Five Guilty Pleasures

That song is on again. The one with the delicious young man whose thumping backbeat promises that tonight he's woooooooooooo-ing me and for four minutes I've forgotten I'm a middle-aged mother of five. A smokin' hot middle-aged mother of five, mind you, but nevertheless out of his demographic. That jolts me back into remembering Jesse Petersen's meme on Guilty Pleasures so I'm revealing my top five. There are more, indeed, but this is a family-friendly blog.  ;)

#5: Enrique Iglesias. Okay, so he's not his panty-waving father and I can't tell you how happy I am not to get squicked out by the sight of that old man on the news anymore making eyes at Willie Nelson during a concert. I'll take the younger version, thank you very mucho. I don't care if his lyrics are uninspired, trite or overly sexual. Sign me up, mama liiiiiiiiiiikes.

#4: Haggis. Not everyone's cup of sheep intestine tea, I love the stuff. While in college, I spent a summer living in the lowlands of Scotland and the B&B owner I stayed with in Dundee took me round town to try every version of the dish. Fried, baked, boiled, you name it - I tried it. My favorite way, however, was while staying with friends in Kirkcudbright where we had a traditional haggis complete with toast to Burns, neeps and tatties, and lighting the thing. Glorious!

#3: Facebook. You love it or you hate it but it's punctured my social life and now I can't go long without it. I've made amazing friends, found new ways to get into mischief and look forward to using it as a future tool for world domination.

#2: Anchorman. I hate this film. I hate it so much that I've seen it over twenty times and can recite the silly thing as easily as I can a Python sketch. What is it about the train wrecks called Will Ferrell movies that make me so addicted? My slight attraction to Vince Vaughn or that I can't get enough Sex Panther? It's not pretty to admit, but there it is. I love lamp.

#1: Celebrity Apprentice. Oh the shame of saying that outloud. While the Donald is seriously on my nerves this season, I can't get enough of self-serving whiny B-list celebrities who fall apart over a lack of donuts. I think they should have crowned Bret Michaels Celeb Apprentice for Life if nothing else but to possibly catch a tantalizing glimpse of hairplugs under the bandana. This year's crop of narcissists have the Meh Factor, but there's enough butt kissing to counteract Trump's assertion that if you don't vote for him for president, you're stupid. Nice slogan, knucklehead.

Jellyfish and rabid sea cows

My husband and I are terrible gift-givers. It's not for lack of trying or that we can't be bothered to notice what the other has his or her eye on throughout the year, but after five kids, we're lucky if we remember we've even gotten another year older. We started our family early: I was pregnant eight months after we'd met and busy being a new wife and setting up our home, presents kind of slipped into the "oh crap, it's 11:15p on Christmas Eve again, isn't it?" category. By then I was ready to eat the candy I'd snuck into his Christmas stocking and take a nap under the tree - forget thoughtful gifts and who the hell really needs wrapping paper?

I didn't have to worry though, for our first Christmas together as a family, Bryan got me socks and a flannel nightgown. Nothing says romance like a chocolate-covered pregnant woman crying in her flannel plaid. Subsequent years weren't much better: boxed toilet paper; a stereo system that by the time he got around to installing it, the system was horribly out of date and unusable; a turkey fryer that probably would have burned the house down if he'd ever taken it out of the box; and most recently - a glass jellyfish paperweight. 

He loved those things while we were in Florida so finding one later, I was thrilled that this time I had finally found something he'd like. Okay, maybe love is a strong word; he looked at it and didn't seem repulsed may be closer to the mark but I did notice. I bought a nice little red one and presented it to him when we got home since his original birthday gift didn't work out. I was going to take he and the girls swimming with the manatees in Florida until someone - not naming names - was afraid of being bitten by a rabid sea cow. We ended up scratching the excursion so I figured this would be a good last-minute substitute. 

Last night, I asked how he liked it.

"It's weird. It's like a tiny little living being trapped in glass."

"Bryan, it is glass. Don't get squicked out." 

"Yeah, but it looks just like..."

"Don't make me call the manatees, Bryan."

It looks like we're going back to boxed joke toilet paper this Christmas.