Julia Slaughter

Archive for the ‘Misadventures’ Category

I had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I went away from home and visited some friends in Oklahoma, and it was fun and fascinating to participate in their Thanksgiving traditions. Despite my many blessings, Thanksgiving has never been a big holiday for my family (in fact we usually leave town), because I am a direct descendant of Mrs.Claus and Santa Claus.

My first scrap of evidence that I am related to Mrs.Claus came when I was in kindergarten, we had parents day and the next night I went to school and found a letter to me from Mrs.Claus! It talked about how she was making Pineapple Upside Down cake for Santa and that day when I went home from work I found my grandmother there in the kitchen making Pineapple Upside Down cake! (Aha! so that’s why I never saw grandpa – he was Santa Claus!)

The other supporting evidence is that my Mom has always been Christmas crazy! She puts up roughly twelve Christmas trees that range in size from 12 feet to 3 feet, there are elves and reindeer scattered through out the house, and tinsel and twinkle lights gleam from every surface that will hold still to tolerate such treatment. The decorating usually begins in October, it starts with mysterious boxes appearing from out of storage units and the attic and well before Thanksgiving it’s finalized, every piece of garland in place. I love our over the top Christmases but it’s always been a little much for me, I like to contain my Christmas decorations to the period after Thanksgiving and into the first week of January.

After Thanksgiving dinner, my Oklahoma friends piled up into cars and we headed to the Chickasha Festival of Light and it was a perfect end to Thanksgiving and a wonderful kick off for Christmas. There were horse drawn carriages to trot around the park in and a bridge that had been turned into a a tunnel of white twinkle lights. I giggled at the mermaids, seahorses, and ostriches and my heart swelled when I saw the huge tree and the 12 days of Christmas. It was wonderful.

I was so excited to get into the Christmas festivities that I ended up coming home and starting my own decorations, even though the weather doesn’t seem quite Christmasy enough yet.

I cannot help myself, I love this time of year. I love the smells of gingerbread, chocolate, and peppermint. I love seeing people in the season. I love twinkle lights and tinsel. I love it all, all of it but shopping…still not a big fan of that.

http://www.chickashafestivaloflight.com/

There are so many things I love about Halloween – pumpkins for soup, bread, and even lattes; children living out their fantasies of being superheroes, pirates, and fairy princesses; candy, candy, candy; trying out a different persona for a night.

Last year I finally got to have the blue black hair I always wanted, my friends wanted to be vampires and I used the opportunity to vamp out – waist length blue black hair, straight heavy bangs framing my face, and make up heavy on dark colors. I’ve always wanted to try out blue black hair, well more blue than black, the kind of hair that seems black until the sun hits it and then it has a beautiful blue aura to it. Unconventional hair colors have always been appealing to me but I understand that they are not particularly appealing to conventional workplaces but at Halloween I can dabble in the unexpected.

This year my friends decided that we would all dress as the cast of Disney’s Sleeping Beauty so I was Sleeping Beauty’s mother, who is merely referred to in the movie as the Queen. I got to wear a fabulous renaissance style dress and I was covered in “pearls.” All the costumes were custom made for us by a friend and they were amazing.

All the fuss about costumes is because every year I have friends who throw a HUGE Halloween party. (I am responsible for invitations since I am something of a paper and font snob!) I was excited about my beautiful and elaborate dress, I graciously greeted Trick or Treaters and the occasional party guest – it’s all alot of fun.

However this is the first year that I became aware that the Mean Girls’ Theory of Halloween Costumes is true. There are people who use Halloween as an opportunity to be as scantily clad as possible. Womens’ costumes tend to trend towards lingerie with assorted tails, horns, and whatnot, however I noticed that even some of the men were getting in on the action. I particularly “enjoyed” the fireman who went so far as to get actual fireman gear and yet went around shirtless. under his suspenders. There were also some shirtless doctors and demons running around and a gladiator in a spangly speedo.

I enjoy watching these exhibitionist on Halloween and I wonder what would Freud say? I wonder what kind of fantasy they are living out? Food for thought I guess…

If you’ve peeked at my Twitter you may have noticed vague references to a wedding – my sister got married over the weekend and I was in the wedding. My sister and I are six years apart (I’m older) and complete opposites. When we were kids I was most likely to be climbing a tree or curled up with a book, she was playing with dolls or ballet dancing.  My sister has also always been the fashionable one, where I’m the one most likely to be in jeans and a tee shirt.

Considering our differences I suppose it’s no surprise that at various points in my sister’s wedding planning I got calls that I found alarming. The first was to announce that I would be wearing a purple dress. I’ve never really considered myself to be a purple person, but I was determined to grin and bear it. The next shocking announcement was that my sister had chosen a SILVER wedding dress! (Jasmine T134 – if you’re into that kind of thing, you can see it below.)

The wedding was beautiful, my sister was gorgeous, and even though the colors were confounding at first – I have to admit that Purple and Silver seemed to be a great combination. I loved seeing family and old friends again, it’s my favorite part of any wedding and I have to admit I also love that it is over! I was so worried that I was going to trip, step on my Sister’s dress, or in some way damage my own dress that I was able to breath a big sigh of relief when it was all over, the dress was back on the hanger, and the bobby pins were all out of my hair. (Though I have to admit that I am *still* brushing hair spray out, days later!)

I have to say, it’s nice to see two people make that commitment to each other – it would be even nicer if I could’ve seen it while wearing flats but still it was a beautiful and memorable day.

I had hoped to have a nice blog post today with pictures of beautiful and fresh produce, but alas the best laid plans of Mice and Men…

After almost two weeks of eating complete and utter garbage, first splurging on vacation and then going through refrigerator drama, I was looking forward to getting back into the kitchen. In fact I wanted to reclaim the kitchen in style and I had dreams of cooking beautiful fresh vegetables. In fact, I didn’t just want vegetables – I wanted fresh, locally grown Farmer’s Market vegetables.

I’m not sure if my desire for fresh locally grown veggies came from hanging out with my friends in California or if it came from thinking about driving down back roads and seeing guys outside with a pick up truck, loaded down with home grown tomatoes and cucumbers, but the desire to hit the Farmer’s Market was strong with me. The knowledge that there was one just down the road from my house made it that much more appealing.

Sunday, I embarked on my unsuccessful quest. The lesson I learned is that just because something is setup on the side of the road and calls itself a “Farmer’s Market” doesn’t mean that what’s inside is home grown goodness. Perhaps I should’ve realized something was amiss when I stepped out of the parking lot into utter darkness, I can’t say that the market was a store, but it was more than just a road side stand.

It took a minute for my eyes to adjust so I stepped to some shelves, out of the way. I was expecting to find some homemade goodies but instead there are faded and peeling labels that indicate I am standing in front of a wall of mass produced and seriously out of date sorghum. Not a promising start…it got worse for me, as I walked through the straw that broke the camels back was the same bagged carrots you can get at the super market. No, this was not good at all. At the end of my inspection I determined that there were in fact homegrown tomatoes and perhaps melons there, everything else was the same stuff that you can get at the grocery store except it had been sitting in a less climate controlled and let’s face it – a less clean environment.

Before I ended up in the grocery store, where I inevitably ended up, I actually took a ten mile drive up rustic highway 98 but to no avail – there wasn’t even a guy with a pick up truck hanging out for me to buy any locally grown vegetables from.

For lunch today I’m having some lovely brussel sprouts, I couldn’t tell you where they were grown but I know this – I didn’t feel like I was participating in a back alley drug deal when I bought them.