Post-Christmas

The end of the week has been a blur, mostly due to a complete inability on my part to separate the activities of the home with that of the office. In short, my brain is worn to a frazzle.

Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday were an exercise in frustration. Trying to finish up the shopping and, at the same time, reviewing documents and emails and graphs and charts for the eager-beaver employees who won't be able to enjoy the holiday due to the fact that they were not really employees anymore but contractors (the haven of security for all those engineers who got laid off back in July) and so don't get any paid holidays; being pounded by bad weather and wondering whether it would even be possible to make the trip down to Aunt Susan's; driving around on the ice and snow and trying to avoid serious accidents.

Thursday and Friday were a wonderful diversion from the cares and worries that had been filling my mind. The roads were relatively clean for our trip. We had an excellent book-on-CD which make the miles pass quickly. Aunt Susan and Uncle Bob were, as always, hospitable and full of conversation. There was plenty of good food and lots of cousins to play with. We had a nice gift exchange, then sat around chatting and swapping stories, even got in a game of Scattergories. Intending to spend the night this time, we didn't have to worry about getting out on the road late at night on icy roads. We slept in Friday morning.

The roads were quite icy Friday, but we weren't in a hurry to leave so spent them morning relaxing, enjoying more food and excellent company. Cousin Cindy brought her girls over so our girls had a chance to play with them again; I helped Uncle Bob with a couple things at the office and in the shed. We finally left around four.

Got home in time to get cleaned up again, then headed out for Cheryl's birthday dinner. Afterward, we went back home to watch her open presents. Then, as we were all quite exhausted by this time, we went to bed.

Today - Saturday - was not as productive as I might've hoped, but the rain was falling rhythmically against the roof all night and that always makes us feel extra drowsy, so we slept in a long time. Then we took it easy all morning. Didn't actually "do" anything until afternoon, and that was not much more than going to the library to swap books, then going to the store to get some milk. Pretty boring.

But I like boring.

The girls were alternating between riding their scooters downstairs in the basement and playing Barbies up in their room; Adam was playing on his DS and plotting more Heroscape strategy; James was playing on his PSP (which he bought with his own money). I worked on the basement a bit, putting up a couple 4x8 walls. Cheryl caught up on her reading and research.

After dinner tonight we played a family game of "Saboteur", a fun little card game which was introduced to us by our game-obsessed friends at a Christmas part last weekend.

Looks like it will be an early bedtime tonight...