The last few days have been a bit of a haze for me. I’m slightly under the weather and have been plagued with some sort of stomach gnome-y adventure so, sometimes it’s hard to understand what Instagram is actually doing with my pictures when I’m breathing deeply and willing myself not to have to sleep on my bathroom floor. Are pictures of my hands going to show up on a billboard selling anti-fungal creams or something equally as fun? All I know is that this morning there are 93 unopened emails and they are all from flickr. So, I missed an exodus of sorts, and I’m glad that people are rediscovering flickr. I’m old school and have been the only person on earth still using it to store my photos. In case of zombie apocalypse, my photos are all saved on somewhere. So, really, I’m discovering that I know nothing about what’s going on. I might leave instagram. I might go back to flickr. I might start using all of those lenses I bought for the hipstamatic app that I used to use for everything. (Rememember hipstamatic?)
While I was sick and couldn’t do, well, anything, I was able to watch the season finales of both Homeland and Dexter and I was able to publish my 8 favorite television moments of 2012 over at Mamapop, but now that I have slightly more brainpower, I may have to create a part 2, since I left some important moments out. I’d love to hear some of yours, if you wouldn’t mind. It’s worth the click over there, you guys, if for nothing else than to re-watch the video of Lane Pryce taking out Pete Campbell. Worth it.
I did actually have a story to tell you today, though.
It was about the Kris Kringle holiday party that I went to last week.
Now, I’m really confused about Christmas party lingo, since, well, I am Jewish, and there are no Hanukkah Harry parties in existence. But, anyway, I always thought that Secret Santa was what I did with my siblings each year. Maw Maw gives us each a hidden name of a sibling and then we buy that person a special gift, and the giver is only revealed during the gift exchange. And I always thought that Kris Kringle was the stealing game. You buy a gift and bring it to a party, and then all gifts get put into the pool and people draw numbers. Number 1 goes first and chooses a gift. Number 2 goes second and can choose a new gift or steal number 1’s gift. It can be super fun and super rowdy. But I have heard all sorts of different names for these games—White Elephant? Dirty Santa? Yankee Swap?
So, whatever you call it, we were invited to one. And I was excited. I had my gift in one hand (from David’s Tea…the Winter Collection) and my contribution to the meal in the other hand (or we’ll call it Ali buys friends)—chocolate chip cookie dough brownies. All I needed was about ten minutes to do my makeup.
But.
Have you met my husband?
Well, if there’s one thing he doesn’t like in this world it is being late for anything ever.
Actually, it comes a close second to when the kids leave their bathroom light on. That’s his least favorite thing.
But then, after the bathroom lights, it’s being late to things.
So, he rushed me out of the door and so I grabbed my makeup bag and figured that I’d put my face on in the car at red lights.
Only, well, we took the crappy Hyundai and you know what the crappy Hyundai doesn’t have in it?
LIGHTS on the mirrors.
So, yes, like some sort of crazy person, I showed up at a party not having any clue how I looked.
Hint: It looked something like this:
Thankfully I had the brownies.
When it came time to the gift exchanging, it was hilariously funny and since we were instructed to think outside the box, there was only one gift card in the mix. My husband came home with an actual phone receiver that he can plug into his iphone for long conference calls. It’s ridiculous—but he uses it, and loves it and I laugh every single time.
While people were fighting over juicers and MY David’s Tea Winter Collection (it’s a good way to be invited back, you know) and one-ound Reese’s Peanut Butter cups, nobody wanted the gift that I had chosen—the gift of good hygiene.
So, there are many things to learn here, but the most important one is this:
If you show up at a party looking like you were hit with a makeup gun, there’s a slight chance you will walk away with A HINT instead of A GIFT.
(Thanks Ray and Cynthia for inviting us to your awesome party. Please keep inviting us. Next year I promise I’ll put my makeup on at home.)

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