{"id":2390,"date":"2010-12-22T09:58:59","date_gmt":"2010-12-22T14:58:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/?p=2390"},"modified":"2010-12-22T09:58:59","modified_gmt":"2010-12-22T14:58:59","slug":"its-beginning-to-look-a-lot-like-something","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/its-beginning-to-look-a-lot-like-something\/","title":{"rendered":"It&#8217;s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Something"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Pro Tip: If you&#8217;re looking to get yourself into the Christmas Spirit and you&#8217;re tired of all of the Christmas songs that you normally listen to? Don&#8217;t, for the love of all that is good and holy, click on the Jessica Simpson Christmas Album in Rhapsody. It will make you want to jab a rusty spork in your ears and then sell your soul to the Baby Satan.<\/p>\n<p><em>Please<\/em> don&#8217;t ask me how I know this.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s almost Christmas, which means that it&#8217;s that one time of the year when we pay somebody to clean our house so my family doesn&#8217;t think we&#8217;re a bunch of slovenly pigs. Which means that it&#8217;s also that one time of year where I&#8217;m afraid to touch anything in my own house, for fear that I&#8217;ll make it dirty. Our bathtub is white, people. <em>White<\/em>. Who knew? I had somehow managed to forget! It&#8217;s almost enough to make a girl avoid bathing, in order to preserve the shiny shininess. Which, of course, would be self defeating. I&#8217;d just end up dirtier and dirtier and it would eventually transfer onto other areas of our house that are also cleaner than they&#8217;ve ever been and ever will be.<\/p>\n<p>Too bad it&#8217;s too cold to hose myself off in the backyard.<\/p>\n<p>The nice thing about owning pets? They will manage to dirty up the house in ways that will leave me feeling guilt-free. Who coughed up the hairballs all over the upstairs hallway? Obviously, not me. And if it was Kristian, we really need to do something about his diet. Last year, I sat in our living room, gazing at our twinkling tree, getting high off of Pine-sol fumes and feeling, for a brief, shining moment, like it was really and truly <em>nice<\/em> to own our house. Then the cat puked in the front hallway. Then the dog lined up next to her and started puking as well. Then I yelled &#8220;This is why we can&#8217;t have nice things!&#8221; and went to get a rag to clean up after them.<\/p>\n<p>A big and hearty thanks to the lovely woman who agreed, at the last minute, to come and clean for us. A big and hearty round of boos to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.home-cleaning-boston.com\/\">Masters Home Services<\/a>. I purchased a voucher to have them come and clean from BuyWithMe. Not only have they <em>not<\/em> come to clean my house, it&#8217;s been over a <em>month<\/em> since I first contacted them. I have yet to receive one email or phone call back from them. Even if they weren&#8217;t able to come and clean, they could have saved me a lot of aggravation if they&#8217;d just responded in November and told me. At this point, I just want my money back.<\/p>\n<p>What have I been doing, if not cleaning my house? Well, first I was cleaning the house for the house cleaner. Because that makes perfect sense to me. Then? I was baking cookies. Then? I was cleaning up after the cookies. (What? I&#8217;m a messy baker). Then? I did my Christmas shopping, <em>all<\/em> of Kristian&#8217;s Christmas shopping and some of my Dad&#8217;s Christmas shopping. Somebody, please, take my credit card away. Even if I&#8217;m getting paid back, it could really use a rest. Maybe a nap in a dark room with a cold washcloth on its face. Come to think of it, I could use one of those as well.<\/p>\n<p>Quick, somebody bring me a festive, holiday, coffee drink and a nap! Bonus points if you take all of those Christmas cookies out of my house so I stop eating them.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;Tis the season for your pants to stop fitting properly.<\/p>\n<p>Damn pants.<\/p>\n<p>I never liked those pants.<\/p>\n<p>Today is my last day at work before Christmas, which means that I&#8217;m finally getting into the Christmas Spirit. In order to share it with you all, here is this year&#8217;s holiday card:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a title=\"Holiday Card by hopers, on Flickr\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/hopers\/5282565687\/\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm6.static.flickr.com\/5044\/5282565687_e192495080.jpg?resize=354%2C500\" alt=\"Holiday Card\" width=\"354\" height=\"500\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>It was surprisingly difficult to put together. I, apparently, have the self confidence of a young Cowardly Lion. It doesn&#8217;t help that I took about 45,672 photos of my sister Melissa&#8217;s adorable children this year and about 7 photos with me and\/or Kristian in them. I didn&#8217;t like the way I look in any of them. I joked on Twitter that our card this year would consist of photos of Gracie and other people&#8217;s children. It would have been confusing but <em>adorable<\/em>. I just might make it happen next year.<\/p>\n<p>I wanted to use this photo, but Kristian wouldn&#8217;t let me:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a title=\"IMG_6898 by hopers, on Flickr\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/hopers\/4223517895\/\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2782\/4223517895_e563813e51.jpg?resize=500%2C357\" alt=\"IMG_6898\" width=\"500\" height=\"357\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>What? I think it pretty accurately captures our general essence, wouldn&#8217;t you say?<\/p>\n<p>(Please don&#8217;t answer that).<\/p>\n<p>Merry Christmas\/Happy Holidays, everyone!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pro Tip: If you&#8217;re looking to get yourself into the Christmas Spirit and you&#8217;re tired of all of the Christmas songs that you normally listen to? Don&#8217;t, for the love&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8,41,4,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","category-holidays","category-photos","category-random"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5yggS-Cy","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2390"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2390\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2396,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2390\/revisions\/2396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hoperoth.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}