Day 1275: Making Christmas
Dec. 28th, 2016 12:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nagi_schwarzHoo boy, but last week was insane. Four days of court. Four days of meetings. Four days of me running around like a mad person to get us ready for Christmas. I did it, though. Finished making all the gifts. Wrapped all of them. Did the laundry. Packed us for our journey.
Survived court. Drug court was crazy. It seems like a bunch of my cases have an abundance of crazy dads, which is irritating. And then a grandma got on my case on my day off, and after doing an emergency hearing by phone, I shut my work phone off. Done and done.
Christmas was a bit - tense, to say the least. We managed the drive up just fine. Once again I was the narrator for the choose your own adventure stories Cody and I read on long drives. Once we picked up Aaron, we got food, and we hit the road, and Aaron joined in on the choose your own adventure game. Generally the three of us had a consensus about the next action to take, but when we didn't, I was the tie-breaker. It was interesting, to say the least. Dingo spent most of the drive asleep with his face shoved into the box of Christmas presents. Ivy slept between the front seats because that's the best place to be, to get random pets from the humans as we rumbled along.
We got in kinda late, we unloaded, and then I went to bed pretty early.
Apparently there was some miscommunication between Cody and Aaron. I'd figured we were giving Aaron a lift north so he could hang out with his mom and his car can't quite manage the trip and he can't afford the gas (he got laid off and is suspended from school and is generally freaking out). Aaron thought he was staying with us for Christmas. Cody's mom doesn't tolerate him well, so after that first night he was supposed to be crashing at his mom's, but his mom was away and working so mostly the poor kid was bored. Cody's dad was of the opinion that Aaron deserved some Christmas charity and should have been allowed to hang out with us for the holiday. Cody was the unfortunate messenger and felt bad telling Aaron to go be alone so we could have family time, and then his brothers' friends came and crashed at the house.
So...awkwardness!
After my emergency hearing on Friday, I spent the entire time at home, lazing and generally having a good time. I was pretty darn determined not to leave the house, to be as lazy as possible. I got some writing done, and I got some knitting done. The others went out for some last-minute emergency Christmas shopping, and then there was some wrapping. We also went out to see Rogue One, which I absolutely adored (and then I heard Carrie Fisher was in the hospital, and I heard yesterday that she was gone). And we got junk food. I ended up hanging out with Aaron some, since I think of everyone in the household I can tolerate him best, having long been inculcated in the art of talking to socially awkward nerd boys (I married one, after all).
On Christmas Eve I was also super, super lazy. Helped the others wrap last-minute purchases. Wrote some. Knitted some. Watched Cody play Braid, a video game he bought. We tossed all our gaming consoles, so now Cody can literally only play video games when he's at his parents' house. And so he kinda binges. He was nice and bought a game he and Aaron could play together.
Christmas Day itself was a bit - fraught. There was disagreement in the house as to whether we should go to Church. As far as I knew, our churches worldwide were only holding the first hour on Christmas Day, which was mostly going to be singing carols anyway (which I kinda feel like I missed out on this year), but the boys didn't want to go, so Leisa and I got dressed and climbed into the truck and drove through the un-plowed streets of town to a deserted church. It was a white Christmas all right, at least two feet of snow. It's a bad day behind the Zion Curtain when church is cancelled due to snow.
So we went home, and the boys went to fetch Grandma and Grandpa in the truck because there was no way the grandparents could have managed the drive. Poor Grandma looked ill all day - we suspect her oxygen tank thingie was malfunctioning - but we had fun. We opened presents. Cody was the victim of the paper this year (the family has a strange tradition of burying one person under all the torn-off wrapping paper each year; my last Christmas up there it was Kieran, last year apparently it was Kip, so this year it was Cody). Cody's aunt and uncle and a couple of cousins showed up, and we opened presents some more, and then we had traditional Christmas omelettes.
Kelly got a copy of Kubo and the Two Strings for Christmas (he adores animated films) so we watched that, and Cody and I got the Secret Life of Pets (because we have two dogs), and we watched that, and then we played board games. Leisa has strong moral objections to Cards Against Humanity - which was interesting to play with a staunch feminist, a social worker, and a bunch of redneck dudes - and she retreated from the den and was nowhere to be seen for the rest of the night.
On Monday, we lazed around some more, and then we packed up our stuff and hit the road. Read more choose your own adventures as we drove. Managed to magically avoid after-work rush hour, got home at a decent time, and now it's back to the grindstone. Crazy dads continue to do crazy things, and I am slogging along best as I can. Looking forward to the New Year. Having a holiday party with my family at my sister's house on Friday, and that will be good times. I'm pretty excited for that.
And to get back to dancing. I miss dancing a lot.
Survived court. Drug court was crazy. It seems like a bunch of my cases have an abundance of crazy dads, which is irritating. And then a grandma got on my case on my day off, and after doing an emergency hearing by phone, I shut my work phone off. Done and done.
Christmas was a bit - tense, to say the least. We managed the drive up just fine. Once again I was the narrator for the choose your own adventure stories Cody and I read on long drives. Once we picked up Aaron, we got food, and we hit the road, and Aaron joined in on the choose your own adventure game. Generally the three of us had a consensus about the next action to take, but when we didn't, I was the tie-breaker. It was interesting, to say the least. Dingo spent most of the drive asleep with his face shoved into the box of Christmas presents. Ivy slept between the front seats because that's the best place to be, to get random pets from the humans as we rumbled along.
We got in kinda late, we unloaded, and then I went to bed pretty early.
Apparently there was some miscommunication between Cody and Aaron. I'd figured we were giving Aaron a lift north so he could hang out with his mom and his car can't quite manage the trip and he can't afford the gas (he got laid off and is suspended from school and is generally freaking out). Aaron thought he was staying with us for Christmas. Cody's mom doesn't tolerate him well, so after that first night he was supposed to be crashing at his mom's, but his mom was away and working so mostly the poor kid was bored. Cody's dad was of the opinion that Aaron deserved some Christmas charity and should have been allowed to hang out with us for the holiday. Cody was the unfortunate messenger and felt bad telling Aaron to go be alone so we could have family time, and then his brothers' friends came and crashed at the house.
So...awkwardness!
After my emergency hearing on Friday, I spent the entire time at home, lazing and generally having a good time. I was pretty darn determined not to leave the house, to be as lazy as possible. I got some writing done, and I got some knitting done. The others went out for some last-minute emergency Christmas shopping, and then there was some wrapping. We also went out to see Rogue One, which I absolutely adored (and then I heard Carrie Fisher was in the hospital, and I heard yesterday that she was gone). And we got junk food. I ended up hanging out with Aaron some, since I think of everyone in the household I can tolerate him best, having long been inculcated in the art of talking to socially awkward nerd boys (I married one, after all).
On Christmas Eve I was also super, super lazy. Helped the others wrap last-minute purchases. Wrote some. Knitted some. Watched Cody play Braid, a video game he bought. We tossed all our gaming consoles, so now Cody can literally only play video games when he's at his parents' house. And so he kinda binges. He was nice and bought a game he and Aaron could play together.
Christmas Day itself was a bit - fraught. There was disagreement in the house as to whether we should go to Church. As far as I knew, our churches worldwide were only holding the first hour on Christmas Day, which was mostly going to be singing carols anyway (which I kinda feel like I missed out on this year), but the boys didn't want to go, so Leisa and I got dressed and climbed into the truck and drove through the un-plowed streets of town to a deserted church. It was a white Christmas all right, at least two feet of snow. It's a bad day behind the Zion Curtain when church is cancelled due to snow.
So we went home, and the boys went to fetch Grandma and Grandpa in the truck because there was no way the grandparents could have managed the drive. Poor Grandma looked ill all day - we suspect her oxygen tank thingie was malfunctioning - but we had fun. We opened presents. Cody was the victim of the paper this year (the family has a strange tradition of burying one person under all the torn-off wrapping paper each year; my last Christmas up there it was Kieran, last year apparently it was Kip, so this year it was Cody). Cody's aunt and uncle and a couple of cousins showed up, and we opened presents some more, and then we had traditional Christmas omelettes.
Kelly got a copy of Kubo and the Two Strings for Christmas (he adores animated films) so we watched that, and Cody and I got the Secret Life of Pets (because we have two dogs), and we watched that, and then we played board games. Leisa has strong moral objections to Cards Against Humanity - which was interesting to play with a staunch feminist, a social worker, and a bunch of redneck dudes - and she retreated from the den and was nowhere to be seen for the rest of the night.
On Monday, we lazed around some more, and then we packed up our stuff and hit the road. Read more choose your own adventures as we drove. Managed to magically avoid after-work rush hour, got home at a decent time, and now it's back to the grindstone. Crazy dads continue to do crazy things, and I am slogging along best as I can. Looking forward to the New Year. Having a holiday party with my family at my sister's house on Friday, and that will be good times. I'm pretty excited for that.
And to get back to dancing. I miss dancing a lot.
