A Very Viking Christmas

I went to Iron Cordoba's "A Very Horny Christmas" party at The Visualite theater last night. Get it. "Horny" because of the horned Viking helmets? It was good blasphemy! A jolly old time was had by all. I got there early to claim a good spot where I could prop my feet up and have some grog.
Before the show started I had to get a picture of the Gibson Les Paul and the Ibanez Destroyer; seeing them is always like seeing old friends. In true Jay Tilyard fashion there were stacks and stacks of Marshalls, Spinal Tap style.

Jay and I were a couple for nearly eight years. We split up about six years ago and now I really enjoy going to these local Rock Star events he and his girlfriend Tracie put on.
Here they are at a previous Viking party. (I don't know how to make this picture bigger)


Some things never change, he is joined on stage by friends we went to high school with to perform spoofs of heavy metal classics with a Viking Christmas twist. Imagine Danzig's "Mother" but with lyrics changed to "Rudolph, if you really wanna guide my sleigh..." Hilarious!
With a population around 1 million Charlotte is still such a small, small town...Six degrees of separation? Around here it's more like two. Here is Kerrie Clayton, my friend Dee's oldest daughter who I've known since she was a sweet little six year old girl. Dee and I worked at Cobourn & Sons together when I was 19 and she would bring Kerrie in to work after picking her up from school and she would play in the saw dust while we refinished furniture.
And look at her now! In a blood wrestling match she emerges from the gore victorious!
Kerrie and Dee have started producing events locally under the name "Goralicious" and they teamed up last night with Iron Cordoba. Here is a hasty shot of just some of the mayhem on stage. The event brought together go-go dancers, thespians, musicians and hangers-on for a truly
"Unholy Night, the screams are fast declining...

...it is the night that the world felt our girth! Dead lay our foes, in blood and guts reclining...
...for one night it was pure Hell on Earth!"

After cleaning off most of the fake blood here are Kerrie Clayton, Jay Tilyard and Dee Clayton rejoicing in Christmas glee. Lock up your maidens!
And to think, years ago Jay briefly worked with us in the shop stripping furniture out back while a first grade Kerrie dug up worms and brought them in to show off to me and Dee. And all these years later we are brought together again by our common love of rockin' out, mayhem, blasphemy?

Yes, all three!
I love my peeps.

Fancy

I am so fancy that this is how I do water.


After a long and wonderful day spent baking homemade chocolate cupcakes and planting a flat of pansies I settled down with a glass of water and relaxed. The weather was the perfect amount of cold and the sun was shining. I spent most of the afternoon with the heat turned off and the doors open, coming in and out of the house doing chores. I made cupcakes for my MS group's Christmas get together and replanted my front porch pots with gorgeous winter cabbages surrounded by multicolored pansies. I also raked and swept the tiny porch on the side of my house and cleaned everything up, throwing lots of crap away, planting bulbs, relocating a rosebush, and putting more pansies in the flower bed. I just love days like this, when you get done and everything is improved at the end of the day.
As a landlord once told my parents when they were young and renting a house in Picayune, "I try to keep this place beautified"! I try to keep it beautified on the inside too. Last year when I was gimped up with MS I vowed to purge stuff and make everything neater and simpler in my home. I have made significant progress I suppose, but still have a lot to do ahead of me. I have two spare rooms that need to be emptied of so much useless crap, and a back porch I would be horrified for anyone to see.
I watch those shows where a person dies and somebody has to go in their house and empty it out...and sometimes the place is just wrecked and you think "Lord, look at how she was living; just layin' in filth!" If I die I want them to come in my house and say "Well she sure had everything in order and she didn't even know anyone would be coming over!"
When my house is clean it makes my mind feel clear, you know? Cluttered house, cluttered mind. I'm not materialistic but I do love my stuff. None of my stuff is expensive, I'm just too thrifty for that. Besides, yo9u can't just go out and buy the things I like. One of my favorite things is this bird's nest a friend gave my as a birthday gift. Isn't it pretty under this glass cloche? That is the foot of a Cooper's Hawk resting in it. How I came upon the dead hawk is a funny story, for another time...



Bird's nest: free
bird foot: free
glass cloche:$2.12
fancy display: priceless.

Last night I decided to rewire my Mary Icon light thing. Here it is before. It had an old stiff brown non polarized cord with no switch. Fire hazard? Maybe, but perhaps most importantly, ugly and not very functional. So I got a sacrificial electric candle to rig up for my Catholic art thing. I still don't know what to call it.
Tod do the job I used wire cutters, a utility knife, heat shrink tubing, and not shown, electrical tape. I disassembled the candle, but ended up just cutting the cord close to the base. Then I took the sleeve off the candle, removed the socket and stripped the last half inch of all four wires to be spliced. Then I twisted them together, and covered the splices in heat shrink tubing. The fun part is heating it up with a lighter and watching it shrink up tight around the twisted wire. I couldn't get pictures of this step because I only have two hands.
Then I cute down the white plastic tube that looks like a candle and slid it over the splice which I wrapped in electrical tape to keep everything neat and together.
And viola! The finished product, a pierced metal Virgin Mary 4 watt light thing. I don't know what to call it. But still, now I have a roll cord switch and it probably won't catch on fire. Nice!

It's Christmas Time!

Yay! I finally got my little tree standing up straight. It's been jammed in that PBR bucket crooked since I put it up a couple of weeks ago.
Isn't this better?

I had to get a picture of this hot pink electric doll head atrocity; I just love it! I think it's just me though. But you know what? It's my house and I like it so there.


I remember our first fake Christmas tree when I was in kindergarten. We took Dad's Red Truck (it was a 1978 Chevy Diesel that I was in LOVE with) to a store right around the corner from where I now live and took the tree home fully decorated in the back! We went inside and there were these fancy big trees all decked out, Mom saw the one she wanted and said "I want that one right there with all the decorations; load it up". Mom drove home and Dad sat in the back with the tree to keep it from blowing away!
Me and Bran would lay under the tree and look up into the magical wonderland of lights and ornaments. Lord, no wonder kids love Christmas so much! When I was really little we had all the cool tiny wooden toy ornaments and it was so hard not to play with them. I guess I did and that's why they didn't survive all these years later...
But they live on in my memory, along with that magical feeling children get as Christmas draw nigh...

Christmas Chorus (and sister worship)

Tuesday night was Ellie's first choir gig. They did a secular Christmas program, it seemed to revolve around a plot based on Frosty The Snowman. I couldn't get close enough to get good still shots. You'll notice Ellie is the tall blond bombshell in red, one of her best friends Zoe is to her right wearing green. They were all so cute! All those angelic little voices singing together sounded so sweet.

Her little sister Cassie sat in back of the audience cheering her on with gusto. Here she is hands raised making the Devil horns; the traditional raised arm signal reserved for the coolest Rock concerts! Once she saw me sneaking pictures of her she really started hamming it up.
On the way out of the school we passed some really good elementary school art on the walls. I wish I had gotten more pictures. Ellie stopped to show me one of her drawings that she was not particularly pleased with. It is like pulling teeth trying to get her to consent to a photo at this age, but Cassie is more than willing (if you can get her to hold still long enough).
Actually this picture pretty much sums them up. Cassie has never held still for one instant since she came into this world. Here she jumps straight in the air mid-photo; a blur next to her much calmer big sister. This is how they appear at any given moment.
Cassie drives Ellie bonkers sometimes, but I always try to explain little sisters to her. "Ellie," I say, "your little sister is the one person in the world who will always be your biggest fan; she thinks you are the coolest, most talented, most beautiful, smartest, toughest, most awesome person ever no matter what."
I think they are so lucky to go to school together. Brandi and I were four grades apart and only went to the same school at the same time when I was in kindergarten through second grade, while we were in dreaded private school together.
Charlotte Country Day was a big campus with many different buildings spread out so classes always walked to lunch, gym, the library, etc. in single file lines led by the teacher. Whenever my class would happen to pass her class I would wave vigorously at her like she was a celebrity! I was so proud to be her little sister. "There's my big sister!" I would announce to my classmates. The word "sister" being synonymous with "hero".
I have been to Rocky River Elementary to have lunch with the girls or go to a book fair and seen Cassie say "Hey there's Ellie!" and waive to her with her usual gusto. As much as they may drive each other nuts at times, the family tradition of sister worship continues.

Sisterhood is a sacred institution that transcends tattle-tailing, clothes-stealing and favorite- possession-breaking. Souls that chose to join in the strongest alliance on Earth come as sisters.
As Brandi said upon my arrival from the hospital "Thank you for getting her for me, she's just the kind I wanted".

Rainy day tasks

Ah, Tuesday...
on this week my favorite day is drippy and cold. From my kitchen window everything looks Christmasy and festive! I have a tiny poinsettia in a silver sugar bowl instead of the usual giant variety. I'm not the biggest fan of the iconic Christmas house plant, but I think everything is adorable when in miniature form.

Stuck inside for the day, I decided to finally get around to the tedium that is organizing my kitchen junk drawers. Truth be told this is a task that I enjoy, but I have to be in the mood for it. (That's why I haven't done it in over a year). I know this may seem boring, but look at how neat these drawers are! Aren't you inspired to clean out your own junk drawers, or maybe yours are already perfectly obsessively organized (you know who you are). If I had taken a before picture you'd be more impressed.


Also on my to do list was writing Christmas cards. Done! I'll put them in the mail as soon as I get stamps later...It took much longer than I thought it would. I didn't send any last year with all the MS rigamarole I was going through at the time, so this year I extra enjoyed the task. You've got to enjoy all the little things that we all take for granted.
Did you notice the doll heads? Guilty as charged.
What else would you use to decorate a pink metallic tree with pink lights? I do have my weaknesses. What the Hell? You only live once!

Saturday night I loaded up the dog and went to McAdenville with Mom, Danny & Ellie. McAdenville is an old mill town south of Charlotte that puts up incredible Christmas lights every year from December 1st through the 26th. They have been doing it for 54 years and people come from miles around and sit through stop and go traffic just to behold the spectacle of thousands of white, green and red lights. It was the kids' first trip to "Christmas town U.S.A."! Mom stayed in the car in the crawling traffic while I got out to walk Roxi with Danny & Ellie.
Along our walk Danny is easily convinced to pose with lit up decorations saying "Show dis to my Mama"! We also passed a group of firemen and a real Santa Claus passing out suckers. Danny told Mimi that was not the real Santa; there's no fooling him. He only just turned four, what a skeptic!
Here he was before we got out and walked. He chanted "GET-OUT-AND-WALK! GET-OUT-AND-WALK!" and Roxi and I were eager to agree with him. It was a beautiful night, just the right amount of cold to be festive but not uncomfortable.
Just one of the houses all decked out for the season...

Gassing up before going into town. Roxi is learning to sit patiently in the back of Mom's car.
A good time was had by all!