Oh, kids. We're so close to the end of 2023. It's been a hard year in many ways and a great year in others. I definitely learned one hell of a lot, though. As always, I'm going to try and write more in the future. It's been tough lately adjusting to my hyperthyroid meds. They make me crazy tired and stooopid a lot. All I want to do is watch the dumbest TV, and I've had a low grade migraine pretty much every day until a couple of weeks ago. I'm hoping it means that my body is starting to adjust to them better. Everything I've read says it takes a few months to adjust and then some of the worst side effects should ease up. Sadly, I think the weight gain part of it might be here to stay, but it's not like I'll be losing all of my super model contracts because of it, it just makes running more of a challenge. There are worse things...
Oh yeah, I was going to write about my holiday. First I want to say that I do love a lot of parts of Christmas traditions. As a single mom, it used to be a lot harder when my kids were young, but now I just do the parts I like, and say screw it to anything that doesn't interest me ,or takes too much work. Mostly, I love to hang all of the photos and Christmas cards on our refrigerator, I love having Christmas lights all over, and a real tree. I LOVE the smell. John does tend to roll his eyes a little about my holiday preparations, but I just like to think that eye rolling and scowling are John's love languages, and I keep on doing what I want to do.
This year the holiday started with a bang. The weather went and got all blustery and snowy and ridiculously cold. We weren't going anywhere, so it wasn't the biggest deal to us, but our car battery died on Christmas Eve, which was kind of annoying. Luckily, we have a good friend and teammate who was nice enough to come over and help out. We have a Honda Fit, which they don't make anymore, and their batteries are pretty small. We found a few auto parts stores that were open on Christmas Eve. One didn't have a battery, one said he was the only person there and it might take all day for him to get to our car, and one said they had the battery, but that it was too cold for them to install it. John and his friend drove out there, got the battery, and after watching a Youtube video, John was able to install the battery himself in the below zero temperatures. My hero!
One of my new favorite Christmas day traditions is taking a bath and drinking some hot tea. I make the water as hot as I can stand and I add too much stinky bubble bath, and I soak. It is my own special gift to myself, and I guarantee you I will never get tired of it.
The kids and their partners came over at about 11 and we opened gifts. A few years ago, we thought we might do away with the gift giving, and just give the kids what my brother likes to call, "the gift that keeps on giving", cash. But both the girls said they like to actually exchange gifts, and I'm fine with that. So, we each buy a few simple gifts. I always say if it ever devolves into us just exchanging gift cards we'll end the practice, but for now it is kind of nice. I always think I'm easy to buy for because I will take fun tea accoutrements, and books, and I like an actual, physical calendar that I can write on, preferably filled with pictures of adorable baby animals. I just can't shake my 1970's junior high girls sensibilities. Nor do I want to.
Besides my morning tub soak, my favorite Christmas tradition is going out for sushi for lunch. The history behind this comes from when the girls were younger. Their dad's birthday is on Christmas day, and so it used to be that I would have the girls on Christmas Eve, and their dad would pick them up on Christmas morning after they opened their gifts. One year their dad decided that he wanted to go to a party instead, and didn't want to take the girls on Christmas day after all. Of course, I didn't have much food in my house because I didn't think I had to worry about feeding the girls, and so I drove around trying to find a place that was open where we could eat dinner that wasn't Walgreens, when we came across a Chinese restaurant. For years after that, we always got Chinese take-out for Christmas dinner...Until we realized our favorite sushi place was also open on Christmas, and we quickly switched. Now we are pretty much the first people in the restaurant when they open on Christmas. Which I'm sure is annoying to them, until they realize how much we tip. I have worked on Christmas day before, and it sucks, so I am all about compensating people for it.
After lunch, the kids went to spend time with their dad. I started getting a bit of a migraine, so I did some hard resting before I started making dinner. The last few years, the kids have asked that I make pasta for Christmas dinner. In particular, cheese tortellini covered in a creamy pesto sauce, and then I saute' veggies in oil and tamari and ground pepper, and I saute' chicken in garlic butter and white wine sauce, I cook linguine and finally, I make their favorite, Alfredo sauce from scratch. It's all pretty easy to make, and John works as my prep cook and cleans up after me.
A lot of years we'll play Cards Against Humanity after dinner, but this year it was snowing, and the kids wanted to get home before the drive became too treacherous, so they finished watching the first Harry Potter movie and headed home.
Archie wasn't too upset about it. After all of the dogs and people, and since he didn't get to have any of the chicken I made, he just wanted a little alone time in his safe space. Poor guy.
Because Christmas was on a Sunday, John got Monday off at his job, and I get Monday and today off at mine.
I have really been slacking off of working out. After my doctor told me I could run again in November, I tried hard to start back up slowly. I just did a slow two miles every other day. I thought that would be good. I even graduated up to a 3.5 mile route...And then the shin splints hit. I used to get them every year at the beginning of track season. Back then my coaches just told me to keep running, and they'd go away eventually. I guess, now doctors know that they could develop into a stress fracture, so I stopped running the last couple of weeks. Of course, I didn't do anything else either, except eat too much. So, when I saw it was going to get all the way up to 14 degrees outside. I asked John if he'd go to Hickory Hill and do a snow hike with me.
Lucky for me, he was all for it. So, we walked a little over 3 miles in the woods and talked, and I made a snow angel, because I'm always 10 years old.
It was just what I needed, and a perfect end to our long holiday weekend.
I hope you all had a lovely long weekend, and were able to spend it exactly how you wanted, and I wish you all a wonderful week ahead.
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