I'm dark. I'm brooding. I...sparkle.

When we snagged one last year ago B autographed it with “Thanks for all the fan mail. XOXO Edward” and planted it in a male coworker’s office. And there it remains, leering into the hallway from the office the pranked coworker vacated months ago and left to a new hire who was fortunate enough to inherit the gem.

Our coworkers are fun people who love a good prank. One of the guys on my floor gifted another one with a life-sized talking Jar Jar Binks for his birthday, so Jar Jar now takes up a significant amount of space there. One of the women has a small speaker she hides in others’ offices then uses to broadcast random noises from her cell phone. (Picture B standing on top of his desk trying to find a wet ceiling tile yesterday when he heard a water dripping noise and was worried that the ceiling was about to cave in on his head. Classic.) And a lot of you will remember the time I was Bubléd.

So now you can probably guess what followed when I found this little pretty at Goodwill two days ago, sporting a $3 price tag:

Would you believe this is a kid's toy? I almost didn't.

Yeah. It took B half the day to figure out who’d set this up in his office last night, after he’d already gone door to door waving this in each person’s face *ahem* and asking them if they were the guilty party.

And the jokes. Oh, the jokes. I’m fairly certain that in the span of about ten minutes I got to hear more phallic references than I ever ever thought I’d hear in all the years I’ll spend in the workplace.

It was great.

C: Ugh. See ya later!

B: No, stay here and just watch five minutes of it!

C: (trying another tactic) Ooh, he has nice muscles!

B: (already gaping open-mouthed at the show, ignoring my comment) Yeah… he does.

C: Okay, I’m leaving now.

And then a roller coaster safety arm descended in front of me and pinned me to the couch.

B: You need to watch this part. It’s just ten minutes!

C: (squirming to get away) You said only five minutes. Liar!

B: Just watch this part! Then you can go! You have to watch this part!

Well, my life wasn’t dramatically altered by viewing this movie clip, but at least now I know why my husband is always running around asking if he’s the prettiest.

Thanks to MatthwJ for the beautiful photo!

Here’s the recipe I used:

http://www.recipezaar.com/recipe/Mini-M-M-Cookies-119209

]]> http://stocktoc.wordpress.com/2012/01/12/mm-cookies/feed/ 3 stocktoc http://stocktoc.wordpress.com/2012/01/11/grandma-and-grandpa-decide-to-ghost-ride-break-com/ http://stocktoc.wordpress.com/2012/01/11/grandma-and-grandpa-decide-to-ghost-ride-break-com/#comments Thu, 12 Jan 2012 04:54:29 +0000 stocktoc http://stocktoc.wordpress.com/?p=2639 ]]> Yuuuuup.

Grandma And Grandpa Decide To Ghost Ride | Break.com

B just added this to our “to do one day when we’re old folks” list.

Not long ago, I lost my backpack and had to go without it when I traveled to Seattle for school. A couple weeks later I walked into the garage to find B suspended from the rafters pretending to be a bat. (Or maybe he was really doing chin-ups, dips, and other CrossFit things. Whatever, Batman.) And there on the ground next to him was my long-lost backpack. Excited by my discovery, I swooped in to grab the backpack and was instantly engulfed in a blinding cloud of white powder.

As it turns out, my dear, sweet, usually logical husband had decided to use my backpack–not an airtight gallon-size Ziploc bag, of which we have many–to store his climbing chalk. And in case some of you are missing the point, know that climbing chalk comes in rock form but is a very fine, loose powder. It shouldn’t be stored in backpacks, especially if plans are being made to carry said backpacks through airport security checkpoints.

All I could do was growl as I shook the bag and more and more white dust flew out of it onto the garage floor. B exclaimed, “But you weren’t using it when I found it!” as I walked back into the house and closed the door behind me. I didn’t have the strength to say anything polite, so I chose silence instead and stomped away, consoling myself into laughter with the thought of one day seeking revenge by filling his school toolbox with tampons.

When something goes missing our house, after I’ve eliminated my own user error from the equation it’s usually safe to assume that my husband’s path somehow, at some point, crossed paths with the missing object. With a few exceptions, he is not as focused on obsessed with order and organization as I am, so when he sets his–or my–keys or sunglasses down somewhere, he doesn’t stop to encode the the process. If I set something down and I know I’ll need it later and wonder where it is, I will stop and make a conscious effort to say to myself, “This is the key I am going to need tomorrow morning. I am placing it right here, next to this plant on this shelf.” B does no such thing, so I’m constantly digging his sunglasses out of my laundry basket, picking up things that fall out of his pockets as he walks, and biting my tongue instead of saying “I told you so” when he loses his cool over a lost TV remote only to find that he left it in the kitchen. Because while he’s often more focused on his next task, I’m there behind him in the shadows, maybe hiding behind that potted plant in the corner, inadvertently taking over by encoding his actions for him. (If you’re thinking “freeeak!”, that’s okay, and I don’t blame you. It’s something for which I wish I could find the on/off switch.)

A couple weeks ago, this came in handy when B woke up early for school and panicked because he couldn’t find his wallet. Sometime before, we’d had a small disagreement over the fact that I kept picking up his wallet and moving it to the spot next to the door, where my purse and our keys belong. On the morning that he woke up early to find his wallet missing, he roused me from my sleep to grumble “Have you seen my wallet?” I said no. When he asked again, “Are you sure you haven’t seen my wallet?” I could tell he really meant, “Are you sure you didn’t  move it?”

I threw the blankets off and stood up, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes as, growling, I began searching in the least likely places for B’s wallet. And less than twenty seconds after I started searching, I found it at eye-level, on a bookshelf in our living room. I called B’s name–which was temporarily, lovingly, changed to “jerkface” since he woke me up early–and stood there pointing to the wallet so he could see where he’d left it. As he rounded the corner, his face melted into the familiar expression he gets when he knows I’m thinking “I told you so.” With a hug, a kiss, and a quick apology for assuming I’d moved his wallet (even though Amendment 376.2 to our Marriage Agreement clearly states that “Wife will not move husband’s wallet, EVER”), he ran out the door.

After B left, I promptly sought my revenge. I walked into the garage, opened up his toolbox, and filled it with tampons.

OK, so I didn’t do that, and I won’t ever do that. But the thought still really cracks me up.

B: What?

C: I’m trying to demonstrate to you that my Groupon obsession is not as bad as you make it out to be.

B: No, it’s still bad. You’re like, “Ooh, awesome! I can have 300 Tasmanians come to my house and do the Chuchamonga dance on my lawn! Sweet deal!”

C: Grrrr.

B: Chuchamonga! Chuchamonga! (while doing the Lindsay Bluth chicken dance)

We knew what was happening outside when we heard the first thumps and the clanging of bells. By the time we heard a loud, jolly voice announcing Santa’s presence with a booming “Ho Ho Ho!” my sister and I could hardly contain our excitement. Santa was in our house eating our cookies! Rudolph was eating our carrots! We were about to get a ton of presents!

Santa continued to make noise, reading our Christmas letter and banging around in the dining and living rooms as he delivered and arranged our gifts. We heard him talking to Rudolph (Santa could only fit his lead reindeer inside our dining room while the others had to wait on the roof), who would respond with a jingle of the bells on his neck harness and crunch noisily on a carrot. I tried to catch a glimpse of Santa through the slightly open bedroom door, but all I could see of the living room was a sliver of our Christmas tree with its lights twinkling. I recall telling my sister later—since I was the oldest, I was clearly the authority—that I could tell from the supernatural twinkle of the Christmas lights and the special shimmer in the air that magic had been present in our house, and even though we couldn’t see Santa there had been visible proof of his existence.

Fast forward a year or two, and the entire family–including great-grandparents, grandparents, aunts, and an uncle–joined us in our small family home in Texas. We’d spent the early evening gathered around in the living room, eating Christmas goodies and watching Santa’s progress on the news channel’s Santa Tracker while we waited to “have a tree” (to borrow my great-grandmother’s terminology for the gift opening ceremony). By this time my sister and I had our suspicions that Santa Claus wasn’t real and that it had something to do with my father’s disappearance at the same time each Christmas Eve, but we’d decided not to share this with our parents for fear that it would mean we wouldn’t get as many presents that year. Santa must have figured out that we had our doubts, because this year he decided to up the ante a bit even though he risked blowing his cover.

After nightfall there we all were again, the entire extended family—minus my father, who had once again disappeared to be ill–huddled in the dark on the two twin beds in the room my sister and I shared. After a long silence punctuated by whispering and shushed giggles from the adults, we heard the first telltale sounds.

After the usual clanging noises from somewhere outside the house, the first clear indication of Santa’s arrival was the red light from Rudolph’s nose. Another round of excited giggles erupted from the adults as soon as we spotted it, a 3-inch red point of light bobbing back and forth across the window. Then we heard the bells, and pretty soon from the noises in the kitchen we could tell Santa was in the building. We all crammed up against the door to listen when we heard Santa announce his presence with a loud, southern-sounding, “Woah, Rudolph!” before launching into the reading of our Christmas letter.

This particular year, as soon as silence settled in the house and we could tell Santa was finished with his stop at our house, someone suggested we all pile out on the lawn to try to catch a glimpse of Santa as he flew away, so there we all went, spilling out onto the lawn. My dad met us there, excitedly exclaiming that there were sleigh marks in the grass from where Santa had landed. And there they were, two lines burned across the front lawn. Never mind the small bits of burned paper towel that still clung to the grass or the slight scent of gunpowder in the air; I’m sure those were coincidental.

A sense of excitement spread among all of us, adults and kids alike, when we discovered the sleigh tracks. After spending a considerable amount of time inspecting them and searching for other clues (“That’s too big to be a dog pile; it must be reindeer poop!”) we returned to the house to cram into the living room and unwrap gifts.

I don’t remember when my sister and I finally confessed to my parents that we knew Santa Claus was just my father with a low-quality tape recorder, some bells, and his US Army issue flashlight with a red light filter, but the tradition of gathering in my family’s house to “have a tree” continued and so did the laughter as we retold the stories of Santa Claus’s previous visits. This evening after I mentioned I was writing a blog post to immortalize the tradition, my dad located his old tape recorder so we could replay a transcript of one of Santa’s last visits and laugh at his southern drawl, the loud train-like background noises that were supposed to be reindeer bells, and a barely noticeable mistake.

As it turns out, Santa does nip the bottle a bit while he’s flying around delivering gifts on Christmas Eve. Either that or we’ve been issuing the reindeer call wrong all these years, because I distinctly heard him call one of them Nixon.

.

Christmas, Blues Traveler

Christmas (Baby Please Come Home), Dustin Kensrue

Christmas Blues, Eric Clapton & John Popper

Maybe Next Year (X-Mas Song), Meiko        <- Definitely need more like this one. LOVE it.

Christmas Eve (Sarajevo 12/24), Trans-Siberian Orchestra

The Christmas Song, Hootie & The Blowfish

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, James Taylor

I Saw Three Ships, Sting

I’ll Be Home For Christmas, Johnny Mathis

I’ll Be Home For Christmas (with Carrie Underwood), Elvis Presley

Last Christmas, Jimmy Eat World

Merry Christmas Baby, B.B. King                            <- My favorite

Please Come Home For Christmas, the Eagles

Santa Claus Is Back In Town, Jonny Lang

The Spirit of Christmas Past, Enya

Walking In A Winter Wonderland, Macy Gray

C: I’m feeling well. I can’t be too expressive right now because my nose is still healing and I feel uncomfortable tension if I move my face too much.

Coworker: Ah, so I shouldn’t make you laugh by telling you stories about midgets selling cocaine to Santa Claus.

(pause)

C: Well, aside from the fact that that would be weird at work…

Coworker: Ah, yeah, the Santa Claus part was over the line, I get it.

C: Exactly. Please don’t mention Santa Claus to me ever again.

(Check out my swollen chipmunk cheeks!)