Where the "F" did November go?

“The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche

However, no one likes burned cookies when you forget them in the oven. No one likes being forgotten after field hockey practice. Thanks Mom. I'm sure none of the others kids made fun of me. God forbid we forget birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays. What is most unforgivable is forgetting to update your blog. I am so sorry cyberspace. I forgot. Please forgive me. Please don't stop reading my blog. By the way your hair looks nice. Have you lost weight? You look fantastic.

Phew. Now that the groveling is over we can continue. It wasn't like I was sitting on my bum twiddling my thumbs. These past few (more than a few) days were filled with ice cream cake, turkey, stuffing, ham, deviled eggs, mac & cheese, chocolate chip cookies, blueberry pancakes... SORRY! I was counting by food again. Anyway many, numerous, several, multiple things happened while I was "vacationing". Charlie turned 3 and we had a party, with ice cream cake! Not for the dogs. You humane people keep your red paint in the buckets. Thanksgiving rolled through or actually we rolled around after all the food we ate. Matt and I celebrated the day he asked me to marry him. We opened the Christmas decorations box (YAY CHRISTMAS!) Finally, Matt let me bring home an animal from work. What? No, I'm not lying. Don't laugh at me like that. Dreams do come true people.

To back track, Charlie our dog turned 3. We had a dog birthday party disguised as football Sunday. The Redskins didn't even have the decency to win. Worst gift ever. We celebrated with ice cream cake (for the people) and dog treats for the dogs. I did smear a bit of icing on Charlie's tongue so he could feel included. For the record, we have the most awesome friends. Jennifer hunted down candles for the cake and cut it! John led the Happy Birthday song. Chris and Bunni tried to round up the dogs and Collin helped pick out the dog treats. Best of all, they still talk to us. Love you guys. Also, thanks to the grumpy lady at Food Lion who wrote Charlie's name on the cake. I didn't have the heart to tell her it was for my dog.

Jennifer lighting the candles and Matt singing "Happy Birthday" to Charlie!

Thanksgiving is possibly my FAVORITE holiday. It used to be Halloween because, for what other reason,  the candy. In actuality Halloween doesn't bring your family together (unless it's mine). Then it involves costumes, alcohol, and Maryanna's birthday. Still sore we missed that this year. So I made up for it by being at Thanksgiving. 1. There is a ton of food. More importantly it's a lot of good food. Gay starts the Turkey at 7:00 am so the whole house smells good the entire day. 2. My sister discovered a talent for baking cupcakes. That deserves it's own number on the list. 3. Turkey Day Family Football. Somehow it ended up being the Reeds against the Jones'. With Morgan (my niece) defecting occasionally. 4. Dad's tire swing. 5. Seeing family. 6. Secret Santa drawings. 7. Several different types of alcohol. All encouraged and consumed. 8. The noise. If you've never been to a Jones family gathering you'd might be concerned that you've either entered a pub or a large angry mob. 9. Knowing that no matter who walks in the door they'll get a hug, a beer and a plate of food. 10. Having 2 days off so we could see Matt's family too!
Also, my dad is a turkey baby. He was born on Thanksgiving so the holiday is usually a combined birthday. This year my ridiculous cousins gave him "ass-cream". Aptly applied for when he's being a pain in the ass. My step mom said that the cream should have been for her. That, is my family in a nut shell. 

My Thanksgiving 2011

Yikes. It looks like I'm writing a book here. I'll try to wrap it up before you fall asleep on me. On 11.27.11 Matt treated me to IHOP before work as a celebration of an anniversary of sorts. I had blueberry pancakes. They were delicious thank you for asking. A year ago he asked me to marry him. Here we are now- home owners, check. Married, check. Kids... not yet. Grandparents please continue to hold your breath. Feel free to breath though because when we do have kids we want you to be alive. Thanks. If you want a full encounter of our proposal leave it in the comments and I'll write a post about it.

Matt proposing 11.27.10

Finally, I have a kitten in my house. Hehehehe. My evil plan is working. I think. Probably not. He's sick and we're fostering him until he gets better. That's the plan. We don't need another animal. Even one as cool as Bebe. We don't need another animal. We don't.... awww he's so cute. No. Matt (the other Matt, our best man Matt) told me "This sick kitten is your gateway drug and the SPCA is your dealer". Touche, sir, touche. Anyone need a kitten?

Love,
Grace

 

All The Help You Need

The Help will be released on Blu-Ray and DVD December 6, 2011.

 
In honor of The Help finally making it from a best selling novel to the big screen, I'm re"printing" my first book review ever. For a review on the movie check out Rotten Tomatoes!

My review was published in Southern Maryland Women Magazine in April/May of 2010. By then The Help was already on the New York Times best sellers list for 44 weeks with four of those weeks at number one.

Enjoy!

  

The Help

Kathryn Stockett

Amy Einhorn Books/ Putnam, 464 pg.

Hardcover $24.95

By: Grace Jones

Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan is twenty-three, a college graduate, tall, gangly and single. In essence, she is her mother’s worst nightmare. Driven by the mysterious dismissal of her childhood maid, Constantine, she embarks on a project that will change not only herself but everyone who reads it.

Abileen Clark is steadfast, wise, and a black maid. She has raised seventeen white children. Mae Mobley will be her last. She knows she loves that child, just as she knows it’ll eventually break both their hearts.

The Help published February 10, 2009.

Minny is short, loud and sassy. She can cook and keep house like no other, but she can’t control her temper, and that’s no good when you’re a black maid in Mississippi. After several dismissals she finds herself employed for a wealthy white-trash woman with secrets of her own.

Seemingly different, these three women will come together to write a book that will cross racial lines and set fire to southern social norms. 

Stockett’s main characters are endearing. You hope, cry, laugh, and fear for them. Abileen, Skeeter, and Minny each take turns narrating. The effect is a whirlwind of optimism and despair.  Stockett’s story is much like the southern dialect that it’s written in, coated in sugar, laced with irony and tainted with a little bit of malice. The tone is remarkably upbeat for such a depressing theme. The result is an uplifting and soul searching tale. In the end you applaud for Minny, pray for Abileen, and cheer for Skeeter. These three women will take you on a remarkable journey through race torn Jackson, Mississippi and leave you wanting more.

First published in February of 2009 it spent forty-four weeks on the New York Times best sellers list, and 4 weeks at number 1. If you haven’t read it yet, you should.

The Magic of Childhood

There are few things that I secretly covet. The most important one of all is Harry Potter. I have read the series numerous times since the first book was published. I'm not bragging. I'd read it more if I could and probably will.

What's most important is that this series, these characters, this amazing story has become an integral part of my life. I can define years by which book I was reading at the time. It may sound silly and naive but for me they are more than books, they are friends. They are friends that are always there when I need them. As if they say, well there you are. It's been a while. We've been waiting for you. Each reading reveals hidden passages. Things I may have missed on my previous trips to Hogwarts. Something that makes me pause in my reading and think, surprisingly deeply on the world in which I have encased my childhood.

When the books became movies I was hesitant to be excited. However, now I will always stop on any channel that is playing them. I am only a year older than Daniel Radcliff (Harry) and the same age as Rupert Grint (Ron). Which in essence means I grew up with the cast.

This summer was the final installment of the Harry Potter series on the big screen. My husband, being the supportive wonderful man that he is, took me to see it. I warned him I was going to cry. I did. I utterly and unashamedly sobbed my way through the entire film. The last movie encapsulates the all too real side of the HP series. Death, sadness, and the eternal fight of good versus evil. Pictured with words the deaths of characters in a book are sad. Captured on screen they are horrifyingly real. 

As I left the theater with my husband I was still crying. I was crying just as much for the death of my beloved characters and the end of a beautiful series as much as I was crying for the girl who's grandmother gave her the first book. The girl who's mom took her to a midnight release for the second. The girl who devoured the third book in one night. The girl who cherished the fourth. The girl who wept over the fifth. The girl who took the sixth to field hockey camp. The girl who graduated high school with the seventh.

I walked out of the theater weeping for the end of my childhood. There was nothing more to tether the illusion to reality. The final movie was made. The ticket bought and spent. A hour or more later and I left an adult.

Love,
Grace

Why did I teach my daughter to read!?!

Hi. My name is Grace and I am addicted to books. 

Ha, you're thinking no surprise there. Well I have proof. May I present exhibit A.

Exhibit A, books bought  from the Fluvanna County Library book sale.

You can't count them all but there are 38 books. THIRTY EIGHT. The book sale only lasted 4 days. Unfortunately the remaining books not bought at the book sale are 25 cents a piece and available until Thanksgiving. So of course when I returned the books I borrowed for free I had to buy more.

I bought everything from trashy romances to vivid non-fiction to American classics. I'm not picky. This particular trip got me 25 paperbacks for 4 dollars. I think she cut me a deal because I must have looked like an angel of mercy when I arrived at the check-out desk with books stacked to my nose.

I can't promise I'll read them all. If they're horrible I'm going to donate them right back. 

The title is an actual quote from my dad.
He got tired of moving my books every time I relocated.

Love, Grace

FOURBUCKS...

Oh sweet seventeen-dollar cup of coffee.

I really don't know why when I'm early to work I have to hit Starbucks. It's a fix, like snorting cocaine in the bathroom during the 1980's. It's all the rage. You should try it, man.

What gets me is, they charge $4.00 for a cup of coffee. FOUR DOLLARS. You know what else you could buy for 4 dollars. 4 cheeseburgers off the McDonald's dollar menu. A comb. 8 cans of soda from a machine. At least 2 candy bars. You can see where my priorities are (food, food, food).

I always feel so silly for not ordering an entirely complex drink. (Tall Caramel Machiato--by the way, spell check wanted to make that Machination, that tells you something about Starbucks doesn't it!).


"Hi, I'd like a cup of coffee that tastes like 15 million calories but really I'd like it to slim my fat ass 10 pant sizes so I still look sexy and hip drinking this coffee, K thanks!"  aka "Hi I'd like a grande low fat skinny latte, hold the foam, no whip, extra cheese?"

Not so much to ask, right? Do you think if someone walked in and ordered a cup of coffee, black, that crappy indie music they play would screech to a halt? Like the sound of 10 thousand vuvuzelas dying after the world cup? Everyone would freeze and creepily turn their heads in unison. A secret guard would silently but efficiently glide out of the back, grab the man by the arm and guide him towards the door. The poor man wouldn't know what hit him. He'd just keep repeating over and over, "but I just wanted a cup of coffee!" His toes skipping the ground like a child's doll.

FWUMP. And now he's outside.

Also, I really hate how they make us gather around at the end of the counter like Hyenas waiting for the Lions to be done eating. Our coffee, logically, should come out in the same order it was placed. This is false. It's as if they purposely make coffee out of order so we get edgy. One of these days there's going to be a fight if that woman has to keep watching other coffees come out before hers.

"EXCUSE me? But my coffee is going to be upgraded to a  grande-ass-kicking if I don't see it here SOON."

Don't mess with that woman. She's the Hyena with 14 cubs and a lazy bum for a  mate. She needs her caffeine.


Ok, so I can't take full glory for the Fourbucks joke. That right belongs to Jack, Matt's step dad. And Matt every time we go to Starbucks and order a $4.00 cup of coffee and he quotes it. Fourbucks. Don't worry, you'll think of it next time you go. You'll feel guilty... pleasure. If loving a coffee shop is so wrong, then I'm better off broke so I can't buy it.


And all you hipsters doing homework, all you old people trying to be cool, and all you prada mom's in your tracksuits, high dollar sneakers and Louis Vitton bags, get over it. Where do I fall? I'm the quiet one, who gets her coffee, smiles and says thank you, and leaves. Like a ghost. So I can enjoy my coffee sin in private.

Love,
Grace

PS. Starbucks, I love the new sticks that fit in the lip hole, just so that little bit of warmth never escapes.
PPS. Your yogurt cost $3.75. It's delicious and I hate you.

GREETINGS, The Awkward Hug...

I am not a good hugger. I mean oh sure, I'll let you use my shirt as a snot rag when you're sad. Grab you and jump up and down, screaming when something amazing happens. I’ll even do a quick wrap around when I haven't seen you in ages.

I seriously can’t, CAN’T, hug you when I don’t know you. If we just met, we better have survived some crazy end of the world catastrophe. Like a meteor, a train collision, or the titanic is going down.

At work I made a friend. Cut the jokes. She’s really nice and we chat whenever we run into each other. However, I never knew her name. The other day I answered the phone at the front desk and helped a fellow co worker by running to the break room and checking her schedule. Lo and behold, it was my new friend. Yay! She decides to thank me with a really awkward, sideways, one armed hug. I froze, then immediately started a rapid paced conversation about traffic. While backing away slowly, pushing my mop bucket.

I have to be missing some important female genome. Don’t all women hug? They hug at work, at the gym, everywhere! Casual acquaintances hug when they haven’t seen each other in years.

“Jane, Hi!”

“Eliza, oh my goodness, how are you? It’s been forever.”

HUGGING, HUGGING, HUGGING.

Not me. I guess I’m just weird.

Love, 

Grace

Top 10 Places to Visit in C-Ville!

I thought I'd throw a top 10 together for you guys. While Matt and I haven't explored all of the cool places to go and neat things to see in our new home town Charlottesville, Virginia, there are a ton we want to. To narrow it down I chose my tops picks to share. Hope to see ya'll round here.

 

Love, Grace

"Can't Spare a Square"

Okay guys, I am seriously behind on my book reviews. I have 2, count them 1, 2, books that I finished reading since Sunday and I have 1 more almost done. I'm a reading machine. I'll probably do a double "issue" for the next post. Watch out for that.

On to the real discussion, why public bathrooms are (a necessary) evil. Whoever set the standards for public bathrooms- set them too high. Then they forgot to train ALL EMPLOYEES, EVERYWHERE.

There are a few key things women have come to expect from their stalls of relief.

1.) A lockable door. There is nothing worse than trying to hover over a toilet while holding a door shut and aiming. God forbid someone tries the door.

2.) A hook for the purse. No excuses. We are going to attempt to pee while holding a purse before we place it anywhere near the ground. Even if this means the straps are hanging from our mouths.

3.) A tissue thin barrier between our rear ends and insanity. We're imagining at least 15 million contractual diseases before our butts hit that naked seat of horrors. It's that or squats from hell.

4.) A little brown paper bag for our monthly messes. We really don't want to flush them (like your little paper sign says) but what else are we supposed to do?

5.) A flush-able toilet. Because men were raised to believe that women use the restroom strictly to powder their noses. Any evidence left otherwise is blasphemy.

Julia Louis Dreyfus as Elaine "The Stall" episode

6.) Toilet paper. We don't want to be that women who has to reach under the stall and ask her neighbor for a scrap of tissue. You know that bitch is going to give you 2 squares.

7.) Get rid of the scale machine! What woman in her right mind enjoys getting on the scale at home. You skinny ones, keep your mouths shut. Why the hell would we pay 25 cents to get on one in a public place. Put that thing in the men's room where they like to weigh themselves before and after a bowel movement.

Gentlemen, the real reason we travel in packs to the bathroom is so we can hold each others purses, pass the toilet paper and "powder our noses".

And that long line ladies, pee and get off the pot. Geesh. 

Love,
Grace