After the Great Condo Fiasco of 2005, we have been a bit gun shy about decorating the new house. Although I may not necessarily LIKE the colors that most of the walls are painted, none of them are as horrific as the Houses of the Holy orange of our bedroom in said condo. Most rooms are tolerable, especially now since the main floor bathroom is (mostly) completed.

I’ve inherited (thanks, Dad) a genuine fear of hanging pictures because OHMYGOD IT MIGHT MAKE HOLES THAT I HAVE TO SPACKLE! If there is something beyond the fact that I now do not vomit when I see the 3!!! different prints of wallpaper clashing mightily, I am now not afraid of spackle (I did, afterall, spackle most of all 4 walls. Oh, the damage that the wallpaper inflicted upon those poor walls). Since we are entertaining, I decided to both frame and hang many of the pictures we have been waiting to hang (waiting for what, I’ll never be sure..a bus to come, a train to go, or waiting around for a yes or no, I’m pretty sure that I was waiting for someone else to do this for me, but no one volunteered, sadly enough.).

Unfortunately for anyone who happens to walk into my home, the walls in the hallway now look as though pictures of my family have been vomited all over the walls. It makes us appear to be completely narcissitic and self-absorbed, which may be the case (2 blogs!! Oh, SNAP!!) and all, but yeah, it’s overkill.

I need to remedy this situation post haste, but am unsure how to do so. I don’t have any sort of eye for decorating houses and typically rely on bright and bold paint colors to mask this. Painting is, though, for now out of the question completely, so what to do? I’m dying for my home to be well put together and flow nicely, but have no real way of making this a reality. I love funky stuff, but I have no idea where to get stuff like that (and no, sadly, I was lying about the Miller Lite signs in my living room. They’re actually in my bedroom. Classy, I know). My family is FULL of useful people, so of course I have an interior decorator that I can invite over, but she’s OCD and might explode unless my home is perfectly cleaned.

How do normal people do this sort of thing? Any ideas?

In a glaring moment of either sheer stupidity or amazing brilliance (I’m blaming sleep deprevation here), I have offered to host Thanksgiving Day at my home this year. Brilliance because then I am not required to travel with two children in a car AND bribe someone to come by and take care of our menagerie for several days. Stupidity because I abhor cooking (true story: in kindergarten, my class was required to submit a recipie off of the top of our heads for a class cookbook. You know, “a room full of milk” and other such hilarious units of measure. My contribution was simple: Call China Light, order food, pick up in 20 minutes. To this day, this remains my favorite recipie, bar none) unless it is baking. I adore baking.

Every other year, we’ve diligently travelled up to Wisconsin to visit Dave’s grandmother in the nursing home and eat somewhat frightening turkey and stuffing. She never remembered who actually I was, I’m sure that I was just some blurry young thing to her but she always remembered Ben and looked forward to hearing him sing his Greatest Hits Album (including, but not limited to “Ring of Fire,” “Working Class Hero,” and “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”). She passed on this summer, which effectively let us off of the hook for Thanksgiving, which meant that Thanksgiving proper was free to be filled with such goodness as ordering junky pizza and drinking a 30 case of Miller High Life by ourselves.

Until I opened my big, fat, trap, and suggested that we could host this holiday. We have a tentative menu, which guarantees that we will waste approximately $60 on a piece of meat that will summarily be ruined by my minstrations. Thankfully, however, I am planning to make several pies that will hopefully overshadow my obvious shortcomings as a chef.

I have begun the process of getting my house back in order (after my recent bout with sleeplessness coupled with my wonky thyroid, I am starting to feel like a reasonable shadow of my former self), which is no small feat. While I am completely aware that the 4-6 people who will come by for Thanksgiving will neither notice nor care that Alex’s teeny clothes are now perfectly folded, organized, and stacked in fancy blue bins, I feel it is necessary, therefore it is (somewhere, Dave is cradling his head in his hands in frustration). It’ll be several weeks (a.k.a. Thanksgiving Day) before this process is completed, so on and on I will plug away.

But I have something completely special up my sleeve for this joyous day, something that no one (save for my husband, and now, The Internet) will have seen coming. Something that will be a new holiday tradition at my house: Schweaty Balls (if you are completely confused right now, go down and watch the SNL skit on this page. It’s about a minute long and worth every second. And no, I am not a teenage boy.)

After listening to me tell the baby over and over “It’s a Schweaty family recipie” and laughing completely by my lonesone, my husband suggested that I pull this stunt for the holidays. I am going to make some sort of ball-shaped cookies (no, not THOSE balls, silly), and put a index card with “Shweaty Balls” next to them.

When someone comments on them, Dave will begin the straight man monologue that he is so good at (about the balls feeling good in your mouth, ad infinitum, ad nauseum), which will surely send me into spasms of laughter. Hell, he’ll be lucky to get my ass back to the kitchen, women! after I have made said balls, as I will be too busy laughing at them. Since my family raised me, they will be expecting these sort of antics from me and laugh along side me, but the real treat will be seeing my uber-conservative in-laws react (the more that I think about this, the more I am convinced that marrying me was an elaborate retaliation method designed to drive his parents insane. I got back at my parents by smoking cigarettes (because in my home, everything else was just fine to do, so long as I didn’t smoke pot in the living room. Ah, hippies), and he got back at his by marrying a crude, crass, pre-marital sex-havin’, loud-mouth woman.), not because I don’t like them, but because I think that someday, they are going to have to learn precisely who their son married, Schweaty Balls and all.

Picture this scene: you’re out to breakfast with your significant other, having an otherwise unremarkable meal, when a table full of unruly children arrives. You try your best to ignore the increase in noise and finish your meal in peace, when, lo and behold, a child from said table walks over to your table and without prompting, sticks his hand into your open purse. The mother, gently chides the child for touching other people’s purses and you are left sitting, dumbstruck and awed by what just happened.

Having been a waitress as well as a hapless consumer, I am constantly surrounded by children and their parents. Hell, I have my own, whom I pick up and take to a school filled with MORE children. My point, roundabout as it may be is this: I see tons and tons and tons of kids. I genuinely like kids, truth be told, maybe I’m not the most gooshy of parents, but I dig the shorties. They crack me up.

I’ve been waiting awhile, trying to place my finger just on what I’ve been thinking, and on Monday it dawned on me. With the whole PC-bullshit generation of Baby Boomers kids having their own kids, it became highly fashionable to eschew the harsher punishments that were often handed down to us. I mouthed off as a kid? I got smacked. I didn’t listen to my parents? I got smacked. I lied? I got smacked AND grounded, and so on and so on.

Parents today want to subscribe to the whole new-agey parental role of being a guide to your child, a resource for them to use to navigate through the more tricky paths that life can offer. They are expected to reward positive behavior with praise and adoration (NEVER bribes) and overlook the negative behavior so as not to reinforce the attention. Yelling is passe, talking quietly (but don’t be TOO NEGATIVE!!!!) is in.

I think it’s bullshit. Your kids should respect you. They should respect you and they should respect authority.

I shudder to think of the generation of Special Snowflakes that will grow up and be SHOCKED to learn that really? We can’t all be fucking astronauts. Or ballerinas. Hell, we’re not all winners. I love my children and I’m not about to try and stomp on their dreams like tiny bugs, but at the same time, disappointment and failure are both real things. I’ll be there for my child when it happens, because it WILL happen.

And when my kid is wrong, I’ll say so. When he needs a spanking, he’ll get it. And he’ll respect me because I am his mother. Not his friend or his playmate, his mother. Which, at the end of the day, is a kazillion times more important.

I am his mother.

This is the only way we were dumb enough to have done what we just did.

Aunt Becky (looking in the mirror, probably inspecting for stray eyebrow hair): Hey Dave, would say I was more hauntingly or more mysteriously beautiful?

The Daver (randomly looking through a pile of mail, deciding it was fruitless, leaving it half-opened in favor of the Xbox): I had a really, really great idea. We should move the fireplace from the living room to the dining room. Can I pencil you in to do that tomorrow?

Aunt Becky (looking in a mirror, trying to look at own ass): I guess so. On a scale of one to ten, how hot is my ass?

The Daver (playing with his balls): A nine. I think we should consider buying a BIGGER TV and another X-box. Then I can play 2 games at once! Doesn’t that sound totally worthful?

Aunt Becky (still in bathroom, admiring newly colored hair from all angles): I can’t believe that you just said worthful. Anyway, I told my stylist, Linda, that I wanted my hair to look JUST LIKE BRITNEY’S, and look, she didn’t dye it enough. Do I look fat with blond hair?

The Daver (eyes have glazed over, but is now staring intently at box of Munchems willing them to come to him so that he doesn’t have to get up): No, honey. Hey, you wanna go out for a beer?

Me (making kissy-faces at self in mirror with new shade of Pussy Pink lipstick): Sure I’d like to order food. Big Girl wants an egg roll.

The radiator clanks so loudly that both jump about 4 feet into the air, completely skewing what the other heard

And that, folks, may be the reason that Dave and I were stoopid enough to CHOOSE to move the week before Christmas. I can’t think of any other sane person deciding that this would be the best course of action:

Sane Guy #1: Hey, it’s a couple weeks before Christmas. Wanna move?

Sane Guy #2: Are you fucking outta your mind? What kind of idiot would move now? Huh?

Sane Guy #1 (chuckles loudly): Juuuuuust kidding. Wanted to see if you were listening to me.

Come to think of it, Guy #1 sounds pretty female.

Some people keep pets to protect themselves and their families from the gamut of intruders, burglars, murderers, and rapists that regularly prey on innocent people. Because they’re always talking about that on the local Fear Segment of the news, so it must be true.

Dogs are a common favorite for this. My brother, for example, trained his German Shepard to attack me whenever I walked into the house. There is no love lost between us, obviously.

My parents have 2 large dogs that alert them when: a) Someone is approaching the house b)Another animal is approaching the house or c) a squirrel farts down the block. It’s actually quite tedious to live with if, you know, you ever want to sleep or study or talk on the phone.

I’ve HEARD of people having cats that do similar things, you know, meowing and hissing whenever someone new comes over. My own cats would NEVER do anything of the sort because they are much more concerned with napping or licking their own assholes. Although Finnegan, my 25 pound cat we call “The Deer Hunter” may attack someone carrying in a cheeseburger or spinach salad, but only so he could eat some of it.

Who am I kidding, he’d eat ALL OF IT.

Apparently, over at Casa de la Sausage, we have inadvertently developed a new hybrid of attack-critters. A nest of wasps decided that our back porch was the perfect spot for a summer home. We cohabitated quite well until this morning, when I was ruthlessly attacked by the mess of wasps.

I guess that wasps are too stupid to train to attack “undesirables,” despite my sorted efforts, which mainly consisted of putting pictures of Pashmina out by the hive and chanting “attack the beast” over and over.

So now, in a haze of insecticide, my porch rests.

Peacefully, even.