Dust of Snow

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

Robert Frost

A Doozie

It technically started away in a manger 2,040 years ago, but for us, it began when Target started wishing its happy holidays in the form of snowflakes and reindeer window decals RIGHT BEFORE HALLOWEEN. For a while I refused and huffed my way past these atrocities, prancing around like uninvited house guests, arriving drunk and two months ahead of time.

Eventually though, as in a week ago, we decided to officially embrace the season via the purchase of a Christmas tree. If a non-indigenous pine tree strewn in lights, shiny balls, and a some kitschy decor, (not forgetting the miniature Mr. Potato Head ornament) doesn't say Happy Birthday Sweet Baby Jesus, I don't know what does. A hot totty perhaps?

Anyway, Jamie and I braved what I like to call the Holiday Vortex of Hell: Target on a Sunday afternoon. And with Mike D. in tow, we had ourselves a party. I failed to mention we embarked on this little adventure immediately following a church service that urged us to turn our backs on consumerism and focus on what really mattered this Christmas season: time with family, worship, peace, love, et. al . . . sure, right after the Christmas tree.

The problem is, you can't exactly just go out and get a tree if you haven't been hoarding Christmas decor for the last 20 years. We realized we had approximately five ornaments, no tree stand, and absolutely nothing else to put up around the house to stake our claim on Sweet Baby Jesus' birth.

Enter: mob scene. Three store aisles with picked over red and green paraphernalia strew about like the aftermath of a Mexican wedding. It was here in the Target holiday section that we gathered what we could and ran for our dear lives, leaving sans tree stand due to the fact that the last one on the shelf had lost its hardware.

Fast forward: Lowes. They might as well have been playing Enya for how peaceful and easy it was to collect and purchase our very beautiful 6-7' Noble Fir tree and, as an impulse buy, pine cones that smelled like Cinnamon. I think it was about this time where I turned into Clark Griswold and asked, "Don't you remember when we used to go out and cut down our own trees in the snow with hand saws? And did I just pay money for pine cones?"

(Yes, but they smell like cinnamon!!!!)

Our one letdown at Lowes was that they were also out of Christmas tree stands, so we decided to venture east, lest Jamie and myself take turns holding up the tree over a bowl of water until December 24th. Luckily, we hit CVS Pharmacy, the mecca of "crap you never knew you needed until you were here"! Our judgment became clouded when we had the choice of one stand that was $13 and one that was $16. Clearly we were going to save three dollars . . .

And lose two hours of our lives to cursing, bruising, and enough sap to start our own glue business.

So, after valiantly attempting to get the tree into the cheap metal stand with 500 moving parts, we finally gave up, ventured back into the world to a closer CVS, and purchased a new stand (with our three dollar coupon from the receipt on the failed stand). The guy at the checkstand realized Jamie was purchasing a new stand to replace the one I just returned, empathetically looked at her, and putting his arms out like a balancing tight rope walker he said in broken English, "Oh that one was . . . "

Wobbly. Yes.

We schlepped our broken bodies home, and in a fit of laughter over a bowl of peppermint ice cream (and some red wine) we slammed that Christmas tree DOWN, and enjoyed the half-roaring fire that took just as long as the tree to commence. Happy Birthday Sweet Baby Jesus!

Tomorrow . . . tomorrow . . .

Mile High City

Snow + Jumping Family Members + Fresh Baked Goods + Late Night Talks = Best Free Trip EVER!

Help-Portrait

Found this via Nick Onken. Love it.

Wisleys

It was almost too much cutefunrainbowhappiness to handle in one backyard, I mean, with all the horsie neighs and couch jumping and excessive squeezing.

How Many People Have Touched YOUR Melons?

I've been fondling a lot of produce lately. Chives, apples, avocados, basil, cilantro, peppers, onions, potatoes, zucchini . . . you name it, I've probably had my hands all over it. And if you're shopping at Windmill Farms, you'll be happy to know that even though I've had my hands all over everything you just placed in your cart, I haven't been sick in months. (knock on wood)

However, a couple days ago when I was purchasing some of those "live" herbs that come in the little plastic containers full of dirt to make it feel like, I don't know, you're making a selection from your personal garden, the checker scanned the vegetation and the plastic popped apart, sending the greens and their dirt all over the counter. She asked if I wanted to get another one, and I figured I was going to wash them anyway, so I had to her use her swine-flu-carrying-money hands to shove the greens back in their little box. Plus, why should someone else take those home, when the store would inevitably put them back on the shelf after I left anyway? I didn't so much consider my gesture as taking one for the team, but instead a tactic for getting one step closer to commencing my time at the migraine-inducing holiday grocery store rugby match in which I'd been participating. (At this point, I can't afford to lose teeth without dental insurance.)

On the drive home, as I prepared the food, and even now as I continue to eat the blessed Thanksgiving leftovers, I'm wondering just how many people touched all my unwrapped goods. This doesn't so much matter with things like bananas and avocados, but zucchini and chives? I might as well have taken these last two days off licking airplane bathrooms. Nevertheless, my unpretentious facet water rinse tactics must have worked, because to my knowledge, not one person in my cooking path has gone down.

Yet.

(knock on wood)

The Google

Top searches that brought you to my blog (kudos to Erin and apparently all you looking to learn Spanish):

hecho en mexico translation
"erin lyde"
across the universe dancing girls
giddy with excitement
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homeless "permanent address" dmv
real housewives
made in mexico translation

Think what we could do with medical insurance

YS Roller Derby 2009 from Katie Gardner on Vimeo.

A letter to the Real Housewives of OC

You are ridiculous. And if I were physically in your lives, I would have literally crawled out of my skin already. Yes, literally. It wouldn't be pretty.

"Things are really hard right now. We might have to give up the house." You may have remembered saying this while eating lunch and drinking wine at a fancy Orange County restaurant. I understand your house is worth less than what you owe and you had to give up the $500 a month maid. I sympathize with you. I really do.

And to the mother whose daughter can't handle the little bump on her nose: she has low self esteem because you're buying her a nose job! I understand that it's hard to top the BMW you bought for her 18th birthday last year, but seriously? Seriously?!

Let's talk about those valley girl accents: Turn. Them. Off. That cheer squad bus talk is more annoying than a gaggle of geese pooping on my lawn.

And in case Bravo happens to be listening, I'm going to suggest a few things to shake it up a little:

1. Get that Australian Nanny on here to clean up some things. Suze Orman wouldn't hurt either.
2. Do a wife swap with the Real Housewives of Sudan. Let's see how hard life is then, Housewives.

Coffee and Chargers

One of my favorite things is when people are condescending to me. [sarcasm]

Exhibit A: I go to Starbucks to get coffee for a group of people, and each time I order a new beverage, the girl behind the counter rolls her eyes and lets me know how I'm killing her softly with my incessant babbling on and on and on about coffeeeeeeeeeee. I then make the mistake of attempting to pay with a $50 bill (not mine), she looks me square in the eyes, and I think we're having a showdown at high noon, and she says with flat affect, "No." To which I reply, "Eh, er, uh . . ." To which she replies, "Sorry." To which I hand her a 20 dollar bill, apparently a very close second to the inconvenience of the 50, noted by a very long roll of the eyes.

Exhibit B: Five blocks later I'm at Radio Shack looking for a phone charger at a price that won't force me to sell my first born. I ask Big Lebowski with the Radio Shack name tag that says Brian or Donald or Mike or something, if they have any chargers that don't cost $30, to which he replies in a tone that denotes I am clearly in a lower caste than him, "Why would you want that?" To which I reply, "Uh, so I don't have to spend $30 on a charger?" To which he replies, "Well, yeah, if you want to see your battery explode and drip battery acid all over everything." [No exaggeration] Since I've already been to CVS, Wallgreens, a pawn shop, and an additional Radio Shack looking for this particular charger, much to my chagrin, I end up buying it. He's patting himself on the back for being such a great salesman. I'm putting pins in the Radio Shack Guy voodoo doll of my mind.

However, I have to admit that I do say this with a hot coffee in one hand and a newly charged phone in the other. So I guess that's the price I pay for convenience.

They just wanna . . .

Sometimes I feel like I live my life in this Catholic school girl uniform, just waiting for my chance to turn into the after-school version of Sarah Jessica Parker in Girls Just Want to Have Fun. Lately I feel so bland and so boring for simply making it through, but until I find a little more time (see: courage) to get in a little more trouble, the following will be a feeble attempt at finding some a-has! in the day-to-day:

Right before flying through the Cincinnati layer of cotton ball clouds, I remembered how much I LOVE being in a window seat while flying over cotton ball clouds. And then, as we broke through the smoky layer, and the sun above turned into a gray day below, the crayon box of fall trees that coated the ground beneath us reminded me how much I LOVE real fall-changing-color trees! Which also reminded me how much I LOVE sitting in a row on an airplane next to a crazy lady who spends most of the flight yelling at the flight attendants IF the seat between us is empty. And how much I LOVE staying in hotels by myself because it means I can let my life spread throughout every last corner of the room without feeling guilty for playing the part of complete slob for a few days. Let's not forget how much I LOVE spending too much on dinner if it means two hours with a good friend who happens to share my affinity for being a food snob. Of course there comes the part where I wake up tomorrow after not getting enough sleep because I'm still existing in the San Diego time zone, but I'm sure there will be things like rainbows and unicorns and dancing elves to somehow remind me that even work trips in the Midwest are full of things to LOVE.

Giddy With Excitement

Go get yer own here.

Holga!

One of the best days ever. Cafe Chloe followed by 8 hours of impromptu shooting with Aaryn. See that halo of light? That follows Aaryn everywhere she goes.

Re-Inspired

Since we got back from a work trip to Haiti about a week ago, I've answered the question "How was the trip?" more than a couple of times. Most answers can be boiled down to these simple facts, "It was good, but I'm never going back."

And then I talked to my friend, Ben, whose summation of his trip to the same exact country can probably be boiled down to the antithesis of my answer, "It was good, and we loved it so much we're going back to live indefinitely." He's picking up life in the States to change he and his wife's address to "Middle of Nowhere, Haiti".

After our e-mail convo, I thought, they must be off their Jesus-loving rockers.

However, after a little thought, I realized I haven't been giving Haiti, or for that matter, Ben, a fair chance. I keep telling people that practically EVERYONE was sad or disgruntled or simply annoyed that we were intruding upon their every day lives. In reality I'm probably just taking out my angst on the entire culture after a few run-ins with some screaming Haitians who were unequivocally pissed at our cameras aimed in their general direction.

And there are also fun little anecdotes, like the one where this previously beautiful country, now scattered with six feet high piles of trash and thick black smog and no remaining natural resources, actually had a president that accomplished little more than half-finishing a poor replica of the Eiffel Tower in the center of the city . . . rather than, I don't know, finding a way to feed his people?

When I get past my pride (like the time where I stupidly yelled out the window, "I'm not even taking your picture!") and my anger toward corrupt elected officials and my general feeling of unease about being in a country where my ONLY point of commonality lies in my ability to say "Bon Jour" and "Oui", I remember these few moments in our three day stint in this completely foreign fourth world country:

• a winking contest with a little boy across the room as a video interview was happening in between us

• a young girl grabbing my hand and holding it as we walked through a random section of the city

• my ability to connect with a crowd of people and individuals to capture in a photo what was really going on in that exact moment

• winding through the slinking dark back alleys of a hidden neighborhood to find men playing dominoes, women braiding hair, teens washing clothes in buckets, and wondering how I got so lucky as to experience this culture, even for some fleeting minutes, in way most will never know

• kissing a grandmother good bye after laughing over pictures and holding hands

So. I might have gone into this completely exhausted, and I might have felt temporarily swallowed in the burden of a trash-laden landscape buried under black diesel exhaust and 90% humidity,

But.

I was reminded that yes, there is something life-giving in connecting with people who on the outside are nothing like me, but just as they do in every other country, reverberate this broken-record lesson: underneath, we are all really just the same.