Fake Grass and Parties

This week just flew by… it’s now Sunday night and I’m sitting in a three hour meeting with India. Well, people who work for my company in India. I have one of these meetings every night for five nights. I know, I know… you’re very envious of this little perk of my job. Ha! Well, it’s all part of my illustrious new program manager job which puts me in charge of an $8 million budget next year. I love saying that because usually as a program/project manager, I get people. But for some reason this time around, I get a BUDGET. Which is basically people plus money to spend on some hardware and software. It makes me sound important but it’s really doing the same old crap that I’ve always done which is pretty much bossing people around. I do like telling people what to do and try to do it at home sometimes but Brian calls me on it.

I did a horrible job of exercising last week. I had meetings that encroached on my noon-time aerobic classes so that fell by the wayside. I did manage to get out and walk a couple times last week but that was it. Now I really need that ROM machine. I’m having a really hard time spending more than 4 minutes exercising knowing that I don’t have to.

I really don’t want to offend any of my readers but I have to talk about another quirk I have. I am horrified when I see people (mostly at work) wearing tapered pants, pleated pants, too short pants, or high waisted jeans AKA “mom jeans”. Even clunky heels are getting a small gasp out of me at times although admittedly I haven’t completely purged all of my chunky heels from my closet. This has all come from watching that show on The Learning Channel (TLC) “What Not to Wear”. I have been brainwashed into wearing pointy toes and skinny heels (although I sometimes give in and wear my clogs or Tevas).

I went to our Big Book Club Holiday Party on Friday night. This time I didn’t read the book which turned out to be OK because it wasn’t even mentioned. I drank two Cosmos which is my favorite cocktail and ate some yummy food, chatted with a few people and then we started the gift exchange. The gift exchange is the kind where you draw a number, and you go in that order and you can either pick a new gift or steal from someone who already has a gift. The key to these gift exchanges is to never expect that you will get something you actually like. That way, you won’t be disappointed. In fact, you may even be pleased with the outcome. I mean, how often do you get something that you would actually buy for yourself? About .00001% of the time. I took some small tea light candles and a gift certificate to Starbucks. Now that is something that the average American will use. I managed to select a cool gift… red wine glasses. But they were stolen by the book club host, Tracy. I know Jill really wanted them though. Maybe Jill will end up getting them for Christmas since Tracy is her sister. So I picked another gift: a foot spa thing. Now this actually isn’t a bad gift but it takes up space in your house and I’m not sure how frequently I would use it. We’ll see. Tracy ended up being the only one who stole a gift and she was the hostess. I like giving her a hard time about that. It is true that Brian and I own about 50 wine glasses already…

Saturday morning we went to Jack’s school’s Christmas show which is always very cute. The little kids sing… well, the older kids sing and the younger kids stand up in front of all the adults looking terrified. But the adults all love that kind of thing. Jack was supposed to sing “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” but I never saw his lips move.

Later that morning, a couple guys showed up to install our fake grass. If you have read my blog from day 1, it was my first entry in August or September. It has taken that long to get our grass installed because of a misquote on the job, which is a long story I would rather not get into. I will say that it turned out really great looking and I will attempt to get some photos posted soon.

Saturday night we had our big Christmas party. We have had one every year since 1998. The first one in 1998 was a big drunk fest with a keg and 60+ people in a 1500 square foot house. The parties have changed quite a bit over the years. Now Brian makes a big huge delicious spread and we drink fine wines. Every year a few people drink a little too much but overimbibing is no longer an every weekend occurrence, since most of us have kids. It’s a night to let loose. I think we had about 40 people and the last people left about 12:30. Our recycling bin is full of wine and beer bottles. We didn’t get a baby-sitter because both kids theoretically should have been asleep by 7:30 PM which is the time the party started. Jack was in bed by 7:15 PM but Ty decided he wanted to party and stayed up until about 9:30 PM, the stinker. Fortunately, a couple guests were willing to hold him. I didn’t like spending 30+ minutes with him trying to get him to go to sleep and not spending time with the guests but oh, well. On Sunday, it was a little rough in the morning. I didn’t drink much at all but Ty was up several times during the night. We played in our new grass, I took Jack to the playground and then Jack and I went to get gelato and to the pet store.