The Update Entry At Long Last!
Hi, all. I am slowly recuperating. Today I felt rather like I did on Thursday morning, which is not too bad, but though I made it through a day of work on Thursday I ended up in horrible pain by the end and couldn't walk the next morning, so I called off work one last time (hopefully) and should be A-OK by the time I have to go back THIS Thursday. At least, that's the plan. So, now that I can sit in an upright chair for a decent amount of time, I will finally give you a holiday update. To make it easier, because I'm still annoyed that my original update died (although I wrote one in my paper journal) I will copy my PLAN for the holidays that I wrote a couple weeks ago, and tell you how the reality matched up.
Saturday: THE GREATEST DAY OF THE WHOLE YEAR! Clean the house all morning. Make clam dip. Go on out to NwAx. Probably do some chores there. Jason will be recruited to do something involving heavy lifting in the cold outdoors, just because that's always what seems to happen. We will have a nice early dinner where we will all laugh a lot, especially if Ginny spontaneously drops in like last year. We will go to church and sing a lot. Then we will come home and start putting food out and lighting candles, and then we will start EATING. And people will start coming over, and it will JUST FREAKIN' BE THE BEST NIGHT OF THE YEAR, BECAUSE IT ALWAYS IS! Then, very late, we will drive home, but luckily Jason is used to staying up very late so we can probably pull it off. Then I will put the ham in the oven so it can start SLOOOOOOOOWWWW-cooking. Mostly accurate. But we took a side stop in Delmont on the way to go see the Narnia movie. Good movie. Even Jason thought so. The party was absolutely packed with people; there were a lot of people I never got to talk to. But Jason became very good buddies with Steve Reinhart. They were scary. Anyway. Actually the coolest thing that happened Christmas Eve was the very cool present my mom made me. You see long ago she'd made this little stuffed like beanie baby Nativity set (though this was long before actual Beanie Babies, mind you) that I always used to play with, so this year she made me a set of my VERY OWN. This is hard to explain how special that is!
Sunday: Sneak down and put Jason's presents under the tree! We will probably make each other laugh! Then we will probably play the game I am giving Jason for Christmas, or do something else fun like that. Then our families will come over. After dinner and presents the grandparents will probably go home, and the rest of us will sit about playing games like Apples to Apples, which I believe Bethany has specifically requested we play again. I TRIED to wake up in time to sneak down to put Jason's presents under the tree, but I JUST COULDN'T DO it. I ended up falling back asleep and telling a bunch of people on a bridge in Pittsburgh that I needed to go home to give Jason his presents. But ah well. See what I got him was: Star Wars Episodes I-III, Ghostbusters, this T-shirt that we saw at of all places the Hippie store at the mall that has Cartman from South Park saying "Screw You, Hippie!", and a used Playstation II, along with a game called "Destroy All Humans," where you're an alien attempting to annihilate the 1950s US. This has brought Jason such indescribable joy that it is totally worth it. I got this great book about Jim Henson that I once kept overdue from the library for a month, Muppet Treasure Island, the Harry Potter movies, a Jo-Ann Fabrics gift card, and a large bottle of Peach Schnapps. And some underwear. Jason's dad ran into an emergency with his sewage treatment plant so his parents came late, so the rest of us played this Shout About Music game that Maggie had gotten which I wholloped everyone at. All three dogs were there and they were running WILD, so Bethany ended up taking their two dogs home. Being repeatedly jumped on by dogs had made me very tired by that point, and then Jason's mom and grandmum arguing with each other and everyone made me more tired. But I got some awesome CDs for presents. They were on my Amazon wish list. Floyd's Meddle, which is SO COMPLETELY WORTH IT if only for "Fearless"; Best ofs from REM and Zeppelin; Paul's latest (Chaos and Creation in the Backyard) which was not on my wish list actually but I certainly don't have a problem with; and homemade copies of Help and Magical Mystery Tour. Also got, hmm, this game-- Trivial Pursuit Book Lovers Edition; all the rest of the stuff we picked out of MimMim's basement; we also got from them, I think it was all the almonds they had picked out of their cans of mixed nuts because they didn't like almonds; we got a new vacuum cleaner, a gift certificate for one month's gas bill, and a free air duct cleaning, which we'll get to later. Highlights of other gifts include that I gave Maggie a Best of the Nuggets II collection which I TOTALLY had a hard time not mentioning on here... this entry's #4-6 were totally on my mind then BECAUSE I'd just made that CD; and that I gave my brother a DVD that I put it a Wheat Thins box so it wouldn't look automatically like a DVD, he unwrapped it and said, "Oh, Wheat Thins!" and totally set it aside. He didn't seem at all disappointed to think that it actually was Wheat Thins though.
Monday: Work. As soon as I'm off, drive out to Aunt Peggy's to catch the rest of her party. Jason has OFF that day. We went to Aunt Peggy's, but there weren't many people there. We didn't stay long. The highlight here was Matt's dog sneezing on my parents.
Tuesday. Work. In the evening, probably go out to eat for our anniversary. We're going to try to go to a restaurant we don't actually go to all the time. We decided to go to the fancy Pizza Hut down the road, where we had the worst waiter in history. The other workers were getting seriously annoyed with him because they kept having to do his job. And SOMEHOW my pasta was too spicy for even Jason's consumption-- requiring lots of water refills, which isn't very easy when you have the world's worst waiter. Luckily we were in such a good mood that we let this blow over. We just tipped poorly. We went home and watched Muppet Treasure Island.
Wednesday. No plans yet. This would be a great day to get together with, maybe my sister, or maybe angie, or maybe whoever. In fact, I stayed home doing laundry and getting the air ducts cleaned and typing my original holiday update, which went into much more detail, but the air duct vacuum blew a fuse and the computer went out in the middle of that. But I already told you that. My back had been hurting since Christmas Eve, but by the end of today it was REALLY sore. I had to lie around a bit.
Thursday: Work. but also Jason will still be home in the evening! And good thing, because I was really out of commission that evening. Work had been fun-- we'd had a batiking activity out which I'd run most of the day. But MAN was I messed up by the end.
Friday: Work. Then go hang out with majellen and hubby and a bunch of other people we don't know! Yay! No, no, no. I got up for work and sat back down again. Then I tried to stand up. This hurt. I tried walking. I fell down. I got to the top of the stairs and called to Jason, who had gone down before me. He helped me downstairs and made me breakfast and I stayed on the couch all day reading my Jim Henson book and watching Jason Destroy All Humans. By late afternoon I could hobble again, but we still weren't going to make it to the party. But luckily, Randy came over after the party!
Saturday: Nothing. But probably a movie marathon. No, also. I think we might have watched one of the Harry Potters in the evening. Just hung out with Randy all day. This was fun. Randy, when he actually manages to really show up somewhere when he says he will, is truly one of my dearest most kindred friends, one of the few people with whom I feel comfortable to just say stuff without even thinking first. I was mobile enough to put a beer can chicken in the oven for dinner, but before dinner happened, Randy and this other guy from IUP whom I'd met once before and dropped in for an hour, headed off to another New Years Party. So we just ate the chicken and watched a movie and actually went to bed before midnight. Molly had been going to come over earlier as well, but she pulled out at the last minute; but I talked to her on the phone for a long while. She and Ang might come over tomorrow.
Sunday: No idea. Either the inlaws will want us to come over or they'll think it's an insane crazy idea. So maybe we'll go to my parents' instead. Or maybe we won't do anything. I still have no idea. I think we watched DVDs some more. Since I haven't been very, um, mobile, we've spent an awful lot of time watching DVDs. Curiously, they've mostly been Jason's. We actually got the Star Wars marathon in yesterday. I was off work again yesterday and today, but I'm definitely getting BETTER.
'
So... finally got that out of the way. Please find something in this entry to comment on, so I can see that it was actually worth finally posting. ;)