Thanks Given

What a very weird Thanksgiving holiday that was. Some parts were fantastic, some incredibly frustrating, and some just plain weird.

There wasn't anything much happening at work on Wednesday, so I took my day off and headed down to Jenn and Brian's around mid-morning. The plan... the plan was that Jenn was going to ride with me, and we'd follow Brian to Blacksburg.

All was ready. The dogs were loaded in the car with Brian to drop off at the kennel, Jenn and I were in my car, and I turned it on...

...and the dashboard lit up with all kinds of lights and warnings. Most notably, the "Check Engine" light, which can occasionally be merely ignored, and the "Engine Hazard" light, which... probably should not be.

Well.

After some discussion, we decided we'd just all ride up together, and Jenn and Brian would head back home a day early so I could keep my schedule. Brian, who is a Car Guy, promised to check out a diagnostic computer from their local auto repair shop when we got back on Friday so that he could read the error codes and decide whether the car was safe to drive home or if we'd need to call AAA to tow it to the local shop and try to find a rental for the weekend.

Despite being a little fretful about the car, we had a good couple of days. Jenn's Aunt Jeanne and Uncle David are great people, and I got to meet her oft-mentioned cousin, Chris. We went for a hike on Thanksgiving morning (apparently a family tradition) that was quite nice, and then came back and had a really great dinner. We broke for a nap and then came back for dessert, and then wrapped up the day with a game of Cards Against Humanity, and inaugurated a homemade question card: "Thanksgiving is incomplete without _____." It would've been perfect if we could've played "Smallpox blankets" as the answer card. I forget, now, what actually won that one, but the game itself was quite fun.

As re-planned, we came home Friday. I have to admit, the drive was much more pleasant with friends in the car to talk to.

When we pulled into Jenn and Brian's again, I figured I should check my car again before Brian headed out to get the diagnostic computer. I started the car up and... the hazard light was gone. Just the check engine light remained. Which rather underscored my suspicion that the car had been pitching a hissy about an electrical hiccup having to do with plugging my phone into the DC power adapter before turning the car on, and made me decide I could risk driving home before taking it to the shop, at least.

So I turned the car back off and went inside to use the bathroom and let them know about my decision. I promised I'd call if I had any more problems, and then went back out... and this time, when I turned the car on, not even the check engine light came on. Nothing. The dashboard stayed dark, innocent as puppy eyes.

Apparently, the gods had just REALLY wanted us to all drive up to Blacksburg together.

So I came home and picked up the kids and life continued apace.

Saturday morning I started putting up our Christmas decorations, exciting the kids to a fever pitch. And that afternoon, we went down to my parents' for my family Thanksgiving, and that was great. Not really anything to report -- it was a pretty standard family gathering. Penny and Alex were pretty fantastic, playing together most of the time so I actually got to talk to my family a bit. Alex hit Maximum Fun Quotient a few times, but being Alex, cheered up again pretty quickly afterward.

Sunday morning at breakfast, a... noise came from the heater vent. A weird, rattle-y, shuddery noise. You know in Doctor Horrible, when the Freeze Ray fails and Dr. Horrible looks around at it and says, "That's... not a good noise"? It was kind of like that. The kids looked at the vent as if it might explode, and then the heater fan stopped working. I poked at things a bit, but eventually had to turn the whole thing off because a sort of burned-plastic smell was leaking from the vents in other parts of the house.

The rest of the day was better -- we got the Christmas tree up, and Penny befriended a couple of cats wandering the neighborhood who had decided to camp on our deck. (They were obviously not actually homeless, as they were well-fed and in excellent health, but she tried to convince me to keep them anyway, as they were very friendly and happy for her to pet them.) We generally had a nice, low-key kind of day, despite the slowly dropping temperature.

I didn't post yesterday because I was at home in the morning, waiting for the repair guy to come and fix the heater. Fortunately, the problem with the fan took him all of about ten minutes to find and fix. Unfortunately, while he was at it, he noticed a pretty nasty leak in the heater's innards that suggested some ugly things, culminating in the news that I need to have an entirely new unit installed. Shouldn't have surprised me too much, really, because this unit is 14 years old, and these things typically have a life span of 10-15 years, so... yeah. He called around and got some estimates, and the price he eventually quoted me is a lot less than I was afraid it would be... but still a pretty big chunk of cash.

So that's scheduled for Thursday. In the meantime, I've only got the emergency heat setting, which works, but draws a lot more power than the usual setting, so I'm trying to keep it set as low as I can tolerate (around 65), and remembering to turn it down to about 60 when I leave for work in the morning, and being grateful that the house's insulation is actually fairly decent, and hoping that the new unit will be more efficient.

Argh. All my stuff is elderly and starting to fail.

Back!

I'm back! Did you miss me? I missed you!

My holiday was mostly pretty good, barring the usual stresses and frustrations of travel and trying to live in someone else's space. But it was great to see everyone, and I got to hold multiple adorable little babies, and my kids were mostly really well-behaved (barring a couple of utter breakdowns, but if your kids can get through 9 days of complete routine upset without any breakdowns at all, then I suspect you have automatons rather than children). I'm only about halfway through processing my pictures, but I promise I'll post a link to the Flickr set when I get them all done and uploaded -- we did some really fun stuff even aside from visiting people, like going to the zoo (which I'd love to see again, though possibly in warmer weather) and a really nifty display of models of famous Chicago buildings build entirely out of plantstuff (and model trains to keep the kids interested) at the Chicago Botanical Gardens.

New Year's Eve was great -- We had our family Christmas that morning, and then brunch and presents with my family at John and Sam's house (instead of Mom and Dad's because they hadn't even bothered to decorate this year). Then we went over to Braz and Adin's for their New Year's Eve party, which was awesome: Rock Band and champagne and counting down to midnight and an epic 9-player game of Cards Against Humanity after we sent Penny (the last child standing) to bed. (We'd told Penny and Ripley they could try for midnight; Ripley gave up the ghost and conked out at 9:30 or so, but by gosh, Penny made it!)
New Year's day was a little hangovery (note to self: one glass of champagne, and stick to more familiar liquors the rest of the night) but it was lovely and calm.

I'd meant to start taking down our Christmas decorations on the 2nd, but after Penny and I went to Target and bought a bunch of stuff (I spent some of my Christmas money on a very pretty and nice enameled cast iron dutch oven to replace my old pathetic soup pot) I kind of ran out of steam and spent most of the rest of the day just sitting around.

But I'll be moving on it soon, I think; I did spent the last couple of days wandering around the house and developing that twitch that means I'm about to do some serious purging. I cleaned out some drawers in my dresser that were filled with sweatshirts left over from when I was nearly 100 pounds heavier that for some reason didn't go in the initial clothing purge. I kept my favorite two -- sometimes you just need a hugely baggy sweatshirt day -- and dumped the rest in my "clothes to donate" pile. So once the Christmas stuff is packed away and back in storage, it looks like I'll be making a run to the thrift store to donate a bunch of bags of clothes and old toys and random crap I don't want anymore. And another one to the bookstore, as well, as I have a couple of boxes of those ready to go.

As of today, I'm back on the diet, too. I'm embarrassed to say how much weight I gained this past year -- most of it in the final quarter -- so I'm going to be using SparkPeople religiously for a while. (Email me if you're a member, too, and I'll add you to my friends!) My first new big goal is 25 pounds. I'd like to get there before my anniversary in April, but that's a little bit ambitious, so we'll see.

That's my only big resolution for this year, though I'd also like to make some more headway on the writing, and possibly do some (digital) scrapbooking.

And of course, having been away from work for nearly two weeks, things are utterly insane, so I'd better get to it...

Unboxed

Went over to Braz and Adin's last night so the kids could exchange their Christmas gifts.

Ripley tore into her with enthusiasm, and as soon as she got the paper off, she looked at the brown shipping box I'd put her presents into and gleefully exclaimed, "A box! It's what I always wanted!"

DUDE. The girl is six, but she delivered that line with perfect nuance. If it hadn't been, you know, a brown shipping box, I might have actually thought that she'd been jonesing for something just like it. Someone has either taught her very well how to act pleased even at disappointing results, or else she's going to be a Grand Master of sarcasm and the dry retort. (...Who am I kidding? It's the sarcasm one, of course.)

(She was eventually very happy with the FurReal toys Penny had picked out for her.)

Henry did not lose his mind over the draw-your-own-puzzle kits we got him, but he seemed happy enough. I think he'll like it better when he can actually, y'know, open them up and use them. Alex was likewise happy with the Imaginext airplane set he received. (Imaginext is apparently a theme for Alex this year; he also got a dinosaur set from our next-door neighbors, and there are another couple of sets waiting under the tree.)

Penny was a little nonplussed at first to find that her package contained CDs instead of toys. She tried to hide her disappointment, but it wasn't until she showed them to Ripley and Ripley got excited that Penny realized that these were a gift worth having. And then I put a nail in disappointment's coffin by Ooohing and Aaahing over the Selena Gomez CD and saying, "Oh, this is big girl music." The two girls all but raced up for Ripley's CD player to give it a listen. (They also gave her the Muppets soundtrack and a Disney songs CD. She was a little more "meh" about them last night, but this morning was excitedly telling me what songs were on all the discs.)

Success!

Tonight: a quiet (please o merciful gods) evening at home and with any luck, an early bedtime.

Fourish

I had a lovely day off on Friday. I spent the morning at Panera, writing, and then Adin joined me for lunch, and after that we went shopping and got pedicures. We all met up again at Plaza Azteca for dinner, and then we went back to Adin's place so Alex could open his birthday present from them, which turned out to be an "I Spy" bingo game. (Like regular bingo, but with objects and letters of the alphabet, with a number of variations suggested by the rules, depending on how advanced the players are.) We played a few rounds of that, and then I went to my book club party.

For the first time this year, we decided to hold it at a restaurant instead of burdening anyone with the job of cleaning up and providing snacks. That turned out to be an awesome idea. We went to Food For Thought and had a fantastic time. As a clever holiday promotion, the manager was handing out what he called "Secret Santa cards" -- little envelopes that contained a surprise gift, ranging from a free glass of wine to a complete dinner for two on Valentine's Day. The catch was that we couldn't open them ourselves; we have to bring them in sometime in January and have a manager open them. So of course we decided that we have to have our January book club there, too!

Saturday was calmer -- we ran some errands in the morning (like taking a box of stuff to the post office so we can hope it gets to his mom's before we do), and Matt went to his monthly D&D game that evening. I took the kids out to dinner, and they were surprisingly good.

Sunday was a little crazier. We had the usual chores, and we exchanged presents with our next-door neighbors, and then Matt and Penny went to see a production of the Nutcracker ballet while Alex napped. After Alex woke up, I took him down to my parents', where Matt and Penny met up with us (they'd had a good time at the ballet, though as Matt said, it was a children's dance troupe, so the performances were a little uneven) for the family birthday party for Alex. Mom made her homemade mac-and-cheese, and Sam brought a gorgeous salad, and Alex seemed quite happy with all his presents. We all had big pieces of cake (except John and Sam, who were being good and making the rest of us look bad) and HOLY CRAP MY BABY IS (nearly) FOUR.

Who let that happen?

Speaking of crazier...

My office Christmas party holiday luncheon annual morale event is today. (Catered lunch, yum!) Tonight we're swapping gifts with the Hegemony. No plans yet for Tuesday, but I expect I'll spend a chunk of it packing, because. Wednesday morning has a doctor's appointment of some sort for everyone in the house except Matt, Penny has a half-day of school (if she goes at all, depending on how long her doctor appointment goes) and that evening, the Hickses are coming up to do the Christmas thing (and also so KT can give me my thirty-one gear and we can sequester ourselves in a corner and talk writer-stuff for a bit).

And then Thursday, we're off to Chicago for the holidays.

In the meantime, one of the gifts I ordered for Matt still hasn't come in, and I have to figure out a way to wrap another one. Details that I had thought long since established (like whether Santa wraps gifts) are being called into question, and since I haven't really been thinking past the Chicago trip, I was blindsided by the need to plan the events for New Year's Eve. I feel like my head isn't screwed on quite right; I'm dropping details right and left, and my body has reacted by making me drop into a drowse every time I stop moving for more than ten minutes.

But at least I finally remembered to load my holiday music onto my iPad!

WHEE!

Busy is Relative

Compared to the previous weekend, this last one was positively indolent.

Jenn and Brian came down on Friday instead of Saturday, so we took them with us over to the Hegemony for dinner and a round of Cards Against Humanity.

I'd meant to be productive Saturday, but Matt took Penny out to run some errands while Alex was napping, and I had a headache, so I went to lay down, too. I had to get up twice to answer the phone, but I crawled right back to bed and the next thing I knew, it was 5:00 and the whole afternoon was gone. So we ordered a huge order of Chinese and took it over to the Hegemony again. This time, we played Trivial Pursuit. I've always sucked at the game, but I got a fantastic selection of really ridiculously difficult questions, so eventually I gave up even really trying, and just enjoyed watching the other three jockey for the win.

Sunday made up for my indulgence Saturday, though. After I'd gotten up and done the grocery shopping, I set about clearing the kitchen of a wide assortment of items that need to be pre-prepared: I roasted five winter squash from our CSA box that have been waiting. I seeded a pomegranate. I peeled and roasted a whole bunch of root vegetables (sweet potatoes, potatoes, turnips, parsnips, and carrots). I made a batch of apple-pumpkin soup. The kitchen got cleaned not once, but a couple of times. So I felt pretty good about all that. The only things left to do on that front are another pomegranate and a batch of peanuts to be shelled and roasted.

I also took Penny out shopping to get some new "fancy" shoes to go with her Christmas dress, and I stopped by Target to pick up a new pair of jeans and a pair of leggings, and I found a couple of new shirts while I was at it. (Kudos to Penny for suffering through all my trying things on and bemoaning re-gained weight; she just sat on the floor in the dressing room with my phone and held the room while I ran back and forth getting things in various sizes.)

After our dinner of pumpkin soup and roasted vegetables, we had to drop Matt's car off at the dealership for some routine maintenance, so as long as we were all in the car anyway, we took the kids down to drive through the Newport News Park's Celebration in Lights. I was driving, so I didn't take any pictures, but Penny had her camera, and delighted in taking both videos and snapshots. (I'll be interested to see if any of them turned out at all.)

The timing worked out pretty well -- by the time we got home, we were only slightly late for Alex's bath and bedtime.

This coming weekend ramps things back up. My book club Christmas party is Friday night. Matt's D&D game is Saturday. Sunday, Matt is taking Penny to see the Nutcracker ballet, after which we'll convene at my parents' for Alex's birthday party.

Humpty

So, the Day Job's HR/benefits department is making changes to the schedule for our holidays which essentially is going to screw us out of a day of vacation next year. (Worse, they're moving it around so that we don't get our annual holiday pool until after the Christmas holidays, which completely sucks. I liked that they'd been giving it to us just before Christmas, because it ensured that we always had that time available. It's now essentially a gigantic sandpaper dildo for people who aren't good at planning a whole year in advance.) They're also changing how much vacation we're allowed to save up, but that's much less of an issue for me since I'm barely keeping my vacation balance above water right now, anyway.

***

Speaking of barely keeping things above water... the schedule probably could have a few more things crammed into it, but it would take a crowbar.

Penny has a half-day today, and tonight we'll probably do our usual Friday night shindig with the Hegemony. Tomorrow, Jenn and Brian are coming into town to do some shopping and then stopping to visit with us afterward. Matt has his D&D game, so he'll probably miss some of their visit, but that'll be okay. They can help me take the kids out to dinner and then we'll figure out something to do once the kids are in bed.

Sunday, so far, has no plans. I'm hoping against hope that the Christmas cards I ordered will arrive today or Saturday so that I can spend part of Sunday signing and addressing them and they can go in the mail on Monday. And I did kind of promise Penny that I'd take her out shopping to try to find some fancy shoes to go with her Christmas dress. I'm not sure when that will happen, but I'm betting on either Saturday or Sunday this weekend.

Next week, I have two doctor appointments on the books, plus I'll probably have to schedule a bloodletting so that my GP will refill my synthyroid prescription.

Then, next weekend, I've got my book club meeting/Christmas party on Friday night, and then nothing on Saturday (except probably doing Christmas cards, if they don't arrive in time to do them this weekend, and shipping those gifts that need to be shipped -- which means we should probably get a move on the last of our gift shopping -- and a box or two of stuff to Matt's mom in advance of our trip, like some presents for the gang there, and we can fill extra space in the box with some of our bulkier clothes), and then Sunday Matt's taking Penny to a local production of The Nutcracker ballet, followed by dinner at my folks' to celebrate Alex's birthday (for which I need to acquire a cake).

And the following Wednesday, Alex and I both have appointments with the ear/nose/throat doctor at the same time that Penny has her quarterly checkup with the endocrinologist, and then she has a half-day of school. We'll spend that night and Thursday morning packing stuff, and then pretty much right after lunch that Thursday, we're off to Richmond to catch our flight to Chicago. (Which should be a hoot, as the flight was already slam-packed full when I booked it in September, and I couldn't get ANY seats together. We'll be relying on the kindness of surrounding strangers to swap around so that the kids can sit with us.)

Matt has been trying to impose some level of organization on our time in Chicago, but my impression is that he's getting a lot of, "Oh, let's just wait and see" responses, so... not so much. I'm trying to stay out of it, for the most part. I'm just chalking those 9 days up to a blur of alternating running around and trying to keep the kids from getting so bored that they wreck his mom's house, and otherwise letting the chips fall as they may.

We're coming back from Chicago on the 30th (at least our seats are all together on that flight), and then on the 31st we'll "do" a mid-day Christmas with my family and end up at the Hegemony to ring in the New Year. (I've promised Penny she can try to stay up until midnight this year. We Shall See how that goes -- and whether I manage to stay awake that late, myself.)

And then I'll have the 1st and the 2nd of January to catch up on sleep, unpack our bags, try to figure out where all the new loot fits, and start un-decorating the house.

Somewhere in all that, we need to find a time to match schedules and meet up with KT and Kevin and Jess so we can give them their presents (and I can get the stuff I ordered from KT's thirty-one show). I need to get some occasional exercise, stay on top of everything at work, finish editing the story I'm working on, and gin up a couple of promotional blurbs for my publisher. I also need to do something with an assortment of vegetables and fruits in my kitchen before they start to go bad on me, and I'd really like to try out the all-edges brownie pan that Karen sent for my birthday. (Maybe Alex will get brownies in addition to cake for his birthday. Just 'cause.)

What I'm saying is -- if I miss a day or two of posting in the next couple of weeks, don't worry; I'm not dead, just insane. And between the 22nd and the 3rd, you probably shouldn't expect to hear from me at all, though I may manage a post or two via my phone. My twitter account is much more likely to see semi-regular posts, if you find yourself saddened by the silence here.

Runaround

What an insanely busy weekend! And yet, loads of fun!

Let's see. Friday night, we took the kids out to see The Muppets. It wasn't a perfect movie, but it was a fitting homage to Henson and Oz and the original Muppets. The kids enjoyed it, though Alex was about to turn into a pumpkin on us by the time it ended.

Saturday morning we got up and got dressed right away and headed into town to watch the Christmas parade. Alex found it alternately boring and too loud, but Penny loved it -- her favorite parts were the middle school and high school bands.

Waiting for the parade

When that ended at 10:30, we walked a few blocks up the street and had an early lunch at Wasabi. (They were nice enough to let us in even though they were still setting up and weren't officially open until 11. They got drinks for us and we were grateful just to sit down until they were ready for us.)

After lunch, we got Alex down for a nap and then I ran up to the store for supplies for the moon cookie party, which started around 1:30 or so. It was a smaller group than usual this year (I can't believe KT and Kevin would rather go to Disney World for a week than come to the moon cookie party!) but we had a great time making cookies and chatting. Though for the record, I seriously need to get some more cookie sheets, next year. Waiting on cookies to bake is a huge hold-up!

When that was done, we all went out to eat at La Tolteca, where Adin's sister met up with us, and then we trooped over to Braz and Adin's to put the kids to bed and have a seven-player game of Cards Against Humanity. (Adin's sister is sweet and giggly and precious, and also? has an incredibly filthy mind. I approve. A lot.)

Sunday morning, Matt threatened the kids with mayhem so that I could sleep in until almost 9. Then we got everyone dressed in their new Christmas clothes (or in Matt's and my cases, our old Christmas clothes) and we went down to New Town to visit Santa and take pictures. They had a different guy playing Santa this year, but he was nearly as good with the kids. A new thing they've got going this year is that if there isn't a line (which there wasn't, for us -- I can never quite believe it) Santa would read a story to the kids. Which was pure awesome.

Santa and Penny peruse her list

Santa reading to the kids

After our visit with Santa, we went out for lunch at Ruby Tuesday, then went home so Alex could crash into a nap. While he was out, Penny and I wrapped a bunch of Christmas presents and put them under the tree (Alex woke up in time to help with the last few) and then we all piled in the car and went to Busch Gardens to see Christmastown, which I have missed for the last few years and was determined to see this time.

I have to say, I loved it. And the weather was perfect -- brisk enough to add to the "winter wonderland" atmosphere without being so cold that it was unpleasant to be outdoors. I do sort of wish that Matt and I could go back without the kids, because it would be nice to a) sample some of the tasty treats without having to worry about the diabetic in tow, b) stay at the park later than Alex's bedtime, and c) stroll along and look at everything at our own pace, without having to deal with assorted whines about being bored/hungry/tired and wanting to go right now to the favorite show or ride.

After all that standing and walking and picture-taking, my back and hips are killing me today, but it was totally worth it. I got lots of fun pictures to use for our Christmas cards and the calendar for next year, and the kids had a great time, even if they were both getting a little tired and out of sorts by the end of it. (I can relate, as I was getting a little tired and out of sorts as well...)

I'm hoping to recover some of my aplomb this week -- there's not much happening at work until Thursday, and I've got 7 hours of what my office calls discretionary/holiday time (I'd been saving it all year for the day after Thanksgiving, but wound up working most of that day, so I still have it left over) that I have to use-or-lose by the 16th. So I'm looking at taking some extra time off -- either two half-days or one full day -- to wrap up my Christmas shopping and work on my writing and generally try to relax and recoup my holiday spirit, which has been badly frazzled by my perception of the schedule, this year.

Treed

Sunday afternoon, amidst all my other errands and running around, I stopped at the storage unit and brought home the Christmas tree and a bunch of other boxes.

When I got home, I started plugging in the tree sections, to make sure they worked before I went to the effort of assembling them.

Good thing, too. Because they didn't. Well, the middle section worked okay. But neither the bottom nor the top sections lit up at all.

There were a number of paths I could have taken from there. My dad, for instance, once actually went over the entirety of a pre-lit tree, testing each and every one of over 600 bulbs, looking for the one(s) that had caused the tree to go out. Yike. My time -- and my fingertips -- are more valuable than that.

Another possible route would have been to just get some light strands and string them on the tree where the built-in lights were dead, ignoring the dead bulbs and hoping the ornaments covered them up. I'd actually done this a couple of years earlier, when one section of the tree went dead. It worked okay, mostly, as long as I kept that section turned toward the corner where it wouldn't be in high profile. But I didn't want to do that for two thirds of the entire tree -- for one thing, I get pre-lit trees for a reason, and that reason is that I hate stringing lights. For another, there would be no way to turn the section with all the dead bulbs toward the corner, and covering ornaments or not, it would've looked pretty skeezy.

So I went with the third option, which was to toss the whole thing out and plan a trip to the store for a new tree. We went looking at Target on Sunday evening, before Matt's birthday dinner, and we picked out a tree we liked -- but there was no way we were going to fit the box in the car with all four of us. I love our Priuses (Prii?) and they have a lot more trunk space than it looks like from the outside... but not that much.

I said something to Matt about possibly picking it up on my way home from work Monday, but then he wanted to do some comparison shopping elsewhere. (Why, when we'd have been ready to get the tree from Target on Sunday if not for the space issue, I'm not sure. Is it possible to have buyer's remorse before you've bought something?)

So on Tuesday, after I'd done my writing, I went over to Wal-Mart. That took a bit longer than it should have; the two trees that were roughly analogous in size and shape to the one we'd picked at Target were both -- of course -- sold out. I thought about going back to Target, but there had only been one tree left of the sort we'd picked out. The chances that it was still there were... slim. So I spent some time waffling over my remaining choices at Wal-Mart.

The box did not fit in the trunk of my car, as expected. It only barely fit in the back seat, stretched across both kids' seats -- closing the car door nudged the box pretty firmly.

But I got it home, and even managed to get it out of the box, light-tested, assembled, and fluffed before Matt and Penny got home. Penny helped me put one round of ornaments on it, and then when Alex came home later, we all put on the remaining ornaments together.

So now we have a lit, decorated tree. Christmas is a go.

Thanks-given

Thanksgiving went pretty well, despite having clogged the sink drain with vegetable peelings the night before and having to summon the emergency plumber for Thanksgiving morning to clear it out with the shop vac. But the food turned out great, and Penny had a good time helping me, and Alex was thrilled beyond measure to drink his milk out of one of my china teacups. I was only confused about the lack of drippings from the turkey -- if I'd known it was going to drop so little, I'd have poured in some chicken stock to add extra heat to the bottom and to give me something to work with when it was time to make gravy. My apple-and-chestnut stuffing turned out awesome, if I do say so myself.

I had to work Friday (and surprisingly, there was work to be done, so I didn't get to enact my plan, which was to check email every couple of hours and otherwise just relax), alas. But Friday evening we went over to Braz and Adin's, and after we got the kids to bed, we played through the entire Cards Against Humanity deck. (Best question/answer pair of the night, and possibly all time: "What do I like to think about when I'm having sex?" "Being a dinosaur.") We wrapped up the game well after 1:30 in the morning. Matt and I didn't get to bed until after 2...

And of course the cat woke me up at 6:30. And when I got up, thinking I would feed him and go back to bed, I found Alex sitting on the edge of his bed, waiting for someone to stir so he could get up. So I was up. Alas. Once we were all up, we went down to my parents' for a little while, and then after Alex's nap we went back to Braz and Adin's for Matt's birthday party. We had hot dogs and bratwurst and ice cream cake, and we played a couple of rounds of Taboo after the kids were tucked into bed, but didn't stay up nearly as late, thank goodness.

Sunday was Matt's birthday, and also something of a crazy runaround day. I got up with the kids so Matt could sleep in, and once he'd gotten up and opened his presents, I did the grocery shopping. Then I came home, put the groceries away, and got the kids started on their lunch. While they finished that up, I ran across town to pick up Matt's birthday pie. (Matt always gets pecan pie for his birthday, and the best pecan pie I've ever had comes from the Jamestown Pie Company.) On my way back from that, I stopped at the storage unit to pick up most of our Christmas boxes and the tree.

When I got back, I took advantage of the excellent weather (it was over 70 outside!) to start putting up the outdoor decorations, and then while I started to assemble the tree, I let the kids distribute the candles in the windows.

But when I tested it, it turned out that of the 3 major sections of tree, only one of them lit up. Now, my dad once actually pulled and tested every single bulb on a pre-lit tree to find out which one had gone bad. I am not that determined. I declared the tree dead (we've had it long enough to have gotten our money's worth out of it, at least) and piled its sections outside with the trash.

Matt had promised Penny he would take her to Sweet Frog for snack on Sunday, so we did that, and then we stopped at Target on the way home to look at new trees. We got one all picked out, but the box was going to be way too big to fit in the car with all of us in it, so we had to leave it there. I did pick up a new door wreath and some plastic ornaments to decorate the porch and bushes, and we got Alex his Christmas outfit. (He did not pick the one I liked best, but he picked my second-favorite. I was tempted to get him both, but he really doesn't need clothes, and the little sets are not cheap.) We still need to take Penny out to look for her Christmas dress, as well. Maybe one evening this week, we'll do that.

Once we got back home, we pretty much turned around and headed straight back out to meet my family at Outback for Matt's birthday dinner. That was fun (and delicious), and then my parents came back to our house to share in that pecan pie. (John and Sam were virtuous, and avoided the temptation.)

All in all, a really good weekend... but I didn't get nearly enough sleep.

With Christmas coming in less than four weeks, I don't expect to get caught up for a while, either.

Quietude

The office is a little quiet today. I'm not quite sure why. Most people taking long vacations around Thanksgiving won't leave until this weekend. Some of the local schools have a teacher workday today, so a few people could be working from home, but it shouldn't count for that many. I know a couple of the managers are on the road for work.

I guess it just all adds up. And the result is that the office is a little quiet. We don't have any deliveries to do today. There's only one delivery for next week. Things in the office are... slow.

In direct contrast, things at home are heating up for the holidays. I've got shopping to do. Thanksgiving dinner to plan. And cook. Gifts to order and wrap and ship. Decorating to do. More shopping. Cleaning (and more cleaning, and more cleaning...)

Pictures to take, cards to lay out and order. Events to plan and host and attend. Notes to write.

Don't get me wrong -- I'm not unhappy. I love this stuff. I love seeing the house decorated for Christmas; I love shopping; I love visiting with friends and family and doing fun things together. I even love planning and cooking big meals like Thanksgiving (occasionally). (The cleaning, not so much, I admit.)

But it does add a big helping of crazy and stress to my days.

Which makes me appreciate these quiet days at the office that much more. I can pause. Sip my coffee. Close my eyes and take a deep breath.

And then fire up the browser and get a jump on some of that shopping.

Ring-a-ding

Ups and downs this weekend...

The major down, for us at least, was discovering that our phone service has gone wonky -- we can make calls out, but anyone trying to call in just gets a couple of bursts of static and then silence, and the phone doesn't ring at all on our end. That wouldn't be too big of a deal -- we hardly ever actually use the house line, and if that was all there was to it, we might consider just dropping it entirely -- but whatever is wrong with the phone also seems to be affecting our DSL line, and making it dump us offline every fifteen or twenty minutes, which is really quite frustrating when we live online as much as we do.

So Matt called the phone company, and they have just about the worst customer service evar. The first time he called, he did it from the house line, and they told him they couldn't run remote tests if we were actually on the phone, which... I guess makes sense, but the person he was talking to (after ten minutes of navigating the horrible automated menus) couldn't give him a direct-line callback number. So he had to hang up and get on my cell phone (his is pay-by-the-minute, whereas I'm on a plan and never use all my minutes) and then navigate the horrible automation again. This time it walked him through some diagnostics via automation, and eventually told him to hang up, unplug all the phones in the house, and then try plugging them back in one at a time.

Well, we still have the problem even with no phones plugged in, so he called back a third time and told the automation to go eff itself until it offered to send out a service person. "The earliest available appointment is on... December... ... ... 15th, between 8 A.M. and... ... ... 6 P.M."

Oy. So I'll be working from home on Wednesday so that someone can be there to let the phone guy in. And in the meantime, our internet is a bit spotty.

But on the bright side! We had the first of the moon cookie parties! Braz and Adin and all four of their kids came, and everyone over age 5 was allowed to make 3 cookies each (well, Emma, at 9, was allowed to make 4 and she got to handle her own knife to trim the dough) and then Braz and Adin and I used up the rest of the dough.

(I didn't get pics of the kids making cookies, alas, because pretty much the whole time the kids were working, I was being asked to finish off Penny's cookies for her. Maybe I'll get some pictures next weekend.)

Adin was quite enthusiastic about the cookies, too. Another moon cookie fan, yay!

In case you're wondering, while we were making cookies, Matt was keeping the kids entertained.

We went out to dinner afterward, of course. And then Sunday, when I mentioned to Adin that the kids had left some stuff behind, she suggested we all meet up for dinner that evening, so that's what we did, and that was nice.

And we came home and got the kids in bed, and then Matt and I watched the new Leverage episode, which was completely awesome.

So it was, all in all, a pretty nice weekend! Phone/internet issues notwithstanding.

This week promises to be busy. I've got a software delivery to organize for work, and as mentioned, I'm working from home Wednesday. Thursday I'm going out to lunch with "the girls" at work, and that evening is the 2nd grade holiday concert. Friday is my office's holiday luncheon (they decided at the very last minute that there would be one, after all. I'm glad I didn't get tagged to organize it!). And then Sunday is the second moon cookie party -- which will be more party-like, because we'll have the Hickseses and Leslie and Jeff and Elizabeth and Lorenz all along for the fun. (And since Leslie and Lorenz are our only moon cookie newbies, I expect we'll blow through all the dough very quickly. Though with that many people, we might need to make 2 batches to make sure everyone gets enough cookies...)

Joy

What's this? A blog post two days in a row?! Someone alert the presses!

So here's a funny thing: I'm not done with my Christmas shopping yet, though I'm getting there. The next three weeks are insanely busy, between work and social stuff planned and Christmas activities and everything, and aside from the moon cookie parties I haven't figured out when I'm going to do any of my holiday baking. Due to a stupid mistake I made in calculating my vacation time, I'm only going to be able to take off one day (besides Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve, which are company holidays), so I'm not really getting a vacation. I had a heart attack the other day when I looked at our joint credit card bill -- we seriously need to cut back on the frequency with which we're eating out -- and that bill didn't even include any of the holiday purchases. As happens around the holidays, my diet is slipping, and I've gained about five pounds since mid-October. (That might have some relation or at least overlap with all the eating out.) Penny's blood sugars are all over the map, and we can't seem to get her to stay in range or calculate a correction that works as advertised. (That, too, might have a bit of overlap with the eating out, though it's a sure bet that's not all of it.)

I should be going off my head with stress. I should be pacing and frantically consulting my calendar and making mildly OCD lists and charts and growling at Matt and the kids for being less than helpful.

But... I'm not. I'm really not. (Okay, I am occasionally growling at the kids, but y'know... they're kids. Sometimes they make me growl. I'm pretty sure I'm not doing it more than usual.)

Instead of being anxious about when things are going to arrive, I'm feeling relaxed about it, and when something I've ordered shows up, I'm giddy with excitement. (I also can't seem to stop shopping. I swear, I can't set foot in a store without seeing something I just have to get for the kids. I'm forbidding myself to set foot in Target without Matt along to act as brakes for at least the next two weeks, because that store is just crazy dangerous, and if I pick up any more adorable little tchotchkes for the stockings, we're going to need to hang three stockings apiece.) But even though I'm bemoaning all the money spent, it's... not that big a deal. Yep, I might have to dip into the savings account a smidge. But that's what we've got a savings account for. And really? I'd rather dip into savings to pay off presents and fun than for, say, repairs. At any rate? I'm not stressing over it.

I've all but succumbed to holiday food and weight gain. I'm still trying to make better choices with meals, but by and large, I'm not kicking myself for eating treats. A buddy at work and I have made a pact to support each other with our new year's diets, and I'm... content with that. When 2011 gets here, I'll pack up all the junk food and have Matt take it to his office, and I'll get back on the wagon and track every bite and lose the five or eight or ten pounds. Better still, I like the attitude I have about it: this is what normal people do. Normal people eat a little more over the holidays, and have fun, and don't worry about it, and then they go on diets in January and February. It's not a big deal.

I can't say I'm entirely sanguine about work and not being able to take much time off, but I'm finding ways to make my peace with that, too. I told my boss that for the week before and after Christmas, I'd be working from home as much as I can. There won't be a lot of urgent work to do during that time anyway, and so I can break up the administrivia and the annual cleanup stuff with stuff at home, and be more relaxed about it all.

I'm not sweating the holiday baking. I have some I want to do. But I'm being more spontaneous about it than most years, and it's not going to bother me horribly if I don't get to it all. Last night, I roasted the fresh peanuts we got from our CSA. (I split it into two batches: one salty, one sweet. They turned out really well, though the salty were better than the sweet, in my opinion. At any rate, I'd planned to set them out for this weekend's moon cookie party, since that's the one Jess will NOT be at -- stupid peanut allergies -- but I'm not sure they'll last even that long.) I've got some cookies and some muffins I want to make. But I'll get to them. And if I don't... well, I don't.

All in all: I'm just sitting back and enjoying what comes as it comes. I'm ready to be social. (I wish I could go to a big party, actually, but I don't think either Matt's office or mine is having one this year.) I'm embracing the good feelings that go with the holidays -- the love and the cherishing of friends and family and the awe and enjoyment of everything beautiful and bright and fun and silly -- and just sidestepping the worry and the rushing and the stress.

If I could give each one of you reading this a gift, it would be this feeling. If I could ask for only one gift, it would be that this feeling stay with me all the time.

It probably won't. I'm too much of a stresspuppy. But I'll enjoy it while it lasts.

Catch-Up

I know, I know, I know. I'm a bad, bad blogger.

The good news is that we've interviewed and selected a candidate and offered her the position that I'm covering that's eating up so much of my time, and she's accepted! The bad news is that, due to a paperwork snafu, she won't be starting until Jan. 3. However, the last couple of weeks of the year are usually fairly slow, punctuated by periods of intense panic. I'd been counting on using those weeks to start getting our new person trained and up to speed on the bewilderingly similar glorp of acronyms and project names we all take for granted, but instead she's going get dropped into the crazy that is the start of the year. Ah, well.

At any rate, I hope to be back to regular blogging in the next few weeks. Maybe. Hopefully.

In the meantime, a little catch-up!

Thanksgiving was lovely:

And then we decorated for Christmas:

(I love this picture... Matt and the kids decorated the tree while I was doing the outside lights, and Matt suggested to Alex that he "spread out" a bit... so Alex valiantly put his ornaments on both sides of the branch.)

This past weekend was especially nice, I thought. We went to a Christmas parade Saturday morning:

And after that we stopped at Wasabi for lunch. Despite which, Penny's blood sugars remained on a fairly even keel all day! Yay!

We'd had plans to go see Santa that afternoon, but Alex's nap ran long (the parade had just tired the poor little guy out) and our Santa is only available from 11 to 4, so we just relaxed for the afternoon, instead.

Sunday morning, we woke to a light dusting of snow on the ground -- the perfect kind: just enough to get the kids excited, but not enough to mess up the roads. It was mostly melted, in fact, by the time we left to go see Santa.

As always, the New Town Santa was amazing. We were the first people there, and no one else had arrived, so Santa talked to Penny for at least 20-25 minutes before another family arrived. Alex flatly refused to sit on Santa's lap, but toward the end, he edged closer to Santa to accept a coloring book, and then threw caution to the wind and gave him a big hug. Santa happily posed for pictures, and his assistant willingly took the camera so we could get a family shot for the holiday card.

(This is not the one we chose for the card.)

Just outside Santa's spot, there was a bench where someone had scraped up probably all the snow in New Town and made a small snowman with it:

That afternoon, I took Alex to a birthday party for one of his school friends. It was at the new Inflation Nation here in town, and holy cow, that place is huge. I'd had to wake Alex up from his nap to go, so he wasn't actually interested in playing until about the last ten or fifteen minutes of the play-period, but he was All About the Elmo hat and Abby Kadabby whistle he got in the party room!

(This was only 1 of at least eight enormous bounce castles/slides/doohickeys.)

So now I think we're all caught up, more or less. I'm looking forward to this coming weekend, when we'll be having the first of two moon cookie parties. (We couldn't find a day when all our friends could make it, so we've split it into two. Given the number of people becoming involved in this tradition, it might even work out better this way.) The weekend after that is the second moon cookie party, and the weekend after that will be... Christmas!

Wow, it comes quick. No, I'm not done with my shopping yet. (But almost!)

So, what've you been up to for the last couple of weeks?

Decor

When I was little, we almost always drove down to North Carolina to visit my mom's family for Thanksgiving.

I hated the drive. It was about four hours or so, and I was not a good passenger. I was prone to carsickness (I still am, if I sit in the back seat) and my brother and I got on each others' nerves any time we were thrown together for more than a half-hour or so.

I honestly don't know how my parents managed to do that drive several times a year without killing one or both of us.

But there was one thing I enjoyed about the Thanksgiving and Christmas trips: the shopping centers. See, this was a state highway drive -- no interstates were convenient to the drive after about the first half-hour -- so we weren't insulated from the towns we passed by noise baffle walls and strategically-placed strips of trees. We passed houses and roadside attractions and farms and a couple-dozen little towns. We stopped at the stoplights and looked at the shopping centers while we waited.

And most of the time, the shopping centers were just like the ones at home. But at Thanksgiving and Christmas... they were decorated. Always. Sometimes the houses were decorated, and sometimes they weren't, but of course the shopping centers always were. Tinsel and garlands and lights. Every shopping center was different, and every new design just added to the thrill and excitement of the holiday season.

This is my last day of work for a while. I'm taking off Wednesday through Monday for the Thanksgiving holiday, and we've already got lots of stuff planned for pretty much the whole weekend.

But I might take some side roads, and remember to appreciate the decorations I see while I'm waiting at the stop lights.

Holiday Wrapup

Sorry I didn't post anything yesterday, but I spent the morning taking Penny to her quarterly diabetes checkup, so when I made it into the office, I didn't have time for a blog entry. (She's doing fine, by the by. A1C is 8.0, which is up a bit, but with all the extra treats the holidays bring, it's not too horrible. I'll expect to see her back in the 7s -- which is where her doctor wants her -- by her March checkup.)

So, Christmas, in short: excellent!

We had my parents over on Christmas Eve for dinner -- just soup and sandwiches, but it was nice to sit and talk, and the kids enjoyed their company. They left as we were getting ready to put Alex to bed, and we told Penny she wasn't allowed to wake us up until 7.

Naturally, I woke up myself at 5:30 or so and my brain immediately started up so I couldn't go back to sleep, but it was nice to snuggle in the warm bed for a while, too. Penny came in promptly at 7, so we got up and picked up Alex and headed down the stairs to see if Santa had come...

Penny was thrilled with the guitar that Santa brought her, which was nice, because we always seem to guess wrong with her bigger gifts. And of course, there were stockings. Penny and Alex dove right into those without much prompting.

And surprisingly, Santa had brought stockings for Matt and I, too! I really got Matt with that one. He'd been a little sad a few days earlier that I hadn't gotten stockings for us, and I'd told him that I hadn't realized he'd wanted stockings for the adults, too, and it was kind of late, so maybe next year... and then after work on Christmas Eve, while he and Penny were at the movies, I went out and got stockings for us, put them together, and hid them. I should've put the nails in the wall for them at the same time, but I forgot -- I ended up putting them in that evening, while Matt was taking his shower. He heard the hammering, and I really thought the jig was up, but managed to convince him he must have been hearing something from outside. The stocking contents weren't all that thrilling (there wasn't much left in the stores on Christmas Eve) but I felt pretty good at having surprised him with their existence.

After the stockings, Penny played Santa and divvied up the pile under the tree, and we started opening. Alex got overwhelmed after the first few, and it wound up taking him until the 26th to open all his gifts, but there's nothing wrong with stretching out the fun, either.

The kids got tons of clothes and toys, and everyone got at least one thing they were over the moon about, so that was great. Penny gave Matt and I a little book that she'd written and illustrated at school, complete with a CD of her reading it aloud. (It was a story about how our house was crazy messy until a Christmas elf came and cleaned it up, after which we thanked him with some cookies.)

Then we played and cleaned up a little and got dressed and played some more and ate lunch and Alex had a nap, and then we went down to my parents' house.

We opened more presents, of course, and giggled over how my mom and Samantha apparently did their shopping out of the same catalog, and admired the beautiful bracelets Sam had made for Penny and the fun toys the kids got, and the picture things I'd made for my parents.

After we'd opened all the gifts, we had dinner, of course. Mom had waffled between turkey and ham for a couple of weeks, but finally settled on the ham. (She'll serve the turkey for New Year's, she says.)

We didn't get home until quite late, but all in all, the kids were very good, and everyone had a great time. Yay, Christmas!

We wound up back at my parents' the next day for a bit, since we'd forgotten some things at their house, but otherwise had a fairly slow and quiet weekend. The kids played with their new toys and read their new books, and Matt and I did much the same.

We're back to work this week, of course, though school is still out, so Penny's at the daycare. I'm hoping/planning to take Thursday off as well as Friday, so at least it's a short week. We don't actually have any plans for New Year's Eve -- it's hard to party with little kids in tow. Or New Year's Day, either -- we were going to have dinner with my family, but that's been moved back to Sunday. I'm trying to think of something we can all do together, or that Penny and I could do, at least (since she and Matt had some special time together on Christmas Eve) but I'm pretty much coming up blank. So I expect the day will just be spent taking down the Christmas decorations and packing them away for another year.

Saturday we're having lunch with Chuck and Anita, though, so that should be fun; and Sunday Matt is taking Penny to see a basketball game, after which we're doing the family New Year's dinner, which I'm also looking forward to.

And then the holidays will be over, and we'll be back to normalcy. I am both sad and relieved that the holidays are already almost over. But more sad than relieved. It's been a really good holiday season, this year.

Eve

Alex had a very good birthday. He got cupcakes again, and lots of presents.

He seemed to have figured out the whole opening-presents thing fairly well, which surprises me slightly. I think Penny was nearly three before she really got into it.

Anyway, Alex got three separate Elmo toys -- a huge one from my parents (that actually used to be Penny's, but she didn't really play with it much, so it went into the attic), a "baby" one (complete with pacifier and diaper) from Matt's dad, and a smaller regular Elmo from Matt's brother and his wife.

Alex glommed onto the little ones immediately, and doesn't want to put them down. He even tried to open the rest of his presents while keeping one of them tucked in his arm, which was adorable.

I'm at work today, but I honestly don't mind too much. There's nothing actually happening, which gives me time to clean up my desk and do paperwork and generally try to get into a good frame of mind for the coming year. And unless something surprises me by turning up, I'll be skipping out at lunchtime.

Tonight we're having my parents over for a simple Christmas Eve dinner of soup and sandwiches. (It would be the whole family, but Sam is working three separate Christmas Eve services for her church, and John opted to stay with her for dinner -- which I certainly can't blame him for.)

And tomorrow is Christmas, whoo! I'm really looking forward to it. Penny is so excited, she's already vibrating. (Note to self: remember to put her present from Santa in my trunk before I head home today!) Dinner will probably be at John and Sam's, as I'll be really surprised if the work being done at my parents' house is finished in time (those things never are -- I have no idea why my parents didn't put it off until after the holidays).

As far as I know, we don't have any particular plans for the weekend, though Matt had an email from our friend Chuck asking about when it might be a good time for us to all get together, so maybe we'll meet up with them. Other than that, my plan is: relax!

Celebrating Christmas or not, I hope you and yours have a wonderful holiday weekend.

The Best Laid Plans...

I wore a short-sleeved shirt to work today on the assumption that I'd be spending the whole day in my office, with my heater. I brought my gym bag with me on the assumption that I'd be going to the gym after the morning meeting.

But my office wasn't cozy and warm when I came in. My heater was up on the credenza with a note taped to it. Oh boy, I thought, a scolding from the landlord about leaving my heater running over the weekend. But no, that wasn't it. It looks like my heater shorted out, literally melting the plug and frying the surge suppressor/extension cord that it had been plugged into.

So it turns out my short-sleeved shirt was a bad idea, and instead of the gym, I'll be running up to the store for a new heater and a new surge suppressor/extension cord thingy. Yay. It's a good thing I keep a sweater in my office, even if it is three or four sizes too big, because without my heater running, my office is about 65.

I had a good weekend, though. I can tell, because I'm up two pounds from Friday morning. Whee!

The office party was a great success (except for my having inadvertently pissed off the caterer by not being able to afford to tip her -- I'd assumed it was built into the invoice and blown the rest of my budget already) and I ate so much that even though I skipped dinner entirely, I was still feeling full to the point of being ill that evening.

It snowed Friday night -- not a lot, just enough to get Penny excited.

Saturday was our Christmas party, and despite some last-minute cancellations due to illness and weather (it snowed harder in some other areas) I think it was a success.

While we were partying, it snowed some more.

And then Sunday, we had dinner with my family to celebrate Alex's 2nd birthday. When Sam set the tray of cupcakes in front of him, he made the most adorable startle ever. Like, "Oh my gosh, cake!" as if he hadn't been pestering me for a cupcake all afternoon. And then, for no apparent reason, he decided he needed to try to eat his cupcake without actually picking it up, which was hysterical.

Lots of fun! And a very great deal of food, oh my lordy.

This week will actually be somewhat calmer and simpler, I think. Work looks fairly light and quiet, as could be expected. I need to come in every day, but I'm hoping to be able to take some (or even most) of the afternoons off.

Tuesday we're having a friend over for chili, and Thursday (Christmas Eve) we're having my parents over for soup and sandwiches. Friday will be more hectic, of course, but also plenty of fun.

Half-Baked

So after the kids were in bed last night, Matt had to go back into work to take care of an emergency fix, and I got to baking.

I made a batch of gingerbread -- not cookies. Gingerbread. It turned out pretty well, though it wasn't as dense as I was expecting -- more like cake than bread. I might drop the amount of baking soda by a smidge in the next batch and see if that helps. It tasted quite good, though personally I like a stronger ginger flavor, so the next batch might have more ginger in it, too.

And then I was still feeling pretty chipper, so I decided to go ahead and try out the recipe for cheese straws. That was a bit more time-consuming than I expected, mostly because I hadn't factored in how long it would take for me to roll out some fifty-odd little snakes of dough. But they turned out pretty tasty (butter and cheese -- how can you go wrong?!) and I think it would be a really fun recipe to make with the kids, since the dough is pretty much play-dough consistency, and it will bake into any shape you lay it out in. (My last batch, just for giggles, I made circles instead of sticks.) I'd just have to lay out some ground rules about the thickness of the shapes, and then let them go wild.

I expect you could also roll it out flat, cut it with small cookie-cutters, and make pretty tasty crackers. I might try that some other time. In any case, definitely a keeper recipe, though I'd like to experiment with whole wheat flour, butter substitutes, and/or lower-fat cheese (not all at once!) to see if I can make it a smidge healthier.

But not tonight. Tonight's mission is to make another batch of gingerbread (with less baking soda and more ginger) and cupcakes for Alex's birthday party on Sunday. And to do some initial clutter-control so we can clean up for the party tomorrow. And start assembling the party favors and stuff.

But before that! is my office's Christmas holiday party year-end event. The catering lady will be here at 10:45 to set up (the party doesn't start until 11:30, but she's got three other luncheons to set up today, apparently, and most of my order is sandwiches and other things that can sit at room-temperature). I'll get to give a lot of gift cards away as door prizes, and eat good food and -- I think -- have a really good time.

Craze

Let's see...

Today between my 11:00 meeting and my allergy shot this afternoon, I'll go out and buy the door prizes for my office holiday party. (Why yes, I am dropping the entire $2000-ish holiday party budget on my credit card that gives me a cashback bonus.)

Matt and I worked out the remaining details on our Christmas party last night, so tonight I'll go shopping for the remaining stuff for that. (Mostly groceries, though we're also thinking of door prizes and -- since there will be kids present -- party favors.) I suspect I'll do that immediately after dinner, which leaves Matt to put the kids to bed by himself, but some of the stores I want close at 9, so waiting until 8:30 to head out is pretty much out of the question.

Tomorrow evening I'll start the party preparations. (Baking, mostly.)

Friday is the office party at work, and then that evening I'll continue the preparations for our party. (More baking, plus some cleaning/clearing and digging out my festive serving platters and such.)

(Along with all that, what started out as a relatively slow week at work turned into insanity, as I've had four  unscheduled documents and not one, not two, but three emergency software releases -- each of which requires a minimum of three documents to be created -- pop up on me.)

Saturday we'll finish the cleaning/clearing, do some last-minute decorating, and assemble all the last-minute stuff for the party. And then actually have the party, which I think will be fun. (We're looking at around 20 people, total, if we don't have a lot of last-minute cancellations. Even if you go by the rule that about a third of the guests will drop out at the last minute, that's 14 or 15 people, about a quarter of which are kids. Not bad!)

Saturday night or Sunday morning, if I didn't get to it before, I need to bake the cupcakes for Alex's birthday party, which is Sunday afternoon/evening. And, of course, Sunday is the usual grocery and laundry day.

Whew. After all that, Christmas week itself will be a snap. It's a good thing I'm starting to recover my Christmas spirit.

Keeping Up

Well, in addition to my annual case of pre-Thanksgiving stomach uck, and my usual pre-Christmas case of a nasty cough (this year's case has yet to turn into bronchitis, but there's still time!) and my time-honored fit of wondering whether I'm the only one who cares and if I ought to just skip the whole holiday thing, I've managed to knock out my traditional saying-something-without-thinking-and-offending-someone a little early this year. Whew, good to know I can cross that off my to-do list.

Since it coincided with several other frustrations and a sneaky bout of PMS, I spent a couple of hours last night thinking (melodramatically, because that's how I roll when the hormone homies are in town) about quitting the whole blog thing entirely. But we all know I'm not going to do that, because I've been doing this journal/blog thing for over ten years now, and I'm not sure I can even function at work if I don't start my day with a post. So I settled for posting some angsty "think I'll go eat worms" messages on Twitter (Twitter! It's the new "getting drunk and calling your ex"!) and then going to bed to cry myself to sleep.

I offer sincere and extremely grateful appreciation to those who responded with concern. Since the most common effect of PMS is to rev up the Mutant Worrybrain with the whole "no one love me" refrain, then every individual message does its part to quash those maunderings.

So I'm better enough this morning to feel like an idiot, but still under the weather enough that I can't summon enthusiasm for much of anything, especially much of anything having to do with Christmas. Hope the hormones dry up in time for me to finish planning the party, or else it's going to turn out kind of half-assed. (You can probably imagine for yourself how the hormones are responding to that.