Lying For Christmas

One consideration I never had when I married a Jewish woman, was that each year during the holidays, I would have to exaggerate the size of our Christmas tree in order for it to meet her height requirements. Size matters to my Fave, and this puts an enormous amount of pressure on me to coax her into agreeing to a tree that looks much taller than it actually is. This is accomplished by lying to her each year and it would seem that I've nearly perfected this process after over ten years worth of attempts. Here's how you lie to your fave for the holidays:

1. When choosing a location to cut down your tree, pick a real farm where you'll actually have to cut the tree down yourself — it should be a fun outing, and this method will not work if you're going to the dead tree lot on the corner.

2. Once you arrive at the tree farm, carefully scope out the terrain for a group of trees on a hill. Use your sales skills to convince your mate by saying something lame like, "it looks like there are some good ones over on that hill."

3. Let your fave casually wander the hill a bit. She/he will say stupid things like, "this one has a flat spot." Come prepared with rebuttals like, "you're right, but we could put that spot against the wall and it will look like it grew there."

(At this point it's up to you to spot your target tree, otherwise you'll be stuck Griswolding a tree home twice the size or your car. Unless you are busy making up for your shortcomings by driving a monster truck as your daily commuter — that's probably not the goal here. Besides, you're the one that will be trimming three feet off of the tree in order to fit it into your living room just because your fave insisted on bringing it home.)

4. After you find what you consider a manageable tree, call over your fave and start making your pitch, but this will only work under one condition; you must stand her/him below the tree so they're looking uphill at it. This is the most important step so please refer to my graphic illustration below for clarification, and I wish you luck by starting out the season with a lie.

Yes, we shop for Christmas trees naked and pregnant. photo: PandP

There's a Story Behind That

As a reader of this blog you're probably aware that I put an enormous amount of time and thought into each post. Like when I take a photo of my Fave and post it here — I usually take as many pictures as I can get away with, then strategically choose the one that entertains me the most. Take this one for example:

Yum, photo: P&P

She's probably not going to be too happy that I put this here, but I am sure there's a story behind it, however, I don't remember the anecdote at the moment.

I may not remember where we were when I snapped that photo, but as I browse through my iCamera photo library, there are plenty of photos that I've stored throughout the months that I remember thinking to myself at the time, "this will fit well on the blog." So as I sat this morning pondering my post options — I had to look no deeper than my pocket.

Slow going, photo: P&P

Guy raising a sail, photo: P&P

This came about because Cousin Short Shirt and Guy challenged me to cock off, I mean sail raising competition at some boat race in SF one afternoon. Side note: Boat racers dress similar to cyclists, just with Lycra covering their entire bodies. I was reluctant to participate in the competition for obvious reasons, so to tame their banter I stepped up and won. My prize; not having to watch this stupid sail being erected any longer.

Remember in my last post how I mentioned that I sit next to a person (Ellen) at work who tries to continuously roofie me? She's been on vacation for the past couple of weeks unable to defend her cube from incoming attacks. I am innocent here aside from the documentary photo journal I've been keeping when others come by and take future risks for themselves by fiddling with her space. I recently captured this next image of Ellen's keyboard — again, this was not my doing, I just took the photo.

A banana peel on Ellen's keyboard, photo: P&P

Ellen looks at bananas the same way that a you might look at someone who just licked the bottom of their shoe. Hopefully Ellen doesn't read this post.

This next one is pretty common practice:

Mauricio wearing a tutu on our Fourth of July ride, photo: P&P

I've been saving this next one for a quite a while and will someday get around to having it framed for my mom. This week was my dad's birthday so it's appropriate that I share one of his finest moments with you. Last year we put our lives in danger and went to a Raider game with my uncle and cousins. While we were tailgating with the scum of the earth before the game, the topic "shotgunning a beer" came up. At 55 years old, my dad had informed me that not only had he never shotgunned a beer, but that he didn't know how. Naturally, that led to this:

Shotgunning a beer

Keep pedaling,
You can find me on Twitter: @pedalandpetal

Digging up a winner, and avoiding a roofie-induced coma

Choosing a winner for my ground flower competition was tougher than I expected, however, I am happy to announce that I've finally green thumbed my way through the submissions with complete objectivity, and have now selected a winner.  Not only is there a winner, but I decided to award another prize to the most ridiculous participant of the ground flower competition. This doesn't mean there are two winners — think of it more like if by chance you had two kids and one of them had a birthday, but you bought them both gifts so there weren't any hurt feelings, but everyone knows whose birthday it really is.

With that said, there are two prizes to hand out, but since there's only one winner I've decided to hand them out differently. As for the winner —here's how he received his prize:

Remember Guy? He didn't win, however, he played an important role in the ground flower competition, and is really good at growing things like plants and children.

A section of Guy's garden, photo: p&p

Guy's beer toting pregnant wife; photo: p&p

Guy didn't win the competition for obvious reasons, like submitting a bouquet from the flower stand at his local grocery store. What guy doesn't know is that he actually grew the winning prize in his garden. When Guy leaves town for a getaway, he has me stop by and water his plants every few days. I usually delegate this chore to my almost four year old who has no problem following his strict instructions.

"Use one bucket of water here, and don't pet them or touch my pumpkins." photo: p&p

I know how much Guy loves his garden so we make sure to leave everything exactly as we found it, if not better.

And we make sure never to over water.

Sometimes leaving things better than we found them is easy, take for example Guy's pot of daisies. They are obviously way too crowded.

Guy's over-crowded flower pot; photo: p&p

Finally, we found the winner's prize; photo: p&p

Guy's much improved flower pot; photo: p&p

So who won? The choice was easy. Congratulations Jarod for winning the ground flower competition. Jarod submitted four flowers with this columbine taking home top honors.

Jarod's Columbine

So I awarded Jarod with the flower that we dug up from Guy's garden, where it will live comfortably in the middle of the forest and try not to get devoured by deer.

Guy's flower living happily in Jarod's garden

Jarod will go down in history as the first winner of the ground flower competition no matter how much Ellen cries about it, but I decided to numb the pain with a prize for her lack of seriousness when submitting flowers for the competition. Remember, Ellen submitted a poinsettia then tried to bribe me with a roofie-filled wall mounted hanger for my bike? Then, she went ahead and submitted another flower which I found out was her neighbors'. So why am I giving Ellen a prize? Well, I sit with my back to her at work and she watches my every move with a mirror that's taped to her monitor. She also was the only person who gave me a deadline for announcing a winner. The good news is that Ellen is leaving for vacation tomorrow, and today is my deadline according to her. My system can't handle any more roofies, so I decided to meet her deadline and provide her with the prize in the photo below. Hopefully it distracts her for a day much like how you would distract a raccoon with a shiny object in hopes of it leaving your garbage cans alone.

Ellen's handlebar sunflower; photo: p&p

Ellen - if you want this sunflower mounted on your handlebars, you'll have to ride your bike to work.

Keep pedaling,

People Watching

The other day my Fave and I decided to have a picnic at the park and do some people watching. We knew it was going to be day filled with characters when when on the way to the park we came across this guy.

Reverse street trike, photo: PandP

Heading to the park seemed a like a peaceful way to enjoy the remainder of our weekend, however, Jak (our dog) had other ideas. He weighs six pounds, barks loud and runs slightly slower than me — I usually catch up to him just in time to apologize to owners of normal dogs for him pretending to be ferocious.

Jak being restrained, photo: PandP

Jak slipped away upon our arrival and hassled a nearby dog jogger, dragging his leash and harness with him. Fortunately his victim was friendly yet confused and let him off the hook with just a few butt sniffs. Sorry for not taking a photo, but I was busy apologizing to the dog and his jogger. From then on we made sure he remained on a short leash.

Jak hunting from his leash, photo: PanP

Once Jak was occupied with hunting from his leash we were able to enjoy the rest of our afternoon, so we continued with our original objective. Take for example this hipster, who can be found being super hip riding without a helmet accompanied by a child on her handlebars who also doesn't have on a helmet.

Super hip helmetless hipster, photo: PandP

After this hipster rode by, Jak had seen enough and needed to get home for a nap.

Goodnight

Keep pedaling,

The Ground Flower Nominations

Let's get to it — and then drag out announcing a winner until my next post. Here are the nominated petals.

Sandy's pretender 

Jessie's wallflower

Not sure how this got on the list (Alia)

The contender, read her blog: http://yearthirtyone.blogspot.com/

Maggie's miniature Christmas trees

Maggie's demon power ground flowers

My Fave's conflict of interest

Ellen attempted to bribe me with a roofie-filled bike rack, which may have worked except...

She submitted a poinsettia - Merry Christmas

My boss obviously didn't take this competition seriously

Jarod's Columbine

Jarod's pansy

Jarod's foxglove

Jarod has a lot of flowers

Something my mom sent in

Something my sister sent in for my mom

My sister still lives at home so she said this was her submission but actually it's just another one for my mom.

Not sure whose this is but based on the bamboo in the background, my sister took this at my parents house. They live in a bamboo forest.

My Fave's submission starting to suffer from over hydration

My Fave's final submission

If I were to submit a ground flower this would be it because star jasmine smells much like I do.

 

Jordan said this was the winner

I said "not sure" attached this submission and said, "there's some tough competition."

Jordan agreed and sent me this

Guy's disqualified non-ground flower from the grocery store.

Guy says this is his real submission

Sarah is a narcissist, or maybe this is Sarah's narcissus

Oh, and Mauricio decided to enter a ground flower from the moon.

I most likely forgot someone's ground flower — if that's the case it's nothing personal, but it obviously means your flowers weren't memorable. Say you had a vote — which are your favorites?

Keep petaling,