Christmastime

I've not been a faithful blogger this month. It's been a busy month, although I've had little to do. Not sure how that works out. However, I just returned from 5 days visiting my parents in Iowa for the holiday. It's good to be back, although it was a nice visit. Not very exciting, but nice. I did, however, eat a lot and sleep a lot and I came home with some good gifts. My favorite two things were my beautiful Christmas card from my husband (awwww....) and my hefty gift card from my parents to TJ Maxx (which I spent this morning in less than an hour!).

Friday we spent upwards of 7 hours in the car whilst venturing down to the great state of Iowa. We stopped in the Cities to have lunch with our friend, Mike, at Noodles & Co. I LOVE Noodles. Their Pad Thai is delicious. We also had to make a stop at Cabella's in Owatonna, for the hubby. He was looking for black powder items, for his gun. He's going to begin making his own bullets for this gun, which, in the long run, is quite frugal of him.

When we arrived in Iowa, my mother wasn't home from work yet. We were sitting in the East Room (that's what we call the TV room, because it's on the east side of the house) and Mom came home and walked straight into the East Room and just stood there staring at us and smiling. "Hi Mom." She started gushing, "You guys are a sight for sore eyes!" (Actually she said something like, "You guys are sore eyes!" But I corrected her.) If you can help it, don't stop having children after just one, and if you can't help it and have only one, please don't stand and stare at them like you've never seen them before when they're 29 years old.

Saturday we were back in the vehicle, heading southeast to Cedar Rapids, where I met up with three of my girlfriends from college, Jolene, Sara, and Ann. Jolene is almost 8 months pregnant, Sara is a 3rd grade teacher and single, and Ann lives in Grand Rapids wtih her husband where she teaches band. I usually only get to see these girls a couple times a year, so any time with them is time well spent!

Sunday night was the Christmas Eve Service at my parent's church. I say "my parent's church," because it is not the church I grew up in. My parents left that church a few years ago, I'm glad to say, and are now a part of an evangelical Lutheran church. The Lutheran part isn't important, the evangelical part is. Anyway, it was filled with people I grew up with and it was weird. I'm sorry, there's just something weird about seeing people you went to gradeschool with walking around with babies and toddlers and children. And I always have to wonder if they really ENJOY living in our hometown. As it was, I couldn't wait to get the h*ll out of there!

Monday was presents and preparing Christmas dinner, both of which were nice. The dinner was tasty and my grandparents were able to come and eat with us. We actually had a really nice time with my grandparents, who are getting up there in years, and it was good to be able to sit with them for several hours and just chat. I only see them about once a year. That's how it's always been, even though they only live 1 hour from my folks. My parents and I have always made our friends our family, rather than being uber close with our family. Not sure why that was.

Tuesday we got up and left, only to drive the 6.5 hours back to Fargo. We made really good time, so that was pleasing to my rear end....

I'm quite glad to report that I didn't have that sinking feeling after all the presents are opened and after the company leaves the house. I think it's the first year that hasn't happened. I guess Christmas isn't nearly the big deal that it was when I was a kid. It's just a time to enjoy, and to thank God for sending his Son to be born a human to walk the earth like us. I made sure to try to be thoughtful of that as I went about my day on the 25th. Otherwise, Christmas truly is just a materialistic day where you eat too much and get presents that wear out eventually. THAT is incredibly depressing, I must say, and for those who don't have Christ as their Savior must have that sense of dread down in their souls. That question, "Is this all there is?" lingers in the back of my mind, from my days before Christ.

This coming weekend is more Christmas celebration, with my husband's family. That always produces a sense of dread in my soul, as well. But, there will be spear fishing, so I will be glad to be sitting out on the ice, waiting for an unlucky fishie to come my way so I can spear it. I hope it's a walleye. But, on top of more Christmas celebration is the New Year's celebration as well, and it always gets overlooked since we're doing the Christmas thing during that time. I've always hated New Year's, especially when I was younger. I didn't drink, so that made that holiday very uncomfortable for me, and often very lonely.

I'm looking forward to a New Year. I'll leave the New Year's talk for another blog, but I am looking forward to it. I'm turning over some new leaves, so that's exciting. I hope everyone who reads this (all three of you) had a Christmas worth remembering.

December

December has been a relatively good month so far. First of all, it's Christmastime, so there's hot apple cider and those yummy little sugar cookies in my office. Well, maybe that's not all good, as I seem to eat several of these little cookies each day, probably adding to the width of my hips, but, hey, in less than 2 weeks, it'll all be over, so I suppose it's time to indulge oneself just a little. It's not like I'm eating 14 cookies each day. Four, maybe, but not fourteen. There's also a beautiful poinsettia sitting in front of me, and I just had a really morbid thought: what if I ate one of its leaves? They say that poinsettia leaves are poisonous. Hmmm....

Anyway, what else has made December a good month? Well, I got to see my best friend at the beginning of the month and we went to the Mall of America, which was fun. I had a job interview a couple weeks ago, and have another one on the 27th. Husband learned of a promotion he's being offered at work (we think - one can never be sure with this company), AND of a church that might be hiring a full time youth pastor, all within about 48 hours. That's somewhat exciting, because either way, we get to buy a house! Which then means we get a puppy!

I've been continuing my acupuncture, and that seems to be showing some results, which is good. I'll go, maybe for the last time, tomorrow. Monday he stuck the needles in my head! I consequently have had a headache for the past 3 days...that was not good. When he went to remove the needles from my head (they were in the back of my head, near to my hairline behind my ears and down by my neck) they didn't want to come out. Apparently the muscles can respond by clinging to the needles. Weird.

I'm almost finished Christmas shopping, and now I'm moving onto the baking realm. I made a batch of peppermint snowball cookies on Saturday when Husband was off killing animals. They are a Christmastime MUST in my family. But aside from those, I'm trying some new recipes: Three Chocolate Bark with Spiced Pecans and Dried Cherries from the Food Network's All Star Christmas Gifts show. This one's from Emeril. Read the recipe - it looks DELICIOUS! I'm also going to try another recipe: Spiced Candied Almonds by Michael Chiarello. Good stuff.

AND, maybe the best part about the whole month was that when I was home-bound last weekend whilst Husband was off killing things, I spent the ENTIRE day on Saturday (well, I got up at 10:00, so maybe not the ENTIRE day...) cleaning out the spare bedroom and the walk-through closet that is inside of it. We had never really organized that room very well after we moved in, mostly because we thought we wouldn't be there very long, and that when our 9 month lease was up, we'd be moving on to a house. When that didn't happen, I decided maybe I should organize it a little bit better. I ended up throwing out about 5 bags of crap. It was wonderful. However, my back hurt so badly after that whole endeavor that I could hardly get out of bed on Sunday morning.

Well, now I'm annoyed. I just spoke with a nurse and now I have to have an MRI!! Good grief. This happened to me about 4 years ago and they found nothing, well, nothing besides my brain. Now I'm going to have an even bigger medical bill because my insurance is crap. ARGH!

But, this does not deter me from having a good December!!

Another happy item: I may get to see my pregnant friend, Dawn, who now lives in Iowa, during the holiday traveling time. We may all be passing through the Cities at the same time. Word is, she has a little belly going on, which I'm dying to see!

Well, I hope your Decembers are happy as well. It's good to be happy.

The Cookie Monster

Last night I was at the gym, in the locker room, changing after water aerobics. Some women came into the locker room, speaking a foreign language that I suspected was Russian (that's not important to the story). They were chattering away as they changed, but instead of changing into something, they just wrapped themselves in the towels provided by the facility. (I wasn't really LOOKING, but I could see what was going on out of the corner of my eye.) Then, I happened to glance up and one of the women had an entire chocolate chip cookie sticking out of her mouth as she was walking away. She walks over to the scale, hops on it, weighs herself, and then the next thing I see is that cookie being flung into the trash can, which was sitting next to the scale.

Oh, the hilarity....

I hesitate to write today...

...as I am unusually crabby, and my stomach hurts. But that's not anything out of the ordinary...that's an everyday occurrence. My stomach hurting, that is. I'm rarely crabby.

It's been two whole weeks since I've written. Lots of things have happened and I guess that makes for a lot of grist for the blog mill, so to speak.

Well, let's see. Thanksgiving has come and gone since my last post. My Thanksgiving was boring, to say the least. We left Fargo on Wednesday night and went to my in-law's house till Saturday night. Read: lots of sitting around and sleeping for Heather, lots of hunting for Chris. I hate going to my in law's house. There are several reasons: 1) my mother in-law rarely cleans her toilet before we come, which grosses me out more than I can ever say; 2) their house makes me sneeze because there are deer heads in the living room and I'm allergic to deer hair (!); 3) I never have anything to do because my husband leaves me all alone in the house with his mother while he and his father go hunting (I'm invited to go hunting, and I'll go once per visit, maybe, however, hunting is not high up there on my list of favorite things to do); 4) it's impossible to eat healthy while I'm there, and their drinking water is HORRIBLE; 5) my mother in-law makes awful stuffing (I bring this up, because my mother makes awesome stuffing - something I look forward to each year.); 5) I was made to butcher a deer. Enough said.

The weekend wasn't entirely lost, however. I did get A LOT of knitting finished...my afghan is several inches longer than it was before I left. And, I wrote a cover letter and resume for my husband, which is always a very time consuming project - I figured that since I had an overabundance of time I could do that for him.

The next interesting thing that happened was that I began to undergo acupuncture. This is a very strange event. To have someone jab very small needles into your body in various places is somewhat disconcerting. I've had it done three times now, and I think it gets worse each time! The first time he put needles in my hands and forearms, by my knees and ankles. The second time he added needles to my neck and my feet (alarming fact: he punctured a vessel in my foot and now I have a bruise on my foot from the needle...). This morning he didn't do the neck, but put one in the middle of my abdomen, and one in each ear - boy did that feel weird. He told me the first time that my stomach would probably make all sorts of gurgly noises, and sure enough, it did! He also hooks me up to a small electrical current in order to speed up the process. So far I haven't felt any benefits, but I also didn't stick to the diet he told me to - I have to cut out all chocolate, coffee, pop, and alcohol. Now, I don't drink much pop or alcohol, but the chocolate and coffee really got me. So, he said if I can just go cold turkey for the next two weeks, I should see the process working more effectively.

Other than that, life has remained much the same, even given the fact I had a job interview last week. The interview went quite well, I thought, but I'm just not sure it's the position I really want. There's another one I'm waiting to hear from, but it's taking an incredibly long time, and with my luck, I won't even get an interview (do you hear the crabbiness coming out there?). Husband is still dying to find another job, but there wasn't even anything to apply for in the paper yesterday. He's really got limited options here in good old F...argo. (Oooohhh, another nip of crabbiness!) At this point, I'm really struggling at not blaming God for not helping the situation. My poor husband has been in this job he deplores for a year and a half. His back hurts every single day from the combination of driving endless hours and wearing a 25 pound tool belt around his waist. He gets no vacation hours, so when we take off for the holidays we just forfeit money. He gets no reimbursement for the $500+ we spend in gas every month so he can do his job. In July it was $800. October of 2005 was $1,100. Now they're telling him that the company is making the techs work Sundays. He said flatly, "No." He already works every single Saturday. I feel so bad for him. I wish I made a load of money so he could just quit. If I sound like I'm complaining, well, I am. It really sucks. I really need to stop here or I'm going to start my own pity party right in the middle of my blog. And no one likes to go to a pity party. And, I guess I really shouldn't blame God, because maybe he is helping the situation, and if he weren't, we'd be living under a bridge. Who knows?

Crabby, crabby, crabby.

I better go before I write something I regret!