All Rolled Into One

It’s been a while, hasn’t it?  I’ve been sick and we’ve been traveling, so I haven’t really had the time or inclination to write.  I’ll catch up now.

For Christmas, we drove down to my sister’s place in Indiana.  They’ve moved again and their new house is SUPER cute.  I love it.  Anyway, mom and dad also went to Indy.  We stayed in a hotel, but spent the days at Melanie’s.  On Christmas eve, we headed out to look at Christmas lights and to go to this one house that had over 80 decorated Christmas trees inside it.  It was awesome, but it was hot as hell inside that little house.  Anyhow, after that we went back to Melanie’s to open presents.  It was a nice Christmas. 🙂  The kids really seemed to like everything that they got and so did the adults.  Duckie got me a very pretty white gold ring with three sapphires in it.  I got him a board game that he wanted (split it with his brother b/c it was EXPENSIVE!) and a french press.  He unwrapped the french press on Christmas eve.  His brother and I let him have the board game when we bought it over Thanksgiving.  We also got a new George Foreman from my sister.  We used to have a really small one, but you could only make like 1 burger at a time on it and we’d lost the cleany thing, so it was really annoying.  This new one is "family" size.  As long as I can make more than 1 burger at a time, I’m happy!  We haven’t had a chance to use it yet, but I’m hoping to get it out of the box tomorrow.  We have some turkey burgers in the freezer that I might try to convince Duckie to make.  I also got an electric skillet from my mom.  I mentioned the thing to my sister as a possible present some time ago and she must have told my mom.  It was a nice surprise.  My dad got me the waterpik that I asked for (I hate flossing!).  Duckie and I got an amazon gift card from my brother who couldn’t make it to Indy.

On Christmas day, Melanie’s mother-in-law brought breakfast over to Melanie’s, so we had some french toast casserole thing and an egg and sausage casserole thing.  They did their presenty opening thing with the in-laws and the kids which, by the way, I wish they’d done before we came over from the hotel.  It’s just weird and awkward to sit around watching everyone else open gifts.  There was some chilling out and Dr. Who watching done and then we ate Christmas dinner.  There was more Dr. Who watching and then we watched 1.5 movies.  By that time, I was tired as all get out, so we went back to the hotel.  Have I mentioned yet that at some point Melanie had her sick son kiss everyone?  I think she’s trying to start a plague.

Anyway, the following day, we headed back to good old Wisconsin…and I tried to die.  It wasn’t a horrible ride back, but I was already starting to get sick the night before, so I had a pretty good sore throat and cough going on by the time we left in the morning.  When we got to town, we headed straight to training for the dog.  We left Indiana at 11ish and finally got to our apartment at 8.  Keep in mind that we went back an hour when we crossed back into our time zone.

So, I went to work on Tuesday….for an hour.  I called out on Wednesday and went in Thursday.  I was in for 1.5 hours on Friday.  We left Wisconsin for Minnesota around 12.  It was a miserable car ride because I was -still- sick!  We met Jared’s girlfriend who was visiting (she’s from Michigan) and everyone kind of chatted and whatnot.  I slept like shit.  I woke up every few hours trying to hack up my lungs and feeling like someone had sucked every last drop of moisture out of my mouth, rubbed it raw with sandpaper and then tried to suck out even more moisture.  We opened presents the next day.  But first….

I was in the bathroom doing my hair or makeup or some such thing and Duckie came in and shut the door.  "I got paid today."  "Well, that’s good."  "Want to get a Nook tablet?"  "Umm..yeah."  So, we went to Barnes and Noble and he bought me a Nook tablet!  Obviously, it’s for both of us, but Duckie says it’s mine because he likes to think that he spoils me. 🙂  I’m super glad b/c I’ve been playing with the Nooks every time we go to B&N ever since I got my hands on my mom’s last July.  And now, on to the presents!

I got a study bible (yes, I specifically asked for it) and a really nice cover (it looks like a cute purse and can double as a bag for my netbook).  I also got three Dickens Village houses, a yarn winder and a book that I asked for.  Duckie got three shirts (guess he should have sent that Christmas list like I kept telling him to!) and some stuff that I don’t remember.  Hehe.  We got his brother some bonsai pots back in November, but we let him have them right away.  For his dad, we bought a 120 piece drill bit set.  For Jared’s giiiirlfriend, we got a hand lotion gift set and some chocolate.  We didn’t know she would be there until the day before we left and we knew NOTHING about her, so we went pretty generic.  We didn’t want her to have to sit around and watch everyone else open presents, though.

Anyhow, I went to bed at like 9:15 that night.  Woke up at 11:57 with desert mouth.  Kissed Duckie (who was still up playing Angry Birds on the Nook) at midnight and then fell right back asleep.  I was feeling marginally better on New Year’s day and the four of us went to the movies to see the new Sherlock Holmes.  LOVED IT!

And today we drove home.  My throat was raw the entire way and I coughed so hard that I almost threw up several times, but it was a pretty quick 5 hour drive.  Of course, it’s Monday, so we had to go straight to training before we could even go home.  Sprocket has his CGC test next Monday, so we really need to work on "stay" with him.  He does just fine on everything else.  He just gets distracted easily when he’s supposed to be staying.  It’s kind of annoying b/c there are things that we have to do for the test that we never learned or even went over in class.  Oh well.  Whatever.  I hope he passes.  I’d hate for my dog to be a failure.

And….. now I’m home.  My throat is still sore and I’m still trying to get those pesky lungs of mine to come out of my chest and exit my body through my mouth, but I’m definitely going to work tomorrow.  I more or less destroyed my vacation time last week because I was sick, so I’m going to have to be super careful about the rest of it.  I need it for appointments and such!

And that was my long and probably boring entry about my  Christmas and New Year.