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When I hosted Thanksgiving, apparently my frantic dashing around in the kitchen searching for serving utensils and plates did not go unnoticed. After this Christmas, I am now all set with serving forks and spoons and gorgeous platters and even a gravy boat and ladle. Phew. You never realize quite what you're missing in your kitchen until you desperately need it. My mom and I got up while it was still dark and drove off to the outlet stores to do the traditional after-Christmas shopping. I was shocked by how few people were out there, standing by the doors waiting for them to open. I can only assume that most people (the clueless ones, of course) went to the mall, and that all the mad crowds were there, because we breezed through the stores with nary a broken nail or tug-of-war at all. We blew through the first store and then met up with my older sister, who joined us in the mad dash for the fabric store where we were greeted with signs of 75% off everywhere we turned! And in that store, I finally scored. Every year I make cookies and every year I rummage around and can find nothing large enough to store cookies in, and every year I end up lining a cardboard box with foil or waxed paper in order to keep the cookies fresh. But no longer! They had round metal tins - perfect for storing cookies! I was so excited! I could have stopped shopping right then, I was so thrilled with this find. But luckily my mom and sister had other plans, plans that involved a craft store (garland! Birthday presents for the nephew!) and Trader Joe's, where I browsed merrily through the frozen foods section plucking all manner of delicious dinners from their depths. And speaking of loot, I did promise to tell you about the gnome. This past Halloween, we drove to Richard's parents' house to see a giant inflatable Frankenstein in their front yard. Richard and his sisters eyed each other in horror, and noted that their father has now become one of *those* people, and that the next step was sure to be either pink flamingos, or a lawn gnome. As the words "lawn gnome" were uttered, there was a clap of thunder and lightning flashed and we all simultaneously raised our hands to the heavens and cried out in our best mad scientists cackles. Okay, so the last bit didn't really happen. But suffice it to say that since Halloween, Richard and I have been on the lookout for a lawn gnome, and about two weeks before Christmas, we finally found one. Originally we were just going to wrap it in tinfoil and leave it in his dad's stocking as the anonymous gift, much like we did with the Christmas haggis last year. But then Richard got a marvelous idea (again with the thunder and lightning and mad scientist cackling) and after firing off email to everyone we could think of begging for pictures, off we set with digital camera and gnome in hand, to put in place our evil plan. Hence, Dandelion Snailrider was born, a tiny little lawn gnome riding a fierce Patagonian warrior snail. And each of the 15 days before Christmas, he wrote an email to Richard's dad, including a picture of where he'd been that day. That plucky little gnome went all over the world. He watched the Iditerod in Alaska. He drank tea with the queen in England. He rode the train in the Grand Canyon, and pondered signs at the North Pole. And all the while he wrote longingly of the end of his journeys, when he would finally reach my in-laws' house, where awaited a haggis of surprising vintage and a lawn of subtle pleasures. To say that the gnome gag was a success is putting it mildly. We even managed to recruit a young neighbor down the street who collected the gnome at the appointed hour and then placed it on the porch, rang the doorbell, and ran away so that the recipient would not see one of us actually in possession of the gift. Granted Richard's dad decided that in revenge he would break out the haggis (which had been in the freezer since last year) and cook it for Christmas dinner, and require all of his children to eat at least one bite. And granted he's now been promising revenge and sending pictures of all manner of tacky lawn art. But it was great fun to implement. Richard - the mastermind behind all the photo editing, and the man responsible for the letters themselves - has uploaded all correspondence and pictures to this location. And you can see that at the very end, the gnome did, indeed, get to partake of the haggis (which actually wasn't nearly as scary as any of us were sure it would be).
Tis the season for Holidailies!
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