barbers, belle chevre, and beasties

Saturday the 22nd was the paternal side of the family Christmas extravaganza and it was just delightful as usual. If there ever comes a year when my brother doesn't show up, I may just throw myself in traffic to have a good excuse not to go...I love my dad, but that side of my family just doesn't give me the warm and fuzzies, you know? Now after that, my sister-in-law invited me to go with them to my brother's mother's house (technically, he's my half-brother with dad being the shared parent). I go to alot of their family functions anyway 'cause his mom's family is nicer than our dad's...if you follow all that. I had a great time hanging out with the niece and nephew as I rarely see them. I seriously need to change that.

Sunday, I hung out at the maternal family for a while then met my friend E for a movie...that's right people! I saw Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street(if you click through for the review, it is in-depth so here's your official spoiler alert if you aren't already familiar with the storyline)! It was beautiful in a very horrible way. It was just as bloody as I'd heard it would be and, if nothing else, go see Sacha Baron Cohen's performance as the rival barber :) It's dark, sad, and leaves you with a very faint taste of iron in your mouth.

Monday I was back out at my mom's house. She had to work a half-day (yay for working at the bank!) but I had a few hours to hang out with her. Neither one of us really had the money to do any kind of big gift thing so I told her all I wanted was a decent picture of her as I don't have one. All the one's she'd given me to that point could have been mug shots and I told her so. I wanted a picture of her smiling and happy whether she was or not! I got a good one too! :) In return, I framed a picture of us that I took when we were strolling the gardens of the Anniston Natural History Museum in October. We were both well pleased with our selections and our gifts. Late afternoon, I headed over to Mrs Roomie's family Christmas at her grandmother's house like I do every year. It was a good, rollicking time as usual since she has, what is to me, a huge family. She and DH arrived late, stayed long enough to eat and watch the kids open gifts, then they left. She didn't talk much and gave me a candle for Christmas. I'll leave it at that. I left about an hour later and as I was leaving her dad gave me an extra squeeze (not in a creepy fashion, mind you, but fatherly-like) and said, "I want to thank you for being such a good friend all these years." I admit, I teared up a little and said, "Well, I'm not going anywhere. You make it sound like I'm moving away." He replied, "Well, I didn't want to let you go without saying that. We've kinda taken you for granted all these years, that you're just always going to be there. I thought you needed to hear it." It was very sweet and just what I needed to hear, but I couldn't help thinking, "Shouldn't Mrs Roomie be the one to say that?" I have spoken to her maybe 3-4 times this month and only because I call. I don't want to chase somebody down but why do I always seem to get dropped like a hot rock? There was the weasel, Mrs Roomie, and another close (I thought) friend who had no problem cutting the strings when newer pastures rolled past. Why is that, I philosophically ponder? Ah well, enough of that. On to the belle chevre and the beasties!

Tuesday was the big day! Let me tell you, if you're feeling kinda down and just blah in general, go spend Christmas with some little kids! I'd forgotten, I really had, but KT's little girls reminded me of what Christmas used to feel like when I was a kid. They don't have credit cards, budgets, vacation requests, suitcase packing, driving concerns, nothing....it's just Santa and the swag. It's magic and fun and cookies and hot chocolate and staying up just five more minutes. It made me feel like a new person, let me tell you! I don't normally enjoy alcohol infused desserts but KT made some bourbon brownies that were to die for. If the bourbon didn't do it, the bacon crazies would. A Club cracker sprinkled with parmesan cheese and wrapped in a slice of bacon, baked at 250 for 2 1/2 hours. OMG! I want some right now. KT's husband fried a turkey, we had THREE KINDS of creamy, fatty casseroles....and the Belle Chevre goat cheese! KT rolled it in olive oil and garlic pepper seasoning and we ate it on scrumptious sesame crackers. A hot guy fanning me with a palm branch could possibly have been the only thing to make this day better...and I'm not even sure about that, he may have wanted some of the goat cheese.

After I left KT's house, it was on to my new petsitting job for Coriander the geriatric cat or, as I like to call her, Big'un. I finally found the house, tired and full of goat cheese and hot cocoa as I was, and got all my crap into the house. I unpacked, watched a bit of tv, then hit the sack since I had to get up early to got to PT this morning. At 1:25am, I woke up to the sound of the cat scratching like hell on something. I tried to go back to sleep, but it was SO loud. She's old, I thought to myself, and she doesn't know me. She's probably just nervous and anxious so I'm going to be magnanimous about this. Okay, this constant scratching went ooonnnnn and ooonnnn until I couldn't stand it. Just about the time I was turning over and heading for my glasses to dispense swift justice, Big'un lumbered in from the other side of the room.
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If that's not Coriander in the corner building a dam,......who is?

I had a feverish 5-10 minute talk with myself where I was firmly reminded that I am afraid of spiders, not rodents. Other kinds of jointy-legged bugs, but not rodents. My stuff was not on the floor. I was fine. I just didn't feel very fine. I did manage to doze back off, but the dam building continued through the night periodically. Construction halted whenever Big'un investigated but Big'un is about 17 years old so her mousing days are very definitely over. At 6am I gave up and started my day, bleary-eyed and severely irritated. I will be going by the store on the way back and purchasing some sort of trap 2-nite! I can't deal with this for the next 10 days or Big'un will be spending some of it with visitation instead of sleepovers. That's a little unethical, but my sanity may start to be at stake here.

As for today, sssssslllllllloooooooowwwwwwww! I was a little late getting in from PT, BUT for about 5 minutes after PT, while my arm was still frozen from the icepacks and tingling from the e-stim, I had a little feeling in my index finger. I could have turned a page, tried to read Braille, anything! I was just touching random things in the car, enjoying the moment. As soon as my arm warmed back up the sensations faded away again. So sad :(

I did KT's Brown Bag program since she's still on vacay. We watched a film on the history of the number "1". Even though it was math oriented, I followed along and was entertained. I feel smarter this evening than I did this morning :)

Now, it is almost time to head back over to Big'un. As I said before, there will be some mouse traps purchased on the way and I'll hope it is simply a mouse. It sounded too big to be a mouse, but hope springs eternal. More on the mouse mania on the morrow!

evenin' ya'll!
htw