Christmas is cancelled

Okay, not really. Just toned down a bit. Maybe more than I would like.

I'll get back to that later.

In the last post I mentioned being worried about my husband's job. Really worried. But now all seems back to normal, or at least, as normal as it has been for the past few months. The middle management of the old company went to a meeting with the new company, and we all sort of thought that these managers would be told that most of them would no longer be needed. But instead they went to this meeting and mostly heard "welcome to the family" type stuff. The week after that my husband went to a meeting of the new company, which was run by the managers of the old company, and he didn't meet anyone from the new company that wasn't already working for the old one. So he signed the papers and such, and then went back to work as usual the next day.

We're still being told that nothing will change until 2012. We believe that, as there is only a few weeks left of 2011.

There is now a rumour that major changes are coming in March or April. We will see.

Anyway, while I was getting out cookbooks wondering what I could make with beans and rice and such as that, everything seems to be back to normal, and we have mostly returned to our previous spending habits.

While I was in the stage of really worrying about money, I asked to be less involved in gift exchanges than I was last year. This seemed to upset my mom a bit, but everyone else seemed okay with it.

In fact, my friends went so far as to say that we shouldn't exchange gifts at all, which was not what I was trying to do. I wanted to limit the gifts to small things, hopefully small things that I had bought earlier. Or maybe I would knit them all hats, or make them soap or baked goods. The person I thought would be most in favor of the soap or baked goods plan wasn't there for the discussion. The person who is most into the whole Christmas exchange thing wasn't there either. That left a couple who only wants to exchange cards, a guy who said he was going to be out of town the weekend we normally exchange gifts, and a girl who says she'd rather do the cards this year just because she's running out of ideas of what to get people.

So the gift exchange that I usually enjoy the most has become a card exchange, which wasn't what I meant to do at all. I hope that the other guy speaks up and says that he's already got something for me, so I would at least exchange gifts with one of them.

I've said that I would not do the charity thing this year. And I probably won't, even if the money situation is better. I'm just not that into it.

And that leaves my family, and my mom doesn't seem as upset as she did. We usually draw names and get one person something that's about thirty dollars. And then we also bring a five dollar gift for something that is usually called the Chinese gift exchange. (That's when someone opens a gift, and then maybe someone else "steals" it, and then the first person opens another gift.) The "stealing" bit is a lot of fun, but there are only six of us. My brother and I think that instead of drawing names for the thirty dollar gifts, we should each bring two of the five dollar gifts for the "stealing" bit. So that would save us all about twenty-five dollars and be more fun anyway. My brother thinks that we are all adults, and we don't really need the thirty dollars gifts, cause if those are things we really want we've probably already got them.

I think that he's right.

Anyway, when Black Friday came, I didn't have as much money as I would have liked to spend, but I didn't think that I had as much to buy either. I was only spending twenty or so on my family, and almost none on my friends, and none on the charity.

Still, for the past few years, I've been going to Walmart early on Black Friday to buy jeans (two or three three for myself), a small appliance (for myself), and several DVDs (some for the charity, some for friends and family, and some for myself). Except for the DVDs, there usually isn't that much on my Christmas list that is worth getting out at four or five in the morning for. But I've long had the tradition of buying stuff I needed for myself, like underwear and a crock pot.

Except for the toys, I wonder if anyone is actually buying the Black Friday stuff for other people. I mean, who gives away giant TVs for Christmas? And, if your family has enough money to give away giant TVs, is saving a hundred dollars or so worth standing in that really long line, possibly all night?

I do not have enough money for a giant TV, and on Black Friday I always wait at least an hour for the really crazy people to get done shopping. But if I ever did have the money for a giant TV and cared enough about it to wait in that long line to get it, the giant TV is going in my living room, and it's going to stay in my living room. I'm certainly not buying three or four TVs to give to friends and family.

Anyway, this year, I went to Walmart at five or so in the morning and found a mostly empty parking lot. I didn't need a small appliance, I couldn't find the jeans I wanted, so that only left looking through the DVDs.

I wish I'd had the money. I hadn't seen anything that interesting in the ad, but once I got there I found complete seasons of Supernatural, Stargate Atlantis, Stargate Universe, Fringe, and The Big Bang Theory. If I had bought everything I wanted, that would have been about two hundred dollars, and that's before buying extras for friends. I didn't have two hundred dollars. I ended up spending about twenty, and I haven't yet decided if I will keep them or give them away.

Next I stood in line at Half Price Books, not quite an hour early, so that I could get a five dollar gift card and have a chance at getting $100. I didn't get the $100, but with the $5 and a coupon I got one of the Chinese exchange gifts.

Next, I bought calendars with coupons in them, a few dollar DVDs at Best Buy, and then headed to another Walmart. I found the jeans there and bought two. Again I looked at the DVDs, but didn't buy more. I had a bit of money left, but I just couldn't decide how to spend it. Which season of Supernatural is the best? Season two maybe? Is that better than any seasons of Stargate Atlantis? Or Fringe? I just couldn't choose.

I think that might be it for the Christmas shopping, except for one or two more Chinese exchange gifts, a gift card, some candy and other food, and maybe some yarn if I knit a few more things. I think I'm done.

This year is probably going to be dull.

Great Minds Think Alike

On Buddy's first birthday, I was invited to a party. They made a big deal of it. He was surrounded by just about everyone he knew as the traditional picture of trying to eat cake was taken. He was presented with every age appropriate toy on the market.

The following Christmas, there seemed no point in getting him anything, as he received just about everything I could think of already for his birthday. Still, his grandparents managed to find a few toys that he didn't already have. I don't remember getting him anything.

For his second birthday, I don't remember them doing much of anything, and I don't remember getting him anything. As it turns out, his birthday was celebrated in combination with some other event, to which I was not invited. So that explains why I don't remember it.

The following Christmas, I didn't think that he needed anymore toys, even if I could have found something not already given to him by one of his grandparents. I knit hats for both him and his little sister. I was surprised that he seemed happy with it and wore it the rest of the day in the house.

For his third birthday, I did not expect to be invited to a party, but I thought that I would get him something anyway, if I found something I thought that he'd like. While shopping on eBay, I found just the thing. Benji. I used to like that movie when I was younger. And I found a dvd with three other stories that I don't remember seeing. It sounded like a good deal, and I ordered it.

The week before Buddy's birthday, while I was waiting for the dvd to come in the mail, I get invited to a party put together at the last minute. It isn't going to be the big deal that the first one was, and I would have to miss out on something else that I'd already planned. But, I decided not to miss Buddy's birthday. He doesn't speak a lot of complete sentences, but he does know everyone's name, and he knows who is missing and asks about them. It is usually men who are missing, and we usually tell him "he's at work." I have no such excuse.

The day before the party, the dvd had not yet appeared, and might still not come in the mail for another week. That didn't matter before, when he either wasn't having a party, or wasn't celebrating with a bunch of adults. I'd just give him the gift later.

But now that there was a party, I'd rather be there with something for him to unwrap. And it was too late for me to go in with someone else and buy something nice. Not that I'd know what that should be anyway. He sort of has five grandparents, and they buy him a lot of stuff.

While at a nearby store buying groceries, I found a slip and slide. Okay, not really a slip and slide, some rival company, but you get the idea. Also there were small blow-up pools made to look like turtles and such. I called his mother, and she said that she did not really want a pool that looked like a turtle. They already had something similar, and they didn't use it much because it was such a hassle to empty the pool later, and you can't leave even a small pool with water unattended. But the slip and slide sounded like a good idea.

So I gave him a slip and slide. Just after that was all wrapped up and ready to go, the Benji dvd arrived in the mail. Oh, well. Benji can be a Christmas present.

Yesterday, we all went to dinner. I asked if Buddy'd had a chance to try out the slip and slide.

Out comes his dad's phone, with pictures. "He ended up with two of them, but we decided to keep them both. Everything breaks eventually, and he'll already have a spare."

Okay.

"It's broke," Buddy said.

"Yes," his dad said. "He gets stuff handed down from cousins who don't need it anymore. Both the other kids used stuff for years, but he gets it and it's broke a week or two later."

Okay.

His mother then tells me that the thought of the Benji dvd was appreciated, but it turns out that they already have that one. His Aunt K already got it for him.

I think Aunt K must have also got him the other slip and slide. She wasn't at the party, and they were planning to see her somewhere else the next day.

I hope that Aunt K doesn't knit.

Christmas is nearly over

Okay, so in my immediate family, the past few years we've done our main Christmas stuff during Christmas Eve instead of Christmas Day, for a couple of reasons, mainly that one of my siblings can spend Christmas with the in-laws. So today I don't know what I will be doing, if I will be doing anything at all. The guys are going to spend much of the day playing video games, and when they take a break to eat lunch I am invited over, and if they decide to watch one of the DVDs someone got for Christmas I'm invited over for that too. Other than that I will probably be here cleaning or maybe knitting. And I might go see Grandma, but one never knows if that will involve spending about five minutes actually talking to Grandma, or several hours spent with other relatives who came to talk to Grandma. Either way is okay with me, I just don't know which to plan for.

So, normally, this would be the end of it, except for the after Christmas clearance sales. Well, this year I will attempt to cut down on the clearance sale shopping, with a few exceptions, like if I see any solar powered lights I will get those. I'm thinking that I would like to have several of those, but I'm only planning to buy the one on Sunday, and there probably won't be much left after that. Solar lights would solve my problem of not having an outdoor electrical socket for Christmas decorating, and I also think that the white lights would look good somewhere year round. The office might not agree, so I'm not going to spend that much, and I'm not going to put up anything til sometime next year.

Solar lights are a bit expensive. New and in season cost $20 for a string of 50 lights, so they'll be $10 when I go and look for them Sunday morning, and I probably won't find any left when I go looking for them again at the 75% off sale later.

Ideally, you would have all different colors of solar lights up all year, maybe orange or purple for Halloween, red or green for Christmas, and white for all year long, and then you just cover up the solar panels for the lights you don't want after the holiday has past. But I don't doubt that the office would have a fit over that idea.

Well, a friend of mine got me a purple knitting loom for Christmas, and it is supposed to be the ideal size for knitting adult hats. And it just looked like they were the same as the old yellow looms, just a different color and in a new package for marketing purposes. And I didn't want to tell my friend that I already had two yellow looms somewhere, and that I didn't really think that they were the ideal size for making hats and that I rarely used them at all. But, it's always good to have spare looms, so I just said thank you and something about it being like the ones I made scarves with only bigger, and didn't mention that I already had two yellow looms. But as it turns out, after I got it home and compared it to the yellow loom it is just a bit smaller but has 48 pegs, which is several more than the yellow loom. So maybe it is the ideal size for making adult hats.

Which is not the same as saying the hats are very attractive. Making a baby hat with the red loom works fine, though I'm thinking that they quickly out-grow the hats. This year I also made a child's hat with the green loom, and that also turned out okay. But the loom hats are finished putting a strand of yarn through all the top loops, taking the yarn off of the pegs, and pulling the strand of yarn tight until all of the top loops come together. It doesn't look the least bit round, but on the smaller hats it doesn't look that bad. On an adult hat made with 48 pegs, this makes the top look a bit lumpy, and when it's on a person's head the head looks a bit odd, sort of square.

This is one of those times that I think it would be helpful to know how to crochet or hand knit with regular knitting needles (or maybe in this case circular knitting needles). Maybe someday I will learn how to do that and knit the hat part way on the loom and then finish it the top some other way. But for now the loom by itself will have to do, and I made hats for the baby and Buddy and Buddy's dad.

I didn't think that Buddy would like his hat, and that we would have a hard time getting him to put it on just so that I could see if it fit him. We put on the baby's hat first. Well, Buddy loves the baby, but he's supposed to be getting all the stuff and all the attention, so whenever something is going on with the baby, he tends to interrupt and say that he wants something. So, while mom is putting the hat on the baby, Buddy wants the hat. So when he finds out that he also has a hat, he puts it on. And he keeps it on most of the night. Buddy's dad wanted a picture taken with the three of them in their hats, and then the other two hats came off immediately after the picture. Buddy wore his nearly til bedtime.

I have a sock-loom. I don't know if I mentioned that before, but when I was out shopping Sunday I found a sock-loom I had seen online for $30, and it was $25 in the store. And I'm thinking that I'm going to come back some other day when I have a 40% off or even 50% off coupon and buy the thing. Except that they only had the one, and I'd never seen one in the store before, and they were having an additional 25% off sale, so I decided to go ahead and buy it. I haven't used it yet, and I doubt that I'll be making just tons of socks, but it is something that I have wanted for a while and now I have one.

Well, I still have a few people to exchange gifts with on New Years Eve. One gift is already done (and has been done since last year), I'll have to think of something for K, and I still might make that scarf for the pilot.

But other than that, Christmas is nearly over.

And I still didn't put up a tree.

I still have stuff to do

Saturday at the pilot's house was nice, and the following Sunday dinner with more of my friends was nice, and this past Saturday was also nice, though I did feel a bit rushed with the whole thing of having to be in Irving and then in Arlington and then yet another place in Arlington. Following that dinner some of the group went to see the Interlochen Christmas lights, but not me. Maybe my husband will offer to drive me tonight, since we didn't get to go to that other thing in Oklahoma.

Right.

Well, something interesting happened during the meeting Saturday. I was wearing a Slytherin scarf, and I got some comments the nice looking scarf. And one of my friends asked how much I would charge to make a scarf if she already had the yarn for it, and I had to tell her that the scarves are eighty dollars, and if she bought the yarn already it would still be about seventy dollars, cause it takes about seven or eight hours to make one. And she said okay, she'd think about it, which usually means no. And then I thought how this particular person is usually good with crafts and such herself, and I went back and suggested that maybe she could just pay me thirty dollars to do the three or four hours of work on the knitting machine, and then she could do the remaining work that did not require the machine, which still takes about four hours but requires no special equipment and is not brain surgery (or at least for her it would not be brain surgery). And she said that she'd think about that.

So right after that, this guy that I don't know very well was trying to ask me something. And it's a very noisy room with all of us having different conversations, and I couldn't make out what he was saying at first. He was asking if I had a Hufflepuff scarf.

Now, normally, I don't have a lot of scarves just already made waiting for someone to buy them. Normally, if you want to buy a scarf from me, you have to give me the details of what you want, and then I'll make you one and you can pay me when it's finished. And usually, after people hear that it's a minimum of eighty dollars, they lose interest anyway. But it did just so happen that last year I'd made one each of the scarves from the third or fourth Harry Potter film, and that I was going to give two away at a Christmas Party last year, which I figured that everyone would want either Gryffindor or Ravenclaw, but I also had Slytherin and Hufflepuff ready to go just in case someone wanted to trade. And as expected, no one at the party really wanted Slytherin or Hufflepuff, so I had them leftover. And it just also happened that I had both these scarves in the car (along with a few others) cause I had taken them somewhere to show someone else, and I just forgot and left them in the car. So when this guy asked about the Hufflepuff scarf, not only did I have one, but I was able to go out and get it for him, though I figured that he'd change his mind after hearing the price.

He didn't say that eighty dollars was too much, only that he didn't have that much with him. I let him look at the scarf while I talked to other people, and he said that he still wanted it, only he'd have to buy it some other time. And it was not a gift for someone else, he just wanted to wear the scarf himself, so he wanted to buy it before it got cold again. He asked if he could pay with PayPal.

Now, my husband has a PayPal account, and I certainly buy enough things with it, but I'd never before had anyone want to pay me with it, other than on eBay, so I didn't have all that information in my head. It certainly would have been possible, in the room with all those nerds and their smart phones, but I didn't have a clue how to go about it, and I couldn't get my husband to answer the phone (he was at someone else's house playing video games, but I'd forgotten and didn't try calling there). And this guy did not really live nearby, and he would probably lose interest if he had to wait another month to get his scarf. But we did manage to exchange emails and figure out a place to meet Sunday afternoon, and he has his scarf, and I have eighty dollars.

Or I did have eighty dollars. I've already spent some of it.

Anyway, I'm pretty happy about the whole thing. This is only the third time that someone has ordered a scarf and actually paid for it.

Okay, so I've bought some more supplies and will try again to make some ornaments, which will probably be a Christmas gift for K, though we will not be exchanging gifts until New Year's Eve, and it will be too late for him to use them this year. But he'll have them for next year. If that doesn't work I don't know what I'm going to give him, probably some homemade dessert, but he's said that he'd rather not have candy as he's already eaten way too much of the stuff and is starting to feel ill, and G already gave him (and the rest of us) cookies, so that's probably not a good idea either.

I'm still thinking that I might make a scarf for the pilot, but again that is something that won't be needed until New Year's Eve. There's still stuff that needs to be done by Friday. I need to get something for my brother in law (probably a gift card for a restaurant), I'm thinking of knitting three hats, and I need two $5 gifts for the Chinese gift exchange. Also I'm wondering if I should put a gift I recently got in a similar exchange in with my brother's gifts, or if I should just keep it. Cause as cute as it is, I don't really need a Star Wars computer mouse, but probably my brother doesn't either.

Okay, in order of things that need doing: buy gift card, buy two $5 gifts, make candy and maybe cookies, knit three hats, wrap gifts, make ornaments, knit scarf, and wrap more gifts.

I still haven't put up a tree.

Getting close now

Okay, as someone pointed out earlier in the comments to my last post, it now really is two weeks til Christmas. Not even two weeks now.

I'm screwed.

Okay, not really that bad, just it doesn't seem right either. There's still a bit of stuff to do, and I don't quite seem to get it through my head that the deadline for a lot of it is here. Like the day after tomorrow here. And like, there won't be time to do anything for it the day of the thing on Saturday, cause it needs to be done before lunch, and so I don't want to be rushing around trying to do anything then. And tomorrow I have plans for going to a movie and such, so except for shopping that I have put off until Friday knowing that I would be in the same general area, I shouldn't plan on having much time to do anything tomorrow.

Which means that a lot of it needs to get done today.

Okay, what I have done so far is buy and wrap some DVDs for the charity thing, and knit a scarf for the charity thing. I have started a knit hat for the charity thing, but a hat isn't something that I committed to, so if it doesn't get done I won't really worry too much about that. Also, I meant to do some ornaments for the charity thing, but again, that wasn't something that I committed to, so if it doesn't get done it is not really a big deal.

For the official gift exchange, I've almost decided on a Darth Vader ornament and a ten dollar gift certificate to Half-Price Books. The thing is that I'm always going to Half-Price Books and forgetting to get the gift card, or else putting it off on purpose til I'm sure of the amount. So now I've put it off and put it off again, and I need the thing before lunch Saturday, so I'd better remember to get it tomorrow. I could still go by and pick up the thing Saturday morning, but if I do that I'll have to wrap the gift in my car, which is possible (especially if I just put the thing in a gift bag) but I'd rather not. Besides, someone might see me.

That leaves the question of whether or not I'm getting a gift for K, or if I'm just getting him a card, or both.

Last weekend we went to dinner. The pilot had us over. Some of us thought it was just for dinner, some of us thought we were supposed to exchange gifts, and some of us thought that we were supposed to exchange cards but save the gifts for later. I had some of the stuff ready, and some not. So I was going to bring some, and print out IOUs for the rest on this nice holiday paper that seems made for just that purpose. I had a gift for G, a gift for D, and Miss Allergies gift was made last year and she already knows what it is. So I wrapped those and put them in the car. And then I was making cards, but I only got two of them done, so I decided to only give to J and R (who said card exchange only), and to the pilot (cause we were at his house and he made the dinner, plus I'm still not sure if his gift is going to work out). I started another one for K, but I'm having a bit of trouble with it, and it still isn't done. So K didn't get a card, and I found out that the gift I originally planned for him won't really work for this year. So I either need to figure out how to finish this card, or else maybe he can have fudge as a present, or maybe I'll knit him a hat.

Then besides the usual bunch there were two other people at the dinner, and I didn't get them a card or anything. I didn't know that they were coming until just a couple of days before, and I wasn't going to try to make them one of these cards (especially at the last minute like that), and I don't do cards usually anyway.

So it ended like this: the two other people gave me a card, and I didn't give them one, and some of the other people did not give them one either cause they either did not know they were coming or did not know that it was meant for us to exchange cards that day. Miss Allergies did not want to unwrap her gift, cause she hadn't brought mine and she wants us to exchange gifts at the same time, so it remained in the car. I gave D her gift, because while we usually exchange gifts we usually are not together the day we exchange gifts, so the gifts are exchanged through messenger service (the pilot). And I wanted to see her open her gift for a change, so I did. And then G was getting the same gift (a Gryffindor scarf), which I thought that she might want to wear to the charity thing, so I went ahead and gave it to her then. I gave one card to J and R, and one card to the pilot. The pilot seemed to really like the card, and he probably thinks that is all he's getting, so he went and gave me the gifts he'd bought for me, though he's saving everyone else for later. And that left K, and I did not even give him an IOU, cause then I thought that the two extra people would wonder why they didn't get anything, not even an IOU, when everyone else got something. So poor K probably thinks that he isn't getting anything.

I really need to finish that card.

Anyway, everything is weekend is screwed up. The charity thing is supposed to be on the Sunday after the Saturday of the meeting. That way, the people not going to the charity thing themselves can still give things to the charity, and we gather all the stuff together on Saturday. There were two problems with that this year. The charity family is going out of town, and they want to start driving on Sunday morning, so they don't want to wait around for us to stop by Sunday afternoon.

The other problem is the damned Cowboys are ruining my life. We were told that going to the charity family's home would not be a good idea, as they live in a trailer, and there are other problems with that we'd really rather not deal with. So it was decided to meet at the apartment of a relative, and the apartment is on Fielder. The stadium is on Collins. Fielder is a major street that parallels Collins, but there are other streets in between them, like Cooper, so I would have thought that Fielder might have some traffic problems before and after the game, but not during. But apparently people will park their cars as far away as that and walk to the stadium rather than pay for parking, so we were told that Sunday would be a bad day to be in the area because of a noon game, even at 2 or 3 as far away as Fielder.

I am not in anyway someone who helps plan this charity thing. In fact, I'm just not that into the charity thing at all, I just sort of feel bad if I don't participate at all while other people are going out and buying really nice things for them. But I don't see how it gets to be this difficult and this complicated. Find us someone who wants free stuff, but not too much, who wants people in their home for a few minutes on the Sunday after the third Saturday of December. (And now add don't have them live anywhere near the stadium if the Cowboys have a home game that day). Is it really that difficult. Find someone who doesn't have much, likes people in costumes, and wants a little bit of free stuff.

Anyway, that is all the stuff that I need to get done for this weekend. And then there is Christmas Eve. And then there's a bit more for New Year's Eve.

I don't even have a tree up.

Christmas is two weeks away

Okay, so if you've seen a calender recently, you know that Christmas isn't really two weeks away. It just suddenly seems that way to me.

My family has decided to cut back a bit on Christmas, so that we mainly buy one nice thing for one person, after we draw names out of a hat. And then we also buy a smaller gift, but we don't know who will get the smaller gift. So the spending limit with tax and everything ends up being just a bit under forty dollars per person, and should only require the one shopping trip. And all that is just fine, and I have most of a month to get that done.

It's the rest of it that I'm unsure about, and a lot of it I need to get done in the next two weeks.

Okay, so there's a group of friends who usually try to do things together two or three times a month. Due to not having a job and the price of gas and some other things, I rarely make it more than once a month now. Once in a great while, the pilot has us over for dinner. And, usually on the third Saturday of December, we exchange gifts. And this is in addition to the official gift exchange at the club, which is also on the that same Saturday.

It probably started when I opened my big mouth and asked the pilot if he was having one of his dinners in November, after I was looking at something and noticed that he'd had a dinner at that time last year. Now, I was not meaning to invite myself over for dinner, just that I was trying to schedule a few things, and I wanted to know if there was a dinner in November that I needed to to keep a certain date open for and not go out of town that week and such. So what he said was that he had meant to have a dinner in November, but this year it just wasn't going to work out, and he wondered if we wouldn't keeping open a Saturday in December for that instead. So now dinner with my friends is scheduled for the second Saturday in December at the pilot's house. So I asked if we should exchange gifts then instead of on the third Saturday like we usually did. At the time I did not have a preference, I just wanted to know.

At that point someone mentioned something about exchanging cards instead of gifts, cause some of us are short on cash, and most of us really don't want to spend that much time in the mall anyway. We had discussed doing this last year too, but we didn't really discuss it early enough for me, and I was already knitting things for two of them. And I didn't want to just exchange cards after I was already either buying or knitting things for some of them. And then I wasn't sure if I should just give the gifts I already had planned and give the others just cards. That didn't seem fair at all. So we ended up having the regular gift exchange and decided to talk about just exchanging cards the next year.

And really, I don't exchange cards. This comes from a time when I really had no money, and I watched other people spend more on the cards than I had in my whole Christmas budget. So with me you either get a gift, or you don't get anything. Even when I didn't have money I gave candy or small fruit baskets or candles or some homemade thing rather than exchanging cards. This means that I have a small list of people, and that there are a lot of people giving me cards when I don't give them anything, but I just can't spend time or effort or money on cards.

Okay, so G brought up the whole gift or card discussion, and everyone else jumped in, and for the most part people said cards were better. The exception being Miss Allergies, cause she picked out what she wanted from me last year, and so I put a certain scarf aside for her. R and J want to exchange cards, K also voted for cards, and the pilot said something about making cards, and G is in favor of either cards or baked goods.

I like baked goods.

Okay, so having heard that we would be mostly exchanging either cards or baked goods with most of these people on the third Saturday (except for Miss Allergies' gift which is already done), I mostly put the idea out of my mind. While I probably won't do cards, I had plenty of time to do small gifts or figure out baked goods or whatever else I might do.

The pilot is now saying that he has cards, but he also found a few gifts....

Okay, so I've been wanting to make him a certain scarf, and I will try again this year, though it might not work out. Also I've heard that K is now leaning towards gift exchange. That's fine, though at the moment I'm not sure what I would get him, as I gave him the handmade scarf last year and a different scarf another year, and even if I had the time he doesn't need yet another scarf. So far as I know, R and J still want to exchange cards, so I will get them something small or baked goods, and I will get something for G that would either be baked goods or something like that.

And then after looking at the schedule, there is something going on with R and J on the third Saturday, which makes me think that we'll end up exchanging gifts or cards or whatever on the second Saturday.

And this means that for the most part, I have only two weeks to do the Christmas stuff, whatever that will be.

For the official gift exchange, I still have until the third Saturday, or I can even decide not to participate. And for my family I still have until Christmas Eve.

Except that last year there was also this extended family Christmas party, and while I haven't heard that it is planned again this year, I was thinking that I should make a couple more scarves, just in case. And also I would like to make another scarf for this charity thing, which would also be due on the third Saturday.

While it slowly dawns on me that I have a lot to do in the next two or three weeks, my husband mentions going out of town. I hadn't really planned on it. In fact, I hadn't really thought about it at all. He's going to the middle of nowhere a bit north of here for two or three days, then has a day off on which he will have to move to another place also a bit north of here for another three or four days. If I had planned on it, I would have had knitting and such ready to go, but I hadn't planned on it. Middle of nowhere and all of that, and I didn't think that there was anything for us to do there. Only he found some Christmas light display between the two places, and he was thinking that we could go see it.

Now that I've looked it up, I don't think that they allow visitors on that day. It was nice of him to think of it, but probably I should not go. The house is a mess and all of that, plus that would leave all this leftover turkey to rot in the frig.

I don't want the turkey to rot. I want to make stuff with it and eat it.

There are plenty of Christmas light displays here, but for whatever reason, he never seems that interested in going to see them.

Okay, so I have a very messy house to clean, and a lot of knitting to do, and then probably more shopping and practice baking to do. Going out of town is probably not the best idea.

I wish that I had planned better.

I have created a monster

Okay, so as I go through my little routine of looking at the stuff and trying to decide what goes where, or what I should get rid of, or whatever, I am now trying to find stuff that I would like to give to someone. Like, I paid good money for this, and it is still in good shape, and even if I'm not using it right now I still don't want to throw it away or give it to Goodwill. But giving some of this stuff to specific people is somehow different, and it makes me feel better, sometimes.

Like, I thought at one time I would get into beads, but then I didn't really. D was into beads. Apparently, D is still into beads. So, I picked out just a few that I just really like and might still make something with someday, and I divided the rest into already made stuff that only a kid would like, and stuff still in the packages that D would want. I gave D most of it, and some necklaces that were already put together (not by me) were given to a little girl that one of my neighbors babysits.

D was just thrilled with the beads and has promised to give me something in return. I really like the promised thing, but I don't need it. I was just wanting the beads to go to someone who would appreciate them. Anyway, D tends to be a bit forgetful. I'll be happy if she gives me what she said that she would, but I won't be mad if she doesn't.

The little girl got a few more things. Basically, if I don't need it anymore, and it's something a kid would want, she probably got it. Except that I'm putting a few things away for someone else, and I'm thinking that some things should go to the club for when we have kid parties or do something in public that involves kids. Like, I have a bunch of little things that were toys from Happy Meals. We could just give those away to random kids if we are out in costume.

So the last thing that I decided to part with was my VHS tape of Watership Down. Watership Down is just the best animated movie, based on a very long novel of the same name. It is about rabbits. I love this movie, but, I am getting rid of most of my VHS tapes, and, my brother has the DVD, which I can borrow any time that I want. So, I saw my neighbor, asked if she still had a VHS player, and said either she or the little girl could have the tape. She asked to make sure that I meant to give it away for keeps, and then she said thank you and all of that.

A few days later, I asked the little girl if she had watched the rabbit movie, and she said not yet. And then she asked if I was still cleaning out my closets, and if I still had any toys, and if I had any play food. (I'm not sure why I should have any play food, but she asks me that a lot.) I told her that I might have a few more toys, but that they were for someone else.

And then she asks me if she can have a toy.

No, I already gave you one. (By now she has been given a VHS tape, jewelry, a plastic tiara, and a stuffed bunny, plus the neighbor has been given microwave bakeware in case she ever wants to try that or to use them as Jello molds.)

Again, she asks me if she can have a toy. Again, I say no.

I move to the other side of the yard to talk to someone else, and she asks again. She just keeps yelling.

Can I have a toy. Can I please have a toy. Can I have just one.

This goes on for a bit, until the neighbor hears her and comes outside to see what all the yelling is about.

We both shake our heads and go back into our houses.

I've created a monster.

I have been lazy

I guess that is nothing new. But I can't seem to get much done, and I get even less done when my husband is around, which is pretty much all of the time now.

The people who run the company my husband works for are about to do something that most of us think is pretty stupid. I won't get into it much here, because it deserves its own post, but let's just say that they are going to change things in such a way that either they will have to have to fire half of the sales people or hire a bunch of other people so that everybody can work in pairs instead of how they work now. If they fire half of the salespeople (the half that never make any money anyway) that would be good for my husband. But they rarely fire anyone, they just make things annoying so that people will want to quit. So that probably means that they will hire a bunch of extra people, and as it is they don't have enough work for the employees that they already have.

So this is bad.

I will have jury duty next month, and I have to schedule a few things so that they don't interfere if I get picked to be on a jury. Not that I expect to get picked, cause I never have been picked before, but I think that I should try to be ready just in case. I should set deadlines for myself, so that I have a lot of stuff done by the middle of next month. It would be nice if I didn't have anything major to do in April. I keep talking about all that I need to do, but I never get started with it. Something always comes up.

In the few moments that I did feel like I could get something done, I started painting that scrap lumber I bought recently. I have a few pieces left to do, but I'll probably finish with that today. Other than that I managed to finish the pilot's Christmas gift attempt number three, which looks nothing like the other two, but he made a suggestion for something he would like and that gave me an idea for something else. So hopefully I will show it to him on Saturday and see if it meets with his approval.

And while I was briefly doing useful stuff, I thought that I would go through a couple of boxes of stuff, thinking that I would take three or four things out of the box and want to get rid of the rest of it. And it turned out to be the other way around, with my getting rid of three or four things and then putting the box back where it was.

There is this theory that if you put something in a box and don't use it for a year that you don't need or want it and that you should get rid of it. Except that I can't seem to get that to work for me. For one thing, seasonal stuff goes in boxes that don't get opened except for once a year, and if you are busy during that season the boxes don't get opened that year at all. But that doesn't mean that the stuff in the box is unwanted, just that you didn't feel up to the whole seasonal decorating thing that year. The decorations will still be good for next year. I can't see any reason for getting rid of the decorations, unless maybe a person has suffered a crippling injury and will never be able to put up the decorations in the future, or maybe if the person becomes Mr. Scrooge and doesn't like holidays anymore. So I have just stacks and stacks of those boxes, and I have no intention of getting rid of them.

Same with the craft stuff. Just cause I didn't do ceramics this year is no reason to get rid of the stuff. Soon I'll be old and I'll join the senior center and do ceramics there.

Okay, the senior center is still years away. Just not as many years away as before. Anyway, the craft stuff stays.

It is the other boxes of odd things that bother me. I would think that stuff should be gotten rid of if I haven't used it in a year. Except that it turns out the main reason I didn't use it all year is that I forgot where I put it. Now that I've found it, getting rid of it doesn't seem like such a good idea.

Like I found one of those cookie sheets that I misplaced. Not that it was in this box, but still, I found a cookie sheet. Maybe I will get back to the whole cookie making thing soon.

Anyway, so I went through this box of stuff, thinking that I was going to get rid of most of a box of stuff, and I just ended up with a slightly lighter box of stuff. And then I also went through a box of paperback books, thinking that I would want to get rid of most of them since I don't read much anymore, but of course the box contained those few books that I would actually want to re-read if my eyes felt better. In fact, I've pulled out a few to re-read anyway. So I still have most of a box of books, though I did find that I had two copies of a certain book, and I have decided that I probably won't re-read the Joy Adamson stuff, and I don't think I will be re-reading this Blake 7 book. Watching Blake 7 is one thing, but taking the time to read it is something else entirely. And how many years has it been since I've given any thought to Blake 7 anyway?

Saturday, I will try to find good homes for these six paperbacks, otherwise they can go in another box that will eventually end up going to Half-Price Books. The rest of the books went back in the box.

But it isn't really the stuff in boxes that bothers me, it is all this other stuff. I have boxes of stuff, and I have books and art on the shelves, and then there is all this other stuff. If it doesn't go on the shelves and it isn't a book and it doesn't go in a seasonal box and it doesn't go in a craft box, where is it supposed to go?

Plans for the weekend

I should finish the scarf today. Well, that isn't exactly true. I should finish with the scarf being on the machine today, and then there is still a bit of work to be done (and I'm not sure how long that will take as I have never tried some of it before), and then there will be the usual bit of joining the edges and adding fringe and such which will take four or five hours.

Anyway, I am hoping that if I really work on it I should be able to finish it by Saturday and give it to my friend.

Even if I don't get it done by Saturday, it still feels good that the end is in sight, for something. And Saturday should be fun anyway. A day out with my friends is usually good. We have games and trivia scheduled. This year they expect so many people will want to play that it is planned that we should play on five-person teams. Last year it was an individual event, and I won, which means that plenty of people should want to be on my team.

I would rather have it all decided before Saturday, but so far I've only asked three people to join me (I can't decide who should be our fifth), and only one of them has emailed me back. He wants to be on my team, and he just thinks that the rest of it will sort itself out on Saturday without any problems.

Also on Saturday, we are supposed to dig up a time capsule. Or, at least, someone else is supposed to dig it up earlier so that we can have it opened on Saturday. There are plans concerning this that might get us thrown out of the restaurant, but we will see what happens.

I'm not crazy about that restaurant anyway, I just never know where else we should go.

I can't remember if we had originally planned to dig up the time capsule at the ten year point, or if they just thought it was a good idea to do it now. We had buried the thing at the home of a couple who got divorced a couple of years ago, and she's having trouble paying the bills by herself. Maybe it is just a good idea to dig up the thing while it is still her house.

Anyway, there is talk of putting new stuff in it and burying it again. I have given no thought as to what I would add. Nothing comes to mind, except maybe a scarf, and I'm not going to waste making a scarf to put into a time capsule.

It is one thing to make a scarf that no one will ever buy, and quite a different thing entirely to make a scarf that no one will ever see.

As for the rest of what is going on here, it is about the usual. We have been told that we have twenty-five weeks left of unemployment, my husband has no schedule for the next two or three weeks after Saturday, I am now told that while I thought at least everything was okay with the car we are a month behind on the payments, etc.... And I get nothing useful done with my time while my husband is home, and so now of course he is home all of the time.

But at least I'm going to go do something fun on Saturday.

I have no plans

Usually at this time of year people make resolutions and decide what they want to be different in the future. They want to go on a diet, they want to go back to school, they want to give up smoking, they want to give up some other bad habit, they want to redecorate the house, they want to be more organized, etc.... I would guess that the majority of us are in some major group like going on a diet or quit smoking, so we would have a lot of company. And we will also have a lot of company when we fail.

Having had the same plans for several years now, I'm afraid I don't even much see the point of making the plans to begin with.

I have looked back over my blog and seen all the times that I've almost gotten this or that room cleaned, or this or that organized, and it this rate I should have it all done in a month or less. Except that it never actually gets done, not all at once, and whatever part did get done is soon back to it's usual state.

And the dieting never works out, except for the one time that I had the house all to myself for several months, and another time that I was just too upset to eat much of anything. So I had dramatic weight loss twice, though only one of those times actually counts as dieting or good eating habits. The other just happened, and I would rather not have it happen again.

As for the smoking, I have never had a cigarette, so I have never had to stop smoking. That must be a hard one, like giving up caffeine, which I try once in a while but never stick to.

As for the usual stuff that has been bothering me for the past several years, no, I am not over it, and I do not really feel better about it. I just have for a time given up on the idea that I can do anything about it. There may be a smile on my face, but the inside of my head is constantly screaming. And no one seems to notice. And it is better that way, that no one seems to notice, because when I am pretending to be alright I at least feel well enough to get out of bed most days and knit or something. I couldn't do that if my outside appearance reflected my inner thoughts.

But I had better soon work on my outside appearance as well. I'm getting zits on my face again, so it is time to go an buy some ProActive. And I do not care for the rest of my appearance either, although my a** still seems to be shrinking. I wear size ten jeans, and I even have a pair of size eight that I can get into sometimes, but I have not lost weight and I do not look any better. I am sure that there is some trick to it, like the people who make the jeans are marking the wrong size so that we will think we have lost weight and buy more clothes. But the scale does not indicate any actual weight loss, and I do not look or feel any better. I just have to buy smaller jeans once in a while.

The appearance of the house is really bad. The living room and dining room look like something from the hoarders show. This is partially the usual stuff, and partially the Christmas shopping and wrapping stuff. There are boxes tossed here and there while I look for something the right size to wrap this thing in, and then I've lost a roll of tape and toss things around while I look for that, and then when I find some tape I can't find ribbon, and so on...

I guess that I can start with that. The Christmas clearance shopping (if I do more of that) will be mostly done today or tomorrow, and I should start putting all of this stuff away. And I can throw away all of these boxes (or at least most of them) that I have been holding on to just in case I needed them to wrap presents.

And in spite of my feelings that the dieting won't work any better this year than it did last year, I really should try to do something about it. Only it is already a few days into the new year, and I haven't even made any plans. Not that I have plans that I haven't followed through on, just that I haven't even made any plans. So that is unusual. I usually have some plan but feel like I have to wait for something to happen before I get started. This year, I haven't even decided how to start.

And I probably will not come up with any plans today either. My only plans for today are knitting (as I have had to start over with the scarf that I meant to give to the pilot for Christmas), and possibly going to Target to see how much Christmas stuff is left.

End of the year

Yesterday I went to Target for the 75% off clearance sale. Not that I bought much. I went to the nearest store and to the Cedar Hill location. Last year there were some stores that had the sale on the 31st, but mine started on the 30th. I had this theory that it might be a Dallas vs. Tarrant county thing that explained the difference. I should have gone to Arlington to test the theory, but I decided that I wasn't going to buy that much anyway. In fact, I decided not to go this morning either. Even if I found just tons of stuff that I wanted, I don't have much money left, and I can't picture there being tons of stuff that I want anyway.

Still, when the 90% off sale gets here, I will probably have another look, just in case.

So the party is a few hours away, but I can't seem to get that excited about it. I am sure that I will be quite happy once I get there, but right now I'm just really wishing that I could just take a nap. But I am not yet tired, and it is not time for sleep, though right in the middle of the party it will be.

So that sucks.

Truthfully, the thing that I am most looking forward to is giving the completed scarf to Miss Allergies. That is, I plan to give her the scarf at the party, assuming that she will actually make it to the party.

The other scarf, I will have to completely start over tomorrow or the next day. I have set up the machine and sketched out a few changes to the design, but mostly I have just changed to a slightly different color yarn, so that I can be sure of being able to buy more if I should run out of yarn again. It would have been nice to have that scarf done before tonight, as we will all be out in the dark anyway, but it just didn't seem to work out that way.

Maybe it will turn out to be a better looking scarf. And I have about two and a half weeks to work on it before the next time I will see my friends again, so maybe it will get done by then.

I suppose that I will go and watch more Stargate.

Happy New Year everyone.

We are expecting snow today

I wouldn't believe them, except that it snowed on Christmas Eve. Yesterday was a fine day, though we found out it was a bit cool to spend much time in the park after we did not bring our coats. But today it is supposed to start snowing at about lunch time. We must remember to go out and buy a few things first, like lottery tickets.

My husband has bought about five or ten pounds of this gourmet Italian bacon stuff. While I would have no problem eating about five or ten pounds of regular bacon, given enough time, I think that I'm already getting a bit tired of this stuff. It is really good for some stuff, but it isn't what I am used to, so I guess that I would rather not have it for breakfast. Anyway, we will go to the grocery store and buy a few things so we can eat this fancy bacon the way it is supposed to be prepared.

I did not find the matching yarn yesterday, so I will put the current scarf aside and start on a completely new one. I have three skeins of soft white yarn, and if I run out I will keep the label so that I can buy more matching yarn. After all of this practice, I should end up with a really nice scarf, though at this rate the pilot will get his Christmas present for Valentine's Day, which would totally be the wrong message.

Speaking of Valentine's Day, that is when the club usually has a fundraising auction, so it is about time that I start looking around to decide if I am going to put anything into it.

I had better get dressed now if I plan to go anywhere before the storm.

The day after Christmas

As I said before, I don't buy much at the 50% off sale. Most of what I do buy that day is food, or stuff that goes with food, that is something that I would buy anyway or something very much like what I would buy anyway, only it is green and red and now marked down.

Like I would usually go and buy lots of Rubbermaid Takealongs. Only Rubbermaid has quit making Takealongs and replaced them with "new and improved Takealongs" which are the same inferior cheap plastic things that everyone else sells, and not like Takealongs at all. So I did not buy any of the old ones, as they are no longer available, and I didn't buy any of the news ones cause even at half price they aren't worth it.

As I have already said, I bought lots of cookies. Not very useful things, cookies, but I like them anyway. I like them a little bit too much. Now I have four boxes of them.

Correction, I now have three boxes of them, as we have already eaten one. But my husband did eat most of that one. When the gingerbread is gone, that will be my fault entirely, but the cake-like cookies are his favorite, and they are half gone now.

I bought three rolls of aluminum foil. So far as I can tell, it is just plain aluminum foil, but as the package had snowflakes it was half price. So I won't run out of foil for a bit.

I found a few more interesting things and called my husband to ask if he was interested. He wasn't very interested in being woke up, even though by that time it was just about eight o'clock anyway, but after discussing the items I put them back on the shelf for someone else to buy.

My husband is one of those rare people who actually likes fruitcake, so I was looking for half price fruitcake, but I didn't find any. After buying a few more regular grocery items that just happened to be on sale, I went home.

I forgot that we were supposed to see the Sherlock Holmes movie, and after hurrying to eat a salad, we headed out again. After the movie, we usually eat the pizza special, but he didn't want pizza as we had just recently had pizza twice. He wanted either chicken wings or BBQ. I wasn't really in the mood for either, but I agreed. We stopped at another store, where we didn't buy much. And then we were back to the discussion of where to eat, and he said that we should decide after we went to the bookstore.

No way. I've been up for hours. I'm hungry. Pick someplace and let's eat.

He passed up both a BBQ place and a wing place and headed for a taco place. And the taco place is fine, except that isn't what he said that he wanted, and I figured he was just going to the taco place cause I didn't sound interested in either of the other places. We can go to one of the other places if he wants to. I had to point out where they were. So we turned around and headed back to the wing place.

And then we get to the wing place, and he isn't that crazy about it. He doesn't want to spend that much on a few chicken wings. Well, that is how much chicken wings cost. He just isn't usually the one buying them, and he didn't realize. So he figures if he's going to spend that much he would rather go to the salad bar next door.

So we go from the pizza place to the idea of BBQ to maybe a taco place to then actually going inside the wing place and then we actually end up eating at the salad bar.

The problem with the salad bar is that I figure if we are going to spend that much money on food, I need to actually eat something. And I end up eating very little actual salad. So it's pasta and tamale soup (never had that one before, but it was good), and a big baked potato with everything on it, and a few veggies on the side, and a couple of desserts.

So then we head to the bookstore, and after that he asked where else I would like to go. As long as we are right here next to a Walmart, I suggest that, thinking he will try to talk me out of it. But he doesn't, and he says that he was going to buy me a skillet anyway. So we go to Walmart, and he does buy me a skillet.

The skillet wasn't on sale or anything, he just bought it anyway. A while back I needed a new skillet, and I kept waiting for the money situation to get better before I bought one, but it never did. So I had to buy one anyway, so I bought a ten inch so that I could just buy the skillet and use a lid that I already had. And then my husband uses a metal cooking utensil on my new non-stick skillet and seriously scratches it, and then I drop and break the glass lid. Which leaves me back where I started, with a scratched up and lidless skillet.

So now he's bought me a new skillet. And he says that he was going to buy it for me for Christmas, but then he wondered if that maybe didn't look right, so he was going to buy me something else, but he didn't think of anything else that didn't seem just as bad. So now he's bought me a new skillet, and we'll see how long it takes for us to ruin this one as well.

While we were there, we found a few more Christmas clearance items. Usually someone buys him chocolate covered cherries for Christmas, but no one did this year, so we bought that. And I bought some cookie cutters, as I might actually be expected to bake some things next year, and I probably don't want to use cookie cutters that I've been using for ceramics class. And then we bought some extension cords, that are useful and needed, but as they are green that makes them half price. I rarely find the extension cord I want in a color that isn't something ugly anyway, so they might as well be green.

So that was all good.

I bought yet another thing of white yarn in an attempt to match something, but again that wasn't it. I guess that I will try again today, but I'm afraid that I'm just going to have to give up on the idea.

Let me explain about the yarn.

I recently tried to get some of my things organized, and my main goal was to get all my yarn together in one place, in boxes, somewhat organized, so that I could at least find what I was looking for and not just assume that I had run out of a color and head off to buy some more.

While I am still missing a few things and feel certain that more yarn and more scarves will turn up later, what I did get organized turned out to be more than seven boxes (big plastic boxes that are the fifteen gallon size or larger) of different kinds of yarn and finished scarves and scarves that were not quite finished as they were either knitted panels that hadn't been joined together to make a tube, or else they just did not have fringe added yet. So I decided that I should use some of this yarn, and that I should finish up these scarves that did not have fringe and such so that I might give them away as gifts, or at least have them ready to go in the unlikely event that someone should want to buy one of them.

No one offered to buy any. Or at least, no one offered to buy any after they heard the price.

So after adding the fringe, I gave away three of them, and then I was making three more to give away. One of them required that I buy all new yarn, cause I didn't have any of that color, the second I had half of the required color and had to buy some more(but it was good to have the yarn organized so that I could see that I already had half of the yarn and didn't buy too much extra).

The third scarf I thought that I had all the yarn that I would need. This was going to be a complicated scarf, to which I would add a bit of glow in the dark paint. I thought that I had about a thousand yards of a white that glowed under black light, about a thousand yards of white that did not glow under black light, and about a thousand yards of black. Not that I needed a thousand yards black, but I did need some. And not that I needed a thousand yards of white that glows under black light either, but I did need some, and also this was the yarn that I would add the paint to, so I would need some for that as well. But the majority of the scarf would be this white that did not glow, and I had a thousand yards or so and was happy that I didn't have to go and buy any yarn for the project, after having bought some very expensive paint and finding most of it would not work as I hoped.

If you have been reading, you might know that after several false starts on the scarf, I have changed the design three or four times, and then in the middle of the project I decided the scarf would be too long and changed it again. At this point I have spent more than thirty hours on the project (not counting false starts and other mishaps), had sore muscles and such, but the end was in sight, and I thought that I would work on it another twelve hours or so before taking it off of the machine, and then I would work on it at least another six hours.

And then I ran out of the main white yarn that I was using. I thought that I had some more of that color (or close enough to it), but when I put it on the machine I thought that it just didn't match at all. And so I have to go out and buy some more that matches it, only there's this little problem of my not having the label and not knowing what kind it is. But it was one of those real big one pound skeins, and I didn't think that there were that many of them out there. And, from the way the yarn was wrapped, I could assume that it was not Red Heart and that it was not Caron either. So I bought Lion Heart Pound of Love, and I bought some other kinds of yarn, just to be on the safe side, Red Heart soft white and winter white, as I thought that they looked pretty close and I was pretty sure that they would not glow under black light.

So I took the yarn home and waited for it to get dark. And I looked at all the yarn under the black light.

I had made a mistake. The Red Heart soft white and winter white did not glow under the blacklight, and the Lion Heart did, but none of them matched the original color. And now that I look again, it wasn't that the original yarn didn't glow under blacklight, just that it didn't glow as much as the other white, as the other white had an almost purple sheen to it even in the daylight.

So I am in the very difficult position of trying to match a yarn that only glows a little under black light, and I'm just having to guess at it while shopping for yarn during the day.

In an effort to match this yarn (that I was originally so happy to use because I wouldn't have to go out and buy anymore of this color), I have now spent about fifteen dollars. Some of this I can return to the store (except the Lion Heart that I had already taken out of the package), but I probably won't because it just isn't worth my time to go and stand in line to get two dollars at one store and three dollars at another store and so on.

I will go out today and look at some more yarn, and probably buy some of it, but after that if it doesn't match I think that I shall have to give up and start all over from the beginning. At least I know now what color yarn to buy that does not glow in black light.

On the fifth day of Christmas

Our family will have a tradition for several years, and then it will change, and then we will have a different tradition for years after that, and then later it will change again.

So, after we were not little kids who believed in Santa Clause and all of that, we had the tradition of exchanging gifts on Christmas Eve after we ate dinner at a certain pizza place. Then, that particular pizza placed closed. Soon after that, my sister requested that we go back to exchanging gifts on Christmas Day.

And then she got married, and we went back to the idea of exchanging gifts on Christmas Eve, after we have dinner at a nice restaurant.

So that was the plan for yesterday, to exchange gifts after we had dinner at this certain restaurant, where we would eat oysters and fried alligator and other such things.

We don't get a lot of snow here, and even when we do it usually much to look at. It doesn't stick. Or there isn't enough of it to cover the ground. It usually melts before the day is over, so, if you want to see snow, you had better go out and look at it when it is actually snowing.

What we do have once in a while is ice on the ground. It might rain or snow, or sometimes make that sleet or freezing rain. Most of the time this will either happen at night, or if it has happened during the day it might melt and flow out into the streets, where if it gets below freezing during the night, it will freeze. So we sometimes have this ice on the roads, but it usually seems to be something that you have to deal with in the morning, unless you are one of those people who has to drive around a lot at night.

Yesterday we had various weather conditions happen during the day. First, there was a bit of rain, which wasn't bad, and most of it was gone before I got around to doing anything. We had a free Whataburger for breakfast and went to the grocery store for a few things that we forgot to get. Not anything Christmas related, just stuff that we were going to run out of, and the stores probably won't be open today, so we had to get the stuff yesterday. And then we went home, and it was snowing a bit, but it just wasn't cold enough yet for it to matter much. We had a lot of snow in chairs and planters and such, being just a bit cooler off of the ground that snow doesn't melt as fast.

So it had snowed, but there wasn't much snow on the ground to look at. But according to the news reports, we would probably get more. My brother called to say that we might have cancel dinner.

Well, it didn't seem that bad. There was a bit of snow on the ground, but there wasn't yet ice in the streets. The ground was for the most part wet, not frozen. Still, it might get worse later. It was just too soon to decide anything.

Later my mom called. My sister was offering to cook something if we wanted to cancel the restaurant reservations and just go straight to her house, since the plan was to go to her house after dinner anyway. My mom didn't want to put my sister to that much trouble, so she suggested going to a different restaurant that was closer to her house.

I did not think much of this going to a different restaurant idea. That would still mean that we would have to get out in traffic twice. If it was safe to go to a different restaurant, it was probably safe to go to the one that we had originally planned. What would make me feel safer was to go straight to my sister's place as she had suggested. As for making my sister cook, we could just order a pizza instead.

We went and got another free Whataburger for lunch while we waited to see if anyone had a better idea.

So we ended up going straight to my sister's place, about an hour earlier than we had planned to meet at the restaurant. And then if we heard that it was going to get ugly, we could go home earlier.

The pizza thing nearly didn't work out. As it took so long to figure out ordering the pizza, it was slightly after six, and the first place that we called closed for the day at six.

We ordered five pizzas from the next place. The wait was a bit longer than usual, but not that much longer since we decided to pick them up instead of having them delivered.

While we were eating pizza, there was more snow.

Well, if it is going to get bad, it is too late now. And if it got really bad, we were safe at somebody's house, not at a restaurant that we would have to leave no matter what.

We exchanged gifts. My siblings seemed to like what we got for them. We got a gift certificate to my husband's favorite restaurant and I got DVDs to all of the Star Trek movies. All eleven of them.

This is my year for getting DVDs, and I am pretty happy with them.

When we were ready to leave, there was ice on the ground, but not so much in the streets. The driveway and sidewalk I just could not walk on, and inched along until I could walk on the now snow covered grass or the mostly dry street. Once we were driving home, the ice was not much of a problem, except for the "bridges and overpasses" and the frozen puddles of water that were mostly near the curbs.

So that was nice enough. I don't expect the weather to be much of a problem today, but I don't think that there are any plans to speak of either. I will just sit here and wait to see what happens.

On the fourth day of Christmas

Okay, I skipped the first thing this year, the charity thing with the club. They said that it was the best ever, and I missed it. Whatever.

The thing with my Uncle G was nice. So I don't regret skipping the charity thing, cause I was knitting and doing other stuff to get ready for that. Though I do regret that I didn't get the knitting done while I was out of town, and then I might have had time for both things.

The third day of Christmas was Saturday, and that involved being at three different places to exchange gifts with different groups of people from the club. So there was the official gift exchange at one restaurant after lunch, and then there were more gifts exchanged among five of us at a different restaurant during dinner, and then there was a get together after dinner at someone's house, where I exchanged gifts with two more people.

I got home after three thirty Sunday morning.

Okay, I have now mostly recovered from Saturday.

Today is the fourth day of Christmas, which is no big deal, and we are going to visit my husband's brother. My husband has four brothers, two sisters, and some nephews, but he only cares about the one sister who lives out of state (and therefore we rarely see her and never have any holiday plans with her), and the one brother. We saw less and less of the others over the years, and after his mother died he decided he did not want to see the others at all.

We usually go to see this brother on the 23rd, but we are going on the 22nd this year to avoid seeing one of the sisters and a nephew and possibly one of the other brothers. Which is fine by me, as I have no interest in seeing them either, and now I have a day of rest between the fourth day of Christmas and the fifth day of Christmas.

The 23rd used to be a big deal, and a stressful day for me, but now it is just the one brother. And we usually don't even do anything for the one brother, we just go see him. We usually don't exchange presents with him. This makes me feel bad, a bit, but it is his brother, and he should work out those details, not me. So I don't bother with it anymore. If we are supposed to exchange gifts, someone needs to tell me. Or my husband needs to do the shopping for that, not me. So last year we were given some small token gifts, and we didn't give anything in return. We don't have anything for him this year either, or at least, not that I know about, so I don't expect he will get us anything, but he might again get us something small, or he might bake something for us.

Years ago they used to have the big family gathering on the 23rd, and I wouldn't be told that we were going until a few days before, and I couldn't get ready in time, much less be expected to get gifts for everyone, even if I had the money, which usually I did not. Not counting the sister that was out of state, and a brother and his wife who was out of state at the time, there were three brothers, a sister, their mother, a sister-in-law, a nephew, and two more nephews that might be there or might not, and the wives of the nephews that might be there or might not, and a son of one of the nephews that might be there or might not. And they exchanged gifts, but it wasn't one of those things where you draw names or anything like that, there were gifts for everyone. So that was seven gifts for the people we knew would be there, and then maybe five more if the others showed up. One year I was told that three of the others would be there, so I got them something, but then it turned out that the other nephew and his wife also showed up, and I didn't have anything for them.

The first year we did this I was given about a week's notice, but then I wasn't told there would be gifts exchanged until about the 20th or the 21st.

I think the family had stopped having this gathering a few years before we got married, but my husband forgot and sort of invited himself over, and then they had to do it cause he was expecting it. And then they did this for several more years, and then one year the brother who hosted the gathering announced that he and his family were going on a cruise or something that year, so no gathering on the 23rd. And then there was some other excuse the year after that, and then there were no more of the big family gatherings on the 23rd.

Without the big family gathering at the one brother's house, we still tried to do something with his mom and the one sister and the one nephew and two of the brothers. And then we saw less and less of them, though he did try to see his mother once in a while and he does still like to see the one brother. Then after his mom died he just didn't want to see anyone but the one brother. He avoids the rest of them, unless maybe he hears that the out-of-state sister might be in town, but we haven't seen her either since the death of his mother.

So now it is just the one brother, and people we are trying to avoid.

Anyway, most of my day will be spent either with this brother, or in the car driving to and from the brother's house.

So that leaves Christmas Eve with my family, Christmas with whoever happens to want to get together and maybe see grandma, and then New Year's Eve with my friends. All I have to do is wrap four gifts by the 24th and hopefully finish two scarves by the 31st.

Gift exchanges

That went well enough, though we did not have all seven of us together at once. Five of us went to dinner, and we saw the other two later. Two of the people at dinner got an IOU, but they didn't seem to mind it that much.

I got baked goods from somebody, though not the somebody I thought. She seemed surprised that we all thought we were getting cookies or something. Some of us got cookies, and some did not. But she still liked the fruit basket.

I received a necklace with a dragon on it. I have several that I don't really wear anymore, but not one like this. And I have this personalized thing coffee/tea thing, and while I don't drink coffee I am trying to drink more tea cause of the whole antioxidant thing. I have some Bath and Body Works stuff and a little digital frame and a really cool watch.

In the official gift exchange I got some DVDs, but after closer inspection they do not quite appear to be what I thought they were. And they are used, which I wouldn't mind so much (especially if they were what I had thought that they were), but these already look used, so now I'm a bit worried that they won't play. My artwork went to someone I don't know very well, but as with the earlier party it made me feel good that what I gave was "stolen." So it seemed to be wanted by someone, and I hope he will be happy with it.

Someone else gave me a DVD of something I like, but I was warned that it might not play on my machine. That's okay, if it doesn't work on my machine I'll find someone else who can use it. This wasn't really a like a Christmas present, this was just, here, someone take this, I don't want it anymore. No problem, I will take it.

Several people left the gift exchange with phasers. Don't mess with us, we're armed now.

I somehow ended up staying out past three in the morning. Most of this year I have tried to stay up til ten and ended up falling asleep at nine or earlier, so I didn't expect to stay out that long, and in fact I had somehow gotten it into my head that it was two hours earlier. Time flies and all of that. Anyway, at some point I thought that it was eleven, and then we watched the new Star Trek movie after that, so I was thinking it was one or so, and then I got into my car and saw that it was after three. So I wasn't in bed until after three-thirty.

Still, I managed to wake up around five and a bit before six I gave up trying to get back to sleep.

Okay, most of the Christmas stuff over for now, except for wrapping a couple of presents. And finishing up the two scarves for the people who received IOUs.

The big day is tomorrow, sort of, maybe...

I can't sleep. After several hours of not being able to sleep, I get up and try to do something quiet. If I had the place to myself, I would just watch some TV until such time as I feel like trying to roll over and sleep again. But I don't have the place to myself, so it is either try to be quite in bed and hope that I will fall asleep again, or get up and try to find something quiet to do someplace else in the house.

And for a bit I tried to knit, but as it turns out this early in the morning I tend to make mistakes, and I have now spent more time trying to correct those mistakes than I have spent actually making progress on the piece.

I have run out of yarn. I have new yarn that I thought matched, but now that I have it on the machine I can see a slight difference between the old yarn and the new yarn. Maybe no one else will notice. Before I put it on the machine, it looked the same. Maybe on the finished piece it will look more the same? Anyway, it would be difficult to find any yarn that matched more than this one. I don't know what else to do except keep knitting with what I have.

I am not going to finish this on time anyway. I don't even know why I am still working on it.

And I still have to finish the scarf for Miss Allergies today. I still have several hours of work to do on that. Today I also have to make and wrap a fruit basket.

Other than that, J's gift is wrapped, R's gift is wrapped, and the gift for another friend is wrapped. The gift I will probably give for the official gift exchange is now painted and mostly dry, though it still smells. I will wait a bit more before I wrap that, and I will find something else to take and wrap, just in case I am talked out of giving this particular gift, as homemade gifts are not encouraged in the official exchange.

Anyway, all this stuff needs to be done before about one o'clock tomorrow. At least, I think that is when it needs to be done, but I can't get a straight answer on the exact plan for tomorrow.

In most of the years that this little group has exchanged gifts, we have gone to dinner as usual and then given each other gifts after dinner. Once in a while, this doesn't work out for everyone, as sometimes someone is sick or out of town or something. So maybe the rest of us go on as usual, and the missing person gets their gifts later, maybe at the New Year's Eve party. That has always seemed a bit awkward to me, to give gifts to one or two friends while the rest of the group is there, and the rest of the group isn't part of the gift exchange. Just sort of screams, yes, we are all friends, but I don't care enough about the rest of you to get you a gift. So I would prefer not to give anyone a gift during the meeting or during the New Year's Eve party or anything like that.

So exchanging gifts apart from the rest of the group is best, and we would usually do that after dinner. Except that this year J and R probably won't go to dinner with us, since they have invited the whole group to their place later that evening, and they probably just won't have time for dinner with us.

So, I need to know what we are doing. After much discussion on the subject earlier, we did confirm that the seven of us would be exchanging gifts this year, though if things do not get better, it might just have to be an exchange of cards next year. (I don't do cards, but that's another story.) So I am quite sure that we are all going to exchange gifts, I just don't know when and where. And I need to know that, so I wrote an email, and so far only one person has answered. She didn't really know, but she thought maybe we were just going to dinner as usual without J and R.

I don't like that idea.

It seems to me that we could all be at the meeting place early and exchange gifts before most of the other people get there. Or that we could stay at the place a little later than usual and exchange gifts after most everyone else has left. Or, since J and R have invited everyone over to their place anyway, maybe they can just invite a few of us to come over before everyone else and do it then. But it isn't my place, so I can't suggest that and invite myself over.

Anyway, one of the gifts that I am giving is a fruit basket, and it needs to be given tomorrow, and if necessary I will give it to the person at the meeting and in front of everyone else, cause fruit baskets just don't keep til later.

So I don't know what is going on, and I don't know what to do. And I don't suppose that it is really a big deal to put all this stuff in the car just in case, except that I'd worry about someone breaking into my car in an attempt to steal presents.

In addition to all of this stuff, I was planning to put a bunch more scarves in the car, so that the pilot can pick out one for me to give to his wife. I don't think that I have ever given her a scarf, and if we are probably not going to give gifts next year, I guess I should give her a scarf this year if she is ever going to get one. I just don't have a special one in mind for her. I just have a few that look good, and he can pick which one he thinks she would like best.

Anyway, I wish the rest of them would answer the damn email.

On the first day of Christmas

Okay, so over the years I have found things to do in the days leading up to Christmas, some of which are nearly as important to me as Christmas itself, or maybe even more so.

For a time my family started having more of a big Christmas Eve and doing gift exchanges then instead of Christmas morning or later that day. Then we switched back to having it Christmas day. And now we have switched it back to Christmas Eve, so that my sister and her husband are able to spend some time with his family. So our gift exchange is on Christmas Eve, and then we might still see each other at some point on Christmas, or we might try to spend Christmas with grandma, and whoever else might stop by to see grandma.

In the past five or six years, I have exchanged gifts with certain friends at a Star Trek club. This is in addition to the official club gift exchange. This gift exchange has become more fun for me than exchanging gifts with my family, cause as my family members got older, I have more and more trouble trying to figure out what to get for them. But the gifts for my friends need to be ready about a week before Christmas, which sometimes makes us feel a bit rushed. This year one of them will probably not get done in time, but that will be okay, he won't care. Maybe I can get it done in time for the New Year's Eve party.

And then there is this charity thing that I do most of the time, if I have the time and the money. Last year I had the time, but not the money, and I was going to skip it, but I got talked into it anyway. This year I didn't have the time or the money, and it was a week earlier than it is usually scheduled. I was very busy. I had planned something, but I backed out about a week ago.

So, the first day of Christmas was Saturday, and I skipped it. I was at home. I was busy trying to finish a blue scarf. I guess the second day of Christmas was Sunday.

Sunday there was a party at Uncle G's place. Some years someone in my extended family will try to have all of us over before it gets too close to Christmas, but I rarely get to go. The first year my mother was elected for this, and my mother is just not social and never does anything like have a party. And I missed it. We had had already planned a trip to New Orleans, and we did not think that we could reschedule it, so we went there instead of mom's party, and she was very mad at us. Our plans were made first, and she could have rescheduled hers if she wanted us there so much. And there have been other parties when I had a job and couldn't get the day off, or we were working out of town, or we just didn't hear about it in time, or one of us was sick or whatever. And it isn't something that happens every year anyway, just whenever someone is in the mood to do it.

So Uncle G and his wife were in the mood, and they had a party Sunday. And my mom originally wasn't planning to go, but I accepted as soon as I was given the invitation. My mom kept calling me to tell me not to be early, or some such thing. My mom was micro-managing me, and it wasn't her party, and originally she wasn't even planning to attend. Yesterday she called a fourth time to tell me that maybe I didn't have to be a half an hour late as she had originally told me, just to be a little bit late, and then she was telling me not to bring food in Tupperware and such. I don't have lots of dishes. I have to use what I have. No one else will care about it.

So we got there fifteen or twenty minutes late instead of half an hour late like my mom said, and we were the first ones there. But I had a little bit to do with the food that we brought. When I had finished with that my brother showed up, bringing cookies from mother, though I'm not quite sure why she sent them ahead since she showed up five minutes later herself. Whatever. Anyway, I think that about half of our extended family were in that little house for a bit. Mostly Uncle G's kids and grandkids, and also his wife's daughter and grandkids, but also my mom and family and another uncle and aunt.

One of my cousins I hadn't seen since I was a kid, and another one I hadn't seen except for at Thanksgiving. Other cousins I have seen on and off, and some of them my age or just a bit older have children, and I have seen them, and I have seem them get older, and one of them even had a baby. So one of my cousins (not one at this party) is a grandparent, though I haven't yet seen the grandchild. And I am well aware that I am old enough to have children, and that I am even perhaps old enough to be a grandparent, if I had wanted to have children and had them. But of the two cousins that I had not seen for a long time, they are not that much younger than me, and I had heard that they had children, but somehow I still picture them being children themselves, and I just didn't quite get it. So some of the children of these cousins are teenagers, some of them soon to be off to college, almost grown themselves.

So after we had plenty to eat and played a few games, Uncle G gave his grandkids presents, and then the adults had a gift exchange. This was one of those gift exchanges where people steal stuff. I was very glad to see that my scarves were stolen a few times. My husband got some games, and I have a gift certificate for a restaurant.

So that all went very well.

When I got home, my mom called me again to tell me I had done a good job.

Back to work. I hope the next Christmas thing is as good.

FREE BOB

This month there has been The Twelve Days of Whataburger, during which you can sign up to receive coupons on odd numbered days that you can use to get something free on even numbered days. So on the first they sent me a coupon that I used on the second to get free fries. Down at the bottom of the coupon is a note to your cashier, telling her which number button to use, and next to that is something like FREE FRIES or FREE SODA or FREE PIE.

The coupon we used yesterday was for a free breakfast on a bun. Since breakfast on a bun is a rather long thing to spell out, the notation to the cashier was abbreviated to FREE BOB.

FREE BOB rather amused me for a bit. Sounds like something you should write on a picket sign. Like maybe someone named Bob has been unfairly imprisoned. FREE BOB! FREE BOB!

Anyway, we had a free breakfast on a bun before we headed out yesterday morning, and we liked it so much we stopped at a different location and had another one on the way home.

So far I have bought something each time I've used a coupon, but I don't suppose that I have to if I don't want to. I heard that they tried this same promotion two years ago, and then decided to cancel it after they had already sent out coupons. I haven't had that happen yet, though one day I did have a bit of an argument with someone who tried to tell me I couldn't use the coupon cause I didn't print out the whole email. This is a stupid argument meant to drive away people when they get tired of giving away free food, but I am not that timid, and it does not work on me. I will cause a scene and still get my free food, but I will not pay for anything to go with it.

If for some reason they really want the whole email, they shouldn't have designed it to only print out the coupon, and it should say in writing that they need the whole email and not to cut out the coupon.

Anyway, after FREE BOB and some minor shopping, we came home and I finished the blue scarf, which took me longer than I expected, but it didn't take as long as trying to deal with that Innovations machine. Joining the panel ends together took longer than I thought, and the fringe takes some time, but still, with the sweater machine I can get the thing done all in a day, if I had the whole day to work on it and didn't have to stop because I ran out of blue yarn.

So I have one finished blue scarf and one finish red scarf, and both will go in a gift exchange later today. I just have to wrap them now.

My mother has now called three times to tell me that our hostess does not really want us to appear at the time given on the invitation, and that we should show up almost half an hour later. This makes no sense to me, but even after I've agreed to do this she will call me again and tell me the whole thing again. She interrupts my knitting to do this, and I have not yet started on the food. Without even getting into whether or not she is right about the hostess actually wanting everyone to show up half an hour late, she needs to leave me alone so that I can get ready for the party, and it seems a bit silly to keep reminding me not to be early for something that at this rate I will never be ready for at all. But I am mostly ready now, except for wrapping the gifts, and as it turns out my husband will be doing the actual food preparation, and we did manage to do the grocery shopping yesterday. So all is well, I think.

So I have a couple of things checked off of my list. As for the rest of the list, I need something for a different gift exchange, but at least I have my supplies now. J's gift is finished and wrapped and everything. R's gift is mostly done. The gift for Miss Allergies still needs some work. Another gift is finished but still needs to be wrapped. My sister's gift is here but needs to be wrapped, as is my brother's. I have to get a gift for another friend by Saturday, but as she will probably get a fruit basket I don't want to get it too much before Saturday.

And that leaves the pilot's gift, which will never be done in time, so I might as well forget about it and work on a nice card that says IOU.

Anyway, I expect to have a nice day today, in spite of having a cold and such. And then I have to get some serious work done before Saturday.