Productive for New Year's
I've been unexpectedly productive today.
sort of
I made a list last night of things I need to do. But I haven't done any of them.
Instead, I woke up today realizing that tomorrow is New Year's Eve, and have been running around cleaning the house. I'm just taking a break from sweeping my room to cool down, and then I'm going to take out the rest of my garbage and VACUUM!!!!!
Then I shall continue to tidy my counter-tops.
I've taken out a lot of recycling already, have washed windows, dusted, vacuumed the upstairs, tidied the living room, and cleaned the bathroom. I think in the new year, I'm going to throw out the wreath in the bathroom; it's too much of dust-trap.
So, how was everyone's holiday? My parents did the whole no-presents-give-to-charity thing again this year. I don't know, it just didn't feel very festive this year, even with the layer of snow (and ice! Yes, I was in the middle of the ice storm right before Christmas, and yes, power went on and off for about two days for me. My car was almost hit by a rather large branch as well, and was stuck in ice and snow for two days while I dug it out). Maybe it was the essay I had to write right before the holidays, maybe it was the lack of anticipation. Any presents I got early, I opened right away, since it would be weird to take them to my parents when we weren't exchanging presents.
So my "loot" this year was a 3DS XL from Dave (metallic pink, which I put a Wonder Woman logo sticker on) with a game, a book from my wishlist, and Assassin's Creed 4. I bought myself chocolate. And I brought a puzzle for my family to work on.
It was an interesting Christmas. My aunt and cousin came over, and I'm really glad I saw my cousin. She's probably the only one in my family that I have anything in common. We read a lot of the same books, so I gave her some of my spare Mercedes Lackey books since she hadn't read them yet.
[edit] just did vacuuming. whew!! [/edit]
As for the rest of my relatives, well.... they can be intense. And demanding. Our family is like herding cats in the best of times, but with all of the, er, stubborn people in the house, it can take at least an hour to convince people just to move into another room so that the one room isn't very noisy. (I blame my parents for putting all the functional and comfortable furniture in one room.) And then we have my uncle and my aunt, from either side of the family, who both are determined to have their say and opinions considered, and one of them trying to play little attention-seeking games, while the other just has no patience and likes to stir things up.
So good things from Christmas: my cousin (yay!), the puzzle, and yummy food.
My grandmother is, unfortunately, showing signs of aging. I can't put my finger on it precisely, but she's bit by bit starting to lose her intellectual edge. The fact that her hearing isn't what it used to be doesn't help (and the fact that we can hear the echoes of her hearing aid, I found it rather annoying because I'm always sitting next to her and I'm already getting sensory overload at times, I don't need everything reflected BACK at me!), but her reasoning doesn't seem to be what it used to be. Mom remarked that she's starting to get more prejudiced now too, when she was more accepting before.
Anyways. My parents just called. My brother and sister in law come home on Friday. Unfortunately, I'll be working when they arrive, but I'm hoping to stay the night at my parents so that I can at least have breakfast, maybe spend the day with them. (Maybe we can see the Hobbit! I haven't seen it yet!)
I've cleaned up most of my counter spaces. I think the next things is to do my dishes and start just tidying. I can put on Netflix or something that I don't really need to watch, just listen, and work on that.