MISSING: Mama Bear

Welcome back, dear readers. I hope you had a Happy Thanksgiving. I'm pretty sure you will all be thankful for the many excellent blog posts to come here at the tudor house the rest of this year, but since Thanksgiving has come and gone, we can all quit worrying about what we already have and are thankful for and start focusing on what we WANT for Christmas, the most joyful time of the year. I'm pretty sure that's the meaning of the holiday season....right?

I can only imagine your joy on Thanksgiving week was dampened a bit by my infrequent posting, but as I tried to explain on Thursday, my illness (self-diagnosed cat scratch fever, courtesy of the cat) slowed me down a bit prior to Turkey Day. I would have been back to posting on Friday, had a precious member of my family not gone missing.

Yes, Mama Bear, the giant teddy who lives with my parents, appears to have been kidnapped from her home on Thanksgiving night. She was last seen sitting in her favorite armchair, having devoured an entire pumpkin pie. I guess none of us saw the crime in our turkey comas. We are not supposed to involve the police, but the ransom note didn't say anything about blogging, so I think this is okay. (I'm a bit offended at how the kidnappers have referred to her as "it." Don't they know she's a real part of our family?)

Mama Bear, if your kidnappers let you have Internet access, I'm sure you're reading this post. We miss you, and we will do whatever it takes to get you back home where you belong. Just don't fall into the whole Stockholm Syndrome thing.

I suspect my cousins. Which cousins, I'm not sure - there were a bunch of them at the house on Thursday night. But kidnappings are something of a family tradition in my life, you see. Your family has a secret recipe for pecan pie, maybe, but mine has a strong tradition of low-level crime. It all started years ago when Mama Bear was taken from our house and sent us photos of herself kayaking, climbing trees, and generally having a ball. She eventually returned, but then one of those Taco Bell bobble-head dogs showed up in our Christmas white elephant exchange...only to be stolen at the end of the night. Our families went back and forth for years, kidnapping various toys and sending each other ransom notes. One of the high points (low points?) was when one family brought a bowling ball to the white elephant exchange and it ended up in  our toilet when everyone left the house. This is normal, right?

Anyway, we all thought the fun was over until this summer, when Mama Bear snuck out and came to my wedding:

She is such a party animal. Of course she'd be in the photo booth.

And now she's gone again. Mama Bear, come home to us. Then help my family plan our revenge.

I hope you all had a Thanksgiving just as eventful as mine. Other than dealing with the kidnapping, mine mainly involved watching movies from the Redbox, watching movies at the theater, catching up on a bit of TV on the old DVR and doing a teensy bit of Black Friday shopping from the comfort of my couch. I could really get used to four-day weekends.

Turtle Up!

It's that time of year when the weather cools off and people refill their propane tanks in hopes of lighting a fire, tuning into some Hallmark Christmas Classics, and turtling up in front of the glow of the television. You know?

Oh wait. You aren't familiar with the term "turtle up"?  Allow me to enlighten you...

I have been having some weird dreams lately. Being the hypochondriac scientist that I am, I immediately turned to the Internet to understand why this is happening to me. According to my research, I am not alone. According to the very reliable website www.psychicsuniverse.com, in fact, many of us are experiencing vivid dreams: "As we move into the Age of Aquarius we are experiencing new spiritual energies of a higher frequency. Our minds, bodies and sprits are adjusting to these new vibrations and vivid dreams are just one possible indication. The veils are thinning and dreams serve as a bridge between our earthly lives and our new expanding consciousness." So I'm fairly sure that my vivid dreams are an indication that I am a psychic. As soon as I get my palm-reading business up and running, I'll post a link so you can schedule your session. Discounts for Tudor House Blog followers!

But I digress. You didn't come here to know why people dream; you want to know what it means to turtle up. 

In my dream, I was in prison. My good friend Tastee from Orange is the New Black was with me. We were staring at two other inmates lying in their cots, but these other girls didn't have their blankets pulled up all the way to their necks. Tastee looked at me, shrugged, and yelled at the inmates: "Y'all better TURTLE UP!" In other words, pull those blankets up to your necks, like a turtle!

Mabel kindly agreed to model for me to help you visual learners understand:

Above is an example of NOT turtling up. You can see from the photo that, while Mabel is resting her squishy little bod on a blanket, she has chosen not to pull the blanket up to her neck for maximum warmth. This is what the inmates were doing when Tastee yelled at them.

Now, here is a classic example of turtling up. You can see that Mabel has pulled the blanket up to her neck, a la the tortuga. She heard Tastee's call and turtled up.

For further explanation, I have provided you with this full frontal turtle image, complete with my artistic handiwork. You are welcome. 

Get it? So now, feel free to start using this terminology in everyday conversation. I have a feeling this is going to be Big. I believe this, of course, because my Internet research also told me that "Artists, entrepreneurs, inventors and scientists often get creative ideas from dreams. Jeff Taylor dreamed up monster.com, Jack Nicklaus had a dream of a new golf grip. And Nobel laureate and scientist Wolfgang Pauli called dreams his "secret laboratory."  This came from WebMD.com, one of my most trusted online resources. Soon, they will have to edit that post to say: "A dream was also the source of popular pop culture phrase 'turtle up.'"  

If you are curious, I also used an online dream analyzer to tell me what my dream meant. Apparently you just type in your dream, then DreamDictionary.com tells you what each individual word means. This is what the dictionary had to say about my dream:

Neck: Means sensuality, sensitivity, beauty or grace.

Prison: Punishment.

Turtle: Longevity, patience, persistence over time.

Cover: Limited view; you are feeling uninformed about events in the world.

Bed: Your inner thoughts.

Pulling: Desire.

I'm going to put this all together, ignore the bad things, and believe that my dream means that my beauty and grace will be long-lived and persistent over time. Seems about right!

RIP, Courtney Jr.

R.I.P.

Courtney, Jr., 11/6/13-11/17/13*

Dear Readers, it is with a heavy heart that I come to you today. Courtney, Jr. has passed. You may remember Courtney, Jr. as Mabel, Jr., the fish who starred in my popular Pinterest-inspired post from a week and a half ago. Upon moving Mabel, Jr. to my office, I realized that I had not given the poor fish the best possible namesake and role model, so I changed his name to honor my favorite co-worker and former Matron of Honor, Courtney. It seems that I changed his name too late, however, and Courtney, Jr. quietly left this world sometime this past weekend, just days after the expiration of his seven-day guarantee. It goes without saying, of course, that I do not care about the money.

Courtney, Jr. joins a venerable brother- and sisterhood of my dearly departed pets in that great farm in the sky: Barney, Sage of the Bluegrass; CleoCatra [whom I must assume is dead since she "ran away" when my family went on vacation]; Miss Velvet, best dog ever; Kozmo, the original cool cat with a trendy spelling; Where's Waldo; Pat the Turtle and the original Blue Fish, just to name a few. Blue Fish was my first Betta, a replacement pet that my mom bought me after she killed my first batch of pet fish by putting them in a bowl of hot water "because they looked so cold." Blue Fish was, of course, completely outclassed by Courtney, Jr., may they both rest in peace.

It seemed that Courtney, Jr. was in poor health on Friday, when he seemed to suffer a stroke, jumped out of his water and back into the bowl, then floated for fifteen minutes or so whilst sadly fluttering one flipper. He ate a last meal of fish pellets, and revived a little when Courtney, Sr. visited my office to discuss the Blackfish movie. [By the way, I haven't seen the movie but it sounds like we should all boycott Seaworld.] When I left the office Friday evening, Courtney, Jr. was resting peacefully.

Courtney, Jr. was honored in a private toilet-side ceremony yesterday on the 15th Floor. The ceremony was quiet and tasteful, just like Courtney, Jr. Hymns were sung and a eulogy given. In lieu of flowers, please become a "follower" of my blog. It's what Courtney, Jr. would have wanted.


* Technically, Courtney died on November 18. I had stopped by the office on Sunday night and declared him dead, but then when I came into work on Monday morning, he was swimming around again! It was truly a workplace miracle. Sadly, the miracle didn't last, and he died again Monday afternoon.

Welcome Back to Tudor Land

So, welcome back to my blog. I say "welcome back" because I assume you were a devoted reader of the Tudor House Blog Part 1, which produced three excellent posts circa 2012. I have deleted those posts because they made me sound like a crazy cat lady. Thank you, loyal readers, for coming back to me. I promise less Mabel the Cat and more Kate Middleton this time around.

So, updates since 2012. Not much has happened, really. I still live in the Tudor house, which is convenient since that's the name of my blog. My cat is no longer on Prozac, though she did poo 6 times in the basement recently when we took all the furniture out of there to get new carpet. Bless her tiny little heart. Still lawyering. Oh yes, and I got married in May (!!), which was awesome. More on that later when I prove to you that my wedding was pretty much exactly the same as Kate's.

Well, that's about all I've got for now. It's great to see you all again. My goals for this reincarnation of the Tudor House Blog are threefold: (1) Surpass my old blogging record of three posts; (2) Establish once and for all that Kate Middleton and I could and should be best friends; and (3) Be hilarious and awesome. Shouldn't be hard. In fact, I've pretty much accomplished No. 3 already.

OK, dear readers, you've convinced me. I can imagine what you're thinking even before you think it. You're right: this blog does need more Mabel. I shall oblige. Starting now:

Don't worry, that photo will be available for purchase on a 16x20 canvas at some point. Also at a later date, Mabel will also do a vlog showing you how to achieve that look of "I don't care about you, but could you feed me?"

Well, we've got a big launch party scheduled for tonight, so I should probably get ready. More on that later.