Merry Merry

Merry Christmas from all of us here at the Split End Cafe.


Also, you should know that Rock Band is SO much cooler than Guitar Hero.

Future Christmas Shopping Just Got Easier

A few years ago, Ben told me he wanted a mixer for his turntables for Christmas. He did all of the research and then sent me a link to an e-bay auction. Being the good wife that I am, I made up a new e-bay user name so he wouldn’t suspect me, and I won the auction. A few weeks later, Ben told me that he had done some more research, realized exactly what he was looking for, and found a more perfect e-bay auction.

One or two years after that, Ben told me he wanted a snowskate for Christmas. He looked around, found exactly what he wanted, and told me where I could find it online. So I bought it, had it delivered to our house, wrapped it, and hid it. A few weeks later, Ben found out that it was better for the bottom board of a snowskate to be longer than the top board—something he hadn’t realized earlier. The one I had ordered was totally wrong.

Anyone see a trend?

This year Ben has been asking for Guitar Hero for the past two months. I don’t know if you know this or not, but Guitar Hero III for Xbox 360 is nearly impossible to find in Utah. After going to Best Buy, Circuit City, Target, Wal-Mart, and Costco, and then repeatedly calling each of those stores to find out if they knew when they would be getting any in, I had pretty much given up on Guitar Hero. Then one day, I casually walked by the electronics department of Wal-Mart and they had it! I couldn’t believe it. I bought it, wrapped it, hid it, and smiled to myself for almost a month because all of my hard work had finally paid off.

That's when Ben decided he didn’t want Guitar Hero after all. He wanted Rock Band.

I think I have a pretty good reason to never buy him anything again, don't you?

How Come Making It Myself Always Costs More Than Buying It?

This year Christmas stockings have moved up a notch on my priority list. This means it’s time to get rid of the dollar store stockings we’ve been using, but I’m not ready to fork out $7 each for new ones. So instead, I just spent $20 on fabric to make some.

Two broken sewing machine needles and a few hours later, my stockings look like they were made in first grade art class, and I keep finding white fuzz all over everything.

Santa and Satan: Practically the Same Word

Ever since we tried to make Liam sit on Santa Claus’s lap last weekend, he’s terrified of the guy. Now he can’t even look at a coloring book picture of Santa without shouting, “Scary Santa!” and turning the page.

Last night I was humming Christmas songs in the car, and without thinking, I started to sing, “Santa Claus is coming to town…” I didn’t even know Liam could hear me, let alone understand what I was singing. But as soon as the words came out of my mouth, he looked at me and yelled, “No! He’s not coming!”

Early Morning Comedian

In the past five minutes I’ve had two conversations that made me realize why I love two-year-olds so much. They went like this:

8:49 a.m.
Ben: “If it’s not too late, I think I want to get Rock Band for Christmas instead of Guitar Hero. There’s one that comes with a guitar, drums, and a microphone.”

Kim: “How much is it?”

Ben: “$169.”

Kim: “Oh, I see how it is.”

Liam: “Oh, SNAP!”

8:51 a.m.
Liam: “I want to play with trains.”

Kim: “They’re still in the kitchen from when you were playing with them last night.”

Liam: “The kitchen…?”

Kim: “Do you know where the kitchen is?”

Liam: “He’s at lunch.”

Cold and Thirsty? Try Some Hotch Locket.

If your kid asked for some “hotch locket with smash-mallows,” would you know what he was talking about?

Don’t worry…I figured it out.

What the Fudge?

I just spent 20 minutes researching hundreds of fudge recipes on the Internet (heaven forbid I waste my time on a recipe that only got 4 stars), only to find out that the exact recipe I printed out was on the back of the marshmallow creme jar. Eerie, no?

Just come over in four hours if you want some 5-star fudge.

Greetings from the Twilight Zone

It all started yesterday morning when I picked up the phone to call Ben at work. Along with a faint dial tone, I could hear loud crackling noises on the line. I made the call anyway, hoping the crackling would go away, but instead I got an additional treat—a woman speaking Spanish between rings. She was loud enough that I said, “Hello?” and assumed she would say something back, but she just kept talking.

After a quick chat with the Spanish-speaker, the crackler, and Ben, I hung up the phone and picked it up again. This time, instead of a crackling dial tone, all I heard was a crackle. Thinking it must be a problem with the cordless phone, I picked up the corded phone in our office. Still no dial tone. In fact, now all of the phones were saying, “Your call cannot be completed as dialed…please hang up and try your call again,” no matter how many times I hung up in between.

Each time I picked up the phone after that I got a random busy signal, a recording, or silence. Ben did some investigative work when he got home and still couldn’t figure out what the problem was. We decided we would call the phone company in the morning.

Then, at 10:00 last night, the police came pounding on our front door. They said they had received a 9-1-1 hang-up call from our house, and that nobody answered when they tried to call back.

WHAT?!!

We’ve already established that the phone is freaky, but freaky enough to call 9-1-1 on its own? We apologized to the cops and told them we would call the phone company immediately. After setting up an appointment for someone to come check out our lines in the morning, we picked up the phone one last time and heard this: “Thank you for calling KWED…”

And He's Never Even Been to Småland

Liam knows how to spell his name because he has the wooden letters L, I, A, and M hanging in his room. The only other word he knows how to spell is Ikea. Don't ask me why he knows that one. I swear we don't go that often.

The other day I asked Liam where he wanted to go that day. Here is his response: