Category — Show and Tell

Show and Tell is wasted on elementary schoolers. Join several dozen bloggers weekly to show off an item, tell a story, and get the attention of the class. In other words, this is Show and Tell 2.0. Everyone is welcome to join, even if you have never posted before and just found out about Show and Tell for the first time today. So yank out a photo of the worst bridesmaid’s dress you ever wore and tell us the story; show off the homemade soup you cooked last night; or tell us all about the scarf you made for your first knitting project. Details on how to participate are located at the bottom of this post.

Let’s begin.

Yesterday, I went to buy material for the ChickieNob and Wolvog’s Purim costumes.  Josh and I picked their costumes until they were two and we went with ideas that go together.  One year, they were Jif peanut butter and a Hershey bar.  The next year, they were fish aquariums that had the twin fin-fin fish from Lucy Cousin’s Hooray for Fish.  When they were two, they wanted to be Mordechai and Queen Esther.  And then the symmetry fell off the cliff.

The next year, the ChickieNob designed a gown with me, a two-toned pink number with a long train that could be bustled as she ran around the playground.  She announced that she would be Queen Esther until she was 100 years old and so far, she has been true to that vision.  The Wolvog said he wanted to be an iPhone.  I tried to see a way these two costumes could go together.  Was he the Queen’s iPhone, and was there a way to put that little boy in a holster and stick him to his sister’s hip?  No?  He was going to be a walking, talking iPhone.  So be it.

Last year, they wanted to wear those same costumes again, but this year, it was time to design new ones.  The ChickieNob and I sat down at the kitchen table and spent 45 minutes designing a turquoise, floor-length gown, a slip dress with enormous sleeves and paste diamonds sewn into the bodice.  A taffeta open overskirt with pleats to make it extend as far as possible from the body.  A headdress fit for a Middle Eastern princess.  And what do you want to be, Wolvog?

He barely looked up from whatever he was doing and grunted one word, “Yoda.”

I went to the store and bought yards of turquoise material, spent the better part of an hour feeling different taffetas and organzas.  The saleswoman delighted in debating out the pros and cons of each fabric, coveting with me the gorgeous turquoise beaded silk that sold for $129 a yard.  After she had painstakingly cut out the different exquisite fabrics that made up the ChickieNob’s costume, she asked, “anything else?”

Um…a yard and a half of the most Yoda-looking brown polar fleece please?

I swear we didn’t aim to raise gender stereotypes.

What are you showing today?

Click here or scroll down to the bottom of this post if this is your first time joining along (Important: link to the permalink for the post, not the main url for your blog and use your blog’s name, not your name. Links not going to a Show and Tell post will be deleted). The list is open from now until late Friday night and a new one is posted every week.

Show and Tell is wasted on elementary schoolers. Join several dozen bloggers weekly to show off an item, tell a story, and get the attention of the class. In other words, this is Show and Tell 2.0. Everyone is welcome to join, even if you have never posted before and just found out about Show and Tell for the first time today. So yank out a photo of the worst bridesmaid’s dress you ever wore and tell us the story; show off the homemade soup you cooked last night; or tell us all about the scarf you made for your first knitting project. Details on how to participate are located at the bottom of this post.

Let’s begin.

I’m writing this before Wednesday night and scheduling it to post because…well…I’m not entirely sure we’ll dodge the bullet with this second storm and still have power.  So I’m assuming that really cool comments are coming in for the Purim basket giveaway.  But in case you haven’t yet entered, I’m showing and telling the practice batch of homemade oreos we made a few weeks ago.

Don’t those look yummy?

Or what about these, the sweet-salty butter pecan cookies:

Both of those–along with two other types of cookies and at least two types of candy–can be yours.  But that’s not all!  You also get our maudlin family letter and whatever else makes it into your box because random shit always makes it into the boxes.

The more you comment around the blogosphere (and report back that you’ve done so in a comment on that post), the greater chance you have of winning.  In other words, you give love to another blogger (or bloggers) and you may get back more butter than you can shake a stick at in return.

Since I’m using the random number generator to pick the winner, while you can leave drool on this post, please leave giveaway entries on that giveaway post so I can have them all in one place.

What are you showing today?

Click here or scroll down to the bottom of this post if this is your first time joining along (Important: link to the permalink for the post, not the main url for your blog and use your blog’s name, not your name. Links not going to a Show and Tell post will be deleted). The list is open from now until late Friday night and a new one is posted every week.

Show and Tell is wasted on elementary schoolers. Join several dozen bloggers weekly to show off an item, tell a story, and get the attention of the class. In other words, this is Show and Tell 2.0. Everyone is welcome to join, even if you have never posted before and just found out about Show and Tell for the first time today. So yank out a photo of the worst bridesmaid’s dress you ever wore and tell us the story; show off the homemade soup you cooked last night; or tell us all about the scarf you made for your first knitting project. Details on how to participate are located at the bottom of this post.

Let’s begin.

Tomorrow is Josh and my ten year dating anniversary (we have an utterly fantastic how-we-met story, but that is fodder for a different post).  We went out for sushi.  A few days earlier, the skies had dumped an inordinate amount of snow (hmmm…feeling familiar this week) on Washington and there were huge greying snow piles outside.

He picked me up at my apartment building.  I wore swingy black pants, a white shirt, and a periwinkle sweater (remember how in periwinkle was ten years ago?  What happened to that colour?) with black, high-heeled mary janes.  I had my hair down.

We went out for sushi because of a joke from when we set up the date a week beforehand.  I ordered kappa maki.  He convinced me to try the gourd rolls.  He never asked me to order gourd rolls again.  He drank a lot of green tea and ended up needing to pee four or five times during the meal.  I thought he might have a bladder problem.  Every time he left, I checked my reflection in my silverware to make sure I didn’t have seaweed between my teeth.

I liked him so much.

We talked a lot about Ireland.  He had been years earlier.  I had a ticket and was set to leave in a few weeks.  They had to close the restaurant, so we walked down the street to a bookstore and wandered around for a bit.  We really didn’t want the date to end.  I would have invited him up to my apartment but the super had been doing work in my apartment and every dish I owned was on my living room floor.

We stopped on the sidewalk outside my apartment building where crazy Alice was waiting behind the front desk.  He pushed my hair off my face with his left hand, slowly cupped my cheek, and kissed me for the longest time.  He told me that he was going to drive home smiling.

I went upstairs and called my mother and my best friend and told them both that I had met the man I would marry.

And I did.

What are you showing today?

Click here or scroll down to the bottom of this post if this is your first time joining along (Important: link to the permalink for the post, not the main url for your blog and use your blog’s name, not your name. Links not going to a Show and Tell post will be deleted). The list is open from now until late Friday night and a new one is posted every week.

Show and Tell is wasted on elementary schoolers. Join several dozen bloggers weekly to show off an item, tell a story, and get the attention of the class. In other words, this is Show and Tell 2.0. Everyone is welcome to join, even if you have never posted before and just found out about Show and Tell for the first time today. So yank out a photo of the worst bridesmaid’s dress you ever wore and tell us the story; show off the homemade soup you cooked last night; or tell us all about the scarf you made for your first knitting project. Details on how to participate are located at the bottom of this post.

Let’s begin.

On Monday, I was supposed to get my guitar restrung, though ended up with only one replaced string, which is a long story that you will be subjected to in a moment.  The reason this fact is important is that the guitar still sounds like shit and Josh has offered to pay me not to play it.  He gave me a massage one night in exchange for a promise that I would leave it in the case.  This is a beautiful thing.

I have not played the guitar since the twins were babies and I instituted the game “band camp” which meant we sat on the living room floor and I played the same three chords over and over again and they banged on their Fisher Price instruments and I recorded it and would play it for Josh every night, asking him, “do you think we have a chance at establishing a family band?  Like the Jonas Brothers or the Von Trapps?”  See, even back then I knew how to create a little piece of torture.

The best part is that because it hasn’t been played in years, the twins have pretty much forgotten about the guitar.  I gave them a little reminder on Tuesday night.  They were up talking after bedtime, so I crept upstairs with the guitar, bumped the door open with my hip, and started serenading them with an impromptu song about how they’re in deep shit for not going to bed.   The Wolvog informed me that I had scared him with my earnest opening G-chord, but since I was up there anyway, could he try the guitar?  Band camp has been resurrected.

I’m not ashamed to admit this–I don’t know how to string a classical guitar.  I’m also not ashamed to admit this–some of my strings are 25 years old.  I have one string that is massively corroded and set to snap at any moment.  But what can I do?  I have an unnatural attachment to these original guitar strings and no desire to learn a new skill.  Actually, I would love to learn if someone wanted to teach me.  I don’t want to learn off of YouTube, which is what the woman in the store suggested.

She was unwilling to restring my guitar unless I was willing to leave it there overnight (even though, I might add, the store was empty the half hour we debated this, the phone didn’t ring once, and it took her under three minutes to change the string she did change despite the fact that she told me it would take forever to change all six strings.  Apparently, forever is currently equal to 18 minutes).  As she replaced the one string, she suggested that I learn how to take care of my guitar and told me that I have no business owning this guitar unless I do.

I know Riotgrrl was trying to get me to grow a pair of ovaries (perhaps ones that work!) by giving me a tough love speech about wo-manning up and becoming self-sufficient.  But I didn’t want tough love.  I didn’t want love at all.  I just wanted my guitar restrung so I could play my way through Rise Up Singing.  And since Josh wouldn’t buy me this at O’Hurley’s General Store in Shepherdstown last weekend, I have no choice but to use the guitar.  Corroded strings and all.

Which is just a long way of saying–does anyone want to buy me a lap harp or teach me how to string my guitar?

What are you showing today?

Click here or scroll down to the bottom of this post if this is your first time joining along (Important: link to the permalink for the post, not the main url for your blog and use your blog’s name, not your name. Links not going to a Show and Tell post will be deleted). The list is open from now until late Friday night and a new one is posted every week.

Show and Tell is wasted on elementary schoolers. Join several dozen bloggers weekly to show off an item, tell a story, and get the attention of the class. In other words, this is Show and Tell 2.0. Everyone is welcome to join, even if you have never posted before and just found out about Show and Tell for the first time today. So yank out a photo of the worst bridesmaid’s dress you ever wore and tell us the story; show off the homemade soup you cooked last night; or tell us all about the scarf you made for your first knitting project. Details on how to participate are located at the bottom of this post.

Let’s begin.

Say what you want about Allison, like the fact that she would willingly live in a state that has flying cockroaches–which are just crickets in my book.  The woman remembers the fine details.

It started almost two years ago, shortly after Zoë died (the anniversary of which is this upcoming Sunday and it would be nice to flood Allison with love right now) when my family walked for hers in that year’s March of Dimes walk and we were Team Lennox and Zoë.

Her thank you gift was a rock.  I’m not sure if I had mentioned it in a post or in an email, but I had once said in passing that I collected stones from various places.  That I had different ones that I carried with me at different times (the first cycle we tried to conceive, back when we were in giddyland, Josh stole me a rock from a restaurant and I carried that one with me until we delivered the twins…so…er…two and a half years it lived in my pocket and I held it during every procedure and test).  Beyond Josh and the twins who have noticed this because they live with me, my niece is the only other person who has ever given me a stone.  We were walking and she bent down, picked up a random rock, and said, “I know you like these.”

So a rock came in the mail, I bawled at her thoughtfulness and the fact that she would remember, and a tradition was born where we send each other rocks from various places.  Her husband makes her steal her own rocks when she sees one in a rock display.  Mine knows I’m a wimp and rolls his eyes and says, “I know, one for you and one for Allison” before doing my dirty work.  We have given each other rocks from beaches and hiking trails.  We just usually pop them in a padded envelope.

Last fall, my postmistress told me a story when I was mailing a new rock to her about how she used to do that with a friend too and how the woman (who is now in her 80s) keeps the rocks in her garden and likes to sit outside and look at them and how she knows if someone moves one.  I told Allison, “Let’s be crotchety like that when we’re older; yelling at people for moving our stones.”  So now we’re committed to becoming bat-shit insane old ladies.

This week, a very special rock came from Allison’s very special place and I am beyond honoured that she would bring me a rock from there.  Those are the best ones–not the ones that are beautiful and smooth and nice to hold, but the ones that come from somewhere meaningful.  Her mother mailed the package for her and included this too:

The twins and I were marveling at it, imagining the size of the bird who built and abandoned this nest.  Josh walked into the kitchen and said, “I just want to state for the record that I am not going to start stealing abandoned bird’s nests for you to start sending back and forth to each other.”

And while that thought hadn’t occurred to me before that point, I think it sounds like a fine idea.  And now I need to go work on Josh since he has those long arms that can reach into trees.

Thank you, Allison (and Allison’s mummy), and my heart is with you all weekend as you remember Zoë.  We’ll be thinking about her too.

What are you showing today?

Click here or scroll down to the bottom of this post if this is your first time joining along (Important: link to the permalink for the post, not the main url for your blog and use your blog’s name, not your name. Links not going to a Show and Tell post will be deleted). The list is open from now until late Friday night and a new one is posted every week.