   
4. get all the crap out of the house, because what's the use of arranging cute decorating tchotkes around if there's clutter all over the place?
   
5. decide if I'm actually going to give presents to my family members--or should I use the tanking economy as an excuse to blow it off?
   
6. if the answer is "yes," do something about that. like I don't already have enough to do, sheesh
   
7. haul the tree up from the basement
   
8. decorate it
   
9. find the stockings. or are they in new hampshire? shit!
   
10. buy more lights for the yard. Four measly strands, two way over on the south side of the house, one strand of icicle lights along one of the two windowboxes, and one pathetic strand wrapped about halfway up a tree by the front door? Isn't cutting it.
    
11. do something about That Stud Muffin I Married's birthday, which is the 19th.
12. really, really, REALLY get on the treadmill, because the Grey's Anatomy-on-DVD-watching/wine drinking habit I've developed has turned me into a
13. lard
14. ass
15. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    

FedEx is my new boyfriend.

Why?

Because he just showed up with this:

A red iPod Nano. Which is my daughter's Christmas present. Let me remind you, in case you haven't been keeping score: Christmas is tomorrow.

Now, ordinarily, I don't panic when a Christmas present shows up late. My daughter's birthday is in January, so anything that shows up late can transmagicallymogrify into a birthday present.
Same present, different wrapping paper. Bingo!

I believe the Catholics call this "transubstantiation."

So, anyway, as I was saying before I wandered into a theological digression, ordinarily I wouldn't mind if changing the iPod into a birthday present. Except for one thing. In a fit of mushiness, I had opted to have the iPod engraved with a Merry Christmas message. And this would look extremely lame on a birthday gift that got handed over in January.

So when the truck pulled up to deliver the iPod, I wanted to kiss the driver. But I restrained myself.

I did treat him to the sight of all 175 pounds of me magnificently arrayed in mis-matched pink pajamas, though. For which I'm sure he is very grateful.

On the first day of Christmas break, my true love gave to me

a mug of Splenda-sweetened milky tea.

Ah ... a morning where I don't have to get up. Or get my children up.

But guess what? I figured out that my children aren't freaks of nature. They're crazy because I'm crazy. It always drives me nuts that they oversleep on school days, but wake up at the crack of dawn on the weekend.

Guess who woke up at 6:00 this morning?

OK ... yesterday. And what I did and didn't do:


1. Order Amazon gift cards for all my kids' teachers.
2. Order Amazon gift cards for my relatives.
3. Order an Ikea gift card for my sister-in-law.
4. Order Christmas flowers for my mother and sister.
5. Order stocking stuffers for my kids.
6. Order a surprise for a friend who reads this blog, so shhhhhhh!
7. Go out and buy new bathrobes for everyone. One of them will be my husband's birthday present. Which was Wednesday.
8. Go out and buy my husband a GPS system for his birthday. Again, two days ago.
9. Make sure we have all the ingredients for Friday pizza night.
10. Send out some Christmas cards.
11. Mail a package to my brother-in-law.
12. Make my grocery list, and as I'm out and about, pick up items from it.
13. Do something about my dining room, which looks drab and colorless now that I've removed all the shit that doesn't belong there.
14. BUY BATTERIES because God knows the window candles won't last the season without reinforcements.
15. Write thank-you notes to people who have given me stuff or been amazingly kind.

This is pretty good progress, considering. A few spanners fell into the works as the day progressed. My shopping got a bit cramped when I received a phone call informing me that my credit card had been declined. That was a bit of a freak out, and progress was derailed until I discovered the reason. It wasn't the usual reason, because I wasn't using my card. When it's my card, I have to think very hard indeed--until my brains rattle around in my head--to remember if perhaps, but some amazing oversight, I had forgotten to pay the bill! For a couple of months. Again.

But this was a card my husband is in charge of, and he not only pays his bills on time, he likes to leave wide, generous, plush borders of available credit on his cards. Kind of like the matting in a print framed in the eighties.

Therefore, I suspected internet fraud of something just as bad.

Turns out the bitch forget to get the bank's safety code. So that was OK.

Still, bathrobes and GPS systems were not bought, because who needs the humiliation of being told her credit was declined? Not I.

But! I sent out 50 Christmas cards yesterday. And will send some more out today. And when That Stud Muffin I Married returns witih the concert tickets he left in Chicago* I'll be able to hit the mall and deal with the whole bathrobe situation.

We'll pick up the birthday cake I ordered for today on our way to the concert. And finally have Wednesday night's birthday cake and Friday night's pizza night tonight.

* See? He's not perfect, either.