CATastrophes And Cereal Killers

I had a few minutes Friday afternoon to sit with my feet up before going to my side gig, helping with a photography business, and thought I'd make some notes for this weekend's Ten Things of Thankful post. I fixed myself a bowl of cereal and sat down in my chair-and-a-half (a/k/a my office). I held the bowl up under my chin as I took each bite, so I didn't drip any milk on my never-been-worn-before black and cream infinity scarf. Fletcher (the family Eeyore) jumped onto the arm of my chair (he is a great lover of cereal AND cereal milk). I ignored him and his sorrowful eyes, lifting the bowl to my chin for another bite, when out of NOWHERE, Fletcher head butted my bowl, sending milk and cereal all over my me, from my chin down. Milk was dripping from my face, running off my scarf and puddling onto the chair. I ran to the bathroom, pieces of cereal falling off of me as I went. My scarf had pieces of cereal in all the folds, some of which transferred to my hair when I lifted the scarf over my head. There was not only cereal down the front of my fleece jacket, but also inside it, and my shirt was wet, too.  All of this led to me calling him Asshole all weekend, and it also led to me not getting my post written until now. The little asshole is on my lap now, his butt on the mousepad, his front half pinning down my left arm, my right arm bent around his back end in order to reach the keyboard. Bear with me. Here's the list:

1. My College Boy is home for a whole month! 

2. I finally got the Christmas tree decorated. The lighted tree had been up, but undecorated, for over a week, as (a) I hadn't had a block of time large enough to use for decorating the tree without cutting severely into my beauty rest; (b) the Little Red Hen couldn't get anyone else in the house interested in helping, anyway; and (c) it was a test to see if Ruby would try to climb the tree this year, given last year's fiasco. Since the tree was still standing, I took the window of opportunity I had and got the ornaments on.

3. The College Boy helped me with some of the decorating, making sure to hang any ornaments made by, or given to, his sister on the back of the tree. (She could have done likewise to him, rather than lying on the couch two feet away from us, watching Grey's Anatomy on Netflix.)

4. Ruby did, indeed, try to climb the tree, making ingress from the windowsill rather than climbing up the trunk (center pole, really, given that it's an artificial tree). My son reached inside and pulled her back out the way she went in, and thus far, it's the only time she's tried it THAT WE KNOW ABOUT.

This year, tunneling in through the side of the tree.

Last year.

5. The preschool Christmas program was this week. The kids did a beautiful job, plus no one peed, pooped, cried or threw up on stage.

6. Pinterest win! We made Christmas trees out of fingerprints and they turned out really cute. We will laminate them and make them our placemats for our Christmas party next week.

7. Pinterest win #2! Instead of making a pan of cinnamon rolls, I used a pie pan and made one giant cinnamon roll that loosely filled the pan. After it had risen and been baked (and frosted), I had a most delicious cinnamon roll cake. I wish I had taken a picture of it, because it was GORGEOUS. You can see my inspiration for this here, at Sally's Baking Addiction.

8. Okay, so I was carrying a gallon sized ziploc bag of beads (each one the size of a small pea) down the hall from my primary classroom to my pre-k classroom, along with an armload of books and papers. I was about six feet from the (closed) door when the bag of beads slithered over my arm and all the beads spilled out. On the tile floor. Did I mention it was a gallon sized bag? And did you know that beads bounce? Imagine hundreds of beads, each of them ping, ping, pinging across the floor. It was enough to cause our music teacher to come up the stairs and the church secretary to come out of her office to see what kind of holy hell on earth was occurring. I just stood there and laughed, because what else are you going to do? I'm very grateful Miss Ruth and Miss Vanesssa came to my rescue, because between the three of us, we got most of them picked up. I suspect we will be finding beads for years, as they went under every door within about a six foot radius, including a furnace closet, two bathrooms, and two classrooms. The only reason they didn't rain down the stairs was the fact that there was a rug at the top of the stairs that caught a few hundred beads before they had a chance to make a break for it. 

9. I saw a car with antlers and a Rudolph nose this morning, and as stupid as it is, it still made me laugh.

10. My dad's 80th birthday was yesterday. Happy birthday, Daddy!

Ready or not, the holidays are upon us. You a Not? Or a Ready? Be thankful, either way, and link up your list below.

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