The saga of Selena and Veinous Dude continues at their own Hipster House site.
Selena and Veinous Dude are ready for holiday entertaining. Veinous Dude has made a rather exciting banana-pineapple torte with chocolate icing and candied fruit on top. He has also made Planter’s Punch in the vintage Depression Glass punch bowl that Selena inherited from her other grandmother. If Veinous Dude felt a need to sing a song about British Grenadiers while adding the grenadine, nobody needs to know except Selena and Fido the cat.
Here come the guests! It’s Selena’s father Len and his new girlfriend, Maria-Eugenia Carmela Elizabetta Vasco de Gama y Garcia del Rio. It looks as if Len has reconciled himself to his daughter’s relationship sufficiently to decide a flat-screen TV would be an excellent Christmas present. Best Buy’s having a really good Black Friday sale may have made reconciliation easier.
Selena is understandably excited about finding out what’s in that big package from Veinous Dude.
Wait! Maria-Eugenia Carmela Elizabetta Vasco de Gama y Garcia del Rio brought a gift for the happy couple too. It’s a tribal drum!
Selena wonders if her father’s having a whirlwind romance might not simplify things — if he’d marry Maria-Eugenia Carmela Elizabetta Vasco de Gama y Garcia del Rio, maybe she could be addressed as “Mamacita,” thereby saving a lot of syllables.
Hmmm… this gift really is a black box. What could it be?
Oh. My. Goodness. Selena had been muttering about taking up guitar again when Veinous Dude had her spend a romantic evening with the Twisted Sister Christmas album, but she’d never expected…
This may need to be crooned over for a bit.
Veinous Dude is almost more thrilled with Selena’s reaction than with getting to open his present from her.
It’s exactly what he wanted! No more mixing cakes with 500 strokes by hand!
Veinous Dude whips his new toy into the kitchen to make marshmallows. And a Merry Christmas is had by all.
***
What’s this? Veinous Dude has decided to surprise Selena by bringing home a Christmas tree. Selena is indeed surprised. As a native Arizonan, she is accustomed to wrapping colored lights around a cactus (using oven mitts to avoid unpleasant encounters with spikes).
Even Fido the cat agrees that there’s only one logical place to put the tree.
Training in subspace warp geometry is remarkably little help when it comes to getting a garland on a tree evenly. And where’d Fido run off to?
Fido’s on the kitchen table. Bad kitty!
Fortunately, Selena’s late grandmother gave her a box of vintage ornaments that Selena remembers fondly from childhood. Not so fortunately, Selena’s family had a penchant for ornaments roughly the size of one’s head. Distribution of ornaments is complicated by Veinous Dude’s unfamiliarity with tradition. The penguin must always go above the candy cane, not below it! And the stocking cannot be level with the candy cane because they are roughly the same size and shape. This is all incredibly obvious — except when it’s not.
On a trip upstairs to decorate with a few ornaments that won’t fit on the tree, Selena succumbs to the urge to lie down with a headache. There is not enough organic low-fat eggnog in the world to cope with this.
Veinous Dude persists. A Veinous Dude has to do what a Veinous Dude has to do. Also, if subspace warp geometry isn’t applicable to distributing vintage ornaments, what the hell is it good for?
Being a romantic, he also puts on some music.
That’s the ticket.
*****
The genesis of this project was an unfinished dollhouse shell that I impulsively bought over the Independence Day weekend, having no idea what to do with it. During the Labor Day weekend, I got it more-or-less mostly finished, thus proving a summer remodeling project can get done if it’s small enough.
Selena’s father Len comes to visit the fixed-up cottage in Phoenix’s historic Coronado neighborhood. He is somewhat off-put by the lack of a door knob but utterly unphazed by the giant tail in the distance.
Meetings with Selena’s boyfriend, Veinous Dude, are always awkward. On the one hand, the veins go nicely with the sofa. On the other hand, what would the grandchildren look like? He is thinking of giving the couple a wall-hanging flat screen TV for that spot by the door, but that might encourage them.
The full extent of Selena’s kitchen skills is finding pop in the fridge.
“Washing one’s hands” is not a euphemism in this household, as it’s one of the few things one can do in the bathroom. The toilet still hasn’t arrived.
Meanwhile, Fido the cat wonders how Len feels about grandkitties, also about being shed on.
