When Doves Cry

You may think you've had family game night, but you haven't had family game night unless you've squared off against wife and daughter in Disney Princess Spinning Wishes Game.

I was at a decided disadvantage before we even laced 'em up. Obviously, I didn't have the right equipment to play this game. Hey, guttermind, I'm talking about cognitive equipment! The game's box subtley states the only requirement for this game is that one has reached the age of four. It doesn't say anything to warn people who have glitter allergies, people who have an aversion to pink and purple blends, people who do not have a degree in quantum mechanics, or people who have mastered logic.

So the other night YHWH, Killer and I plopped down on the living room floor to play this soon-to-be-classic from Milton Br...er..Hasbro. When you play with Killer there are certain guidelines to follow when selecting a venue for game play: the play site must have an unobstructed path to the restroom to accomodate the frequent diversionary trips when it isn't her turn; the play site must be removed from the line of site of Barbies, Polly Pockets, etc. so as not to tempt her during the times when it isn't her turn (this also prevents cross-species interaction between brands; before long Polly Pocket would be introducing herself to Snow White and they would go to lunch to get to know each other better and then I would be called on to orchestrate the remaining three princesses and provide dialogue for their resentful vitriole at having been dumped for that little blonde b**** so that Polly and Snow could return and they would all make up and be BFF); finally, the play site must also be on the floor (this is so she can drape herself off the furniture or stand up and do a couple of karate moves when it isn't her turn.

The game requires extensive assembly, including a large sheet of small stickers which have to be applied to a number of small pieces. YHWH began reading the instructions while I placed the stickers on the die, markers and wish-spinner. The directions made no sense when read aloud. I assumed this was because I was distracted by the impossibility of determining where each sticker went or maybe the translation from Chinese was outsourced to India, but when I finally hit the wall and snatched the rule book from YHWH's hands, I realized the reason is that it was all written in princess lingo. Normally, I process rules with my left brain, but once I switched over it began to sink in. I just had no precognition of the Ray of Enchanting Light. Now I do.

One of the first mistakes I made was assuming that Disney Princess Spinning Wishes Game was in fact the same as Pretty Pretty Princess Game or any of the myriad other girl games I have played in which competition has been very carefully excised from the experience. Most girl games lead you on some labryinthine chase through a disorienting emotional...oh wait, that's real life. Therefore, I did not formulate a strategy to trounce my opponents. And let me just stop right here to announce I never 'let' anyone win. No quarter asked and none given. No victory is too cheap. Likewise, I also did not try and size up my opponents' strategies, although I knew YHWH would do what she could to enable Killer and I to somehow share a victory and Killer would cheat like a dog to win.

Here's how the game works. Four princes have hidden a gift for each of their princesses in one of four castle towers. Each princess leaves her Rapunzel-like encampment in a tower and parades Gideon-like around the castle wall until she accomplishes her task of getting her three wishes granted. This is done by spinning the wheel with a mesmerizing spiral lightning sticker until a wish lands within your Ray of Enchanting Light which emanates from below the wheel in the color corresponding to your princess' dress. The wishes are on little stands and they rise like pillars out cavities in the wheel. This is important because when you get down to the last wish or two, you have to understand centrifugal force (which I don't) in order to retrieve it because it always lands opposite you when the wheel stops. This fact adds about thirty minutes to the game. Once a princess has her wishes, she enters the castle and walks around inside it looking at all the presents until she finds the one intended for her by her prince.

I'm constantly criticized for thinking too much, and this was no exception. I still haven't come to grips with the unwieldy name. It seems like it should be Disney's Princesses' Spinning Wishes Game, but since the majority of the target market lisps from lack of front teeth, I guess I see why they sacrificed proper grammar for a less humiliating pronunciation. A lot of my overthinking, though, had to do with the lack of symmetry. That always bothers me. Take a gander at the game board:


You can see the Ray of Enchanting Light coming out from under the wheel, but only the blue light from Cinderella's ray bathes her castle in a glow. Also, the two gray miss-a-turn spaces are on the same half of the board and there are only three wish spaces on that side as opposed to five on the other, so Belle in her yellow castle has a statistically greater chance of going home empty-handed - probably because she was originally trailer trash unlike the high-born others. All the castle gates have spires, but only one set of towers does.

And then there are the philosophical questions. Why do your wishes have to be material objects? Why not an end to starvation, global domination, or a declining teen birthrate? Why are all four couples in one castle? Why is Snow White's gift from her prince an apple when the others get glass slippers, a gold crown and a rose? Hasn't Snow had enough of apples already? And if I'm anyone but Sleeping Beauty, I'm making off with crown. Screw the rose.

The good thing about thinking too much is that you can always find a way to rationalize. I finally just told myself it's only a game. It's not whether you win or lose, blah, blah, blah. After I relaxed, I then proceeded on two victorious marched through the magical kingdom. The first was a dramatic thriller in which Sleeping Beauty and I snatched victory on the final roll before Killer opened her prince's gift. Then Cinderella and I romped on the next game.

So here I sit undefeated in Disney Princess Spinning Wishes Game. I wish I could say the same for my college bowl pool. Makes me long for a glittery die roll.

You Say You Want A Revolution?

By popular demand, here is the communist incense... just follow the link - I'm too lazy to scan the box.

Disclaimer: Dear Big Brother, I am not nor have I ever been a member of the Communist Party (I just like the Soviet Realist art).

So Fair To Be Seen

Merry Christmas every one!

I thought I'd post before my usual post-Xmas funk sets in. I just pulled the pumpkin bread and pumpkin pie out of the oven and put the ham in which gives me two hours. We're also having yam puff, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, and hot rolls.

We've had a pretty good Christmas so far. Yesterday Killer was so wound up I took her out for a long walk to try and wear her down. It didn't help much, but we did get to see the Grandmother of Europe, resplendent in crimson holiday vest. Last night we all watched Holiday Inn and It's A Wonderful Life and then YHWH and I were up making preps until about 1:30am. There is some wack TV on at 1:30 Xmas Eve. There were all manner of cheesy choirs and even a really lame unmelodic Native American Christmas chant. Finally I switched over to QVC for awhile. I can't help it, I love watching QVC. I have never purchased anything, but I love the crazy personalities and the washed up celebs trying to hawk their wares to the shut-in set. Last night there was a middle aged guy and his perfect whitebread family sitting on the floor in front of a fake fireplace and Christmas tree on a set. He had a box of ornaments hidden behind his back and he pulled them out one at a time and gave the complete history of each little dowdy dangly. "And this was just after we moved to Huntsville from Montgomery," he intoned as he swung a cotton ball bedecked football player on a gold cord in front of his daughter. He trotted out First Christmases, great grandmas, ones he just liked, it went on for over an hour commercial free. It was a sentimental train-wreck and I couldn't turn away amidst the carnage.

We finally crashed about 1:30, but Super Giant Killer woke me up about 6:15 and said she just couldn't try and sleep anymore. C. F. Kats was ill, but she rallied long enough to unwrap. They cut a wide swath as depicted below. Here is the peaceful scene moments before (note it is still quite dark outside):


Click for larger to see the large coral-ish snake Killer got from Santa. Here's some of the carnage:



It's actually not as bad as it looks. Our girls are scarcely materialistic and didn't ask for anything big. So they got lots of books and art supplies and clothing staples. Killer got a Marie Antoinette doll from the fat man as well (click for larger):



I got some nice Communist incense and a box of exotic beef - er, well, jerky anyway. It's really stuff like emu and gator. I also got a nice cigar and some cognac. No sign of a smoking jacket, tho.

Off to finish lunch preps...

Merry Christmas!

Is Christmas Safe For Animals?

Well here's the layout (click for larger). Those are penguins, reindeer and hallelujah snowmen in the red and green shortbread; they look pretty tasty up close, just don't photgraph well. I couldn't fit the 8 loaves of pumpkin bread and 7 loaves of chai spice bread (Killer snagged one of those before I could stop her) in the picture. When she walked in and saw all the stacks she said, "Dad! It's a holiday wonderland of cookies!" I ran some stocking stuffer errands this morning so I didn't get to the CCD cookies or the pain d'epice. There's always tomorrow. I was pretty proud I only made two mistakes - that I know of. In one I put in 2 tsp of baking powder instead of soda, but I was able to spoon it out before it was mixed in and I was baking some pumpkin bread in a coffee can like mom used to and I inadvertently used a 5# can instead of a 2# can and when the top browned I pulled it out and it was a big soup inside. No prob, just poured it into a loaf pan and it came out alright, just ugly.

Since the breads took an hour each to bake, I had time to watch Santa Claus Conquers the Maritians with Killer while I waited. It's a classic, y'know. How can you argue with Pia Zadora's debut?

Merry Xmas!

The Boys in the NYPD Choir Were Singing 'Galway Bay'

I can't believe it's raining today and may be tomorrow. The magic of Christmas is alive! All December I've been singing, "I'm dreaming of precipitation this Christmas..." Ok, it's not Christmas, but I'll take two days of rain. And there's s'posed to be more this weekend.

That part actually irks me. My dad annoyingly wants us to drive to Tulsa on Sat nite for our family Christmas dinner. Since I'm currently in disconnect mode with them, I'm not het up about driving out there in a wintry mix for a 7:00 dinner and driving back at 9:00 at the earliest, arriving home at 11:00ish. Not the least, it's irritating to give up an entire day of Xmas prep.

I accomplished much on day one of holiday baking:
4 doz shortbread (1 red, 1 green)
2 doz minty middles
4 doz pfefferneuse
4 doz spritz
1 tray of peppermint bark
2 doz Russian teacakes
3 doz chocolate crinkles
8 maids a-milking

Tomorrow is chai-spice bread, pain d'epice, and pumpkin bread in a coffee can. Then packaging, then delivering, then I need to bake a few dozen for our annual Christmas cookie decorating (CCD) partay. And mebbe some Chex Mix.

We watched Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol tonite. It was a pretty accurate retelling - unfortunately. I'm simply baffled at why they had Mr. Magoo playing Scrooge straight. I mean the possibilities are endless (as they always are with Mr. Magoo). I can picture a scene where one of the spirits tells him to look over there and he can't see anything or he thinks the ghost of Christmas future is a wild bear and he beats him with his umbrella. Oh, well.

All the Lights Are Coming On Now

I spent the day with my mom's sister. She had a box of photos she salvaged from the house of my aunt who died a few months ago and we went through them together - I digitized them and she helped me identify who everyone was. This aunt was like Mary Poppins when my sister and I were little. She was a single mom and moved to our town because my mom and she were close. Even though she had a son my age, she kind of adopted us and took us on all kinds of adventures. Since we were all broke, she would come up with all this wild - but free - stuff for us to do.

One day we had a picnic in the grass as close as you could get to the airport runway. I was only about six so I'm not sure how close we actually were, the ear-splitting, chest-crushing sonic extravaganza was mind-blowing. The sandwiches weren't bad, either. She worked in the gorgeous NBT Building in Tulsa and one night she convinced the janitor into letting us go out onto some platform as high as you could go without safety gear. Pretty thrilling to a kid. Another time we were sitting around and she said, "I'm sick of this room. Let's redo the floor!" So we drove all over time and dumpster-dived behind carpet stores looking for sample squares and other usuable scraps of carpet. It didn't matter what color or pile it was, we tossed them in the backseat of her VW bug with us and away we went. When we got back to her house we put them all together into a crazy quilt carpet for the new look. We went storm-chasing, all kinds of stuff.

Today was great, too. She showed up at my door with a box of photos and a picnic lunch and we laughed and cried as we talked about my mom and all the stuff we used to. The most priceless treasure I pulled from the box was the only known set of pics of my mom holding Killer. She died a couple weeks after Killer was born and she was only strong enough to hold her that one time. I didn't know my grandma had snapped pics, so these were news to me.

Got new glasses, too. I look (and the girls say I act) like this guy now.

I finished the Aran winter set, but you'll have to ask the Grandmother of Europe if you want to see them. I gave them to her for Secret Santa and I forgot to take pics first. I was making them for her all along and then when she dissed me and quit carpooling with me I decided I wasn't going to give them to her after all. Then I drew her name for Secret Santa so I got to give them to her anyway. I Also finished a set of legwarmers for my yoga instructor sister-in-law. I stitched an 'om' on one and the sanskrit word 'namaste' on the other. Here they are (click for better view):













I made them from a vintage Jane Fonda-era aerobics pattern (except for the emblems - did those myself), and they are pretty bunchy. This gal I made them for is pretty toned, so I hope these don't just drop right to her ankles. I'm pretty proud of the design, though.

There's Been A Hoot-Owl Howlin' By My Window Now

cab·in fe·ver ('ka-ben 'fE-v&r), n, a condition in parenting which causes an increase in the child's energy level and a proportional decrease in the parent's patience. In extreme cases, the parent is given to horrifying thoughts, though rarely acting upon. These may include, but are not limited to: euphoria brought on by hopes that one will have to go to work (this requires professional treatment); search-engine lookups on the amount of time you can lock your child out in 12-degree cold without noticeable frostbite; cursing Laura Ingalls Wilder for not indexing her books while you look for guidance on what the hell to do with little girls who have cabin fever; taunting little girls as you trample them in game after game of Life, checkers, Mille Bornes, Payday, Trouble, and Parcheesi.

I'm still about 10 years old when it comes to snow days. I love any unscheduled day off work (well, scheduled, too) and all the attendant things like hot chocolate, fires, naps, bundling up and, these days, knitting. Did I mention not being at work? But then there's Killer to contend with. She's actually above-average in categories like attention span and ease of entertainment, but even on warm spring days in May (usually very early on a Saturday morning) she wants you to do whatever it is with her. Can you fathom the audacity?

When I woke up Thursday morning I just knew it was going to be a long one. I tried to mentally sketch out what to expect so I could be prepared. I thought I had a handle on it. I realized I'd have to entertain her all day. I realized she would start begging to go outside the second she got up; that she would underdress; that she had no winter gear like boots; that it would take 20 minutes to get her ready to go out; that she would actually be out about 5 minutes; that our wood floor would soon become a warped puddle of melted snow; and that no matter how many packages of Swiss Miss I opened, she would eat the marshmallows, and like Goldilocks, deem the chocolate too hot and skip off to do something else.

Early that morning, I wouldn't let her go out in the sleet. She had to wait until the snow started. So, we had some pumpkin bread and looked at catalogs while I drank my coffee and she ate the marshmallows out of her Swiss Miss. Then we started a game of Mille Bornes and she was being really good and hadn't even asked to go out. Then the death knell toned. The neighbor girl, Jasmine, rang the doorbell promptly at 9:00. I now had two of them to deal with.

A note about the neighbor girl. She and her sister are close in age to each of ours and they have a working single mom and a deadbeat dad. So the older is essentially raising the younger. The thing is Jasmine and Killer fight like they were sisters. Constantly. No matter how many times we split them up, they say they like each other and they are best friends, but from the moment they look at each other they begin an unceasing tirade of snipes and territorial scrapes. Jasmine has been coming over increasingly anyway (poor thing is looking for a family, I think) and with her mom at work, I realized she was going to be here all day. Hell had frozen over and I was in it.

I'll spare you the details, but it was 12 hours of misery. For one thing, Jasmine's mom 'went over to a friend's house' until 10:00pm and we couldn't send her back home because the 13-year-old caretaker had walked over to her boyfriend's house to watch a movie. Finally, it all collapsed around 9:00pm when Killer crossed the threshhold and went into one of her blind rages. She does this when she gets too tired and stressed and she makes these primal guttural howls and her face gets blood red and she wanders the halls pushing people out of her way. She literally 'isn't herself' and all we can do is put her in her room and close her door. It's over in about 10 minutes. I had to make Jasmine go in the other room and put Killer to bed.

Friday I was disgustingly glad to be going to work, but we were closed again. So when the doorbell rang again that morning. I told YHWH, "Let's go to the mall." So we let Jamsine stay an hour and left Killer with C.F. Kats and we walked to the mall. We had a great time together and we actually got a majority of our shopping done. At first there was no one there, but by time we left it was positively packed. We did get one call from Killer while we were out. She could barely talk because she was sobbing deeply that the snow was melting and it made her terribly sad and Sissy was making fun of her for it. I told her to watch Frosty the Snowman and tell me the moral when I got home. I was having too much fun being FREE!!

Didn't We Almost Have It All?

Apparently I clicked "save as draft" instead of "publish" last week, so here's my Thanksgiving tale.

I have dubbed this year's Thanksgiving as Thanksgiving Inchoate. I knew that if I squawked enough before my inevitable and involuntary attendance at the Rebs' Thanksgiving dinner, it wouldn't be nearly as bad as I had imagined it to be. I had imagined being set upon by Harpies, picked at for being a male knitter, or forced into a small corner with some other exile, compelled to discuss the weather and the Sooners' chances. So I was actually chipper that morning when I awoke to find that YHWH was fully ill with a cold. Surely she would be unable to endure a full afternoon of the Extended Family Plan.

That morning I took a pre-emptive three-mile walk through the neighborhood at a brisk pace so that I would be in a good mood. I hate to admit that, because a) I loathe exercise; 2) I loathe sunshine; and d) I'm really uncomfortable being in a good mood. But I thought it might help because I was resigned to go to YHWH's family gathering and I didn't want her to feel like she had to choose me or them. Even so, just before leaving the house I reached into the top cabinet and sipped a shot of relaxing cognac.

There were about thirty people there, but I was only related by blood to one of them. I just sat on a couch and watched the football game and simply nodded and waved to everyone when they came in. I didn't even have to converse about the Dolphins' defense or the Sooners' chances. No one asked how work was going or what grade Killer is in now. I just sat there with a nice relaxing grin on my face.

When dinner came, it was a free-for-all seating arrangement spanning four rooms and I was somewhat taken aback by the number of people who made no effort to sit anywhere near their nuclear families. I immediately regretted not having eaten a hearty breakfast. Here it was 1:00 and I had only consumed a cup of coffee and a shot of 'yac and there was very nearly nothing I wanted to eat on the harvest smorgasbord before me. There were steamed whole green beans, not green bean casserole with fried onions on top; the dressing was not stuffing and looked like a large, full bedpan from a hospital influenza ward; there were thick cut roasted sweet potatoes rather than candied yams with melted marshmallows on top; the mashed potatoes were garlic-saged with the peels swirled in as opposed to the stiff white potatoes which can hold a reservoir for white gravy (of which there was none); and the Pillsbury crescent rolls simply paled in comparison to my sister's butterhorns. As I'd hoped, YHWH only held out through lunch and within a half-hour we were excusing ourselves to go over to her aunt's for dessert and then home to bed.

It all had the ethos of attending one of those dinners you get at a banquet or some other workplace function held at a hotel. No one wanted to be there. There was no enmity, no strife, but no affection or love or filial piety or desire to relate beyond the agreement to meet annually on the third Thursday in November. Definitely not Thanksgiving.