Bring It, 2009. BRING IT.

Clearly, I am the worst blogger in the entire world.  I really am.

I have not posted in so long, if I were to really detail what's happened since my last post it would take you  until Valentine's Day to get through everything, and really?  

WHO'S GOT THE TIME?

To sum up, just in the last few weeks, I have had my sister and nephew come for Thanksgiving, contracted a horrific case of laryngitis (otherwise known as Husband's Dream Come True) on Thanksgiving Day when I was hosting thirteen people for dinner, celebrated the twins' first birthday, celebrated my seventh wedding anniversary, had my 41st birthday, gotten ready for Christmas, finally been freed from my clomping walking boot, started physical therapy twice a week, been told my Crazy-Walk (sort of a drag-foot, limp kind of thing) was 'mostly in my head' (i.e. YOU CRAZY, LADY!) and let's see...what else?

I think that about covers it. 

Oh yeah. Not blogged once.  Not even Twittered, for Chrissakes.  And that takes a total of .00001 seconds.

So....highlights?  And, because it's ME, some lowlights as well:

Thanksgiving was fun, in that this is frigging insane kind of way.  In that good news/bad news kind of way that often defines life.

The good news is I managed to make a fairly decent Butternut Squash soup the day before I got sick, the bad news is my sister and I decided to 'garnish' the bowls of soup with a candied walnut and some unsweetened whipped cream to rock it all Top Chef Style.  This was NOT a good plan.  In the past I've used sour cream, and let's just say whipped cream cannot carry a walnut. So everyone's bowls had an odd looking smear on the top, plus a surprise what in God's name is THIS walnut that was lurking at the bottom of their bowl.

Thankfully, no one mentioned it.  Which was good because by the time we served dinner I literally had no voice.  AT ALL. Part of the problem was for some reason the Universe thought it would be funny to give me a terrible case of laryngitis on the day to give thanks.  The day I am having tons of people over for my very first Thanksgiving ever. (I mean, I've celebrated the holiday before.  I just mean, this was the first year I've hosted.  But you knew that. Moving on.)

Anyhoo, part of the problem is that my Mother is deaf as a door knell (which I think is supposed to be DEAD as a door knell but my sister and I have always said "deaf" and "dead" is much grimmer and who knows what that means anyway?) and so I literally had to repeat EVERYTHING AT LEAST TWICE.  EVERY SINGLE DINGLE THING.  ALL DAY LONG.

"When do we start the stuffing"

"What?"

"WHEN DO WE START THE STUFFING??"

"Where is the bowl for the cranberry sauce?"

"What?"

"WHERE IS THE BOWL FOR THE CRANBERRY SAUCE??"

All day long.

So you can imagine how by about 3:00 PM my voice was totally gone and I was using hand signals to ask if people wanted cream and sugar with their coffee.

The next day was the babies' first birthday, and my sister and BeBop and I bundled everyone up and took them to the San Francisco Zoo.

This was funny because I was still in The Boot and had to rent an Old Lady Scooter to, well, scoot around the zoo.  Also funny?  The speed controller was a dial with two pictures on either end:  a tortoise and a jack rabbit.

I know!  Zoo humor is so damn funny.  It's HARE-larious.  You can BEARly stand it. I'm not LION, it's that funny. 

SOMEONE STOP ME.

So my sister was constantly yelling, "Come on slowpoke!  Gun that mother up to jack rabbit and let's go!"  But even on jack rabbit, I could barely keep up with the strollers she and BeBop were pushing.

And don't even get me started on what happened when I came tooling around a blind corner and BANG!  Right in front of me is a loose peacock standing in the middle of the road, all 'oh look at me and my pretty tail feathers' and how I came THIS close to running said peacock over. I'm still having nightmares.

And then just to add a little extra drama to the outing, because Lord knows three kids under two, two strollers and an Old Lady Scooter aren't dramatic enough, there was The Incident from last year.  On Christmas Day a Siberian tiger escaped from her enclosure and mauled three people, killing one young man.  (DUDE. Watson gets all GRIM all of a sudden.) 

But now the tiger area is all enclosed in a high-tech,James Bond-y, USSR prior to 1990 crazy wire and lights type deal.  And tons of tourists stand around saying, "Is this where that Tiger ate that boy?"  and "Yep, I think it was right here" and why am I relaying this part of the zoo tour?  God, I have no idea.  

Let's just say I cranked my scooter up all the way from tortoise to jack rabbit and got the hell away from there. Later a friend told me I was taking an unnecessary risk just being in the vicinity, given that on my scooter I was a veritable Meal on Wheels for any escaped vicious beasts.

Later, for their birthday, we subjected the babies to more cupcakes and more photos of them stuffing the aforementioned cupcakes into their cry-holes.  Because really, can anyone ever get enough of babies shoving cupcakes into their faces?

Didn't think so.

To recap:  We had Thanksgiving, guests galore, laryngitis, babies' birthday, zoo trip, narrowly-avoided incident with both peacock and large vicious cat AND our anniversary, all on the same weekend.

Followed in quick succession by my birthday. 

My 41st BIRTHDAY, can you friggin' believe it?!

I cannot. 

Except when I get eight hours of sleep and STILL wake up tired. Then I can believe it.  Or how when I barely step on a speed bump in a parking lot and my foot snaps in two like a dried twig, THEN I can believe I am forty-one.

But I'm determined to make this the best year yet.  And I wish the same for all of you.




We got crap-ass cupcakes on our birthday, Thanksgiving-themed cupcakes with crappy Pilgrims on top that my crap-ass cheap Dad got ON SALE.  The nerve.





Screw that Dude!  I just shoved that chocolate masterpiece in my mouth and was all, YEAH! Chocolate is the BOMB!





We made sure our Mommy couldn't, for the life of her, take one good photo of the two of us together.  One of us was either moving, closing our eyes, trying to fall head first off the couch or shooting mucus out our nostrils down the front of our face.  GOOD TIMES.


 


Well, okay.  This one was pretty cute. We guess. 





This is the whole gang at the zoo.  I (Parker) am crying because this hat is not fierce, like AT ALL.  And my bro bro looks like a tiny little lumberjack in his hat, so overall not a great fashion day for the Watson twins.  But Mommy and Daddy are just beside themselves with joy because here we are, celebrating our 1st birthday!  What could better?

(Ok, so Mommy not getting mauled by a tiger while on her scooter. That was also nice. Good point.)