Abbie's Real Life Blog

I love having a productive weekend, I admit it.  Even if most of the weekend is pretty lazy, I will usually try to accomplish something late on Sunday so that I go to bed with a feeling of productivity.  My favorite thing to do on a Sunday is mounds of laundry, especially all the bedding.  Not just clean sheets, but the comforter and duvet cover too.  And then pull it out of the dryer right before bed, make it all up, and go to bed that night in clean sheets (with finished projects dancing in my head).

I got to do that last night- go to bed in clean sheets and with a clean comforter.  It was pretty nice, especially since the high last night was 4 degrees.  Today it’s warmer, with a high around nineteen degrees!  Tomorrow should maybe even be above freezing.

I had a productive weekend.  I like to come in here and report that on Mondays, if you didn’t notice.  It’s just one of those things.

Yesterday was a full big day of staying home and working.  I got up when Tracy got up to go to work at 5:00am, and I really didn’t go back to bed (maybe a twenty-minute nap around noon) until about 11pm, when I watched a When Weather Changed History about the sinking of the Titanic which gave me anxiety dreams.  I hate big boats.  I fear the ocean.  My personal hell is a cruise ship.  Imagine having a vacation where you never leave the resort or the people in the resort.  And the resort is surrounded on all sides and below by vast emptiness, certain death, sharks, and suffocation by drowning.  This is a tourist industry worth billions a year?  I don’t understand.  It’s the stuff of my nightmares.

Anyway, I lit a fire in the fireplace and kept it going most of the day while I watched holiday movies and wrapped presents, did all the laundry, and worked on photos.  I only left in the evening when the light bulb in my fiber optic Christmas tree burned out, and I had to see if I could find a replacement.  (Ace Hardware had one, of course.  Of course!  I love Ace Hardware.)  I bought that fiber optic Christmas tree five years ago, kind of ironically.  I still love it.  I really don’t feel like my tree counts, as I never spend much time on the actual Christmas Day at my house.  My parents’ tree is the real one.  So mine is fine for what it is- little and silver and sparkly and slightly tacky and fun and also easy-peasy to set up and take down and store for next year.  No ornaments, just some tinsel garland that doesn’t shed everywhere.

I finally finished all the shopping today, for real for real.  This includes the family wedding that was yesterday in upstate New York that we didn’t attend, and it includes Hanukkah presents that I need to mail today or tomorrow, and that should be all of it.  Everything.

Tonight we’re going to my mother’s house for the second night of Hanukkah- latkes and applesauce and gingerbread and lighting the menorah.  I really love this holiday, even if I’m not Jewish and even if it’s not really that important of a Jewish holiday.  I just like it.  I just like holidays, actually.  Traditions and celebrations of any kind.  You could sell me on nearly any holiday, I think, if you told me it was a tradition. 

Except Sweetest Day.  I refuse to believe or participate in the idea of Sweetest Day.

I finally finished putting up the lights on the outside of the house.  They were half done for about two weeks.  I did two trees in blue, two in white, and one multicolor, and that’s it!  It’s not as easy as it sounds.  The new trees are very tall, so I end up balancing the lights on the end of a rake and making do like that.  It’s not any easier to take down, either.

So the holiday plans are mostly made, I think.  I feel really behind this year, but we aren’t doing our family Christmas celebration until New Year’s, so that’s probably why.  I mean, we’ll celebrate Christmas Day, but my brother and sister-in-law aren’t coming to town until New Year’s, and that’s when we’ll do the gift exchange.  So most of the rest of the family stuff will happen first, and I should see a big portion of the family this year, which is nice.  I’m definitely taking the camera and flash and documenting everything, because I was pretty good about sharing family event photos this past year and everyone was really complimentary about it, even wanting lots of copies.  I like to share, so that is fun.

I work almost every day this week and next except for the actual holidays themselves, Christmas Day and New Year’s Day, although I will leave a little early on the respective Eves.  Maybe half days each.  Otherwise it’s a real work week, complete with work, although that is not really true as no one calls or writes.  So it’s a quiet few days, which are my FAVORITE.  Quiet work days.  I love them.

What else did I do this past weekend?  I was all crowing about productivity, but I can’t think of what else I did.  Oh, I cleaned the house.  One cannot wrap presents in a dirty house.  One cannot put up the Christmas tree in a dirty house.  Santa Claus does not come to a dirty house!

It is so cold here.  I am wearing long underwear under my clothes, and I’m still not warm enough.  I am not a fan of this long underwear though.  It is the silky kind, and the pants are too tight on my legs but easily have room for another person at my waist.  What is that about?  They are not maternity sized, but they easily would work if I was nine months pregnant (as long as my legs were the same size).  The same is true for the shirt, which has tight arms but the rest of it is kind of badly shaped.  A little too short, a little too wide in the wrong places.  I guess this is long underwear made for apple-shaped people!  I am not apple-shaped.  I am not a pear either.  I am not sure that I belong in a fruit category.

We may get snow tomorrow.  I hope it snows.  I don’t like rain on Christmas, but snow on Christmas is great.