Meet the Ornaments: part 2

Meet the Guardian Angel. I really do appreciate her sincere desire on my behalf. But every night I pray that she is someone else's guardian angel. "Why?" you may ask, "She seems pleasant enough, floating through the boughs of your nylon Christmas tree." I'll tell you why. If guardian angels are going to watch over you, THEY NEED BIGGER EYES. I want the angel watching my back to see in very large, crisp detail, not tiny, blurry shapes and colors.

There is another minor detail that disturbs me about this guardian angel.  Notice the lovely, handwritten sign bearing her wish?  The angel had to write down this message because IT DOESN'T HAVE A MOUTH. I need a guardian angel that can vocalize some kind of warning if I'm in danger. Suppose this angel did detect some imminent danger through its tiny pinhole eyes. It must then furiously scribble a warning in delicate gold letters, telling me of the danger which surely has already killed me dead. Even if the angel did display the message in time, I'm not a very good reader, and it has tiny handwriting.

So, I hope you're having a wonderful Christmas season, and I would advise you to pray that this isn't your guardian angel either.

Meet the Ornaments

As soon as our forks clattered to a rest on our plates after Thanksgiving dinner, Laura officially declared it to be "Christmas Time!"  So we bought a fake tree, got out Laura's collection of ornaments, and started decorating.  In order for the tree to fit in our house, I had to give up my place at the dinner table and move around to the side.  But I must say it looks pretty good.

Hey, that's my seat!

Since these were Laura's ornaments, I had never seen any of them before. So, I am going to chronicle my first impressions of some select ornaments over the next few days.  Starting with this one…

Meet American Santa.  This was the first ornament I picked up and it was the first one on the tree.  After being placed on the tree, American Santa declared eminent domain over the rest of the tree, but was unable to enforce his borders once the other ornaments started immigrating to the tree as well.  Now, everyone knows that Santa Claus is an American citizen and a proud patriot, but I didn't know he was such a huge Captain America fan too.

I love the subtle propaganda that this ornament embodies.  So, Merry Christmas to all America, and to all America a good night!

A Thanksgiving Close Call

When Laura and I scheduled who we would spend the holidays with this year, we decided to spend Thanksgiving with the Barrons and Christmas with the Elmers (my parents) so we could get on the same holiday rotation as my sister and brother-in-law (LeighAnn and Ryan).  In preparation for our Thanksgiving break in Athens, GA with the Barrons, Laura informed me that they always dress up on Thanksgiving day.  This made me very excited.  I was a little disappointed with our Halloween costumes this year, and I saw this as a fantastic opportunity to redeem myself with some quality dressing up.  Plus, I knew there would be lots of pictures taken to document my costuming triumph.  Unfortunately, I was mistaken.  When Laura said "dress up," I was envisioning something like this...

or this...

Fortunately, Laura caught my mistake before I finished packing my bag. She simply meant dress nicely, not dress in costume.  That was what I like to say is a "close call." Whew...
x

"David's House"

I have a confession to make. I may have misled some people when I blogged about how helpless I am in finding food when Laura isn't at home. When you read "helpless" what I'm really saying is "lazy." The truth is I am a decent cook, despite the sexist discrimination that prevented me (or any male) from taking home-economics in high school. While I specialize in grilling red meat (since I'm a man), I love cooking breakfast food. That is why I have unofficially started a breakfast restaurant called "David's House."

Now before y'all come knocking on my door at 6 am for a cup of coffee and some hashbrowns, this restaurant is only open on days when Laura doesn't want to get out of bed. The executive chef of this restaurant (me) guarantees speedy preparation, ingredients that have been on the floor for 5 seconds or less, and making huge messes. I can guarantee a huge mess because I can't throw an egg shell behind my back into the in-sink-erator (aka garbage disposal) from across the room with much consistency.

If any of you are fortunate enough to dine at David's House in the future, here's a preview of the menu:

scrambled eggs

fried eggs

ugly omelettes

cereal

burnt toast

coffee

I can promise that after you eat at David's House you'll leave saying, "Well, at least I didn't pay for that."

Elmer food

Every so often Laura will be out of the house at lunch or dinner time, leaving her helpless husband to fend for himself for food. Now, unless she has left me directions on how to cook something or has already made my sandwich and cut it into neat triangles, I will either forget to eat or eat a whole box of granola bars (those things aren't going to eat themselves people!). At lunch time yesterday I found myself in this predicament: a hungry David, no Laura, no directions, no pre-cut sandwich. But this time I decided to actually fix myself a quesadilla for lunch.

Now, normally there are two ways to make a quesadilla. You can make a half-sized one using a single tortilla, folded over, with cheese in the middle (what I will from now on call "Barron-sized"), or you can make a full-sized one using two tortillas with cheese in the middle. Since I had remembered to eat lunch, I figured I would reward myself by eating a lot, and thus, full-sized. But a full-sized quesadilla didn't seem to be good enough. And that was when I had a stroke of genius. I folded over my full-sized quesadilla and put cheese between that fold too, resulting in a full-sized-halfsie quesadilla!!!

Not only did it weigh about 3 pounds, but it was so cheesy I didn't think I would be able to finish it. But I did because that's what being an Elmer is all about - Not only must you finish all the food on your plate, but you're expected to finish every morsel on the whole table. And we excel at this.

I guess you could say that "Elmering" some food would be demolishing 5,000 calories in a single sitting and living to tell the tale.

Priorities

The other day Laura and I were sitting at our picnic table with Anne Barron and her good friend Ellie Mahon having just finished a lovely dinner. When Anne and Ellie stood up, the table was suddenly unbalanced and, for a moment, seemed to be tipping over. As a side note, I have always felt that circumstances that call for immediate action reveal what is truly important to you. In that moment of six-flags-esque terror, Laura grabbed hold of a plate and bowl that were sitting on the table (net worth ~ $70) to prevent them from breaking during the fall. I, on the other hand, latched on to my beer for dear life. It should be noted that there were only about two sips left in the bottle. Fortunately, Anne and Ellie kept the table from tipping over, which also kept the two dishes I should have grabbed from breaking.

I can't say I'm proud of what I did, but if this happened again I wonder if I would do anything differently...

New Blog!

Everyone has been asking me to start a new blog sing the wedding one is over, so I did. But this time David is on board too, and since he is way more funny/witty/clever/deep/soul-inspiring, you'll soon see where the real typing talent in this two-some lies.

So get ready for David to make you laugh, cry, cheer, and shout for joy, while you become horribly dependent on this blog for your happiness.
Enjoy!