Pickles & Dimes

I step off the deck, carefully avoiding the ice patches as Shorty sprints to sniff recently left rabbit prints. My face is covered with a scarf, my feet with boots, my head with a hat, my hands with gloves. The wind, thankfully, is absent. Shorty continues sniffing on his preordained trail, first checking the raspberry bush, then the holes in the fence, then the lilac tree. Stars twinkle shyly in the denim-blue sky, a moon sliver tucked in its back pocket. I close my eyes and repurpose the sound of nearby traffic as ocean waves crashing into rocks. The outside light glinting onto the snow makes it glitter like white sand. Beach sand. Warm beach sand. I burrow my nose further into my scarf. For a moment, there is no cold, only warmth. Shorty prances up to me holding up his paw, his rabbit hunt completed and his feet chilly.

“You’re right, buddy,” I tell him. “Let’s go back inside. It’s effing cold out.”

So, here’s another last-minute masthead I did, after weeks of laboring over another masthead that ended up looking like a two-fingered, cross-eyed zebra designed it. And do you know where I got the creative inspiration for this?

Buffalo Wild Wings. Yeah, some people’s muse is music or art or poetry. Mine is spicy garlic wings and a UFC fight in the background.

While we were there, I thought of no less than five masthead ideas. If I had a laptop, I would set up shop in one of their restaurants and produce the next great literary novel.

But since I don’t, the world will have to be content with my clip art masterpieces (using the word “masterpieces” very loosely, of course).

Happy 2009!

Hi guys, I hope you all have fun New Year’s plans. Speaking of which, what are your fun New Year’s plans? Do you have any NYE traditions? Tell us!

Tonight, we’re going out to eat somewhere and then popping open some champagne at either midnight or 9:30, depending on how tired we are. Whee!

For fun, here are some of my favorite posts from 2008. Enjoy!

January: The one where Jason made me bleed

February: The one where we acted like 8-year-olds

March: The one with the naughty mushrooms

April: The one where Jason gets a toothpick in his knee

May: The one with the stalker cardinal. (By the way, this bird is still doing this to Jason’s parents!)

June: The one where the week never ended

July: The one with the mustachioed cats

August: The one where we add to our nutty family

September: The one with the little things that make me happy

October: The one with the quarter-hoarding rednecks

November: The one where Jason thought I was the dog

December: The one with the death-desiring squirrel

Did everyone have a nice holiday? We did. I got a box of bacon from my parents as one of my gifts, and Jason got a huge set of decorative toothpicks (to commemorate this). Fantastic. We also managed to forget our camera at my aunt’s house and Jason’s wedding ring at his parents’ house. (He took it off to wash the dishes, SO HE CLAIMS.)

We played Pictionary at my aunt’s and the boys totally kicked the girls’ butts. It was ridiculous. For example, here is an artist’s rendering of what my father drew:

The guessing went like this: TUBE! TEST TUBE! SCIENCE! EXPERIMENT!

From “tube” to “experiment” in two seconds. Are you kidding me?

And then this, drawn by Jason:

Again, the guesses came with rapid, eerie precision: MOUNTAIN! PEAK! STEEP!

The leaps of logic they made were insane. It’s like they shared a brain.

Take, for instance, this:

This may look like a hamburger to you and I, but to the brain trust menfolk, it only took them three guesses to get “OREO COOKIE.” WhatEVER.

Meanwhile, I drew this:

And had to eventually bail because the closest anyone got was: TV!

It is so obviously a VCR. God.

It also didn’t help that my aunt was trying to get us to guess “democrat” and drew an elephant instead.

I won our little fantasy football pool (based on science!) and am trying to figure out what to do with the money ($68. Note to illegal gambling officials: this money is imaginary!). I offered to put it in our safe for um, safekeeping, but Jason said I should spend it on myself. And then I noticed a local massage place has 50-minute massages for only $39. Well, that was easy.

I’m not going to make any New Year’s resolutions this year, but here’s a list of things I vow to do to make 2009 more fun.

- Use my telescope more often on starry nights.
- Wear the jewelry that’s buried in my jewelry box.
- Open a new box of cereal instead of avoiding the last sawdusty remnants of the old cereal.
- Compliment the pets more on their cuteness.
- Start a new knitting project before my old, boring one is done.
- Surprise Jason by taking him somewhere unexpected, unexpectedly.
- Try some new recipes from the 20 cookbooks I inexplicably own.
- Live in the moment. If I’m reading, focus on the book. If I’m at work, focus on work. If someone’s talking, focus on what they’re saying. Etc.
- Go rock climbing. And to an archery range. And to a shooting range.
- Bake those cookies, even if I only end up eating two (or eight).

How about you? What would you like to do more of in 2009 that’s not really a resolution?