short notes
Just two days more to Christmas. For some reason I've been much more organised this year - all the gifts have been bought and wrapped, the Christmas and Boxing Day menus have been planned, the gifts of chocolate and wine given to our neighbours and the concierge, and as I type this the Christmas cake is fresh out of the oven, cooling and ready to be decorated later in the afternoon. In the morning all of us braved the hypermarket and emerged in one piece. No more grocery shopping until the 27th at least.
The kids are super excited and counting down with a vengeance. Last night Bao woke me up with inane questions about Santa and the Tooth Fairy and for the record, her voice is high and clear as a bell and cuts through the silence of the night remarkably well. I evidently mumbled unsatisfactory answers because I remember her huffing and sulking until I eventually yelled at her to go back to sleep. It was three in the morning and Bao had missed the memo about children who get coal in their stockings for waking their parents before dawn.
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J got back from Nairobi last Sunday and is likely to be lurking at home till the second week of January at least. I really hope we won't be at each other's throats all the time, the way we were last year. I'm counting on the fact that we live in a big apartment so there must be some refuge for either of us at some point.
Had a particularly vivid dream last night in which J was a traitor who sold state secrets and it was our last moments together before the SWAT team swooped in to carry him off to some gulag. Serves me right for watching London Spy just before bed. I woke up very refreshed - perhaps the dream helped me vent all my accumulated resentment and angst in the safety of my subconscious.
I think this year will be better though, because I just booked tickets for a quick weekend in London to see my pal C in January. J will babysit while I'm away so he's already scoring points! No need for any gift under the tree - a sanity break is already worth so much. I just have to keep my eye on the prize!
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We definitely are not going to have a white Christmas this year. It's been unseasonably warm so far. We had some snow right at the beginning of November and nothing since then, just a lot of fog. Not that I'm complaining, but the people with ski chalet rentals are, because the snow conditions aren't great this year, not even for light sledding. Chamonix, for example, had a measly 1cm of snowfall a week ago and nothing since.
I'm sure I'll be eating my words in about a month when the temperatures properly drop and we're freezing our butts off. In the meantime, we're making the most of the limited winter sunshine and the kids go out to play every afternoon if the sun is out. The winter solstice has just passed which means that the darkest day is over and I can look forward to the days (very) gradually lengthening. Oh, but I do love the change of the seasons.
The kids are super excited and counting down with a vengeance. Last night Bao woke me up with inane questions about Santa and the Tooth Fairy and for the record, her voice is high and clear as a bell and cuts through the silence of the night remarkably well. I evidently mumbled unsatisfactory answers because I remember her huffing and sulking until I eventually yelled at her to go back to sleep. It was three in the morning and Bao had missed the memo about children who get coal in their stockings for waking their parents before dawn.
_____________________
J got back from Nairobi last Sunday and is likely to be lurking at home till the second week of January at least. I really hope we won't be at each other's throats all the time, the way we were last year. I'm counting on the fact that we live in a big apartment so there must be some refuge for either of us at some point.
Had a particularly vivid dream last night in which J was a traitor who sold state secrets and it was our last moments together before the SWAT team swooped in to carry him off to some gulag. Serves me right for watching London Spy just before bed. I woke up very refreshed - perhaps the dream helped me vent all my accumulated resentment and angst in the safety of my subconscious.
I think this year will be better though, because I just booked tickets for a quick weekend in London to see my pal C in January. J will babysit while I'm away so he's already scoring points! No need for any gift under the tree - a sanity break is already worth so much. I just have to keep my eye on the prize!
____________________
We definitely are not going to have a white Christmas this year. It's been unseasonably warm so far. We had some snow right at the beginning of November and nothing since then, just a lot of fog. Not that I'm complaining, but the people with ski chalet rentals are, because the snow conditions aren't great this year, not even for light sledding. Chamonix, for example, had a measly 1cm of snowfall a week ago and nothing since.
I'm sure I'll be eating my words in about a month when the temperatures properly drop and we're freezing our butts off. In the meantime, we're making the most of the limited winter sunshine and the kids go out to play every afternoon if the sun is out. The winter solstice has just passed which means that the darkest day is over and I can look forward to the days (very) gradually lengthening. Oh, but I do love the change of the seasons.