Friendsgiving

Ever notice how on sitcoms about a group of friends, they are always together for the holidays? Throughout the shows we always get to meet the characters’ family members but are we to believe these people just don’t make the effort to go home for the holidays, ever? In How I Met Your Mother it is more believable, as a few of the characters are from different parts of the country (and Canada) but what about in Friends?  We know their families just live in Queens and Long Island.  They always seem like they are having so much fun hanging out with their friends at the holidays.  I enjoy going home to see my family a lot at the holidays, but I decided I am jealous of those sitcoms and I want to have Thanksgiving with my friends.  That is why this year I decided to host our inaugural Friendsgiving.

The idea was pretty simple; we had friends over for a full Thanksgiving meal.  Ryan was excited to make his own turkey, and people brought mashed potatoes & gravy, green bean casserole, pumpkin pies, stuffing and deviled eggs.  There were nine of us total, which is a little bit tight for our little house – but I am pretty creative when it comes to these things.  I brought in our beer pong table and set it up with all of the patio chairs in the kitchen and moved our kitchen two-top to the living room behind the couch.  The kitchen could seat six and the other table two, so I figured I would just do what I do half the time anyway and eat standing up at the breakfast bar. Ryan did not think it was very classy to have people sit on the patio furniture, but what the hell do I care.  People sit on it when it’s outside, what’s the difference?    I didn’t end up having to stand though because the guys gathered in the room with football on.  All four of the guys crowded around our little two-top bar table so they could eat and watch. 

It is hard to put a measure on how much wine I drank because we were all sharing multiple bottles, but if I had to guess I would say 2.5 in total…thankfully there was plenty of food to soak it up J

Insomnia

Two isolated weeknights in the last week I have suffered from insomnia.  This happens to me occasionally, although usually not so close together.  I blame my recent scaredy-cat-ness.  There has been a bit of a crime wave in the mile radius of our house in the last few weeks (thankfully it has not leaked to our cozy little subdivision but it’s hauntingly close).  Last week I could blame it on the Halloween movies.  This week I don’t know what to say.  I go to bed within the same hour every night and get up at the same time every morning.  But last night…it was like my head and my house were plotting against me.  Every single noise that you could imagine was forming an awful orchestra in my head.  The ticking of the many clocks (my betrothed does not believe that these can bother me as much as they do) in the house, random rumblings in my stomach, the fridge…which I am sure is haunted and it’s random knocking noise, and last night new sounds creaking from the attic.  I fell asleep and woke up at least ten different times.  I turned on my faithful Friends DVD for background noise and fell asleep (ironically it was an episode where Chandler suffers insomnia....), only to wake up 15 minutes later because Ryan wasn’t in bed. He was just peeing. I have a freak problem here.  I eventually moved to the guest room and shut the door, away from the snoring, the ticking clocks, the creaking, the dripping in our bathroom, and a silent bliss came over me.  Too bad I waited until after 2AM to do that.  Thank goodness for caffeine, that’s all I have to say about that!

Christmas Fever

My last post was about Halloween.  It seems I have quickly moved on and it isn’t even actual Halloween yet…

I have always been very stern about the rule “no celebrating Christmas until Thanksgiving night”.  I don’t care about the department stores putting things up in September or anything like that.  But to contain myself and my love of holidays and Christmas, I usually try to wait until Thanksgiving night, after everyone is stuffed to the brim and little wine drunk, to pop in Elf for the first of many viewings that year. 

But this year something strange is happening… I have the Christmas bug way early.  My mom and I have been texting each other ideas for Christmas gifts for weeks. I can’t wait to find out what sibling I will get in our Sib Secret Santa drawing. I have already started collecting pieces of a costume for our Christmas party.  I have two Christmas-related Pinterest boards.  I am not out of control yet…but I am definitely spiraling in that direction.  As I am typing this, I am singing Nat King Cole Christmas Song in my head.  Yesterday I was a little under the weather and stayed home from work.  All I wanted to do was watch Home Alone. 

So what is up with this holiday spirit the day before All Hallow’s Eve?  I’ve decided my sentimental scale is off the charts this year.  Frightening for anyone who knows me at my average my sentimental scale is already pretty high.  But this year is different.  We are decorating our first home and first real tree.  It’s the last Christmas before I’m a married woman.  One of my best friends is celebrating her first Christmas as a married woman.  Another best friend is celebrating either her first Christmas as a mother, or her last Christmas before she is a mother.  Babies and weddings and houses, oh my!

I need something to distract me.  Maybe I will try to celebrate obscure holidays between now and Thanksgiving to keep me under control.  November 2^nd is deviled egg day!  November 15^th is Clean your Fridge out day!  November 17^th is Homemade Bread day, and consequently Ryan was just talking about baking his own bread last night!  See, I can do this.  Hopefully I can report on my positive progress soon.  Maybe I need to hide the Christmas movies from myself.

Bah Humbug. 

This is Halloween

I hold a huge grudge against my father for making me watch Halloween with him on Halloween night when I was seven years old.  He followed that with waking me up by standing outside my bedroom window staring with his eyes wide open or following me around singing or humming the many creepy songs from the movie.  I am doomed to ever feel safe anywhere because of this.

But for some reason I still love Halloween movies.  Maybe it’s because I excessively celebrate any holiday, and a lot of that involves getting in the spirit.  It all goes together for me in October– when the leaves are falling, the weather cools down, harvest colors everywhere – and movies about masked murderers or evil supernatural spirits.

The problem is I still do not feel safe in my home.  We have only lived there since April, so this being my first Halloween season there could be part of the reason.  Or it could be because I’m so easily spooked.  Either way, ever since we’ve turned off the A/C and opened the windows, I find myself very jumpy when I sleep.  Every morning last week I laid awake in bed half an hour before my alarm went off (our feline friend is a non-electronic alarm clock that never quite gets the time right) swearing that I could hear noises coming from my kitchen.  The fridge knocks…or animals outside are stirring.  But every morning I convince myself over and over again that a burglar turned masked murderer is in the house, and my bed is the only safe place.  Like I am little kid…and can’t step off the bed because the floor is lava…only in this situation, the floor is a free-for-all to get stabbed to death by Michael Myers.  We have mirrors on a wall in the living room that I can see from the bed, so I sit and stare at them waiting to see something move.  A few times last week I stared for so long that I actually did start to see things move, but realized that I just hadn’t blinked in three minutes so I was getting a little delusional.  

I watched all three Scream movies this weekend.  I love Scream.  I could watch them all over and over again.  And then I watched Paranormal Activity 4...I did not see Paranormal Activity 4 so I was surprised they even made this many of them.  Last night while I attempted to sleep, thoughts of evil Katie snapping the neck of an unknowing teenage boy were in my head.  Neither Ryan nor I slept well last night, constantly jumping awake and hearing noises.  I am convinced Katie was in the house, for Night #1.  If you remember the movies you know there is a lot of slow buildup until she makes her final attacks.  Hopefully I still am updating this blog in a few weeks.  Only time will tell.

Compliments from Strangers

I don’t care how many delicious lunch spots there are in Indy, Panera will always have the key to my heart.  You just can’t do wrong by me with Panera.  The closest one to my office is a few short miles up the road, and is a perfect mutual meeting spot for me and a former employee/colleague/good friend of mine from her office.  We meet there once or twice a month for a dose of gossip, exchanging of work and life advice, and stuff our faces with a yummy soup and salad.

A few weeks ago when we were meeting there, I was climbing out of my car and was greeted by a stranger’s cat call “damn girl…you are GORGEOUS!!”  I might have otherwise been afraid and ran away, but I’d just read an article that women should really not take offense to cat calls, but to take the compliment and move on with your day feeling a little brighter.  “Thank you!” I said and walked into the café with my chin in the air.

Yesterday, my girlfriend and I met on an off-beat day of the week (going out for lunch on a Tuesday? Normally a Friday activity for me).  She’d texted me she was running a few minutes late, so I was standing near the door at the back of the line.  A disheveled young mother and her toddler walked past me, “NICE outfit!!” and kept on going.  I didn’t even have time to thank her.

I told my girlfriend we might have to up these visits to weekly.  It’s so great for my self-esteem (since I have such a problem with that…)

I am not sure if it’s creepy or awesome that strangers at Panera find me irresistible…but I don’t care!