Fondue Festivities and Happy Holiday Hunting

This year marks the 19th annual fondue and scavenger hunt party

hosted in our home right before Christmas.
Since our meager beginnings in a tiny apartment in Jacksonville, Florida,
to a clubhouse in Dothan, Alabama, to our first home here
and now our 2nd home here in Greenville, SC,
this tradition has been one we look forward to every year.

[Now, I have to add a caveat.
If you are reading this, and you are a friend of mine here in town,
and you have not been invited to one of these yet, and want to be,
let me know.
If you are reading this, and you are a friend of mine here in town, 
and you have already attended this in the past, 
too bad. 
We need fresh meat this year!
Call my secretary and make an appointment,
we'll try to squeeze you in.
Or you can crash the party. The details are below.
Just be sure to bring me a nice gift.
I am registered at several thrift stores.]

Ahem.
On to the rest of the post.

I usually print my own invites on some stationery I find at Office Max or Staples.

Or we make postcards at the Fuji Film kiosk at Walgreens.

But this year, I decided I wanted to try another way of making the invites,
online at:

STUDIO DAYSPRING.com

So, I simply created an account and logged in.

I selected my category, Christmas Party Invites,

I then chose the card. The pretty red and aqua ones. I wonder why?

I chose a folded card.

It looked like this when I started.

I got to move the fonts, colors and words around

(this was extremely fun, by they way).

And voila!

An invite.


The front:

The inside top:

The inside bottom:

The back:

Then I checked out.
(Like I did after the huge Thanksgiving meal we had).

The hardest part was waiting for the cards to arrive.

(Three days).

And when they did, I was actually astonished by them!

Thick paper, not-too-glossy, not-too-matte, rich hues.

They are quality!

Here they are in person:

I always add some loose, unexpected embellishments inside the cards
[which I hear, really make a mess fantastic first impression,
especially after one has just vacuumed, or one happens to open the invite in their car.]

You can also upload your own family photos to make GORGEOUS Christmas Cards.

They make birthday, shower, wedding invites,thank you cards,
Graduation Announcements and more!

Anything, really, since YOU customize your card.

If you think it up, you can make it.

I'm sorry Office Max and Staples, you won't see me in your stationery aisle 
next year or the year after the year after that.

I'm sorry Fuji, I won't be standing in the long line at your photo kiosk again.

I have found my card maker.

I'm sorry I cannot tell you more about the party.
It would spoil the surprise and shock fun for the this year's fresh meat party-goers.

But here is one set of friends that survived the night.

So go check out Studio Dayspring and make a celebration happen!

Dennis Miller Double Whammy

SELLER: Dennis Miller
LOCATION: Santa Barbara, CA
PRICE: Price Upon Request (previously reported to be $17,500,000)
SIZE: 10,000-ish square feet,

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Listen giblets, contrary to popular opinion we are still "officially" partaking in our extended Thanksgiving holiday break and, more importantly, we are more than a little worse for wear from last night's early dinner of tomato bits and champagne that ran obscenely late with our visiting from Alaska gal pal Sheila Sinn and her baby brother Vard C. Camp. So cut us some slack, okay?

In June of 2010 Emmy winning comedian cum kind of conservative radio talk show host Dennis Miller and his long time former model wifey Carolyn "Ali" Espley listed their fully restored, updated and upgraded mansion in Montecito, CA with a reported asking price of $17,500,000

Mister Miller started up his ladder of fame in the mid-1980s when he appeared on Star Search and lost to the spectacularly unfunny Sinbad. It wasn't long before he took over the Weekend Update desk on Saturday Night Live. After jumping the SNL ship in the early 1990s he helmed an eponymous late-night talk show on the tee-vee and by the early 2000s he'd taken a job as a color commentator for Monday Night Football. In the mid-naughts he began a long relationship with Fox News on which he gives his opinion on things on their various punditry programs. His primary gig nowadays, as far as Your Mama can tell, is a 3-hour syndicated talk radio program called The Dennis Miller Show on which he chit-chats about political, cultural and social issues and plays host to a variety of guests from Ohio lefty liberal congressman Dennis Kucinich to that smug and pugnacious Ann Coulter ladee who causes Your Mama's sphincter to seize up with anxiety at the mere mention of her name.

According to previous reports and property records Mister and Missus Miller picked up their Montecito estate–technically and from the tax man's point of view located in Santa Barbara and not Montecito–way back in 1993 for an undisclosed amount of moolah. Your Mama thinks it's pretty safe to assume the cost for acquiring the property was far far far less than the seventeen and some million they're (allegedly) asking. Anyhoodles poodles, the 10,000-ish square foot house was lucky enough to be designed and built in 1895 by prominent and adroit Gilded Age architect Stanford White part of whose bizness was to conjure and create opulent homes for shockingly rich individuals. He's also the man (mostly or partly) responsible for designing the iconic Washington Square Arch in New York City's Greenwich Village and both the Metropolitan and Century clubs, also in New York City.

Listing information indicates the historic and elegant 2-story mansion with 8 bedrooms and 9 terliting facilities was restored by Mister and Missus Miller in a 1994 gut renovation that dutifully retained the masterful configuration of rooms and maintained the original architectural detail. The public rooms include but are not limited to an impress the guests style entrance hall, graciously scaled formal living room with fireplace and a bank of French doors that open to a planted terrace, an intimately sized and bookshelf lined library with a second fireplace, a banquet hall sized formal dining room outfitted with Chippendale chairs, an antique crystal chandelier and a second slightly less formal eating area tucked into a window wrapped nook.

There are exposed beams painted white in the large gore-may eat-in kitchen that has mahogany flooring, white raised panel cabinetry, a Mercedes-sized marble topped work island/breakfast bar, dee-luxe built in side by side fridge and freezer and a Dutch door that opens to a side terrace. We don't particularly care for the generic and upscale banality of this particular cookery but we do love us a Dutch door, children.

In 2002, according to listing information, Mister and Missus Miller embarked on a second renovation of the shingled Colonial style residence that included an enlargement of the family room with river rock fireplace and built-in banquette style eating area. The master bedroom suite was enlarged and includes a bed chamber with fireplace separated from a private sitting room by French doors, custom closets and and a vast partially paneled pooper with mahogany herring bone pattern floors, fireplace, rose velvet covered window seat and matching free standing chaise where Mister and Missus Miller probably sit when they clip each other's toenails, twin free-standing vanities, and a gigantic soaking tub for two set smack in the center of the damn room room.

Deep, rocking chair style covered porches lined with columns and flower boxes ring the lower level of the house and transition the elegant but not entirely stuffy interior spaces to the expansive grounds that include 3.76 acres of unnaturally green lawns, beautifully laced mature trees and lush flower gardens. At one end of the house a heated swimming pool and spa complex includes built-in lounge seating, a large stone terrace heated by a massive free standing river rock outdoor fireplace, and a cabana with fully equipped kitchen, barbecue and a poolside pooper. Elsewhere on the grounds are a tennis court, sunken trampoline and a "whimsical" tree house.

Just beyond the swimming pool a separate "Recreation House" built in 1917 has a private gated drive, sunken living room with original stone fireplace, and two bedrooms perfect for overflow guests who tend to make too much noise farting and fornicating.

The stunning Stanford White designed mansion with its separate "Recreation House" isn't, as it turns out, the only old house Mister and Missus Miller own in Montecito. They also own the French Mediterranean style villa across the road. Although information Your Mama dug up on the interweb shows that the listing expired in mid-November of 2010, Mister and Missus Miller had this second Mediterranean manse on the market with an asking price of $2,500,000.
As best as Your Mama can tell, Mister and Missus Miller scooped up this second residence in June of 1993 for an undisclosed amount of money...or at least an amount of money we were unable to suss out.

The main house, according to listing information, has two master suites plus staff quarters. A fully detached guest house, situated across the motor court from the main house includes an office area and two additional and good sized guest rooms that share a single pooper.

The tile roofed and wood shuttered residence was built in 1958 at the tail end of a long gated driveway and includes a large entry with magnificent black and white marble checked floor, a paneled formal living room with fireplace, blood red formal dining room that opens into a sun room with picture windows, sky lights, and fireplace, and a country kitchen. A sparsely furnished family room sort of space has built-in bookshelves, a wall mounted flat screen tee-vee and a bizarre and not particularly cohesive collection of traditional upholstered pieces paired with a chunky and very disco Lucite coffee table that, quite honestly, would look 47 times better up in Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter's family room.

Both of the upstairs master suites have tree top views and at least one opens out to a covered terrace with views over the back yard and towards the Pacific Ocean. The swimming pool, surrounded by dense foliage, is a swoon-worthy circular affair although we could very well do without the pair of rooster figurines that stand guard over the steps into the pool.

To be honest chickens, Your Mama don't know a circus tent from a book store so we really can't say what purpose this house serves for Mister and Missus Miller. Perhaps it's another guest house. Or maybe his or her parents occupy the place. Or maybe they just rent it out to someone with the dough-ray-me to live in Montecito but not the desire to actually own a house in Montecito.

Celebrities and filthy rich big bizness types ooze out of every crevice of über upscale Montecito and some of Mister and Missus Miller's nearby neighbors include tennis ace Jimmy Connors, movie producer Steve Tisch (Forrest Gump, American History X, Snatch), actor Michael Keaton, and the queen of Montecito herself Oprah Winfrey, but of course her $50,000,000 spread is so damn big that she's neighbors with practically everyone on Montecito.

listing photos: Coldwell Banker Previews International

Kim Zolciak Re-Lists Her Wig Storage Facility in Duluth

SELLER: Kim Zolciak
LOCATION: Duluth, GA
PRICE: $499,000
SIZE: 3,396 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Housing prices continue to drop like flies and celebrities (and quasi celebrities) aren't immune to the sorry state of the economy. One of those homes on the asking price downward spiral is the Duluth, GA townhouse of Real Housewive's of Atlanta's resident wig wearing wonder Kim Zolciak.

Miz Zolciak–who claims to be 32 but, let's be honest chickens, looks like a 40+ year old drag queen with a butt load of Botox up in her face–recently traded in both her married sugar daddy Big Poppa and her lesbian lover DJ Tracy Young for 25-year old professional football player Kroy Biermann. The horned-up mommy of two tweenaged gurls met her new man/boy-friend during a charity event dance contest during which she and about a million other people including Your Mama were unable to take their eyes off of his impossibly firm, Alaska-sized backside. Not long after the dance contest thingambobber, the lovebirds hooked up in short order Mister Beirmann put a baby up in Miz Zolciak. The two were recently engaged and Your Mama sincerely wishes Miz Zolciak a world of be-wigged and wedded bliss even though we fear that as Your Mama's boozy b.f.f. Fiona Trambeau always says about such tawdry romantic situations: "This can only end in tears, this can only end in tears"

Her new bun in the oven may or may not have something to do with Miz Zolciak's renewed interest in selling her townhouse. Back in the summer of 2009, the wannabe pop star who can't carry a tune to save her damn life listed her 3-story townhouse with an asking price of $568,700. No one stepped up to sign the deed on the dotted line and eventually she took the townhouse off the market. Miz Zolciak recently re-listed her upgraded and professionally decorated residence with a much lower asking price of $499,000, not much more than the $486,000 she paid for the place back in January of 2006.

Current listing information shows the townhouse, smashed up between to other townhouses, spans 3,396 square feet and includes 3 bedrooms and 3.5 poopers. Miz Zolciak and her real estate people decided that on this trip to the real estate rodeo they would attempt use her "celebrity" to assist in the marketing of the townhouse. Not only does the listing declare that this is a "REAL HOUSEWIVES OF ATLANTA LUXURY TOWNHOUSE," one of the listing photos shows Miz Zolciak posed on a tufted bench in her bordello-ish boo-dwar in a pair of ripped up jeans, a frilly rose colored blouse, an inch of pancake make-up and, natch, one of her many faux blond manes.

Even worse, quite frankly, than the photo of Miz Zolciak herself, is the listing photo of the formal dining area where two gigantic photographs of Miz Zolciak and her prodigious cleavage hang on the wall behind the table. Oh hell no. Hunny, pleeze. Who does that? Seriously, what is the psychology that leads someone to actually say to their assistant Lo-teesha Rideabicycle, "Can you call the handyman to come over hang up a couple over-sized professional framed photographs of me with my titties hanging out up in the dining room?"

Listen Miz Zolciak, despite our better judgment we sort of like you. We marvel at your complete disregard for decorum and we can't help but to admire your ought to be deeply embarrassing efforts to have a singing career even though you sound like a damn walrus in heat. However, we must draw the line somewhere and that line is gigantic "glam" photographs of yourself hanging on the wall in the dining room. Trust us when we tell you that with the possible exception of your new baby daddy Kroy nobody–least of all your children–wants to eat a pie from Pizza Hut while looking up at your bustin' boobies. Please don't do this in whatever new house or condo or townhouse you end up moving to, okay? Promise Your Mama you won't do that.

Anyhoo, other amenities and luxuries of Miz Zolciak's lair include a double height foyer, 10-foot ceilings coffered ceiling in the main living areas on the ground floor, fireplace, hardwood and wall to wall carpeted floors, a gore-may kitchen with granite counter tops and a breakfast bar, a separate office, exercise room, family room, second floor laundry room, an over-sized master bedroom with sitting area and spa-style pooper, a small fenced patio with irrigation system and waterfall, and custom fitted closets with wig storage nooks. (Okay, Your Mama don't know know that there are wig storage nooks in Miz Zolciak's closet, but we like to think there are and if there ain't there ought to be.)

Unfortunately for Miz Zolciak, there are at least two other townhouses with identical layouts in her gated complex in suburban Atlanta that are currently listed with much lower price tags of $445,000 and $400,000, a sorry situation that indicates Miz Zolciak may have to come down even lower off her price iffin she's really serious about finding someone to take her townhouse off her freaky French tipped hands.

For photos of Miz Zolciak's crib go here, here and here.

We're back...

Listen chickens, Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter wound up out in the boonies at Big Daddy's ranch the last few days where, apparently and unfortunately, they haven't heard of the damn interweb yet.

We're back to civilization now and slowly crawling back up into the celebrity real estate saddle and fixin' up to ride. Try to have some patience now. Okay?

Thanksgiving is Over: Now What?

I hope your turkey day was blessed!

Whether you were at home surrounded by friends and family,

whether you were overseas in another country missing your family,

even if you might have been sick or in the hospital with someone who was,

I pray that you remembered how fortunate we are to simply be alive.

We all get another day to love, dream, share, enjoy, and "do" life.

I spent my day with Mark and my girls Miss S (Sophomore in college) 

and Miss A (Sophomore in High School-we homeschool),

in Atlanta, GA, at another sister's home.

I have 3 sisters (Stephenie, Amy and Ana) and through a series of wondrous events, 

I was reunited with 2 of them (Amy and Ana) after 35 years!

And this was our first Thanksgiving (or any holiday for that matter) all together!

It was memorable, to say the least!

As my beefcake and I were cleaning up Ana's kitchen last night,

I reflected on the events of the day, 

and how we move, during this time of the year,

from one event to the next, without much more thought 

than checking off what's on our TO DO list.

Mine looks like this:

Leslie's Holiday TO DO List:

1. Get through Thanksgiving.
2. Send out the Fondue Festivities and Happy Holiday Hunting party invites.
3. (Will talk about this next post).
4. Get down the boxes of Christmas decorations.
5. Get a new-to-me outfit for the parties we're attending.
6. Put lights outside.
7. Decorate the outside of the house.
8. Make a few new crafts.
9. Put the tree(s) up and decorate them.
10. Clean house.
11. Design the mantle decor and centerpieces.
12. Make sure the pantry is stocked with baking supplies.
13. Family volunteer with Salvation Army Toy Drive.
14. Bake cookies and make candies.
15. Wrap presents.
16. Etc.
17. Etc.
18. Etc.

~

Then, I remembered a piece of paper that gets packed up into 

one of my Christmas Rubbermaid storage boxes after Christmas every year,

and then rediscovered every year as I begin the preparations

for the new Christmas season.

It gets hung on my refrigerator to remind me of what's more important
than checking off a TO DO list.

~~~

A Home Maker’s Christmas Guide

~1 Corinthians 13

If I decorate my house perfectly with satin and velvet bows, 

strands of twinkling lights and shiny balls, but do not show love to my family, 

I'm just another decorator.

If I slave away in the kitchen, baking dozens of Christmas cookies, 

preparing gourmet meals and arranging a beautifully adorned table at mealtime, 

but do not show love to my family, 

I'm just another cook.

If I work at the soup kitchen, 

carol in the nursing home and give all that I have to charity, 

but do not show love to my family, 

it profits me nothing.

If I trim the spruce with shimmering angels and crocheted snowflakes, 

attend a myriad of holiday parties 

and sing in the choir's cantata but do not focus on Christ, 

I have missed the point.

Love stops the cooking to hug the child.

Love sets aside the decorating to kiss the spouse.

Love is kind, though harried and tired.

Love doesn't envy another's home that has coordinated Christmas china and table linens.

Love doesn't yell at the kids to get out of the way.

Love doesn't give only to those who are able to give in return 

but rejoices in giving to those who can't.

Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never fails. 

Video games will break, pearl necklaces will be lost, golf clubs will rust, 

but giving the gift of LOVE will endure.

                  -Author Unknown

~~~

I have saved A Home Maker’s Christmas Guide as a (safe) .pdf file.

To print it, click here.

(Under the Title is a print button)

~~~

I also found a handy dandy 
Christmas To Do List from Life as Mom to print.
Click here.






Let's remember to LOVE this season!

Happy Turkey Day!

Gobble, gobble, gobble.

photo: Dan Smith

Another Housewife's House on the Block

SELLERS: Kyle Richards and Mauricio Umansky
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $2,450,000
SIZE: 4,200 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 5 bathrooms.

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: There's an unofficial real estate rule when it comes to the houses of all the "housewives" on The Real Housewives of Wherever series: Soon after the season begins, regardless of which city is featured, at least two of the "housewives" will put their houses on the market.

Some need to sell due to financial distress (Gina from Orange County for example) and some just because because they want a change (Jill from New York City, let's say). Currently, the Atlanta, GA area house Sherée Whitfield leases in is on the market for $1,395,000, Mary Amons has her suburban D.C. digs on the market for $1,995,000 (reduced from $2,350,000), and Lisa "Pinky" Vanderpump's palatial pile in Beverly Hills, CA is unofficially listed with fat asking price of $29,000,000.

Also on the market, with an asking price of $2,450,000, is the Bel Air contemporary of raven haired Beverly Hills "housewife" Kyle Richards, one of the few of the entire lot of "housewives" who actually seems to be a housewife. Miz Richards–a former actress and Paris Hilton's mother Kathy's sister–is hitched to Los Angeles über-agent Mauricio Umansky who purveys posh properties for Hilton & Hyland, the well known brokerage owned, of course, by Kathy's hubby Rick Hilton, otherwise known as Paris's daddy. Are the children following?

Miz Richards showbiz career goes back to the mid 1970s when she was just knee-high to a lawnmower. Starting in 1975 she worked it on Little House on the Prairie and in 1978 she appeared in her seminal silver screen role in the horror film Halloween. She later starred in the tee-vee series Down to Earth and beginning in the late 1990s until 2006 she has long relationship of 20+ episodes on the hospital drama ER.

Mister Umansky, who has more than $400,000,000 in listings, shakes his money maker all over the Platinum Triangle–that's Bev Hills, Bel Air and the Holmby Hills, butter beans–and he gets a substantial percentage of the listings for the mega-mansions in the guard gated, star studded and steroidal Beverly Park community.

In addition to Lisa Vanderpump's twenty nine million dollar pile that's directly across from sister "housewife" Adrienne Maloof, Mister Umansky is working his real estate stuff for three more mansions in Beverly Park. Although it has not appeared in the MLS for quite some time, Mister Umansky has long had the mock-Moorish mansion of nutritional supplements tycoon Bill Phillips listed on his website with an asking price of $34,000,000. Interestingly, out of the blut the other day Your Mama heard through the celebrity real estate grapevine–but can not yet confirm via property records–that Mister Phillips's estate, called The Great 78, was sold for $25,000,000. Rockstar Energy Drink CEO and founder Russ Weiner hired Mister Umansky to represent his Beverly Park mansion listed at $28,000,000. Mister Weiner bought his 16,000 square foot house in February of 2007 for $15,000,000. Mister Umansky's list of listings also includes the 9 bedroom and 15 pooper spec house Beverly Park resident and Vanna White's ex-huzband George Santopietro built, listed with an ungodly $50,000,000 asking price, leased briefly to His Purpleness Prince for a reported $200,000 per month and now has back on the market at the much reduced price of $27,900,000.

In the last few years Mister Umansky has sold at least three pricey properties up in Beverly Park including a newly completed boo-teek hotel sized faux-chateau last listed for $31,500,000 and sold, according to property records, for ten million and change. Your Mama suspects there may have been other trades and considerations in the deal and that the thing went down for more than ten million bucks, but we don't know a cat box from a cookie jar so don't nobody go spoutin' off about that. In the fall of 2008 hair-chested and accented Mister Umansky brokered the transaction for a not yet completed Tuscan-style behemoth bought by wildly wealthy property developer Ron Tutor for $36,700,000. A couple years prior to that he persuaded a buyer to pay $22,000,000 for a somewhat squat-looking mansion owned and occupied for a couple of years by none other than Kelsey Grammer and his insufferable soon to be ex-wife and Beverly Hills Housewife Camille Grammer. Despite the high-sterical drama between Miz Richards and the plainly narcissistic soon to be ex-Missus Kelsey Grammer, Mister Grammer still and currently has the erstwhile couple's 7 bedroom and 9 pooper house in Holmby Hills listed with Mister Umansky with a price tag of $18,900,000.

While he may be a crack real estate agent in Los Angeles, Mister Umansky doesn't seem to have the Midas Touch when it comes to selling his own home located on a small cul-de-sac so high in the hills of Bel Air that it might as well be Encino. Property records reveal that Mister Umansky and Miz Richards scooped up their family crib in June of 2004 for $1,935,000.

As best as we can tell from our research on the internets and in our archives, Mister Umansky and Miz Richards first put their house on the market way back in May of 2009 with an asking price of $3,450,000. Since then the property has been de-listed and re-listed several times and the price has plummeted to its current price tag of $2,450,000. A few flicks of the well worn beads on Your Mama's bejeweled abacus shows that that million dollar price chop represents a significant and sort of embarrassing 29% discount from the original price.

Listing information shows the recently remodeled two-story house measures around 4,200 square feet and includes 4 bedrooms each with en suite terliting facilities plus an additional full pooper for guests. Many of the home's rooms look over or open to the resort style back yard and the view that encompasses the city lights of the San Fernando Valley and the surrounding mountains. The house sits atop a hill at the bottom of which snakes the always busy and always jammed up 405 freeway. Although Your Mama has never been in the house, of course, we're thinking (and hoping) the house sits high and far enough from that freeway that whatever road noise there might be is minimal.

The main rooms include a long living room that opens to the resort-style back yard, a formal dining room, and an open plan kitchen, family and breakfast area that also opens up to the back yard. There are also, according to listing information, an office and staff quarters although we're not aware that Miz Richards, a bizzy mother of four daughters, employs live-in domestic help unlike that perplexing and psychically destabilizing Camille Grammer ladee who can't seem to slather on her own lip gloss without a resident make-up gay or raise her two youngins without a team of round the clock nanny-gurls.

The mostly earth tone day-core in the majority of Richards-Umansky residence is a very cohesive and obviously much considered situation that listing information describes as "contemporary Balinese tropical resort" style. Your Mama interprets this to mean that they stuck a bunch of carved Buddha things up in there, added some clean lined sectional sofas, tossed up a couple of shimmery Verner Panton designed sconces, set some leafy and spikey plants in various corners and threw in a couple white leather Barcelona chairs in the sitting area of the master bedroom. The "blended" nature of the day-core was unfortunately reinforced with a plethora of flooring materials including travertine, slate, hardwood and wall to wall carpeting. Your Mama's decorating rule #472 states that particular care must be taken when mixing and matching more than three flooring materials in any one dwelling and this house, hunnies, is a perfect example why.

Listen kids, this is hardly the worst sort of celebrity and "celebrity" day-core Your Mama's come across lately but there's just something so contrived and over-processed about it all that we can't quite put our gin soaked brain on right at this moment. Can you?

The flat back yard has a heated, free form black bottomed swimming pool, attached spa, barbecue areas, circular sunken fire pit and a lawn plenty big enough to set up one of those horrid jumpy houses and fence off a small area for a sad little petting zoo like Miz Richards did for the down to earth yet still hideously expensive birthday party she threw for her toddler.

Even though the real estate bizness is tough, Mister Umansky probably still makes a living far greater than Your Mama and the Dr. Cooter combined and we suspect the Richards-Umansky clan is not downsizing but rather up-sizing into a larger and more expensive house in a slightly more swank part of town.

Ungrateful

Hello, Lord.

We need to talk.
Something has been bothering me for quite some time now.
I need to air some grievances and address the injustices that my circumstance has caused me.


This is hard for me to talk to You about because I love to think that I impress people 

with my supreme homemaking abilities.


Okay, here goes.


It's about this house.

Others think that I always have the house immaculate and exquisitely decorated, 
the floors scrubbed, 
everything vacuumed and in its place. 
I don't quite know where they got that notion?
Perhaps because most pictures I take are staged?

But You and I know, 
that in reality,
I have piles of dirty laundry, waiting to be washed and dried.
Baskets of clean linens waiting to be ironed.
Socks waiting to be paired.
Hangers waiting to be utilized.
Someone's always staining something, which then becomes my chore.
My dilemma.
They just toss it in the pile, and I'm supposed to take it from there.
Exemption for them, affliction for me.

And since you're listening,
I also thought I'd mention something else.
I hate cleaning the bathroom, Lord.
It's gross. 
Why does my family's poop have to stink?
Why must their body waste leave me with a toilet to scrub? 
A shower to scour?
A sink to wipe?
Toothpaste splatters on the mirror to scrape off?
Hair in the corner, behind the door?
Yuck.
Just yuck.

Have you seen what's happening here, God?
It's unbelievable!
What about all this stuff on the counter, Lord?
What is wrong with the drawers?
Are the drawers broken?
Are their hands broken?
Can't they see the clutter and disarray?
How is anything useful when it is scattered amongst all the other paraphernalia?
Why can't they just put things where they belong?
How come they treat their things like this?

See this dust, God?
What a nuisance.
Couldn't you have just not invented it?
No matter how many times I wipe it away, it always comes back.
It just settles there, taunting me, waiting for the feather duster.
So, I dust it. 
So, what does it get me?
As soon as the feather duster is out of sight,
the particles make an even more voluminous comeback, 
only to start the cycle of
mockery once again!


Not fair.

And another thing!
These children you gave me 
never make their beds when they know that it pleases me,
nor do they come the first time I call, 
nor have their dishes land squarely in the dishwasher 
when they are through eating 
IN THE LIVING ROOM!
Selective hearing I've heard it called.
Honestly, where did they learn this behavior?

Since You're interested, let me ask You something else.
Why does everyone walk by the dishwasher when it needs to be emptied?
One would think they'd take the hint when I open the door!
Instead, they shuffle by, on their way to another destination that
is somehow more important at that moment.
Like the coffee maker for some caffeine,
the sink for a glass of water,
or the fridge to find a bite to eat,
as if that's more important than serving ME!

My life would be so much easier if I didn't have all these obstacles.

You surely know that

I could get so much more out of life!

My days, 

my months, 

my years 

would go much more smoothly 

if I weren't constantly interrupted by 

dirt, 

debris, 

and 

disorder.

So, Lord, I now ask you...would it be too much 

if I even occasionally 

got a little bit of cooperation,

a smidgen of appreciation,

a whisper of praise?

A speck of love?

A fraction of gratitude?

Well, would it?

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

What's that?

Did you say something?

How often do I say thanks?

To You?

But haven't you seen the messes?

You've seen MY mess?

Are You blind to the turmoil this dirt causes me?

You came to clean MY dirt?

My heart?

My sin-laden soul is now spotless?

I have let my pride keep me from thanksgiving and praise to You?

Lord, I agree that I have a fading memory,

and I love to neatly forget Your mercy.

I conveniently fold and stow away Your grace.

I scrub out the remainders of Your salvation.

You don't care about the condition of my house, 

as much as You care about the condition of my heart.

Dirty dishes or dirty mind?

Cluttered counters or improper motives?

Messy martyr or sympathetic servant?

God, remind me of how wonderful You are and restore the joy of my thanksgiving!

Make me grateful, I pray.

Amen.

.