He replied, “You just look past the drops and everything is still clear. You don’t need them right away.”

I think I’ve been operating under the impression that I need them right away.

It’s funny the simple conversations that stay with you and turn out to mean so much more than face value.

1. What did you do in 2011 that you’d never done before?

Received unemployment, Tivo’d, played down the holiday’s, played an important role in a wedding, went to Alaska, tried online dating, joined a semi-pro cheer team, started couponing, went to Vegas, went to a bachelorette.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I didn’t make any, at least none I remember

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Not really close but a lot of people I know, primarily from high school

4. Did anyone close to you die?
No, not this year.

5. What countries did you visit?
Canada!

6. What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?
Stability

7. What dates from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
October 26th, the day I lost my job and my whole life changed.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Getting a job after only a month, or dancing again.

9. What was your biggest failure?
Losing my job.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Pneumonia in January, weird eye infection thingie.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
Anything that was free with coupons.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
My mom’s- I feel like we’ve become a lot closer and have mutual discussions about things now. My dad has become one of my number one fan.  Dan has wonderful moments where we’re 100% on the same team. Meghan has become my best friend, the person I can always turn to for support.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
I have never been this frank, but my ex. I cannot believe the shit he did to me that came up this year.

14. Where did most of your money go?
Rent and bills.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Going to vegas, cruising with just me and my mom, hockey season starting up again.

16. What song will always remind you of 2011?
Drink to That by Rhianna. Party Rockers.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:

a) happier or sadder? By the end of the year, sadder.
b) thinner or fatter? Fatter during most of the year, getting thinner at the end.
c) richer or poorer? Significantly poorer.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Dance, bonding with other ladies, travel.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Crying, sitting on the couch.

20. How did you spend Christmas?
Sick, at my parent’s house.

21. Did you fall in love in 2011?
Yes.

22. What was your favorite TV program?
Holmes on Homes. I don’t want to ever buy a house without Mike going through it first!

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
Not hate, but a lot of people got cut out this year.

24. What was the best book you read?
I can’t pick one… I really enjoyed The Hunger Games, The Help, whatever else I read camping.

25. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Kate Nash’s “Nicest Thing”  Emmy Rossum “Slow me Down”

26. What did you want and get?
A new computer when mine died. A new job. A support system.

27. What did you want and not get?
I new, local female friend I can really bond with.  Commitment (premature or otherwise). Organization. Sanity.

28. What was your favorite film of this year?
I can’t remember seeing anything that completely rocked my socks. Fast Five?

29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I got belligerently drunk and did more things that I regret and am embarrassed about than I ever have. I turned 26.

30. What is one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Being a conventional version of successful.

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2011?
Soccer-mom chic. Lots of low boots and wedges, skinny jeans and casual scarves with tees. Not to be confused with hipster chic.

32. What kept you sane?
My cat, Milwaukee. Meghan. Wine. Weekends.

33. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Parise from the NJ Devils. Always.

34. What political issue stirred you the most?
Probably Penn State.

35. Who did you miss?
My family. Dan when our schedules became opposite. Meghan when shit goes south. Friends I drifted from like Rachelle, Heather and Kat.

36. Who was the best new person you met?
Some of the girls on dance team are fabulous.  An older Canadian gentleman from the cruise.

37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2011.
You are always replaceable. You are also always good enough.

38. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
“The noise of the world is getting me caught up/ Chasing the clock and I wish I could stop it/ Just need to breath, somebody please/ slow me down”

Conundrum, eh? I just love the food. My criteria for the perfect superbowl “meal” is utterly snackable: no utensils, clever and oh so tasty.  And I love feeding people, so Superbowl is purely my vehicle.

This year, I’ve decided to let that inspiration begin at new years, with a casual gathering of the usual suspects. If I’ve got to stay up late to kiss this crappy year goodbye, I’m going to be eating.  Here’s my lineup for both events:

New Years:

- Mini Lasagna Cups – A newbie to my lineup but I think a perfect munchable dinner-like item for the evening.

- Salad on a Stick – Honestly I think this is lamer than lame, but it’ll be nice to have next to the lasagna cups. Totally embarrassed this is in my lineup, but fork-free.

- PW Jalapeno Poppers - God I love Pioneer Woman. And these look delish, for everyone who likes jalapeno. Which sadly isn’t me.

- Caramelized Onion and Goat Cheese Bread – Must I explain this one? Really? Cheese, carbs and flavor. Life is complete.

- Perhaps prosciutto and melon for it’s salty sweet delight.

- Raw fruits and veggies for guilt-free constant nomming.

- Cheesy puffs. Mandatory processed fakeness because it MUST BE SO.

- And then these gems. Cheesecake Stuffed Strawberries. You’re welcome.

Breakfast of course is a whole ‘nother beast, but I think these Idaho Sunrises will be PERFECT.  Cheese and bacon with plenty of hangover absorbing carbs.

Now Superbowl is all about appealing to the boys, so it’s a little less… snooty?

- PW Jalapeno Poppers, as shown above. OBVS.

- Mini Baked Potatoes – I did these ones last year and they were a HUGE hit. I’ll have to make twice as many me thinks.

- Nacho Cups – I swear, these are like consumerism at its finest. They require almost no cooking, all you do is open like 7 different jars and spoon into tortilla chip cups. It’s ridiculous. Ridiculously delicious.

- Bacon and Blue Cheese Dip – This will be the only dip returning from last year. No other is needed.

- Again, fruit and veggies for my ladylike sensibilities.

- Lil Smokies. Ya just kinda gotta.

- Tequila Watermelon Wedges – No part of this sounds like a bad idea. Nope.

- Last year I made Mini Cheesecakes as well, and I think I might be kicked out of my own house if I don’t offer them up again. Plus, they’re super easy. Maybe even superbowl easy. Sorry, I’ll stop.

And that’s it! Easy, snackable, hands-only feasts that you can graze on for a while.  Other things I found include Asparagus in Blankets, Tomato Basil Skewers and Mustard Dill Tortellini Salad Skewers… those might have to wait on the bench until next year.

Wake

Check job sites

Check couponing sites

Watch something on TV

Clean something

Get out of the house on whatever desperate reasoning I can come up with

Stalk twitter obsessively

Catch up with friends

Clean something

Check job sites

Check couponing blogs

Read another book

Eat dinner

Stay up too late

Repeat.

I’ve never been formally unemployed. Never received unemployment or severence pay. This is a whole new world I’m not accustomed to.

Ultimately, it makes me feel a little worthless. I’ve taken to doing ANYTHING that will make me feel like I’m contributing to the betterment of my life.  Cook something new, bake another dessert, try my hand at baking bread, deep clean the stove, get an amazingly good deal, paint my nails, wax my car, pay bills.

While my time is monotenous and mundane, I’ve also finally got time to do new things.  The mystery is just in finding the balance that leaves me feeling fulfilled and optomistic.

Here’s to the unknown.

[i was home all along...]

“I don’t play a hand unless it’s paired or suited.”

*pause*

uhm… then you don’t play very much, do you?

“Exactly.”

I learned to play poker (Omaha and hold ‘em) my sophomore year of college from my boyfriend’s apartment-mate.  Scott is a beanpole of an Asian kid, quiet and witty.  He had a passion for poker, the likes of which I had never seen.  I harassing him regularly to teach me, in between hanging out in my boyfriend’s on-campus apartment while he was at class exclusively so I could watch TLC.

We sat down, finally, one night.  I absorbed the rules and layout of play quickly and let him deal me a few hands face up so he could explain strategy.  My boyfriend quickly got bored and wandered off to play Halo.  I was rapt as he explained statistics and percentages, numbers that made a game quickly less of a game and more of a math equation that I would NEVER get a grip on.

“So, you have a five of clubs and a eight of diamonds, what would you do?”

Play it, at least until the flop and see what my odds are for the straight.

“No. You would fold.”

…

“The odds of you hitting a five to nine or four to eight straight aren’t in your favor, and you have nothing else to work with.”

Oh.  So.  I fold.  That’s boring.

“No. That’s smart.”

He finally let me conceal my cards. I was so excited to have a secret.  We folded hand after hand.  I got bold and played hands he wouldn’t, he expressed (generally with a sigh) the luck I got in flops and rivers.  He still beat me, of course, but I was hooked.  My birthday was celebrated on the beach and I requested we play poker at a picnic table after lunch.

Now when I play, I always think of Scott.  I don’t talk to him anymore, I rarely talked to him after my boyfriend moved out of the apartment.  But I sit and play on free poker sites, rolling my eyes at how other people play.  I don’t fold as many hands, but I’ll ride my blind when given the opportunity and raise aggressively on good hands.  I’ve lost more than I’ve won, but I can hold my own.

Scott also once, for a minute, convinced me that horse sweat was poisonous and that’s why cowboy’s wear chaps.

He could apparently teach me anything.

What we DID do though, is give a blessing for the baby and a second for the family after saying our association with the mother to be.  A little hippie-dippy but ultimately kind of a cool idea.

“So everyone, we’ll start with your name, then your mom’s name, then your mom’s mom’s name and go as far back in your matriarchal line as you  know…”

“Okay. Uhm, hi everyone.  I’m Erica, my mom’s Lori and my grandma is Virgie.  My great-grandma… uhm… I don’t know her name.”

Panic inside my brain follows: I mean, it’s not that I don’t know her name, exactly. I know what she looks like.  I have a picture.  She looks just like me… I just don’t think I’ve ever heard her name.  Or maybe I wasn’t listening well enough, maybe I’ve been told and I just blocked it out because sometimes it just hurts to think about my grandma because I hardly knew her and to know her mom seems mind blowing to me.  Maybe I should’ve listened closer.  I’ll go home and find out.  I’ll go home and start tracking my family tree, because I don’t think anyone’s doing it.  The only part of my family with remote history and no one cares enough to track it.  But I think someone might be, I don’t know. How can I not know my mom’s mom’s mom’s NAME even????

I’m prone to freak outs.  Especially of the mental variety.

Here’s what I do know.

My grandma’s mom died when my grandma was young, maybe 8 years old.  My grandma Virgie grew  up in one of the Dakota’s, the poor Dakota (South?) and stopped school young to help on the family farm.  They were poor,  no Christmas poor.  I’m pretty sure she was first generation, from Norway, to the point where her and her husband spoke only Norwegian to each other.  In passing, I think she had five children, Virgie being the youngest.

That’s it. That’s all I know.

But I think it’s time to learn more…

I haven’t seen you in twenty years. Every year I think of you, every day I think of you. I hardly know you, but I like to think you know me pretty well. Probably better than I know myself. I’ve determined though, that of everyone in the family you would understand me the most. That’s what I regret the most.

Over the course of twenty years, times will come up where my world tumbles down around me and I lie in the dark with tears streaming down my face and talk it all out to you. I’ve been doing it for as long as I can remember, like you can hear me.

And I feel like now, more than any other time, I want you to hear me so badly it’s making it worse.

I watched a few episodes. And went “Bitches be crazy, yo….

But I could do that.”

So I did. I started perusing printable coupon sites, following couponing networks to catch the deals. Researching Safeway deals and combining coupons against promotions. Mini-celebration-in-honor-of-me when I realized I could register my safeway club card in their Just4U program and score sweet-ass deals.  Getting frustrated when I couldn’t find any more deals, couldn’t get my printer to print, and realized how much time I had spent already.

But today I shopped, although I didn’t expect much.  Regardless, I needed groceries and I’ve always been relatively thrifty in that regard, so now it’s a personal challenge.

Here’s what I did, with the discount(s):

2 Emerald Breakfast to Go on sale 2/$6, J4U $1 off, $1 MFR coupon = $2 each
Betty Crocker Instant Mashed Potatoes on sale 2/$5 (forgot the .50$ coupon. waaah)
Kraft mac n’ cheese on sale .88$
Rice (not on sale) $3.19
Canned Mandarin oranges (not on sale) $1
3 Kinds of canned beans .89$ each
Frosted Flakes on sale 2/$5, MFR $1 coupon rejected
Jiffy corn muffin mix on sale .49$
Tortillas J4U price .99$
Pasta Sauce on sale 2/$3
2 CanadaDry Ginger Ale J4U price .77$/each
DunkinHines Large Vanilla Frosting on sale 4/$5
Kleenex J4U .99$
Friskies canned cat food on sale 10/$7, J4U BOGO = .33$/each
TidyCat Litter on sale $6.99, J4U .50$ off, MFR $1.10 off = $5.39
OreIda Tatertots on sale 2/$6, J4U $1.99/each
3 Stouffer’s lasagna on sale 5/$11, $1.10 off MFR coupon rejected (totally bummed about that one…)
Eggs (12 count) J4U  FREE
Lucerne String Cheese on sale $3
Lucerne Milk 1/2 gal J4U $1.49
Lucerne sour cream 16 oz on sale $1.77
Lucerne butter J4U $2.49
Mother’s Day Card !!
Safeway 100% whole wheat bread J4U $1.48
Assorted produce (oranges, potato, onion, cucumber, cantaloupe) all .99$/lb
African Violet on sale $3.33

And the roundhouse kick to the face? $10 off a $50 purchase!!

All in all, I only used 2 coupons, had one forgotten (on a box) and had 2 returned to me (the cashier and manager-on-duty said they didn’t list a way to authenticate). I had a bunch of other coupons, but I want to wait for the items to go on sale.

My savings? 47%  I spent $58.35

Now that I’ve gotten a taste, I’m ready to do some more research and get my saving on!

My five cousins moved from Dunsmore to Alaska when I was maybe 9.  It wasn’t a super impactful decision for the family ultimately, except around Thanksgiving and occasionally during the summer months.  My youngest cousin was biting the tips off my fat crayola markers with her toddler teeth, and the cousin’s my age were constantly bickering.  But we hung out, and they were fun. Then they moved to Alaska, and that was that.

There were stories about their horse getting hit by a semi on the way up to Alaska in the middle of the night.  They moved without much if anything of a house waiting for them, at the brink of Spring.  My cousins told me about going to the bathroom as a group in the middle of the night and dropping the flashlight down the outhouse toilet.  The oldest daughter (from another marriage) moved to live with her dad, and my aunt and uncle eventually got a divorce.

We saw them around July when I was about 17 and had a summer Thanksgiving in their honor.  The cousin’s my age got pregnant and had adorable babies.  The youngest moved back to California for private school.  My uncle remarried.

My only male cousin from that family joined the Army.

Adam. Adam joined the army to spite my uncle, in a way.  He didn’t like Alaska, he didn’t like the family’s rules and always enjoyed getting into a bit of trouble.  He asked to stay with my parents, to surprise his youngest sister when she visited for Thanksgiving.  He told stories that were blatantly edited of the worst of the partying he did with his army buddies.  He hated being stationed in Georgia and wanted desperately to be shipped out to Afghanistan.  I won’t lie, he came off as a bit of a Southern boy hick.

But then he did get shipped out.  It seemed to… humble him a bit.  He grew up a tad, and seemed to enjoy coming to stay with my parents on leave.  At some point, unbeknownst to me, his training allowed him to become a paratrooper, something he loved.

Yesterday on a jump, his arm got caught in the static line and broke in three places.  To quite literally add insult to injury he landed on the arm as well.  They’re anticipating a one year recovery.

To the boy who jumps out of planes, godspeed.  We love you.  We always have.

I don’t generally pay much attention to my magazines anymore, leading me to allow most of my subscriptions to lapse this time around, so I flipped through the pages of Redbook first while Stacy and Clinton remodeled frumpy moms.  “What’s shocked us this issue? Turn to page 134 for details on the website that husbands go to cheat.” Hmm. Interesting, I’ll get to it soon enough.

And then I got to it.  And read it.

Have you heard about this? ashleymadison.com ? A whole new realm of dating site, who’s first words to you blare across the status bar “AFFAIRS GUARANTEED.”  The stories were vaguely reminiscent of my online dating days, except for the whole cheating part, presumably.  The distinct sadness of each situation was earth-shakingly real, the men from every walk of life who – for the most part- just got bored.

Bored.  It’s not that they weren’t still in love, or that their husband’s weren’t good fathers, or that they had been married for years (one was a newlywed).  They were just bored.

It buries into every insecurity I’ve ever had about my relationships. The ohmygodi’mnevergoingtobegoodenough‘s that riddle holes into the most stable places.

Then I got mad.   How dare Redbook report on something that will make every sane woman who reads question their significant other.  There is a point somewhere between responsible journalism and fear-pumping of facts that this article lands between.  I consider myself rather internet savvy, and I had no clue this site even existed. What of the mom group that actually considers this periodical their bible?  How many marriages will this destroy, how many families will it tear apart, how many women scorned?

I’m not condoning the cheating itself.  That one action is obviously more impacting than the report.  But the reporting implies “Women, question your husbands. Women, ALWAYS question your husbands.”  It left a bad taste in my mouth, and pushing fear from my own mind about every relationship I’ve ever been in.

Goodbye, Redbook.  I am now relegated to Women’s Day and FamilyCircle for my mindless mom drivel.

“I’m getting out, no nothing ever shames me.
I’m going out, I don’t care if you’re angry.”