Holidays
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Holiday Disasters!
We're not going to try to hide the fact that we LOVE the holiday season! But sometimes the most perfect time of year doesn't turn out quite as perfectly as you had hoped ? And we want to hear about it!
Time to share your worst holiday disasters! Leave your stories in the comments below or email feedback@thenest.com for the chance to be featured in the next digital issue of The Nest!
Re: Holiday Disasters!
Last year, a couple days before Christmas, my uncle passed away and my mother was flying down for the funeral. Christmas has always been about family for us and H and I had to drive my mother to the airport Christmas morning so it was sad because we weren't going to be doing anything with my family. I'm not a very openly emotional person, I'll be the first to admit, but Christmas Eve and Christmas morning for me was spent silently crying in the bathroom so nobody would see me.
H gave me a beautiful Le Vian ring Christmas morning and the entire time, I was trying not to bawl in front of him so he I thought I hated it until finally we were driving to his mothers house and I just lost it. I had to pull the car over and let him drive because I couldn't concentrate.
It was hard to explain to my young nieces why I was hysterical.
One year at Thanksgiving, my grandmother called my mother fat (she is not. My grandmother is overly critical) because she had loaded up her plate (Hello. It's Thanksgiving, people). After that, I refused to eat. My grandmother asked why I wasn't eating and I told her it was because I didn't want people to think I was fat. I sat through the whole meal with an empty plate while my mother was in another room with my dad, crying (she ended up leaving). After dinner, my grandmother and I had a very serious discussion on what is and is not appropriate to say to people.
(It may seem a little silly out of context, but my grandma does stuff like this all the time and this was the final straw for my mom and I)
On my sounds familiar! Last year DH's grandmother called his aunt fat on Christmas Eve. Just looked at her and said you are so fat. His aunt started crying and everyone is still ignoring the grandmother. She says stuff like this all the time. She's actually not invited to this years Christmas Eve celebration. On one hand I feel bad for an 85 year old sitting alone on Christmas but she really is horrible.
I followed my family's classic recipe and put the meatloaf in the oven, then cooked the pasta and veggies as I waited for him to arrive. Veggies and pasta came out great, and the meatloaf looked great too when I opened the oven to take it out. However, my roommates and I had not yet gotten around to purchasing oven mitts or potholders, so I had nothing with which to safely remove said meatloaf. I thought that maybe I could use clean dish towels, but they proved too thin and I burned my hands right through them on the meatloaf pan.
"OWWW! @#!$%!" I cried, and dropped the pan.
Then I watched in horror as the meatloaf pan turned perfectly upside down and landed on the kitchen floor with a squishy thud, blowing chunks out in an unholy circle. My hard work was in steaming pieces, and to make matters worse, I knew that one of my roommates had just spent all day cleaning that kitchen - especially the floor - within an inch of its life, and I had gone and turned it into a disaster area. I burst into sobs.
My roommate's boyfriend was visiting her at the time, so he heard the commotion and came running out of her bedroom, asking if I was okay. He looked absolutely dumbfounded when he asked me what was wrong and all I could stammer was, "M-m-my meeeeatloaf..."
"Don't cry," he said, "it's only food."
"YOU DON'T UNDERSTAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAND..." I wailed.
My roommate handed me tissues and mixed me a White Russian, while her boyfriend started looking around the floor, assessing the damage.
"Wait a minute," he said after a few moments. Then he asked my roommate, "Didn't you clean the whole kitchen today?"
"Yeah," she said. "So?"
"So..." he answered, "would you say that this floor is so clean you could almost... eat off of it?"
He gently turned the meatloaf pan right side up, and showed us girls that in fact, most of the meat had stayed inside, safe and sound. Only the very top level had smacked into the floor - the clean floor, he emphasized - and spattered outward. So what if we just picked up the chunks we could salvage off the floor and neatly, ever so neatly, try to place them back on top of the loaf? Maybe no one would be the wiser...
Sure enough, by God, when Husband finally showed up for dinner, he devoured the meatloaf and complimented how tasty everything was, and thanked me for being sweet enough to put together the meal for him.
In closing I would like to thank:
1. My roommate, for cleaning that kitchen floor so well that we could get away with this, and for not being upset that I'd made such a mess on that floor, AND for getting me drunk enough to agree that rebuilding the loaf was a good idea;
2. My roommate's boyfriend, for his quick thinking that salvaged my sad little feast;
3. The cat, who somehow had the good sense and/or compassion to stay out of the kitchen and not try to sneak meatloaf bites; and finally...
4. My husband - who (bless his heart), after I told him the truth of what had happened, simply laughed and said, "You know, I THOUGHT the top of that thing looked a little odd..."
He still trusts, eats and compliments my cooking to this day, thank goodness, although the one consequence of this story has been that my meatloaf was subsequently renamed "meat bomb," and that name will never go away.