caerula's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- sad Sad news: my cousin who was pregnant with the twins has lost one of the babies, and is in the hospital, where they are trying to stop her premature labor and save the other baby. She was nearly five months along; they just found out the week before Christmas that it was a boy and a girl, and had decided on names. I'm so sad for them, and I also feel guilty, of course, for snarking on them when I found out. Sigh. Honestly, I think I'd rather never be pregnant than have to go through something like this. 11:16 a.m. - December 30, 2003 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- way too much about Christmas For those who asked, yes, the pictures in the previous entry are a selection of my handmade Christmas cards featuring The Kid, which didn't all get sent out yet, so if you didn't get one, it's 'cause I'm a lazy bum. We had a pleasant, if unremarkable, Christmas Day. Christmas Eve Blue and I stopped by Minnie�s, where they were hosting her in-laws for dinner, but stayed only for a few minutes and then took ourselves out to dinner. Not that Minnie�s meals aren�t great, but her in-laws are rather loud and obnoxious and we just weren�t in the mood. So we went to dinner, contemplated going to the movies but instead came home and opened a couple of little presents, and went to bed. Managed to sleep in until past nine the next day, since we didn�t have any YMB around to wake us up at the crack of what-the-hell, opened a couple more presents, lazed around, and made it over to my parents around noon. For dinner there we had Mom and Dad, us, Minnie and EB, AuntieP and Grandma, the other AuntieP, her kid FutureSerialKiller, and Gramma. FSK was the youngest, at 16, and it really was odd not to have any other kids around. The Crazy Cousins have gone off to North Carolina for three weeks, and the Esses and their kids are in Florida, so with YMB gone as well there were no kids to be had. I have to say that when I was a kid, I think I would have been annoyed to have Christmas Day in a hotel room somewhere instead of at Gramma�s house. There�s just a certain way you do things, and going away at Christmas just isn�t one of the things you do, at least in our family. So it was a fairly quiet and laid-back day. We had dinner, and opened presents for what seemed like hours. With no kids around to push the presents thing, we handed presents around, someone would open something, someone else would go get more coffee or punch or get distracted and start another conversation, and twenty minutes later someone would open something else. Plus, with both grandmas there, the conversations wandered quite a bit. In the evening we went out to Blue�s cousin Ell�s, who was hosting this year; the cousin who normally hosts has also taken herself off to Florida with her family. The in-laws were there, and crazy AuntieEm, and Ell�s three little boys. The two oldest (6 and 8, I believe) were engrossed in their new Xbox down in the basement, and Blue soon joined them, and the 4-year-old was sick and clinging to Ell the entire time. The older guys � FIL and his brother � were watching sports in the living. So I was stuck in the kitchen with the women the entire time, where I got to see AuntieEm tweeze her chin hairs at the kitchen counter. Really. And endure more comments about how as soon as we adopt, I�m sure to turn up pregnant because the �pressure will be off.� Uh-huh, that�s why we can�t get pregnant. We�re just putting too much pressure on ourselves. Nothing at all to do with my reproductive organs being covered in scar tissue. Met some other cousin�s new wife, inappropriately attired in a teeny miniskirt and thigh-high boots. And heard all the bad things that have happened to everyone on that side of the family all year, since that�s the way AuntieEm and the rest of the aunts entertain themselves at family gatherings. Oy. I had to come in to work on Friday, where I was the only one in our entire department present. Needless to say I didn�t exactly work the entire day. And this weekend I spent an exciting afternoon and evening cleaning out and reorganizing all the kitchen cupboards. Whee. So, YMB gets home tomorrow night, and we�ll do his Christmas stuff New Year�s morning, probably. Kitty and her family are arriving Friday afternoon and can only stay until Saturday afternoon (asshat ControlFreak�s scheduling, of course), so we�ll head back over to Mom and Dad�s for big family dinner Friday night. There�s a whole other entry there but I�m so sick of talking about Kitty and the baby and the Asshat and arranging our lives around Kitty and the baby and the Asshat that I�m not even going there today. Ooh, I almost forgot presents! We got a really nifty set of pots and pans from my parents (yeah, I know, but we needed them, and they�re RED!, and also that�s what inspired my kitchen reorganization, which I�ve needed to do for months, and also I don�t think they paid that much for them � gah, I hope not!), and apparently there�s a bunch of other Kitchenaid stuff that also comes in red, which I�ve just wasted about 15 minutes adding to my Amazon wishlist just so I don�t forget it exists. I�m all about the red kitchen now, even though my dishes are Fiestaware and so all different colors, but no red at all. Also we got a new scanner which has me all geeked, of course, since my old one hasn�t worked in about two years. This is the kind that is supposed to automatically fix discoloration and creases and stuff on old pictures, which I have a ton of, and has an adapter for slides and negatives. A lot of the pictures from when Kitty and I were little are on slides, so I�d like to get some of those in. A Wal-mart gift card from Auntie and Grandma, which will of course come in handy, and money from Gramma, which is traditional and also very handy. Blue got me several nice things from Origins � lavender & vanilla lotion, and vapor bath (great stuff!), and ginger body spray, so I smell good, at least. And the Chicago DVD, finally, and the new Linda Eder cd (which apparently had him a little confused, as it's called Storybook and he somehow thought he was looking for a book/cd combo, or a cd set, or something, instead of just a regular old cd. So I had to be kind of amused by that, and also act proud of him that he figured it out). He was totally geeked with his Firefly DVDs, BNL cd, Lord of the Rings Weapons and Warfare book (so he likes the movies better than the books. So what?), and of course the dancing hamster, which went everywhere with us Christmas Day and was shown to everyone. We let YMB open a couple of presents before he left � his LotR Risk game, and basketball t-shirt and warm-up pants � but the majority will be opened New Year�s Day, when Blue�s parents come over with their stuff as well, so there may actually be more loot forthcoming. NOT that that's the important thing, OF COURSE. 11:47 a.m. - December 29, 2003 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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