The Thankful

Finding the Thankful is even easier than finding the Funny this week.  Ten of us had a truly American feast here in our little cozy apartment.  For the enquiring minds who want details (P), I served the following:
Appetizers - spinach artichoke dip with ritz crackers; Harry and David's pepper relish dip with wheat thins; a large cold boiled shrimp platter with cocktail sauce; a veggie tray with ranch dip; rotel queso dip with tortilla chips. I just realized upon typing that that I was a bit dip-heavy on the appetizers.....
Main course - Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, green bean casserole, macaroni and cheese, eggplant casserole, two cranberry sauces, corn, rolls and butter.
Dessert, courtesy of my wonderful neighbor, M - scratch made apple, pecan and pumpkin pies with ice cream and whipped cream.
We consumed some good Southern sweet tea, and all had varying degrees of tryptophan coma accompanied by yearnings for stretchy pants.
Here's the number one Thankful I found.   Sir not only swept and mopped all the floors on Wednesday and hung the Drama Drapes, but he also washed every. single. dish.  Girl, YES he did.  All the china, the silver, the pots and pans, the baked-on, stuck-on casserole dishes, all of it.  Till way past every military man's bedtime.  He allowed me to dry and put away, but that man worked.  I was so so grateful, because the cooking had done a number on my creaky joints, and I was feeling the end of that day for sure, but I never expected him to pitch in like that.  What a man.

The "before:"

 Drum roll for the long-awaited BUFFET debut!!!!

Three cheers for the prettier-in-person SPICY REDS!!!!!

The "during:"

There is no "after."  I was too tired to lift the camera phone.  Gobble gobble. 
Feeling very blessed this morning as I review the weekend.  Tomorrow I'll tell you about our post-feast visitors.  In the meantime,



LOOK!

Another inch has fallen just since I took this photo.  It's the softest, most peaceful snow I've seen in many years.  I'm propped on the sofa just watching it fall.  I'm sure the roads will be a slip-n-slide by the time the workday is over - this is one day I'm glad I don't have to set one little foot outside.

Finding the Funny

Thanks to all of you for your spirited opinions both here and on Facebook in the Drape Debate of '10.  Photos will be posted tomorrow.  The winner has been hung and is awaiting foofing (that swishy, pokey stuff you have to do to get it evenly spaced and fluffed.)  I have no ladder, and the chairs are not tall enough to reach the foof area, so I'm waiting for Sir to get home from work  and balance himself like the Thanksgiving elf on the windowsills again.  The man is nothing if not patient. 

In other news, I wish I was my mother.  She has such a gift for seeing the sunny side of life, and right now I'm having to look very hard for it.  I'll never again take for granted how easy it is for me to operate on a daily basis in the States.  Here, finding a lampshade is impossible.  Finding an English speaker to cut my hair is thus far impossible.  A mail-order throw rug for the hall looks really good in the picture, and arrives worse than ugly, but it's too late to do anything about it before the guests come Thursday.  If the commissary is out of an American grocery item, there are not five or six other options to run by and pick it up.  You just can't get it. 
Most of all, 99.9999% of the people I love are not going to be around my table this Thanksgiving, and I can't seem to stop my little tear ducts from overflowing about it.  Erp. 
Yesterday, we were in the middle of a five-hour bus ride back from a retreat Sir was helping with.  (Coach bus rides are the way to travel - they had the cutest little spotless bathroom, footrests, huge windows, and no stress of driving.)    I was gazing out at the corner of Austria we cut through on the way back to Heidelberg.  Huge, fluffy flakes of snow were falling, and all of the tall, elegant evergreen boughs were bending gracefully down under the weight of their white dollops of snow.  The contrast of rich green and pure white was everywhere.  The tops of the mountains are all bare -  jagged peaks of rock jutting impossibly high.  It was really breathtaking, and instead of sending prayers of thanks that God was allowing me the privilege of seeing this amazing show of His handiwork, I was fighting back tears that my Girl wasn't there to see it with me.

SO.  As you can see, I need some help finding the funny around here.  At some point, I'm sure I will laugh over the fact that it took me three months, four stores, two mail orders and five hours of hand sewing to put together a kitchen valance I could have done in a half hour total in the US.  I'll chuckle over the dragging of the boxes of stuff home from the post office and back to the post office to return to Penneys and Amazon and Chef's Catalog.  I'll giggle about recycling and composting every shred of everything instead of tossing it into my king-sized American trash can.  But not yet.  Right now it's a recipe for homesickness.  Meanwhile, I'm determined to find the funny.

Please note that the lower the content of fat in the milk, the skinnier the cow on the carton.  I may or may not have laughed so hard I had to run to the ladies' room very fast.

Haayelp

An interior designer I am not.  Therefore, God bless JCPenney's heart, I ordered valances and drapes in four shades of red.  Sir is groaning every day when he drags boxes home from the post office.  I will be sending three of the four back, and I'm sure there will be further groaning.  None of this compares to the groans coming from me as I try to choose which red.

Let me back up.  We need window treatments in our dining room.  The living room area, which is separated only by a double archway, has traditional German lace curtains, gifted to us by my sweet friend Isabel.  The dining room has large windows as well, and since we have little wall art, I wanted to put some color in there.  Living room furniture is the aforementioned slightly lumpy denim Ikea sofa and loveseat, with a bold blue and white striped club chair and a dark red leather recliner.  Dining room set is dark cherry, as is.....the new sideboard!  I would take a picture for those of you who have been following this torturous drama, but at the moment the sideboard is stacked with dishes waiting to be washed for Thanksgiving dinner.

AAAAnnnyway, it was decided by those who care (me) that a pop of red would be good, and that these drapes could come home and live in SC comfortably as well.  Then the agony of the colors began.  Who can know what a swatchthesizeofyourthumbnailonthecomputerscreen will really look like when it is fourteen feet wide on your wall?  I kid you not - it's a 14-foot wall.  I had to buy seven of one valance; four of another, just to span it.  The curtains will actually only be down the sides - no need for them to draw all the way across. 

SO - I have eliminated Brick, as Sir came home, saw it and said, "That looks like dried blood. Or rust."
And I eliminated New Orleans Red, because although I liked the color, the valance came with fringe embellished with rather large crystal beads, and the total effect was a little too bordello-ish for our taste.
And we have left for your voting pleasure

Cranberry on the left         and Spicy Red on the right.  Please vote early and often, so that poor Sir can come home from work tonight and slave on threading 85 pounds of drapery into the thin slits in the ceiling designed by the ever-efficient Germans to avoid the EASE and GOOD LOOKS of actual curtain rods. 

I need your help.  Please forgive the rumpled quality of the photo - I basically threw each panel up over the top of the window to give you the idea.

Love,
Nest On A Deadline

Wordy Wednesday - Edition Herbst

Happy Herbst.  Before you go all babelfish google yahoo online translator on me, I will tell you that Herbst is the German word for Autumn.  And it's so very very autumny here.  Right now I'm watching leaves just blow right off the trees in the yard of our building.  We went to a Strong Bonds lunch today, and on the way home, Sir drove a different route and we passed a tree (maple-ish looking) that had the brightest red leaves I have ever seen in my life.  I mean RED.  Most of the other trees are riotous shades of orange and yellow - the mountain outside my window is gorgeous, and I only hope there are enough evergreens to keep it from becoming completely bare this winter or it's going to look awfully depressing.  For right now, though, as my new friend S said yesterday, the leaves are definitely the "flowers of Fall."  Crunchy and gorgeous, and I think even bigger than most leaves at home.  New England has some competition here, and even though Sir and I miss nearly everything about the States, we totally have to admit there is great beauty around us.

Thanks to all who have offered wonderiffic suggestions for my home decorating ish-shoes.  I am pleased to report that at the Big PX in the Sky at Ramstein the other day, a totally-suitable buffet for the dining room jumped right out at me with its big "on sale" sign, and though it will never claim to be an heirloom, it will work very well in the portable nest that is our life for the next several years.  Photos to come.  I'm finally going to get to unpack the china.
Also, I adore http://www.amazon.com/.  I have shopped for hours from the economical comfort of the long-suffering slightly lumpy IKEA denim sofa that is my perch.  Packages are on their way - such exciting delights as a genuine $35 faux-cherry end table, an egg slicer, sweat pants for Sir, more books (which of course I need like apples need worms) and the ever-so-essential Graniteware turkey roaster.  FYI, there are certain items that my adored Amazon.com will not ship to APO (Army Post Office) addresses.  I would like to ask Mr. Amazon why he feels that it is hazardous to send me a small stainless steel gravy ladle and a set of 10 black curtain rings with clips.  He has no objection to sending me a glass cake plate with dome lid and seasons 3 and 5 of NCIS.  Am I going to commit some sort of crime with my gravy ladle?  DO NOT answer that, those who have eaten my cooking. This is where the phrase "rhetorical question" fits.

In other news, I am searching for the VERY nifty random integer generator I have seen others use to draw the names for their giveaway winners.  Thanks to all who entered - I will update this post with results as soon as I figure it out.

<iframe src="http://www.random.org/widgets/integers/iframe.php?title=True+Random+Number+Generator&amp;buttontxt=Generate&amp;width=160&amp;height=200&amp;border=on&amp;bgcolor=%23FFFFFF&amp;txtcolor=%23777777&amp;altbgcolor=%23CCCCFF&amp;alttxtcolor=%23000000&amp;defaultmin=&amp;defaultmax=&amp;fixed=off" frameborder="0" width="160" height="200" scrolling="no" longdesc="http://www.random.org/integers/">
The numbers generated by this widget come from RANDOM.ORG's true random number generator.
</iframe>
Well, my cute little box with the random integer drawing came out an epic fail.  It did, however, generate me a number on its own site, which was........drum roll, please - 7!  Lucky number seven is my olddddd friend (and I mean that in only the nicest way because we go way back to 7th grade) JULIE.  Jules, please email me at Pearls14434@aol.com with your mailing address to claim your prize!!  Thanks to all who entered - I will be having more giveaways as we get closer to the holidays.