Tuesday’s are my weigh-in days for my online Weight Watchers thingy, and despite having now lost 10 pounds, every Monday night I sit in fear of the morning’s number. Like it will have magically gone back up 10 lbs IN SPITE of having diligently stuck to the diet. I also offer up some silent prayers as the scale blinks and thinks about how to ruin my life for the week.

Methinks I need a new hobby. Or at least, some Valium.

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If I am going to continue in this whole “trying to post everyday” thing without actually talking about my lunch or my bathroom habits, I am going to need some help. This is where YOU come in: what do I write about? Don’t be shy, ask away (or at least give me some subject matter to write about. I can only talk about myself for so long before I start to get nauseous.). I assure you that I am the least modest person on the planet, so very little that you could either say or ask would be off limits.

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Something I’ve wanted to throw out there for a long while is this: do you OR should you comment on every blog that you read? I try to do so, just so the author knows that those site hits on their Site Meter aren’t just from spambots or whatever. Plus, most people who have public blogs tend to enjoy having an audience, so I’m happy to oblige.

After the Great Condo Fiasco of 2005, we have been a bit gun shy about decorating the new house. Although I may not necessarily LIKE the colors that most of the walls are painted, none of them are as horrific as the Houses of the Holy orange of our bedroom in said condo. Most rooms are tolerable, especially now since the main floor bathroom is (mostly) completed.

I’ve inherited (thanks, Dad) a genuine fear of hanging pictures because OHMYGOD IT MIGHT MAKE HOLES THAT I HAVE TO SPACKLE! If there is something beyond the fact that I now do not vomit when I see the 3!!! different prints of wallpaper clashing mightily, I am now not afraid of spackle (I did, afterall, spackle most of all 4 walls. Oh, the damage that the wallpaper inflicted upon those poor walls). Since we are entertaining, I decided to both frame and hang many of the pictures we have been waiting to hang (waiting for what, I’ll never be sure..a bus to come, a train to go, or waiting around for a yes or no, I’m pretty sure that I was waiting for someone else to do this for me, but no one volunteered, sadly enough.).

Unfortunately for anyone who happens to walk into my home, the walls in the hallway now look as though pictures of my family have been vomited all over the walls. It makes us appear to be completely narcissitic and self-absorbed, which may be the case (2 blogs!! Oh, SNAP!!) and all, but yeah, it’s overkill.

I need to remedy this situation post haste, but am unsure how to do so. I don’t have any sort of eye for decorating houses and typically rely on bright and bold paint colors to mask this. Painting is, though, for now out of the question completely, so what to do? I’m dying for my home to be well put together and flow nicely, but have no real way of making this a reality. I love funky stuff, but I have no idea where to get stuff like that (and no, sadly, I was lying about the Miller Lite signs in my living room. They’re actually in my bedroom. Classy, I know). My family is FULL of useful people, so of course I have an interior decorator that I can invite over, but she’s OCD and might explode unless my home is perfectly cleaned.

How do normal people do this sort of thing? Any ideas?

In a glaring moment of either sheer stupidity or amazing brilliance (I’m blaming sleep deprevation here), I have offered to host Thanksgiving Day at my home this year. Brilliance because then I am not required to travel with two children in a car AND bribe someone to come by and take care of our menagerie for several days. Stupidity because I abhor cooking (true story: in kindergarten, my class was required to submit a recipie off of the top of our heads for a class cookbook. You know, “a room full of milk” and other such hilarious units of measure. My contribution was simple: Call China Light, order food, pick up in 20 minutes. To this day, this remains my favorite recipie, bar none) unless it is baking. I adore baking.

Every other year, we’ve diligently travelled up to Wisconsin to visit Dave’s grandmother in the nursing home and eat somewhat frightening turkey and stuffing. She never remembered who actually I was, I’m sure that I was just some blurry young thing to her but she always remembered Ben and looked forward to hearing him sing his Greatest Hits Album (including, but not limited to “Ring of Fire,” “Working Class Hero,” and “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”). She passed on this summer, which effectively let us off of the hook for Thanksgiving, which meant that Thanksgiving proper was free to be filled with such goodness as ordering junky pizza and drinking a 30 case of Miller High Life by ourselves.

Until I opened my big, fat, trap, and suggested that we could host this holiday. We have a tentative menu, which guarantees that we will waste approximately $60 on a piece of meat that will summarily be ruined by my minstrations. Thankfully, however, I am planning to make several pies that will hopefully overshadow my obvious shortcomings as a chef.

I have begun the process of getting my house back in order (after my recent bout with sleeplessness coupled with my wonky thyroid, I am starting to feel like a reasonable shadow of my former self), which is no small feat. While I am completely aware that the 4-6 people who will come by for Thanksgiving will neither notice nor care that Alex’s teeny clothes are now perfectly folded, organized, and stacked in fancy blue bins, I feel it is necessary, therefore it is (somewhere, Dave is cradling his head in his hands in frustration). It’ll be several weeks (a.k.a. Thanksgiving Day) before this process is completed, so on and on I will plug away.

But I have something completely special up my sleeve for this joyous day, something that no one (save for my husband, and now, The Internet) will have seen coming. Something that will be a new holiday tradition at my house: Schweaty Balls (if you are completely confused right now, go down and watch the SNL skit on this page. It’s about a minute long and worth every second. And no, I am not a teenage boy.)

After listening to me tell the baby over and over “It’s a Schweaty family recipie” and laughing completely by my lonesone, my husband suggested that I pull this stunt for the holidays. I am going to make some sort of ball-shaped cookies (no, not THOSE balls, silly), and put a index card with “Shweaty Balls” next to them.

When someone comments on them, Dave will begin the straight man monologue that he is so good at (about the balls feeling good in your mouth, ad infinitum, ad nauseum), which will surely send me into spasms of laughter. Hell, he’ll be lucky to get my ass back to the kitchen, women! after I have made said balls, as I will be too busy laughing at them. Since my family raised me, they will be expecting these sort of antics from me and laugh along side me, but the real treat will be seeing my uber-conservative in-laws react (the more that I think about this, the more I am convinced that marrying me was an elaborate retaliation method designed to drive his parents insane. I got back at my parents by smoking cigarettes (because in my home, everything else was just fine to do, so long as I didn’t smoke pot in the living room. Ah, hippies), and he got back at his by marrying a crude, crass, pre-marital sex-havin’, loud-mouth woman.), not because I don’t like them, but because I think that someday, they are going to have to learn precisely who their son married, Schweaty Balls and all.