{"id":2978,"date":"2008-11-24T19:29:20","date_gmt":"2008-11-25T02:29:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/?p=2978"},"modified":"2008-11-28T20:56:57","modified_gmt":"2008-11-29T03:56:57","slug":"hit-or-miss-holidays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/2008\/11\/24\/hit-or-miss-holidays\/","title":{"rendered":"Hit-or-Miss Holidays"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Strange things are afoot in our household.  Sure, everyone has been trading viruses for a month (there&#8217;s the 8-hour vomit one, the lingering fever one, the sore throat one, and the head cold one), but still, things seem&#8230; unseasonably calm.  The last two weeks have been difficult with Paul working around the clock (literally) to get the outbuilding weather-proof before it rained, added into the whole Will&#8217;s-party thing, a week&#8217;s visit from Paul&#8217;s Mom, ongoing illness, school stuff, and job deadlines&#8230; but still, it&#8217;s been okay.  I&#8217;ve even been getting work done and met a deadline today with relative ease and no late nights.  Then I realized.<\/p>\n<p>I said &#8220;no&#8221; to teaching this fall.<\/p>\n<p>I must remember how good it feels to say no to things every once in awhile.<\/p>\n<p>Except caffeine.  I&#8217;ve lived life without and <em>ooooh my<\/em>, it feels good to be back on the wagon.<\/p>\n<p>Tonight I started to inventory all the things I&#8217;ve collected this year and am very close to being completely done with the holidays.  (Except for Paul, who is most likely getting a yet undetermined bacon-related something for spoiling the Wii surprise.)   Last year, we sent out Mardi Gras cards because we were that behind.  Today, our holiday cards arrived (I&#8217;m not happy with the color Shutterfly added to them, but hey, the price was right).  I feel like I&#8217;m mellowing into a &#8216;this is what the season is suppose to be about&#8217; place and it feels all starched and ironed, way too Norman Rockwell to fit my one-step-away-from-nervous-breakdown mode of operation.  The question is, then, what in the world am I forgetting?<\/p>\n<p>Don&#8217;t be surprised if our house burns down tomorrow.<\/p>\n<p>Here is a holiday that we sort of missed, though.  Halloween.  That was when I kicked off our family&#8217;s month of illness by ruining Halloween.  No carved pumpkins this year!  But a few weeks before, I tried to be crafty&#8230; and even have proof.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-2984\" title=\"halloween\" src=\"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/11\/halloween.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"499\" height=\"333\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/11\/halloween.jpg 1345w, http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/11\/halloween-300x199.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 499px) 100vw, 499px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Aren&#8217;t they cute?  My favorite part is Franken-pumpkin&#8217;s bolts sticking out of his head.  Please ignore the trash behind him that I obviously didn&#8217;t see when I took the picture.  And the fact that the flowers are&#8230; ahem&#8230; not blooming.  When I finally got around to taking this picture, they&#8217;d been out a month.  (That&#8217;s why the bat&#8217;s eyes are falling off.)<\/p>\n<p>Actually, they were suppose to be even cuter.  Will and I spent an entire Saturday peeling oranges and limes, which we cut into nose and eye shapes and dried in the oven for 3 hours.  Will took some pictures of me cutting.  (Will did the peeling.)<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-2979\" title=\"halloween-1\" src=\"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/11\/halloween-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"333\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/11\/halloween-1.jpg 1536w, http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/11\/halloween-1-300x200.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I think this one has a cool artsy quality.  One that comes from expertly putting the camera on the counter top and randomly pressing the shutter because &#8220;the camera is too heavy&#8221; to hold.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-2980\" title=\"halloween-2\" src=\"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/11\/halloween-2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"333\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/11\/halloween-2.jpg 1536w, http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/11\/halloween-2-300x200.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Here are the eyes and noses.  I help him aim a bit before he pressed the shutter for this photograph.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-2981\" title=\"halloween-3\" src=\"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/11\/halloween-3.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"333\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/11\/halloween-3.jpg 1536w, http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/11\/halloween-3-300x200.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Will painted pumpkins to make the bat.  Initially, we were going to make three and hang them on the porch.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-2982\" title=\"halloween-4\" src=\"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/11\/halloween-4.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"750\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/11\/halloween-4.jpg 1024w, http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/11\/halloween-4-200x300.jpg 200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t think he cared a bit that we only managed to get wings and eyes on one.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-2983\" title=\"halloween-5\" src=\"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/11\/halloween-5.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"333\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/11\/halloween-5.jpg 1536w, http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/11\/halloween-5-300x200.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Strange things are afoot in our household. Sure, everyone has been trading viruses for a month (there&#8217;s the 8-hour vomit one, the lingering fever one, the sore throat one, and the head cold one), but still, things seem&#8230; unseasonably calm. The last two weeks have been difficult with Paul working around the clock (literally) to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[81],"tags":[127,128],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2978"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2978"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2978\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2987,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2978\/revisions\/2987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}