Feast your eyes on this...

All right, all right.  Everyone settle down.  I'm here now.

I just got back from shopping.  I know.  Shocker.  Me and Lady Gaga had some last minute mega sale-ness to attend to.  She's my favorite shopping buddy.  She's very patient when I have to go back and forth across the store when I forget stuff I already passed.  Oh.  I'm gonna tell you how that shopping trip breaks down right here and now!  This is the part where Artie would raise his fingerless gloved hand in the hair and say "testify!"  You should totally get that reference...  At Kroger, I like to give my Kroger card after everything has scanned.  It's cheap entertainment. So, after everything was rung up and before my Kroger card, my total was $249.xx.  After she scanned my Kroger card, my total dropped to $155.xx.  After my coupons, my total was $71.59.  That's right.  My grand total savings was $173.76 OR 71%.  Imagine if I still didn't have to buy some pull-ups for that sweet  skunk of mine.  Bless his heart.  He just can't hold his own in the night time.  Literally.  And also, I did buy some hummus, black olives, shredded carrots, an avocado, a cucumber AND some clearanced out Flat Outs for a totally killer sandwich for my lunch tomorrow.  I have to eat with a bunch of four year olds so I'm feeling a little entitled to a lovely grown-up meal.  So, that was an additional 10 buxish of splurge but my rationale is that Hubs DID say he wanted to have some hummus around.  And those ingredients are mighty healthy.  So, if I could just NOT eat every morsel of sweet in my house, move my arse a bit to lose a bit of it, AND eat these sandwiches all week, something good has GOT to happen.  Right?  right?

So, let's address those dangling threads from last night.  I told you I would tell you my Christmas revelation.  One of my favorite things to do when I am driving around at night alone in the car, is to leave the stereo off.   When the weather warrants it, I like to have the windows down a bit and just seep in that moving silence - moving like I'm in motion.  Not moving as in my arm hairs raise a little and I get a little verklempt.  It's wonderful.  Last night, however, I decided to keep the radio on.  The radio has been locked to the same station since roughly Halloween.  You know what I'm going to say next, don't you?  That right!   Christmas music!  I know that Thanksgiving hasn't occurred yet, but I kind of don't care.  I'm not big on Thanksgiving.  I mean - I'm HUGE on giving thanks.  I'm rather insistent on it and I try to make sure that the big dude upstairs is fully aware that I am cognizant of my blessed beyond measureness.  But I don't really have feelings about Thanksgiving as a day.  I guess because originally it was this romanticized holiday all about the pilgrims and the Indians coming together and having a feast with corn and gourds and turkey and cylindrically shaped gelled cranberries.  I accept it as an excuse for family to come together.  I certainly accept it as an excuse to eat lots of food.  But I'm not terribly moved - moved like the arm hair version, not like in motion -  or excited about the rest of it.  Maybe I'm just such a rebel that I'm not into traditions that are kind of forced on me.  For example.  I don't like turkey.  I'll eat some pressed turkey deli style product on a sandwich.  I'll eat some turkey meat with some gravy on a sandwich.  But turkey is just so precarious.  You really do get what you pay for when it comes to those big tasteless birds.  And no one wants to spend lots of money on a turkey!  At least no one I spend Thanksgiving with.  And I get that.  But, truly, the more you spend on a turkey, the more succulent it is, the harder it is to dry out and the more tasty.  But I have probably only had some such turkey once or twice in my life.  Certainly enough times to know that there is a difference.  But not enough times to treat it like a holy grail that I spend time pining for it until the next Thanksgiving arrives.  So.  For our Thanksgiving, we have ham.  Honeybaked, preferably.  But this year, we are providing Thanksgiving boxes for our church and we aren't going anywhere and we aren't hosting anyone.  We are on a budget and I don't feel bound to abide by anyone's expectations of what should be on the table.  I asked the kids tonight what they wanted for Thanksgiving dinner.  Here are the answers:  tacos, pizza, cheese, and the taco soup that she wouldn't touch for dinner tonight.  She wouldn't eat it tonight, but she wants it for Thanksgiving.  Whatever.  I just wanted to know what they would say.  Then Hubs wanted to "throw out some options".  Turkey.  Sweet potatoes with marshmallows on top.  Apple pie.  Lemon meringue pie.  Chocolate meringue pie.  Pumpkin pie.  It would seem that he thought that his mother was coming to cook him some sort of Thanksgiving feast (complete with an entire pie buffet, apparently...) because not only do I not make any of those things, but I don't even LIKE any of those things.  Not a one.  I like my sweet potatoes with a crunchy pecan, praline kind of thing going on atop.  I would eat a chocolate meringue pie if it was all I had to eat for my sweet tooth but I don't like meringue.  So, I don't know what we are going to do.  But I do know that Hubs is going to be HIGHLY disappointed.  Anywho.  I know that it's early yet to be listening to Christmas songs but I love Christmas.  I love decorating and baking and magic.  And I love celebrating the most audacious act of love ever - that God crammed Himself into little baby Jesus (oh, Talladega Nights, how I love thee...) and crashed into the earth into a smelly barn with itchy hay.  And I'm all too happy to start celebrating all that as early as the beginning of November.  So, I'm tooling around (shopping, you know.) and the windows are down and Christmas songs are playing and it's night.  And do you know what I realized?  White Christmases are highly over-rated.  I looked at my temperature gauge in my car and it said 68 degrees and I thought about all those people in California and Florida and before, I felt sorry for them.  Because I really believed that part of the magic of Christmas was the snow.  But you know what else about snow??  It's flippin' cold!!  I've had plenty of white Christmases.  I don't need snow for Christmas.  In fact, as I was enjoying those very favorable conditions, I found myself jealous.  That's right.  I was covetous of warm, clear Christmas.  I want that.  I want to wish people mele kaliki maka and not be quirky or charming because I'm saying something a little off beat.  I'm saying it because I'm in freakin' Hawaii and that's what we all say!!  And that, my firends, was my Christmas revelation.

Now, let's talk stuffing.  I bought more last night.  I know.  I know!  But it was apple stuffing.  And I can't get that at the mega sale.  I can't get the cranberry stuffing there either.  It's not enough to have cranberries, you gotta have cranberries IN other Thanksgiving goods.  And also, there were tear pads of coupons to try the apple stuffing.  I could get boxes for 29 cents each after that coupon.  And then, when I combined that with my buy 4 boxes of stuffing, get a fifth one free coupon, I'm not really sure how you could expect me to pass it up.  No.  Really.  How do I pass that up?

I watched Repo Men last night.  It was pretty cool.  I try not to get caught up in the personal lives of celebrities.  Actually, that is a total lie.  I am all up in their business but I'm trying not to be.  But I will tell you that I have trouble not judging a celebrity by the behavior and holding it against them when it comes to viewing their movies.  Like.  I'm definitely hard pressed to need to see anything with Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie.  I just don't respect them as people and the very public things they have done to hurt other people.  I know there are two sides to every story.  I know that it's not right for me to judge anyone.  But I do and I don't like 'em.  So, here comes Jude Law.  He's a known skank.  And maybe he's changed his ways.  I hope so.  I hope we all get  the chance to.  But I went ahead and watched his movie.  Plus I love me some Forest Whitaker.  That dude can act.  Did you see him in The Shield?   Did you see The Shield?  You just gotta.  On both.  So, Repo Men was all science fictiony and pretty violent.  I don't mind violence per se.  It's all in the circumstances.  For instance, I didn't mind it in Inglorious Basterds.  I think because it was Nazi violence.  I'm just sayin'.  They were stupid.  But the violence in Repo Men was a little tougher for me.  And I don't have something I can point to and say - that's why.  What was funny about it was that after we watched it, Hubs and I read the summary that Netlix had on it and it was completely different than the movie we watched.  The movie was based on a book so maybe that summary was about the book version.  Which is frustrating because I think you all know how I feel about the disassembly of the story that occurs when they turn a book into a movie.    I will give Repo Men 6 out of 10 Jenny's jewels.  Hubs was supposed to be working and was more interested in the movie than his computer so I'm going to say it was interesting and was a decent way to pass some time.

Since it is once again after midnight, I will leave you with my new thing for the day.  I actually have a couple I could relay to you but I'm going to go with the biggie.  Hubs and I made our commitment to the Game Change campaign at our church today.  Really we had already done it last Thursday but today was the official version.  The amount will make us bleed.  (You had to be there...).  And I feel really good about that.  I feel good that it gives me a chance to prioritize.  It gives me a chance to make choices and honor my husband, my family and my Lord.  I feel changed by the journey we went through to get to that number.  I feel more peaceful.  I give Game Change journey to commitment 9 out of 10 stars.  What?  I'm not going to be able to buy new jeans for like 3 years!  That's why I gotta exercise like right now. I can't afford to outgrow these.  It will be embarrassing on many, many levels but mostly the one where my thighs actually bust the seams.  In public.  Anywho.  I can't wait to hear the final number of how much we raised.  Don't you worry.  I'll let you know.  We find out next weekend.  Just before Thanksgiving.  And I will give thanks for all that our church will be doing in the name of love while eating at a Golden Corral restaurant so that everyone gets what they want...