Day 571

The inspection continues; it's going as well as such things go.

Came home totally tired, cranky and all-round pissy over all the things on my mental To-Do list but before doing any of it I had myself some fudge for dinner which helped immensely.  It isn't grainy at all. Taking time to get oneself in a better headspace is always well worth it because then everything afterwards goes better - slogging along "because I gotta get it done" is just throwing -handfuls- of pebbles into the bag of resentment.

Once the sugar kicked in I made dinner for tonight, a meatloaf for Youngest to bake tomorrow night and - best of all - the last of the holiday baking. Tomorrow I have to go to the bank so I'm going to combine that with getting those Express Mail boxes from the post office so I can send a nice chunk of all the goodies down to the family in the other house and another nice chunk to my dear friend in Hawaii which is why I've kind of been rushing because the cutoff to get something there by Christmas is the 15th. It's a surprise and would be just as good a surprise during actual Christmastide as opposed to Technically Still Advent but still.

The other thing I'm doing between the bank and the post office is taking myself to lunch again. This feels particularly indulgent since I took myself to lunch last week and on Monday I went to my monthly work-colleague trio lunch. However I'm not going to be able to have a nice lunch out or a bit of shopping on Thursday after my Big Loop as I'd planned because of the inspection so I figure doing it tomorrow, which is ahead of time, is a nice way to prevent resentment on the day itself when I end up swinging through a drive-thru and eating in the car on the way back up.

I'm still kind of in denial about Christmas itself though.  It's my turn to be on-call and since I'm already on regular call I also said I'd be willing to do special administrative call so I am required to stay local from 12/22 to 1/2. I don't really mind this as I've been to the other house in August, September, October and November. Plus the weather is always a variable. However SiL works retail and is thus likewise tied to -that- area so Eldest will definitely be staying down there with him. Me here and SiL there are the two fixed points in this constellation of emotional work; everything else is mutable. There have been many proposals.  Some are more appealing than others but given cars and weather and dispositions and such, what I actually -expect- to happen is that Spouse, Eldest and SiL will all stay there while Middle, Youngest, ABL and I all stay here...and "stay here" in this case will mean spending a good chunk of the day itself at MiL's apartment opening presents and having a bad meal with her and Auntie. Hence my denial. I'm not particularly looking forward to that and don't expect to enjoy it very much so I'm trying, over the next two weeks, to become more resigned to and accepting of it.

Who knows? Maybe something totally unexpected will happen.

Some year - not any time soon, I'm sure - I'll get to do what I -really- want over the Christmas holiday: Take a nice long vacation to a non-Christian country or two. Just skip the whole thing completely.

And so it goes.