Oh How the Vino Flows

Monday again, eh? Fabulous. How was your weekend? Mine was great... so I hear.

Saturday night I hosted a soiree with La Bev + family and introduced them to another family that we knew The Bevs would really like. When their first conversation was about poo, we knew we had a match made in heaven.

We tossed the 6 kids some pizza, sugary juice boxes and a face painting kit and hardly heard from the wild banshees again for a solid 5 hours while they destroyed my house. I'm sure the feeling of blissful freedom was mutual.

In a related story, I'm now an unemployed wino wine consultant. Sadly, my distributor abruptly closed shop... which leaves me with cases of wines. I know, so sad, right? Thank goodness I have good friends to help me remedy such a situation.

And remedy it, we did.

But never to be a hostess who runs out of anything, I lost my mind also picked up a box (gasp!)of wine... you know, just in case.

Two things I don't want my guests leaving with; empty stomachs and my good silver their sobriety. Let's just say, I succeed on both accounts.

In fact, sadly, it took me almost an hour to notice our dear friend E had slipped into a catatonic state in the kitchen.

What? I was busy rockin' out on the Guitar Hero.

But like all good things, the party came to an end around 1am when we all tried scrubbing our children clean (face paint + unsupervised children = FAIL). I fell asleep to the sounds of Joe scrubbing colorful little fingerprints off the walls.

Five hours later I woke up to the dreaded Carton Du Vin headache and the recollection of promising a friend we'd go horseback riding in the morning. I dragged myself out to the barn to feed the horses and get ready to ride. I'm not sure I've ever vomited on a horse, so I pleaded with Storm that I wouldn't yack on him if he'd just go all cruise control for me... oh and don't let me fall off. Deal.

Of course, I probably could have cancelled, but that's so not like me.

Luckily, the crisp fresh air and a healthy dose of Tylenol seemed to do the trick and I had a fabulous ride.

And no yacking.

(Not Really) Wordless Wednesday: Hodgepodge Edition

Sorry guys, I'm cleaning out my cell phone pictures and serving up heaping plate of left overs. Mmmmmmm, enjoy.

It's nasty out today and I can't help but wish I was back in Antigua, jet skiing. Yes, that's Joe riding bitch. And after about 10 minutes of him screaming, "you're going too fast!", I dropped his ass back on the beach. Coz I'm nice like that.





Morgan channels her inner Ga.










The kids set up a trap to catch a leprechaun on St. Patty's Day. Unfortunately they got out-smarted by the little green bastard and he left this little message to them on my hardwood floor with a sharpie. Next year I'm leaving out my own trap; De-Con laced whiskey.

ROAD TRIP WITH THE HORSES!

Storm enjoys a Pony Pop, which is, essentially, horse crack cocaine on a rope.

Weekend of Water and Wind (But No Trees)

Good morning! OK, not good. At least not here at the casa de Mala... My washing machine bit the dust last night (why, oh why, did I wait until I only had sweatpants left to do laundry!?). Oh, and did I mention that the warranty just ran out like 25 minutes before it gave up the ghost? On an amazingly unrelated note, while the washing machine tried relieving itself of the last of it's water, the pipe to the leach field failed, sending all that water to my basement floor. Good times.

Thank goodness I had a fabulous weekend, because so far, this week sucks! And it's only 9:30am on Monday.


Saturday night we enjoyed a wonderful evening at La Bev's and let me tell you, she made a Chicken Tikki Masala that was out of this world! SO YUMMY. We stuffed ourselves silly until we could do nothing but lounge on the couch, bloated and happy, and watch the most mindless movie ever.



By Sunday, I could button my pants again felt refreshed and much lighter. No, really, MUCH lighter. Like floating on air lighter.






Thank you to my Mom and Tim, who treated me to a session of indoor skydiving. It was a blast! And best of all I didn't break my neck! Yay!



Well, that's all I got. I need to go and bail some more water. Jealous?

Lost in Translation

So sorry, I've dropped off the blogaroo map again lately. The good news is I'm no longer living under a massive, fallen pine. The bad news is I've been dying under the weather. Sinus infection and laryngitis (Bev and I would make a great singing duo!). Good times.

Anyhoo..

Recently I was shuffling through some old pictures and came across photos from my high school language arts trip to France and Spain. I could drone on and on about how fabulous the trip was; how wonderful it was to see the Eiffel Tower, The Louvre and travel throughout the Loire Valley.. oh yeah, and Spain. Heh, I don't remember so much about Spain. We hoteled near a bull fighting arena and they all spoke Spanish. I studied French and the only phrase my friends in Spanish class taught me was, "¿comprar un kilo?", which, really, isn't helpful at all. Unless you want to extend your vacation in a Spanish prison.
Anyway, despite the historical buildings, the world-famous art and the breath-taking chateaus, the most memorable part of the trip was our tour guide, Frederic LaCroix.

Sigh, that's him in the brown jacket to the far right... Pay no attention to the high-waters. Or to the sleep-deprived, goofy 15 year old seated next to him. Did I tour Europe without a hair brush? Whatev. Mala likey her sleep, when she doesn't get enough the result is, well, not pretty.

Anyway, back to the hottie tour guide. He was a college student in Paris, studying history, who earned extra money by escorting American high schoolers around Europe. I have no idea how old he was. At 15, he was just an adult in my world. Mmmmmmmm, a hottie though, nonetheless.

For some reason, the name "Fred" sounded horrible when paired with anything sexy, "ohhhh Fred!" "Mmmmmmmm Fred!" YESSSSSSSSSS, FRED!" just didn't seem to suit him. So I renamed him "Bob"... not that it was any more sexy, but I could remember it easily. You know, I've established I have issues remember things like names. Pshhhhh.

Well the name stuck, and the entire bus load of kids referred to him as Bob, and soon enough, so was our French and Spanish teachers, who were chaperoning the trip.

The school trip was 2 weeks; 1 week touring France, the other in Spain. Shortly into the trip, I found it more interesting taking in the sights of Bob then the billion year old churches. I wasn't the only one, all the girls were appreciating the French hottie. When not feigning interest in historical sites, we all hung close to Bob, laughing, teasing, having a great time!

Bob enjoyed the attention as well.

Unlike the average tour guide who would make the mandated appearance to point out a king's summer home or famous painting, and then somehow vanish as to not to fraternize with the annoying American teens, Bob began hanging out with us between glimpses of the Mona Lisa and Chateau Chenonceau (see, I was paying attention to more than just Bob)! In fact, his constant presence with us may have concerned our teachers, but rather than address any perceived inappropraite behavior, they chose to take full advantage of the volunteer chaperon and left us in his care so they could go get rip-roaring drunk.

In exchange for teaching us about all the king's mistresses and other salacious tales in French history, we taught Bob how to play Uno. Soon the trip became more like a world tour Uno tournament. Bob often came to our hotel room and played with us for hours (Uno, YOU PERVS! FOCUS!). Uno was also a good excuse for Bob to ride in our sleeper car for the 19 hour train trip to Spain. Good times.

Our teachers finally relinquished all chaperoning duties to Bob and he took a group of us out to a night club where we danced the night away to Spanish techno. Yeah, that part sucked. It got worse, however, when we begged the DJ to play anything American, and the best he could come up with was WMCA. Really? Well, somehow despite being French, Bob had no idea how to do the YMCA dance. Or at least that was his story when he asked me to show him, puppet-style - you know, standing behind him moving his arms for him- which I did. Hawt, right? Inappropriate? Pshhhh...

On our last night with Bob, he knocked on my hotel room door. Instead on insisting on one last Uno match, he asked me to meet him in his room in 20 minutes. My friends all turned and stared at me, slack-jawed.

I think I made it 11 minutes before I knocked on his door. He called me to come in while he was sitting at his desk, busy writing. He invited me to have a seat, but since he was sitting in the only chair in the room, I took a spot on the edge on his bed.

He finished the letter, folded it neatly in thirds and sealed it in an envelope. He then sat beside me on his bed. "I'm really going to miss you?" he said in his strong french accent that I had tried to mock perfect for the past two weeks.

"Yeah. We'll miss you too". That's safe, right?

He handed the envelope to me. "Read this on the plane home."

Bob then asked if we could take a picture together. Much to my relief, he then hurried out to get a fellow student to take the picture. Whew! I wasn't sure where he was going with his photographic ambitions.

Of course I couldn't wait until I boarded the plane the following morning, and I ripped into the letter as soon as I returned to my room. Patience is not a characteristic I possess, especially when I have a hot little note burning my mitts.

Shit! I mean, MERDE! It was written in FRENCH! What in the past two weeks made him think I was actually a good student in French class! I now regretted my less than brilliant French skills as I skimmed the letter only to truly be able to decipher words like "the", "I" and "very", which wasn't very insightful at all. Tres damage! And it was a long letter. It killed me to not know what gems it contained.

On the bus to the airport I sat near my French teacher (nice to see her again!). I agonized. Of course I couldn't show her the letter, but she alone held the key to it's secrets. I had no choice but to act like a studious pupil and slyly ask her, "Madame, what does "XXX" mean?". She'd lift a suspicious eyebrow and translated for me. I'd cautiously wait a minute and then ask for another translation.

All was good until one particular phrase made Madame spin in her seat and stare at me directly, "Where did you hear that?". I stammered and mumbled something about the subway. "Well, it's disgusting and I'm NOT translating it!"

I folded the letter up and put it away, knowing it's decoding would have to wait until I got home and tried cracking it with my French to English dictionary. Sadly, I doubted my academic book would contain the proper translation. ZUT ALORS!

Please Stand By

Sorry, I've been a bit.... busy.

Got Wood?

As one of my funny (and insanely hot) friends pointed out, "Jilted tree attacks log cabin Ex.". Nice, eh?

But I've gotten ahead of myself...

So Thursday night I decided to treat myself to a warm bubble bath in our claw foot tub; relaxing and enjoying a good book. Ahhhhhhh, life is good.

About 11:30pm I feel like a shriveled prune notice the weather outside had taken a turn for the worse as the wind and rain really started to get out of control. The weatherman did mention something earlier about a high wind warning, but in all honesty, in the past few days, he had also called for snow, which we didn't get and rain storms - that were nothing more than a few trickles, so basically, we had all stopped listening to the fool. But as the wind went from a howl to the sounds of a rabid pack of crazed beasts, I decided my relaxation time was over and headed to bed.

No less than 5 minutes later, a deafening crash and the entire house rocked. Naturally, I screamed a pitch I never knew was possible and ran for the kids' bedrooms. Despite the fact the enormous BOOM came from nearby their rooms, they hadn't even so much as opened their eyes. From room to room, I scooped up the kids, threw each over my shoulder and ran downstairs.

Joe had been in the kitchen and met me at the bottom of the stairs. From the sound and shaking of the house he expected the second floor of the house to be smashed into oblivion.

Of course, it was pitch black outside, and along with the KABOOM, so went our electricity. As Joe grabbed a flashlight and headed outside, I peered up through the glass ceiling of my sunroom, "ummmm, I think that's a tree".

The storm, which later was reported to have winds of 94mph, continued and we could hear other trees cracking and falling. We decided to all bunk in our room, thinking it would be safely away from any further damage. But it was far from a rest full night.

In the morning we finally got to view the full extent of the damage. A 125" pine tree actually got up-rooted and the entire beast fell on our shed and house, right where my claw foot tub sits. But thankfully, it didn't fall 2 feet to the right, missing the shed and wiping out my beloved sunroom. Yeah, that would have sucked.

So by Saturday, Joe decided to fly the coop and use the down time for some skiing in Colorado. By lunch, the kids were pissing me off with their power of annoyance bored out of their minds and were rescued by Grammie and Bumpa. So it was just me, the hole in the roof and the hum of the generator.

Four days later, the superheroes from PSNH and Comcast ran new wires and plugged my house back into the grid. Oh sweet, wonderful grid, how I missed thee.