I’m a little bit of a late bloomer when it comes to getting ready for Christmas. I'm kind of like those bulbs you have to plant in your flower garden in the dead of winter to turn into flowers come spring. Or maybe it’s the seeds you plant. However it goes, Father Christmas won't be seeing my bloomers til half past Valentine's Day.
But for the first time since the Power Ranger incident of '02, I started shopping before Christmas this year. I was going to wait, but the operators were standing by and I had to call right away to get the Ginsu knives.
Although I don’t go full out in the decorating area, you can tell it’s Christmas around my house by subtle changes in the décor. Just keep an eye out for mutations in the dust patterns on the coffee table.
I’ve moved the nativity scene that I forgot to put away last Christmas from the shelf in the laundry room to the top of the entertainment center, dusted off the baby Jesus, and removed the dryer sheet from the shepherd’s staff. The shepherd isn't quite as festive without his lint-free banner, but now it smells a little more like a stable and less like the Snuggle bear.
What appears to be stray tree limbs connected by lumps of fur in one corner of the living room is actually a small Frasier fir holding up under the strain of the investigative processes of two Labradors, three cats, and an inquisitive Dachshund sporting a Christmas tree skirt. Occasionally the tree gives a shudder and deposits various small animals on the floor. If it lived in the Hundred Acre Wood, my tree would be Eeyore.
There are 1,497 gift bags of assorted sizes and heritage covering every available flat surface, along with several containers of used bows that are perfectly suitable for family gifts if you affix them to packages with a loop of Scotch tape. There is no Scotch tape anywhere in the house. There are several dozen wood screws of assorted sizes in the junk drawer, but repeated attempts at giftwrap show that the wood screw is not a device that is effective for this purpose.
The kitchen table is covered with bits of burned sugar cookies and ingredients for partially assembled gelatin salads and casseroles that will bear offerings of melted cheese and Ritz crackers come Christmas day. This is not considered untidiness in the kitchen, but rather food preparation with holiday flair.
There is a wreath on the outside of the closet door instead of the inside of the closet door. The wreath boasts a giddy Snowman who is on the verge of bursting into the songs of the season just as soon as the Captain tells me where he hid the batteries.
There is a car in the driveway awaiting new tires, a replacement windshield wiper, and a brake job. Nothing says Merry Christmas at our house quite like "there's a front end alignment with your name on it just around the corner."
So for all of you folks who have every Martha Stewartesque napkin folded into snowflakes, don’t judge me on my lack of handmade ornaments and scented candles. Christmas at my house might have a different flavor and a smell that tends more toward PineSol than pine branches, but the spirit is the same.
I might deck my halls with takeout boxes instead of tinsel, but I still have the hope that good will is not just a store where you can get half off every Tuesday.
Merry Christmas!
Laugh
Showing posts with label Ritz. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ritz. Show all posts
Monday, December 12, 2011
Monday, September 20, 2010
Win the Cap'n's Booty!
Arrrgh! This be The Cap'n talkin'!
In honor o' International Talk Like A Pirate Day, I decided to conduct me own little raid on the Weddin' o' th' Sentry, at some fancy hoity-toity lubber tavern callin' itself the Ritz Carlton. (I gots t' admit, I don't see what the big deal is, jus' cause they named it fer a cracker.) I was lookin' fer to catch the lovely wench AmyDoodle, cause she makes me laugh, and even a pirate cap'n needs t' laugh ever now and agin.
But when I got to the crumby place, I heard that the wench had absconded and was nowheres t' be found! I was a right mite miffed, lemme tell yez! I searched and I searched, and all I found was... her shoes. The purtiest little pair ‘o satin slippers you ever did see.
Well, me and th' lads (Bo and Sam, the first Labradors) was peerin' at th' sitchy-ashun, and we allowed as how the day might still be won. All we had t' do was figger out a way t' use th' shoes t' my own advantage.
But what can a pirate do with a pair o' size 8M Mootsies Tootsies? They don't fit a big manly pirate cap'n like meself....
They don't make much of a hat....
And, puttin' the lie t' Get Smart, yer can't use it like a tellyphone....
Me first Mate Bo can't be induced to wear 'em....
And the Beard Enhancement Technology jus' ain't ready yet.
Finally, I tried to eat one. But satin jus' makes me mouth dry....
But wait. A plan began t' be formin' in me head. A devious, cunnin' plan!
I'll give 'em away! Tha's right! We'll lure this Amy Doodle wench by
offerin' up 'er very own shoes -- a $50.00, er, $34.99,er, $29.98 value -- to a
lucky winner whose name will be drawn from my cap'n's hat by a random
lubber we'll pick up off th' beach.
So 'ere's yer chance! Jus' post a comment t' this here missive, or email
the wench herself a' ashley1949@gmail.com, fer a chance to get the
cap'n's booty!*
Note: Souvenir Ritz-Carlton Plastic Cup with Sissy-Girly Drink not included.
*Translation for non-booty speakers. You’ve read about them here on Mind Over Mullis. Now you can win the very shoes that attended, but did not get worn at the deluxe Ritz Carlton wedding. Worn for an hour, carried for an evening of dining and dancing! Just add a comment to this post or e-mail ashley1949@gmail.com. Hope you can walk a mile in my shoes—because I couldn’t walk at all!
Deadline: 11:59PM, September 30, 2010. Void where prohibited.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Traveling Shoes
For a trip to Wal-Mart last weekend, I wore dress pants and heels. For a wedding at the Ritz last month, I wore pantyhose with no feet and carried my shoes. I use my copy of Dress for Success to even up the slope under the litter box where the builder got a little crazy with his leveling tool.
Granted my trip to WalMart came just after church, a place I generally visit wearing matching clothes, or at least the ones from the end-of-the bed pile that I’m fairly certain are clean.
I bought new shoes to wear to the Ritz. On the “Cinderella needs new shoes for the ball” theory, I used the grocery money to purchase a pair of black satin peep toe pumps in size “Does Not Fit” as require by the Fashion Statute of ’08.
Getting dressed for an elegant party in a hotel room three hours from home is not a good time to find out your shoes are the same size as the infield at Yankee stadium. When I walked across the room, the shoes flew off like rainy day road slush off truck tires.
It didn’t help that I had three other pairs of black shoes in the bedroom closet 200 miles and a red dirt driveway down the Interstate.
It didn’t help that we’d just made an emergency shoe run for the Captain who had apparently chucked his dress shoes out the car window while cruising down the highway at 70 miles an hour. At least I couldn’t think of any other reason why he had taken care to bring a charcoal gray pinstripe suit, gray silk tie, and two year old grass-stained Reeboks.
The scenic, historic town that held the Ritz was much too quaint to offer anything so mundane as a shoe store, so we dashed to Shoes R Us in the next village to pick up a pair of dress shoes. We were even now donning our fancy duds to attend an elegant party with folks who did not purchase their clothes at the Zippy Mart.
“Why did you buy shoes that don’t fit?” The Captain of my Love Boat has a happy talent for driving my stress meter into uncharted territory. He was oblivious to the Jaws music that began in low tones in the background.
“They fit in the store.”
“I see. Why didn’t you ask for out-of-store shoes?” Sure, the man with the plastic dress loafers thinks he’s a comedian. Let’s see if he’ll find any clean underwear in the drawer the next time he’s headed for Lunch with the Boss Day.
“I tried them on without hose. With hose, my feet slip down like they’re on a swimming pool slide. My toes are trying to crash out the end into deep water.”
“What should I do? Throw you a life preserver?”
I strolled across the room to kill him, gripping the inside of my shoes with my toes like a cardinal clutching the branch of an icy winter pine. After about twenty minutes I stopped to rest before finishing the trip.
“Just let me hang on to your arm. We’ll walk slowly. We’ll look more elegant like that anyway.”
“Ohhh, like Jed Clampett easing down the spiral staircase to visit the see-ment pond.”
If I could aim it properly, I would have stabbed him in the instep with a stiletto. Unfortunately control was a problem and the shoe flew off sideways like it was lost in space.
At the Ritz, we were met by a smiling valet who clearly intended to park our car. Our car that was so full of wadded tissues that I attempted to use as shoe padding on the trip over that it looked like a Puffs outlet store.
The valet extended a well-manicured hand. My husband dropped the car keys into it-- just before Cinderella’s slipper knocked him out of commission with a pop fly to mid-centerfield. I never saw a valet fold into accordion pleats before. His reflexes were quite spectacular.
Not long after the wounded valet incident, the shoes took the road less traveled, and I skied down the hill barefoot to the lovely lakeside wedding. About the time I hit the sidewalk switchback halfway down the black diamond slope, the feet ripped out of my classic black hosiery, held in place by a single strand of between-the-toe nylon.
I arrived at the bottom of the mountain with a spray of grass and a flourish, and with all the grace of an Olympic champion accepted the arm of the usher, black satin pumps in hand, and the Captain trotting up behind.
The wedding was picturesque and stunning in its simple beauty. But I’m sure glad I didn’t promise to keep those pesky pumps Til Death Us Do Part. I’d hate to have to commit a crime of passion on my sole mate with a monogrammed napkin.
Granted my trip to WalMart came just after church, a place I generally visit wearing matching clothes, or at least the ones from the end-of-the bed pile that I’m fairly certain are clean.
I bought new shoes to wear to the Ritz. On the “Cinderella needs new shoes for the ball” theory, I used the grocery money to purchase a pair of black satin peep toe pumps in size “Does Not Fit” as require by the Fashion Statute of ’08.
Getting dressed for an elegant party in a hotel room three hours from home is not a good time to find out your shoes are the same size as the infield at Yankee stadium. When I walked across the room, the shoes flew off like rainy day road slush off truck tires.
It didn’t help that I had three other pairs of black shoes in the bedroom closet 200 miles and a red dirt driveway down the Interstate.
It didn’t help that we’d just made an emergency shoe run for the Captain who had apparently chucked his dress shoes out the car window while cruising down the highway at 70 miles an hour. At least I couldn’t think of any other reason why he had taken care to bring a charcoal gray pinstripe suit, gray silk tie, and two year old grass-stained Reeboks.
The scenic, historic town that held the Ritz was much too quaint to offer anything so mundane as a shoe store, so we dashed to Shoes R Us in the next village to pick up a pair of dress shoes. We were even now donning our fancy duds to attend an elegant party with folks who did not purchase their clothes at the Zippy Mart.
“Why did you buy shoes that don’t fit?” The Captain of my Love Boat has a happy talent for driving my stress meter into uncharted territory. He was oblivious to the Jaws music that began in low tones in the background.
“They fit in the store.”
“I see. Why didn’t you ask for out-of-store shoes?” Sure, the man with the plastic dress loafers thinks he’s a comedian. Let’s see if he’ll find any clean underwear in the drawer the next time he’s headed for Lunch with the Boss Day.
“I tried them on without hose. With hose, my feet slip down like they’re on a swimming pool slide. My toes are trying to crash out the end into deep water.”
“What should I do? Throw you a life preserver?”
I strolled across the room to kill him, gripping the inside of my shoes with my toes like a cardinal clutching the branch of an icy winter pine. After about twenty minutes I stopped to rest before finishing the trip.
“Just let me hang on to your arm. We’ll walk slowly. We’ll look more elegant like that anyway.”
“Ohhh, like Jed Clampett easing down the spiral staircase to visit the see-ment pond.”
If I could aim it properly, I would have stabbed him in the instep with a stiletto. Unfortunately control was a problem and the shoe flew off sideways like it was lost in space.
At the Ritz, we were met by a smiling valet who clearly intended to park our car. Our car that was so full of wadded tissues that I attempted to use as shoe padding on the trip over that it looked like a Puffs outlet store.
The valet extended a well-manicured hand. My husband dropped the car keys into it-- just before Cinderella’s slipper knocked him out of commission with a pop fly to mid-centerfield. I never saw a valet fold into accordion pleats before. His reflexes were quite spectacular.
Not long after the wounded valet incident, the shoes took the road less traveled, and I skied down the hill barefoot to the lovely lakeside wedding. About the time I hit the sidewalk switchback halfway down the black diamond slope, the feet ripped out of my classic black hosiery, held in place by a single strand of between-the-toe nylon.
I arrived at the bottom of the mountain with a spray of grass and a flourish, and with all the grace of an Olympic champion accepted the arm of the usher, black satin pumps in hand, and the Captain trotting up behind.
The wedding was picturesque and stunning in its simple beauty. But I’m sure glad I didn’t promise to keep those pesky pumps Til Death Us Do Part. I’d hate to have to commit a crime of passion on my sole mate with a monogrammed napkin.
Monday, September 13, 2010
From Ritz to Spits and Back Again
Me: Stop growling at the waiter.
Captain: Tell him to get his hands out of my lap.
Me: He was just arranging your napkin for you.
Captain: If he arranges anything else in my lap, he’ll be serving salads at the rehab center.
Me: And you’ll be eating them in cell block 9. Here comes the first course. Remember to use your cocktail fork.
Captain: If that dude puts his hands in my lap again, he’s gonna find out what my cocktail fork is for.
Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, everybody at the party is going know you’re from a place where the dogs wear tags instead of tiaras. Nobody will ever confuse me with Paris Hilton. I pick clothes by the “will it show food” method, and my Labrador could eat a herd of her Chihuahuas and still have room for a Poodle snack later on. But I like to think that when it comes to manners I know enough not to blow my nose on the dinner napkin unless it’s paper and comes in an economy pack. Or at least a low thread count.
Sometimes, though, no matter how you try to disguise the poppy seeds wedged in your Saturday night smile, you may as well pack it in and head off to make a living as a camel farmer in Dubai because everybody can tell you come from a place where smoke detectors take the place of kitchen timers and you use 911 to call the family to dinner.
I’ve read up on the subject and even though camels have a reputation for expressing their opinions in unsanitary and vehemently saliva-filled ways, there are times I would opt for my hand at camel-milking and brave the spit rather than have another head waiter discover that I took my au gratin for granted.
Recently, I had occasion to visit the Ritz. And when I say Ritz, I don’t mean the cracker.
There are some places where a small town Southern girl is as comfortable as a garden tomato on white bread; center stage at the Miss Fried Okra Festival, the discount makeup stand at the corner flea market, the cushioned rocker in the church nursery holding a lap full of a baby made of wet and drippy.
Note that the Ritz-Carlton hotel during cocktail hour is not on this list.
I’m the girl who honeyed her crumpet upside down when invited to tea. The girl who shot a grape across the floor like fruit flavored buckshot at an outdoor café. The girl who thinks that any dessert plate within her orbit is an open invitation for food tasting.
I discovered that life at the Ritz isn’t the same as it is at Motel 6. At the Ritz, they’ll leave the light on for you, but they tally the wattage and charge it to your bill. I’ve paid less that than that for a permanent bridge to anchor my molars against Tootsie Roll devastation. The good folks at the Ritz will run your bathwater too, but for that price, the Captain says they should christen the QE II in it and scrub the bathtub ring with a live mink.
In my world, college and antibiotics comes in courses. At the Ritz, dinner does. All in all, we came through the maze of salad forks and bread plates unscathed. A line of waiters strode out with each course and circled our table like General Santa Ana closing in on the die-hard Texans at the Alamo. Those waiters put up a good fight, what with extra spoons and not a Bowie knife in the lot, but we showed those guys we knew what a finger bowl was good for.
Captain: We didn’t have finger bowls. You kept rinsing your hands in my Scotch and soda. Didn’t you see it on the video they made during dinner?
Me: Do you know the area code for Dubai? I hear there are some great opportunities in camel farming there.
Captain: There may not be any job openings. That’s where that waiter said he was headed the last time he tried to put that napkin in my lap.
Captain: Tell him to get his hands out of my lap.
Me: He was just arranging your napkin for you.
Captain: If he arranges anything else in my lap, he’ll be serving salads at the rehab center.
Me: And you’ll be eating them in cell block 9. Here comes the first course. Remember to use your cocktail fork.
Captain: If that dude puts his hands in my lap again, he’s gonna find out what my cocktail fork is for.
Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, everybody at the party is going know you’re from a place where the dogs wear tags instead of tiaras. Nobody will ever confuse me with Paris Hilton. I pick clothes by the “will it show food” method, and my Labrador could eat a herd of her Chihuahuas and still have room for a Poodle snack later on. But I like to think that when it comes to manners I know enough not to blow my nose on the dinner napkin unless it’s paper and comes in an economy pack. Or at least a low thread count.
Sometimes, though, no matter how you try to disguise the poppy seeds wedged in your Saturday night smile, you may as well pack it in and head off to make a living as a camel farmer in Dubai because everybody can tell you come from a place where smoke detectors take the place of kitchen timers and you use 911 to call the family to dinner.
I’ve read up on the subject and even though camels have a reputation for expressing their opinions in unsanitary and vehemently saliva-filled ways, there are times I would opt for my hand at camel-milking and brave the spit rather than have another head waiter discover that I took my au gratin for granted.
Recently, I had occasion to visit the Ritz. And when I say Ritz, I don’t mean the cracker.
There are some places where a small town Southern girl is as comfortable as a garden tomato on white bread; center stage at the Miss Fried Okra Festival, the discount makeup stand at the corner flea market, the cushioned rocker in the church nursery holding a lap full of a baby made of wet and drippy.
Note that the Ritz-Carlton hotel during cocktail hour is not on this list.
I’m the girl who honeyed her crumpet upside down when invited to tea. The girl who shot a grape across the floor like fruit flavored buckshot at an outdoor café. The girl who thinks that any dessert plate within her orbit is an open invitation for food tasting.
I discovered that life at the Ritz isn’t the same as it is at Motel 6. At the Ritz, they’ll leave the light on for you, but they tally the wattage and charge it to your bill. I’ve paid less that than that for a permanent bridge to anchor my molars against Tootsie Roll devastation. The good folks at the Ritz will run your bathwater too, but for that price, the Captain says they should christen the QE II in it and scrub the bathtub ring with a live mink.
In my world, college and antibiotics comes in courses. At the Ritz, dinner does. All in all, we came through the maze of salad forks and bread plates unscathed. A line of waiters strode out with each course and circled our table like General Santa Ana closing in on the die-hard Texans at the Alamo. Those waiters put up a good fight, what with extra spoons and not a Bowie knife in the lot, but we showed those guys we knew what a finger bowl was good for.
Captain: We didn’t have finger bowls. You kept rinsing your hands in my Scotch and soda. Didn’t you see it on the video they made during dinner?
Me: Do you know the area code for Dubai? I hear there are some great opportunities in camel farming there.
Captain: There may not be any job openings. That’s where that waiter said he was headed the last time he tried to put that napkin in my lap.
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