no boys allowed in the room!!!!

wow!

re: kitchen towels
sometimes they get gross and you have to replace the old ones -- always good to have some new fresh ones on hand!
love your mom

my parents gave me some chocolate, darkness on the edge of town box, copy of all the presidents men signed by woodward AND bernstein, and a petsmart gift card. shockingly excellent work on their behalf!

x-post - Yep. Wow is pretty much all what I said when I opened it.

wow is right

see, that's the difference between me & her -- the gross ones I repurpose for cleaning the oily gunk off the stove or as paint rags or oil rags for the car.

the surface area of kitchen towels that she has given me that i still have exceeds that of my kitchen.

kitchen floor, that is.

I always need kitchen towels. Hook me up.

I asked for:
Socks, not knee-highs, in dark colors.
Flannel nightgown (hush. I'm old, married, and live in Chicago plus I was trying to play to my mom's shopping strengths) with the helpful hint "blue is my favorite color."

I got:
Purple striped knee-highs and acid green and purple slipper socks
Micro fleece nightgowns in lavender and red. They were the right size at least. Plus I'll happily wear them, its just an example of how the woman doesn't listen.
An assortment of annoying and unnecessary kitchen shit that I'll never use like an artsy spaghetti measurer, a garlic crusher, and "stainless steel soap" that youre supposed to use to get the garlic smell off your hands.

Favorite gift: jumbo peppermint shea butter lip balm.

http://www.amazon.com/Royal-VKB-VP303-370-Garlic-Crusher/dp/B000OW58D8

This thing makes me furious.

Wow, that's crazy.
Does that steel soap thing work?

what infuriates you about the garlic crusher?

I can crush garlic just fine with the side of a knife and then don't have a garlic press AND a knife to wash.

"Steel soap" works but so does rubbing a stainless steel spoon on yr fingers. Anything stainless will do the trick.

oh yes - the extraneous item that requires cleaning and maintenance

My mom just gets caught up in whay she perceives as the clever novelty of the stuff without considering the utility or how much drawer space I have.

I'm a little extra sensitive to it bc my parents' house is turning into hoarder-in-training headquarters. My mom gets attached to stuff and says she'll deal with it later but never gets around to it and now three entire rooms are nearly useless because they are filled with crap like garlic crushers and stainless steel soap.

i got this book for christmas btw

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_tfGC7tOlrdk/S7dw8Azt_JI/AAAAAAAAJqE/7y0x_ebK8ro/s1600/stuff-cover.jpg

yeah - i feel like my mom doesn't consider that i live in an urban apartment and not a suburban 4 bedroom house. she has room for 3 dozen kitchen towels, 8 different sizes of graters and spatulas, and a five year supply of extra virgin olive oil -- i do not.

xp Let me know if it's any good.

I threatened to put my parents on Hoarders if they didn't straighten out. Harsh, but I was exhausted by pretending it was normal so I had to say something and I went for tough love humor.

If I had more room, I'd get a chest freezer.

lol!

I'd like to start doing my hair differently too, but feel very self-conscious about changing up hair and makeup and having work colleagues notice. I don't care if friends notice. Is that just me or does it make anyone else uncomfortable? It's something to do with feeling like you're openly trying to be more attractive.

My only concern wrt colleagues would be if I had my hair cut like in the middle of the workday, and ppl would know I was someone who thought it was acceptable to duck out of work to get a hair cut.

BTW I am someone who thinks it is acceptable to duck out of work to get a hair cut.

Outside of our Secret Santa thing, I got two Christmas gifts this year: a steak assortment from one of the gift meat companies from my sister, and a large coffee mug filled with (cheap) chocolates from the mother of one of my patients that broke when I sleepily reached for it on my nightstand. (My husband was ill most of the month, my mother-in-law is too demented to keep track of the days, my family only gives gifts to the children of the family, and my husband's family hates him. The last time I had more than 1-2 gifts to open was when I was 16.)

I know that haircut feeling. I get the same way when I switch glasses or wear contacts (which never happens). It's more about just not wanting anybody at work to pay attention to how I look.

That said, I get my hair cut differently a lot and change the color and nobody notices.

Also if ducking out of work to get a haircut is wrong, I don't wanna be right.

gift meat companies
the what?

i think it's like some kinda meat of the month thing? kinda harry & david-ish?

my mom gives me tea towels too, every christmas, and dish cloths and things. pretty sure i've never bought a tea towel in my life!

hoarding freaks me out. like, i kinda never want to own a big house so that i can always have a reason to either not acquire ridic unnecessary stuff in the first place or make sure i get rid of / give away things i no longer need. or maybe i've just been living in a small apartment for too long... i don't know, but i do know that that STUFF book really looks like STFU to me. which is how i feel. i mean, there is this shop near my house called "never enough" (in french of course) and it actually makes me mad!

John's dad sends us a package from a "gift meat company" every xmas, with a little (typed on the invoice) note that says "A little taste of Texas, from Dad." Same gift package every year:

http://www.nbsmokehouse.com/item.asp?itm=11

IDK what to to with Canadian bacon.

Isn't Canadian bacon pretty much just ham? I have the most delicious ham from Mollie Stones but it's one of those things that they only bring out "for the holidays". I want to eat delicious ham all year, thank you.

Abbbottt, you make eggs Benedict w/Canadian bacon. Also a key ingredient in a Midwest pizza.

Oh man, eggs Benedict – you are a champ, Suzy.

With all these food recommendations I should probably be the size of a large tract home but...no, somehow. BEWARE though, homemade Hollandaise sauce est tres difficile.

I'm going to Sunday brunch at a fine old Jazz Age establishment this weekend and they do something called Eggs Chesapeake - formule Benedict minus the bacon/ham plus CRAB CAKES.

Me and my first roommate at age 19 would get stoned and have 3 am competitions at who could make the best Hollandaise so I'm set there.

xp Ha I thought that said Eggs Cheapskate

Most definitely not Eggs Cheapskate at $14. LOLLLLL

Abbbb, please to pass on yr Hollandaise methodology and I will throw down my Jamaican curry chicken recipe - taught to me by wonderful Jamaican granny Pearlina - for the thread.

tbh I have told this to people before and it grosses them out so warning if you have egg-related fears, um, do not read?

If you leave eggs out long enough for them to be room temp you can just make hollandaise in a blender – 4 egg yolks and the juice of 2 lemons blend, blend, blend, melt 2 stick of butter so they are *really hot* and totally melted and also hot – then drizzle that into the blendy eggs + lemon – heats it up to the right temp to get it thick. If not, you can whisk it for a bit in the hot pan you melted the butter in. But my roomie liked to just whisk it in a double boiler so I always felt it was this John Henry tale of whisks v blender technology. But she stole my blender when she moved out so *shrugs*

This meant that about 9 pm I was putting four eggs on the counter every night.

I'll be cutting that recipe to be 2 eggs/1 stick/1 lemon

salt + cayenne pepper are good additions, too.

oh man i would be pretty grateful for kitchen towels! never seem to have enough, they always disappear.

i got nothing from my parents but my MIL gave me
- a gorgeous pashmina in my favourite shade of green
- two pairs of earrings that she made
- a bracelet that she also made
- a beaded wrist cuff
- chamomile tea
- a set of funny little pottery bowls
- a fancy hair dryer (the elchim one that robyn loves!)
- a framed victorian-era squirrel print (i <3 squirrels)
- a necklace from a jeweler i also <3

(the last 3 were picked out by my husband but were paid for by my in-laws)

oh these were really b'day gifts, not xmas presents

My only Xmas present (apart from plane ticket) $50 from best friend's mom.

my in-laws have 3 sons so they like to spoil their DILs which is totally awesome imo

wow that is an awesome bunch of gifts, j! you wld seem to have the elusive dream in laws. wows

(hairdryer will dry yr hair so fast you'll be like whoa)

yah i am already in love with it - it was on my wishlist!

John's dad sends us a package from a "gift meat company" every xmas, with a little (typed on the invoice) note that says "A little taste of Texas, from Dad." Same gift package every year:

That's it, but it's a different company. (Not Omaha Steaks, but another one that I can't recall.)

I just snapped the underwiring on my one remaining comfortable bra :(

trying to figure out measurement instructions now. so many different sets of instructions which completely contradict each other. like, the first one wants me to measure under the bust and not add any numbers, then the next one wants me to measure in the same place and add 4... well, that's already a pretty big difference, how are these both supposed to be "right"?

I've bought from figleaves.com before but their fitting guide is pretty damn unhelpful, it gives some instructions for finding the band size and then goes "ehhh guess randomly at the cup size based on your last bra", like, oh, the one where the label has faded in the wash and which probably didn't fit right anyway given that it just snapped?

</rant>

i got a really good garlic press for xmas. before i just had a rusty target one i got on sale and it sucked. i tried it last night, i just put the garlic in and squeezed the thing and when i opened it i was like whoa there's nothing left in here. so i made some nice garlicky tomato sauce.
no garlic crusher though, lol

A have a garlic press and I love it! It does the job of a knife, garlic crusher, and stainless steal soap all at once because it peels, crushes, and keeps your hands out of the garlic.

I am so sympathetic to the bra thing. The difference between band and cup plus four has always given me absurd results that do not bear out in the real world. This is just super annoying because, as I have mentioned before, my tig ole bitties mean I have to buy bras online since only $$$ specialty lingerie shops carry my size, and there is only one speciality lingerie shop in Chicago that I can afford and they pissed me off a couple of years ago and I can hold some serious retail grudges. You actually might be able to guess based on your last bra because if the tag is that faded, the underwire breakage was probably due to age rather than poor fit.

I like herroom.com a lot and recently ordered from biggerbras.com (after confirming that they would not send a package that read "BIGGER BRAS" to my husband at work, which is the only secure place we can receive packages, although they did send one bra in a really big box and I was like... bigger, yes, but not like, the size of microwave). My honest advice to you, if going into a store and trying on a shit ton of bras to find your size (and then ordering the same bra cheaper from somewhere on line) is to pick a place with a good return policy and order two or three bras in varying sizes, then return the ones that don't fit. It's a hassle, but it's pretty surefire.

Herroom.com has a good fit guide, as well, that can help you determine whether your bra fits you correctly or not. They also have really good customer reviews.

Two or three of the same style bras in different sizes, I should say, since size will vary between manufacturers and styles. That's another thing I like about herroom.com. They have a nice chart that will indicate what size you wear in an Elomi bra if you normally wear a different size in some other brand. Also, they have "fit tips" that will tell you a particular style in one brand differs from other styles in that brand. Like for my favorite bra (this one - http://www.herroom.com/elomi-1220-Smoothing-Foam-Underwire-Bra.shtml) the fit tip is that the cup size runs bigger than normal, which has proven true in my experience.

Two or three years ago I basically dedicated three months of my life to finding my proper bra size and The Perfect Bra that I could buy for the rest of my life* and never have to worry about it again, and this is why I have so many bra shopping-related opinions.

*Or for as long as wearing ones boobs round, high, and tight on ones chest is fashionable, I suppose.

after confirming that they would not send a package that read "BIGGER BRAS" to my husband at work, which is the only secure place we can receive packages
oh jenny
this is the sort of thing we shouldn't have to worry about, but totally do. also this made me lol for reals Or for as long as wearing ones boobs round, high, and tight on ones chest is fashionable, I suppose.

in personal adventures in feminism news, i schooled my dad about sexism the other day and it felt really powerful