Where’d that last month go?

The holidays have come and gone, leaving behind an exponentially growing heap of work on my desk, a good eight extra pounds on my ass, and a million little pine needles all over the floor, all of which, for the life of me, I can’t seem to manage to vacuum up.

Let’s recap quickly, shall we?

Our annual Christmas party returned this year with a bang (and, of course, a John Bang!), after a yearlong hiatus while we were in Nashville. (Did I seriously live in Nashville? I can hardly remember.) It just didn’t feel like the holidays last year without inviting all eight million of our nearest and dearest to come over and trash our house. The good news is, I only got a picture of the “before.” I wish my house looked like this all the time:

Note the overwhelming presence of bacon-wrapped items:

Actually, apart from waking up to an arctic breeze flowing through my living room through an open window (!!!!), the collateral damage this year was far less extensive than what I remember from the past, though perhaps I had too many glasses of champagne to notice. A special shout-out to the girliest girls I know, Elizabeth and Abbie, who took over the kitchen and, I suspect, refilled my glass when I wasn’t looking. Let it flow, girls, just let it flow.

Christmas Eve and Day proved mild and, dare I say, almost a little boring? Nary a tear was shed (and I kept myself together pretty good, too) in our Honda CR-V as Rob and I raced back and forth between family parties, counting the minutes to ensure we were spending precisely the same amount of time with each family. We used to feel a crushing sense of guilt that we were Ruining Everyone’s Christmas and Beloved Family Traditions for our parents and siblings, but this year, either they stopped caring, or we did. It was awesome.

This is not to say that the holidays didn’t bring about the requisite drama. Christmas Eve (and Day) found me in the midst of eight dog fights, at least 25 Jews eating ham, a five-hour drive from Chicago to Highland Park, one ball-in-a-cup smackdown, two Mexican “hired help”-ers admiring my wedding album, one Korean Jazzercise instructor telling me how I look much less fat now than I do in my wedding album, and a partridge in a pear tree.

Mmmmm …. ham.

Mexico’s favorite game for over 100 years!

¡Qué gorda la novia! 

Molly, before going postal, holiday-style, on Autumn (my next dog will be a golden retriever):

and, of course, the grand finale:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Of course, no celebration of The Birth of Our Savior Jesus Christ would be complete without a group of Jews singing church hymns in four-part harmony around the hearth. Can you spot the Holocaust survivor? (Hint: She’s 95 and has the best seat in the house.)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Yes, my head nearly exploded the first time I experienced this bizarre ritual, too.

But such commitment to wholesomeness, so fervent as to transcend social and religious norms, certainly could not limit itself to just one holiday. And so, for those of you who still don’t believe that Rob’s family has a Thanksgiving talent show and a sing-a-long, including such beloved hippie family classics as “Feelin’ Groovy,” “This Land Is Your Land” and “You’ve Got A Friend,” I give you my new family, holding hands and singing “Kumbaya”:

(Just kidding, sort of. This is a little song by my friend Dan Fogelberg, about love, family, growing up, and the poignancy of life.)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Let’s see, where was I?

The new year sort of flew under the radar. I resolved to blog closer to daily than to monthly, and I promptly failed. My friends Liz and Joel have vowed to keep me on my toes, though — Joel because he misguidedly thinks I am hilarious, and Liz because she was getting really damn sick of looking at that ultrasound at the top of my blog for so long, for crying out loud, there are babies everywhere! – so you can all thank them for this gratuitously long entry.

Perhaps if I start blogging more often, Rob will start keeping his own new year’s resolutions. Sadly, I have yet to experience more than even the slightest hint that Rob might be giving me a back rub, in spite of his resolution to do so, and despite the fact that he knows full well what’s in it for him. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. If you know what I mean.

Though I have to hand it to my husband: he is coming home from work at a reasonable hour.  I suspect, however, that this has more than a little something to do with his brand new speakers. He loosens his tie, pours himself some bourbon, and settles in on the couch, flipping through the unending library of music on TiVo Rhapsody and listening to some tunes, man, all the while tuning out the rest of the world (including, say, his wife, or a dog whimpering by the door to be let out).

Speaking of Molly, she is about two incidents away from going to the glue factory. Apart from developing an overly dominant state of being (that’s Dog Whisperer-speak for getting into some nasty dog fights), she remains a mischevious holy terror around the house.

Because she can no longer have her head in the garbage for what amounts to a good four hours of the day (Abbie had the brilliant idea of turning the garbage can around), Molly has now redoubled her effort to retrieve food from the counter. The other day, while I was attempting to make corn chowder, I left on the counter a mixing bowl with two cups of whole milk (for which I had made a special trip to the store, and that I had just measured out and poured the rest down the drain) while I ran in the office to look at the recipe on the (laptop) computer (that I very well could have brought into the kitchen, but that would have made too much sense).

CRASH! SPLASH! Wait … splash?!?

I came running into the kitchen to find milk EVERYWHERE.

Note the tail in the background. Not pictured: the milk dripping from the tops of the cabinets and — I kid you not — the ceiling.

And, of course, that was the end of the corn chowder. It was the end of a really bad day, and I’m not gonna lie: I cried. I cried over spilled milk.

It has been snowing a lot, which has meant that I’ve been outside shoveling. We live in a condo building, and of course we are paying someone to do this kind of thing for us — not that he has done it in, oh, about four of the five years I’ve lived here, not that I’m counting, but the condo president refuses to fire him, and he happens to be the same neighbor that tried to punch me, so I’m not going anywhere near this one. (Wait, have I not told you that story yet?)

Anyway, I do a lot of shoveling. We all know my affinity for mindless household tasks and manual labor, such as painting the mantel or installing light fixtures, so I can’t exactly play the martyr.

Molly adores the snow and is thrilled when I ask her if she wants to “go shovel.” She treats a snowy day like a crime scene investigation, shoving her nose, then her snout, then her face and entire head into the snow banks, sniffing relentlessly to verify the identity of the culprit that has covered her entire world in this cold white stuff. Once she uncovers a piece of evidence — be it a stick, a piece of cloth, or a McDonald’s cheeseburger wrapper — she flings it up in the air and bounds over and through the snow, prancing around with trash hanging out of her mouth like she won a prize.

It’s good entertainment.

Here she is, enjoying a frigid afternoon and beautiful “wintry mix”:

Because she’s a cute dog, my neighbors assume (and insist) that she should be wearing a sweater, or at least some doggie boots. But I swear, Molly could live out in that snow and never get cold. When it’s time to go in, she puts on her best pathetic face and pleads for five more minutes.

Some days, I have half a mind to just leave her out there.

Have I suitably made up for having missed an entire month? I hope so. Even I’m getting sick of me by now.

Several months ago, Ben and Abbie had their first “for better or for worse” moment: they decided to run a marathon together.

They started out strong, running together six days a week along the lake shore, past their new condo and the grassy spot where they got engaged, nothing between them but the Chicago summer sunshine and a gigantic yellow lab.

Of course, life eventually got in the way – as it always does. Abbie’s responsibilities as Dimmer Queen of the World kept her out of town for days at a time, and Ben was spending more and more time in the lab, playing with worms under the auspices of finding a cure for cancer.

Then, Ben injured himself. He claims he hurt his knee trying to keep up with Abbie’s high school track-star pace, but the physician in him knows the truth: after one too many sleepless nights studying at Starbucks North & Wells, his leg muscles had finally atrophied.

It looked like Ben wasn’t going to be able to run the marathon after all.

But on the morning of the Chicago Distance Classic, he was up with the sun (like he is every day), pumping himself full of coffee (like he always does) and lacing up his running shoes (which were still brand new and in the box). Ben knew how important it was to Abbie that they run this race together, and that alone made it important to him.

So he ran with her.

He ran with her when the gun went off and thousands of people swarmed through the gates. He ran with her along the lake front, where they had begun their training, and he ran with her as the course grew unfamiliar. He ran with her when his knee began to ache, refusing her offers to stop to rest and rehydrate.

And when he could run no more, Ben did what he always did: he urged Abbie ahead.

This is a guy who manages to succeed in everything he tries — a talented student, scientist, singer, photographer, even drummer. You kind of want to hate him, but here’s the thing: he has absolutely no ego about it.

When it comes to Abbie, on the other hand, Ben has an undying confidence in her ability and insists that she follow her dreams. Like the time Abbie casually mentioned to Ben that she was thinking about getting her MBA –- and suddenly, business school catalogs mysteriously began to arrive in the mail.

For her part, Abbie is incredibly strong and independent. She’s out of town all the time, and she rarely whines about having a husband who spends 95 percent of his time in the lab. 

Ben and Abbie are both completely fine on their own. But here’s the remarkable part: after they’ve been apart for any appreciable amount of time, you can actually see them light up when are together again. Ben and Abbie love to be together, not because they need each other, but because they love each other. And that’s amazing, after ten years together — to still light up like that.

Anyway, Abbie ran ahead, determined to finish the race not just for herself, but for the both of them. She ran strong and fast, on the heels of the Ethiopians and the gazelles, and I swear to you that she was barely sweating.

When Abbie crossed the finish line, she kept on running. She looped back around the crowds, past Museum Park and back on the course, against the current of other runners. She ran until she found Ben, hobbling pathetically along the course.

All they had to do is look at each other, and they just lit up. And they knew they could carry on.

They ran together those last few miles, laughing and entertaining each other with their usual silliness and stupidity, the way only best friends can.

When they reached the home stretch, Ben and Abbie fell into step with each other. They were holding hands when they crossed the finish line.

Congratulations, Mr. and Mrs.! Have a great time in Maui! And Ben, stop reading my blog on your honeymoon! That iPhone is so confiscated.

You know what’s expensive? FURNITURE. Specifically, bedroom furniture. I can swallow dropping six hundred bucks on a nice kitchen table that I’m going to have to look at every day while I’m eating dinner off a $400 coffee table while sitting on a $500 couch and watching a television set that cost more than I care to think about. I’m even registered for a $200 saucepan that is never going to do anything more than heat up a can of Campbell’s soup.

But bedroom furniture? Really? Some fancy, expensive drawers in which to store my Old Navy wardrobe? A nightstand where I can stash stash old editions of Yoga Journal and the rosary I got for my First Communion and don’t know what else to do with? This is what I’m supposed to pay upwards of $4,000 for?

Seriously! A bedroom set costs four grand! Do you know how many fancy purses you can buy with four grand? That’s enough to take a nice trip to Italy to visit Andy and Sarah. Or buy a wedding cake in Maui, for that matter!

Of course, not all the furniture is quite this expensive, but can I help it if I have champagne taste? I like Pottery Barn, so sue me. But Target doesn’t sell king-size headboards, Ikea is disturbingly modern, and Roy’s Furniture in Chicago is full of (according to our dear friend J.G.) “paisley goy shit.” (MAN is it good to be back in Chicago!)

How in the world do people afford to furnish their homes?

In Nashville, we kept all our clothes on the floor of our walk-in closet (Rob’s heaped unceremoniously, mine stacked hapazardly but at least looking somewhat tidy). But the moving trucks are bringing all our stuff to our 1,400-square foot closetless condo on Friday, and I don’t know WHERE we’re gonna put it!