Ouch

I never knew the non-dominant hand pinkie finger right. on. the. tip could possibly hurt this bad.

I fell off of Harley today (don't worry, Auntie, the only injury I have is my finger and my back's fine!). It was slow motion, as most things like that are. I had time to think, alright, this could be bad. Let's not land the wrong way on the ol' back. In my intense concentration to NOT hurt my back on my way down, I apparently really forgot to remember what I was doing with my left hand, because whatever I did, it wasn't good. I don't think I've ever posted a blog with so many w's or s's!!! It must be a conspiracy.

I think I broke that teeny tiny little dinky bone right on the end of my pinkie. I've done a lot of things in my life that hurt... but no joke, this is right up there on the list of All Things Painful.

I'm trying to post some holiday pics... hopefully they'll be up soon...

A Story of Survival!

Historically, Christmas around my/our family has been insane. For my entire life, my memories of Christmas encompass a lot of food, excitement and waiting for the adults to eat to go open presents, and when we got there, so many presents we couldn't hardly stand it. Another tradition that we always had was at the family Christmas to open gifts one person at a time. The good years, we'd open them from youngest to oldest. The bad years, the oldest person would start. That often left us youngsters with elevated blood pressures and insane desire by the time it was our turn. Luckily, I don't remember many of those.

Nonetheless, there were always so many presents we could hardly open them all. Our little fingers were bloody stumps from opening by the time we got to the bottom of our stack. And that tradition, apparently, is continuing. Years ago, like when I was still to little to be bummed out about it, someone said "we're not doing Christmas like this anymore - it'll be one gift a piece..."

Again, that was definitely at least before I could drive... probably earlier. And it still hasn't happened. Now don't get me wrong - I appreciate all the time, effort, work, headaches, shopping trips, and late night wrappings that go into such a celebration - but it's crazy! The kids love it (obviously) because it's as if Santa dropped a Toys R Us satellite store right there in the middle of Grandma's living room. This year, my best gift was the photobook I made for my beautiful Grandma using Shutterfly's album design site. Here's a link to it if you're interested... it really turned out nice. If you ever need a meaningful gift for someone who has all they need, this is the way to go. It took a total of about 12 hours to finish from scanning the first picture to finally ordering it, but it was worth it...

Anyway, we had a lot of fun, everyone's exhausted, and we get to do it again, today, if the inch thick ice ever melts on the roads so we can make it to Chesterton... I'll post pics when it's all over...

Hope everyone's holiday was filled with memories as fond as mine...

Turkey Frying and Power Outages

That title just about sums up the last 12 hours of my life. We had some friends over for dinner Saturday night. We weren't sure what to make, and tossed around the idea of doing some mid-winter grilling. Turns out it's a good thing we made other plans - it was freezing cold and snowing at dinner prep time. Luckily I had the fabulous idea of frying a turkey earlier in the week so that's what we did. This time I got a reasonably sized turkey (only 12 pounds) instead of the 22 pound super turkey we had for Thanksgiving. In about 30 minutes, we had a yummy fully cooked bird ready to be carved. We didn't burn the outside quite as bad this time, either. The Thanksgiving turkey would probably have been perfect if we'd cooked it about 10 minutes less than we did. Some of the meat close to the surface was a little tough. This time, the skin was still burned a little, but the meat inside was fine. We'll fine tune this thing just in time for the holidays to be over, I guess.

So we ate (a lot!) and had a soak in the hot tub, hung out for a while after that, and went to bed. The weather man said the already bone chilling cold weather was going to take a downward turn, with more wind, snow, and ice. We listened to the wind ripping past the house all night and finally it happened. The power went out. The first time was at a convenient 2 am. It came right back on but the problem is now that the kids' sound machines, on which they heavily rely to sleep, we set to a cheery, morning "woodland forest" instead of the sleep inducing "white noise." They were screaming, so I got up, fixed the machines, found the cell phone, reset the bedroom alarm clock, and lightly dozed off to sleep (again). About the time I got comfortable and just about asleep, it went off again. Brian took on the sound machine resetting duties this time. The darn power went off probably 3 or 4 more times before it was really time to get up. It only went off for a few seconds - you know - just long enough to screw everything up. REMC owes me a babysitter, a quiet house, and at least 4 hours of pure uninterrupted sleep. I imagine the problems are coming from the fact that the power lines have like 200 pounds of ice on them and the wind's blowing at about 100 miles an hour...

The power went out, in fact, as I was typing this...

How do they expect anyone to get any work done around here?

I Must Really Suck

Am I like the only person on this planet who doesn't bake Christmas cookies? I've been reading up on all my friends' blogs and everyone but me is baking (well, almost). I made cookies for our friends and stuff one year, a few years ago (actually when I got my Kitchenaid mixer a few days early... thanks Brian) and it was so miserable I vowed I'd never do it again. Plus, I think I gained 20 pounds from all the cookie dough and other stuff I ate before the cookies were actually done...

Looking back now, I can't even remember WHY I have such disgusting memories of it. I don't think anything horrible or disasterous happened. Pretty much all I remember is saying, "I'll never do that again." Kind of like a drunken night of misery - don't remember much about the specifics, but pretty darn sure you don't want to do it again.

Maybe since the whole thing is a little foggy in my head, it's time to do it again. Or not.

A Bad Headline

Am I hearing things? They were just covering the Bears game on the channel 7 news at 10. They showed a picture of one of the players sitting on the bench with his helmet off, head steaming. The news anchor says, "get your steaming hot meat puppet here."

HUH? Are you kidding me? And then, just as soon as I was recovering from that comment, they are interviewing a player who is saying something about Vaseline. What the hell is going on? This is why we don't watch channel 7.

Brian was actually reading my previous blog on our laptop, not really paying attention to the TV, and he even looked up, then looked at me, and said, "What the hell did he just say?"

It's time for me to go to bed - or change the channel!!!

Surgry Buddies

Brian finally had his elbow surgery to correct his tendon problem. He'd been getting cortisone shots pretty much all year, and the doctor finally decided to go ahead and just fix it surgically. Apparently he had tennis elbow, which from what he told me is an overuse injury. I don't completely understand this as it was 1) his LEFT elbow, and 2) it's not like he has a job or does anything that is repeatedly stressing or using his left arm over and over like in an assembly line or something... oh well.

Anyway, they did his surgery outpatient, so he came straight home after it was over. He's feeling pretty good now (almost a week later) but will still be off work for the next 2 months, probably more or less due to the nature of his job. It would suck to get into a fight with someone or something and "pop" that would be the end of that.

Part B of our excitement was that Shooter also had surgery. Normal dog stuff for her - spaying - and removing her rear dew claws. She's fine, too, I just thought this was a good photographic opportunity to get the two sickies recovering on the couch together.

In other news, I'm just about done with our Christmas shopping. We have a few odds and ends to get, but the vast majority of it is D.O.N.E! What I have left to buy is simple stuff, and I know what I need. It seems that's always the problem I have at Christmas - figuring out what the hell to get people. Gift cards just seem so impersonal. I like getting them, don't get me wrong. I love what I consider a shopping spree, it lets me get what I want in the size I need, and saves me from having to return/exchange things that aren't the right size or whatever. I never mind a few hours to have to myself to go shopping. So if anyone out there was thinking "gift card" for me, keep em' flowing. :)

I'll be at Hawthorne Park in Porter today taking Santa pictures for their town Christmas festival. Another established photog in the area double booked himself today and didn't realize it till this week. He called me (to my surprise) and asked me to shoot for him today. It'll be easy - a simple light setup and I'll give him all the pictures. He'll handle all the orders, deliveries, post processing, and file maintenance, so it's a quick and easy $100 for me at a time I can definitely find a use for it. I was pretty honored, as he's trusting ME to represent his company... a pretty big deal for me!

Hope things are going well for you. I never did blog about Thanksgiving. Maybe I'll talk about the turkey frying experience after we fry Christmas' bird. Then I'll have something to compare it to. Have a good weekend!

NEW CONTACT INFO

For anyone who cares, I have a new email address. Look on my facebook page and check my info if you need it, or call me and let me know you want it. In other words, don't send anything to jlrichmond76@msn.com or to jmcdonald76@comcast.net anymore!