Litter

Happy New Year. Send your New Year's wish or resolution on a teeny piece of paper to be dropped in NYC when the clock strikes midnight.

New Year's Wish

Christmas 07

Gary and I will always refer to this Christmas as The Christmas in Which Hank Channeled Hugh Hefner. Hank received this robe as a gift from Santa and I think he's pretty much worn it straight for 72 hours. I am not kidding; he tucked it into his snow pants before heading out to sled today. Aside from the lack of Playboy Playmates, cigars, and martini glasses strewn about around here, it's been just like living in the Playboy Mansion.

The goal was 6:30 A.M.

I told the children that if they attempted to re-enact last year's Christmas debacle they would have to sit and watch their dad and me play with their toys and eat their candy all day. We made it until 6:10 and I managed to snap a few gift-opening pictures.

Merry Christmas

Hank's dream came true.

Contrary to his mother's long-term plan he will no longer have to wait until his wedding day to receive a game system. Santa brought one last night. The boxing game is proving to be popular with the whole family however Hope doesn't want to fight other characters. She just wants to hit the bag in the training sessions. Mr. and Mrs. Bickerson, and Hank, are enjoying pounding the crap out of each other in the ring.

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas full of joy, peace and love.

Santa Claus is coming to town

He knows if you've been bad or good and these two know they've been baaaaaad.

You can tell by her eyes how badly Hope wants to throw the checkerboard across the room.

Do you love dogs? Especially old dogs?

I can't stop reading dog books. This is the one I'm in the middle of now:

Rescuing Sprite

It's a sweet story about an old dog. There are tissues involved in the reading of said book. Many, many tissues.

Happy Saturday

What if there's Bears?

"It's good, it just needs more salt."

If bacon cookies aren't your style how about this?

Chicken-fried bacon

My new Christmas cookie

Bacon Chocolate Chip

Knitting

Have any of you knitters made anything with this slubby yarn? It's very fun.

Bernat Max

Christmas program

If you have a desire to see and hear an interesting Christmas program, I bet this will be good:

All is Calm: The Christmas Truce of 1914

Winter Wonderland

And after this I have to go search iTunes for James Taylor Christmas tunes.

Has this term already been coined?

Speaking of bad Photoshopping, I was talking to Hope today about coloring a Christmas picture for her awesome bus driver to go with the cookies we will give him on Friday. She has a better idea:

"Mom, I have a better idea. Why don't you photocrap a picture of a bus with me and my friends on it?"

Why Hope, photocrapping is my specialty.

He was not amused

We paid a little emergency visit to our local Genius Bar™ to seek the advice of a Genius™ Sunday after church. I think we've been excommunicated. From the Apple Store, not church. See here was the problem:

It's always safe to assume the worst when you see someone holding a blow dryer to a laptop keyboard. Mr. Bickerson had oopsy-daisied just a titch of Miller Light onto the keyboard Saturday night. (That's how we roll on Saturdays, yo.) Turns out that Mac laptops don't drink. So we let it dry out Saturday over night and made a Genuis™ appointment for the next day. By Sunday some of the keys were already functioning so Mr. B. knew it wasn't a death sentence. He really just needed a spare Mac keyboard to plug in and see if that was the extent of the problem.

Long story short: The computer is okay even if it does smell a little like fraternity 12 hours after a home game. Our Genuis™, however, has put us on The Official List of Apple Customers Who Shall be Shunned Henceforth.

"Christmas Card Done in Haste," or "Where are the Fingers from Hope's Left Hand?"

George would cry tears of shame and would pretend he didn't know me if he saw this:

.
I call this "Photoshop 001" because it's not up to "Photoshop 101" standards. And why was I unable to produce something a little bit more respectable? Because "Procrastination" is my middle name, my friends.

Christmas music link

From a story on NPR and featuring recordings of Vocalessence from this (and past) year's Christmas concert.

I'll believe it when I see it

I Can't Believe I'm Knitting Socks!

I'm not. Yet. I've only got as far as the gauge swatch and that didn't go smoothly, seeing that I need 5 dbl point needles size 4, not 3 in size 4 and 2 in size 5. I like to wing it, though.

Overheard during a playdate

Apparently after one too many Chinese songs had been sung:

Please just sing it in ENGLISH!

Link

When blogger's block strikes you can always link to dooce. It's the first blog I read when I get home from work. Today she has posted a link to a video which my review summarizes thusly:

(Dog+swelling music+child+passage of time)ocean=Video likely to rip one's heart out

(Click on her link to "All about my dog.")

Movie report

No Country for Old Men

Very, very good. Very, very bleak. We give it two depressed thumbs up.

Man cold

Gary didn't call paramedics like this guy did but he did call our neighbor who was a part-time ER doc. Gary was pretty convinced he was going to die of a sore throat and, because I couldn't stand any more whining and moaning, I went out to see Delores Claiborn which was a movie based on a Stephen King story where a woman kills her husband. Ha ha. Ha. Gary ended up having an emergency tonsillectomy and a lot of morphine for some serious pain. Apparently it is painful to grow an absess where your tonsils ought to be.

Great minds think alike...or like to deny suffering experienced by others. Fast-forward several years to a Sunday morning when by all outward appearances I am clearly having a freaking stroke. Gary takes me to the emergency room and tries to convince the ER doctor that he could probably take me home and do a couple of loads of laundry for me and I would be okay. Because he thought I was having a nervous breakdown. It turned out it was the best three-day vacation of my life (next to the Boundary Waters trip).

I tell this story because it makes me laugh a lot. And every time I tell it I have to apologize for re-embarrassing my man because when Gary realized how sick I was he was pretty scared that I was going to die.

Nevertheless, he is a weeny when he has a Man-cold.

Canoe Rainbow

Canoe Rainbow
Originally uploaded by Mrs. Bickerson.

Attention Flickr users: You can edit your photos online with Picnik. I think I've solved our Christmas card issue!

Rudolph

Hank: "Mom, Rudolph is Donner's son? Is that in real life or just on this show?"

Winter layer

I've started to pack it on. Everybody needs a little extra protection in a Minnesota winter even with the effects of Global Warming™. These damn tasty treats are going to be the main reason for my 10-pound weight gain over the next few weeks:

Trader Joe's Candy Cane Joe Joes

Don't show her this

Do you have a daughter who loves Little Mermaid? Don't show her this but this is my favorite contestant in the contest so far:

I heard myself say it

I turned into my parents while trying to read the directions on a new bottle of Advil this morning when I heard myself say: "Why do they make the directions so hard to read on these things?"