Luna Tail|Lunacy, Crabiness, Life

Had another good Christmas this year. I’m thankful both my parents are still alive and healthy. I worry that they won’t be around someday and then Christmas will be sad. But for now it’s still happy and we have a really good time. Our family is small, it’s just me and my husband, my sister and her son, and my Mom and Dad. But my Mom always makes a delicious dinner and we have rice pudding and the one who finds the almond wins a prize… and then we do gifts and sit around the Christmas tree.

I don’t really believe in any particular religion, though I think anything is possible, so I don’t really celebrate Christmas because of the religious aspect that most Christians do (but not all?). I celebrate a good happy time to spend with family and enjoy the season. Love each other and be together and chat.

The gift thing isn’t my favorite. It’s work to go out and buy things, and then I never know what to get. And stopping at the cigar store isn’t as fun as it used to be. The gift thing is the least fun part… well, opening them and laughing while doing so is fun. Maybe I need to focus on that part more than dwelling on the worry of the actual shopping. Maybe I’ll have to remember that for next year.

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas.

I’m so glad that Daylight Savings Time is over. I really don’t like it. I prefer the natural time. And I really, really really badly hate the spring forward. I have a hard enough time getting up in the morning anyway. Having to get up an our earlier is just murder on me.

When I was a kid I spent a lot of time up at night with my Dad looking at the starts. I have wonderful memories of that. It was a great time and I love the stars, and the dark. They are my friends. And so even to this day I feel comfortable at night. Relaxed and safe and cozy. I had great times with the Astronomy club and with my Dad and I look back at those memories very fondly. And since I get up so early for work, now, I don’t stay up late in the summer anymore. So the only time I get to enjoy the dark is in the winter when the days are short and the nights are oh-so-nicely long!

So now I go to bed early, except when I go on vacations but heck, even then I go to bed early, even at a disney resort if I ever go to one of those again!   But I so love the long dark nights. Great memories, great feelings, peace and coziness and security.  That is what the long dark nights mean to me.

My husband is off on a trip this weekend. I can’t say to where, but I hope he’ll be okay. The weather is always iffy this time of year, and so I’ll worry. I gave him my cell phone so he can call me if he needs to, and he can check in every few hours.  He is a very safe driver and so I’m sure he’ll be safe, and he’s in the Outback which is a good safe car.

Of course I worry about him rolling… only because I’ve been in two rollovers in my life, both in the winter in the snow.  But the weather is supposed to be clear this weekend and hopefully he’ll be home by Monday. Monday is a holiday so I get to be home too, and have a nice day off!

I’m relaxing today.  As are the dogs.  It’s quiet in the house again which is really nice, all the foster dogs are gone. They are fun to have for a while, but they are even more fun to have gone.    I wish dog rescue wasn’t necessary. If it wasn’t, we wouldn’t have the six dogs we do. And we do love them all, for sure.

Christmas Eve

I will be the first to admit about myself… I don’t really believe in the Christian God. And so celebrating Christmas, per se, isn’t really what I’m doing this time of year. But I love Christmas time, and I’ve been thinking, lately, what it is I actually am celebrating anymore.

I consider myself agnostic, which basically means I don’t think a god can be proven or disproven. And I know I know, God and proof are mutually exclusive, right? Faith and God are what go together. However, when I think of proof, I don’t really mean physical proof.. I just mean proof that I, personally, can believe.

Me and Hubby

So anyway, what do I celebrate? I celebrate my family and the wonderful life I have. I love spending the day with my family, having dinner, opening gifts… and the gift part isn’t really even that big of a deal. It’s just a fun thing we do and if there were no gifts, and no food, if there was only just our family, then that would still be a wonderful day.

Me and My Family

What do you celebrate? Do you celebrate Christmas, the winter solstice, or anything at all this time of year?  I like having a bit celebration at this time of year because it’s cold out, and it can be dreary, so having a big day to celebrate is nice and fun. After the new year, we head into the really dreary part of the winter… January and February are the worst! Cold and not much to look forward to except the spring. And here in Utah spring doesn’t usually come until well into May!

So I’ll just enjoy the long dark nights, which I love. My sister got me some way cool candles, I put them on my bookshelves, and they are flameless! I love them! They look great and are no danger to the dogs and cats. And I had to dust and vacuum too because the house was a mess and the candles didn’t look good with all the icky dust. LOL.

Today, Christmas day, our family doesn’t do much… we celebrate Christmas Eve.  My parents are european and so that is our big day.  We had a great dinner and rice pudding and hot spiced wine and egg nog.  I kinda wish we didn’t need Christmas to celebrate! Maybe we should have another holiday, sometime the beginning of Februray, or middle of February, to break the dreariness of winter.

Festivus anyone?  LOL

Even though spelling the word genealogy is most difficult… lol. I still have this need to know more of mine. A while ago, a year or more, I had a software package set up on my website that allowed me and everyone else I knew, and was related to, to log in and input their information.

Unfortunately my relatives are not too crazy about the web so it didn’t go very far. And I’m reassessing the idea of having it on my own server. Sure it’s nice to own the data, but at the same time it’s kinda a pain to maintain it and back it up.

So are there sites out there that are free where I can create an account and enter genealogy? That my family and other relatives can log into too? What about language support… it’d have to be in German and Slovakian and various other languages too. Hrm.. I’m going to have to look some things up. Of course I’ll need the best diet pills before I meet some of my relatives, so I lose some weight!

I was just having a miserable weekend last weekend… but at the same time, I was very happy to be spending time with some of my friends. And I was wondering if it’s cheesy or tacky to tell friends, and family, how much they really mean to me.

I didn’t have friends when I was in my early twenties… not good friends which were people I was loyal to and admired them for who they were. When I was a kid I went with whoever would take me. And that way I ended up with some awful kids. In High School I had some good friends but we have drifted apart for the most part.

I have amazing friends now, though. Sometimes I want to write them a short note telling them how wonderful I think they are and how much I appreciate them. Do you do that? Is it awkward, or a good idea?

Well, apparently I’m a failure when it comes to losing weight on my own. BLEH. I mean heck… I do know how to eat, don’t I? I guess not. I lost 20 pounds doing Eat To Live a couple (maybe 3) years ago now. But lately it has been coming back on. I got down to 147 at one point. Yesterday I weighed myself and I was 162. Man! What happened! If I don’t do something soon, I’ll be back up to 170 where I was before I did the Eat to Live stuff.

So I took my sister’s gumption and joined Weight Watchers again. I have got to drop this weight, it’s really starting to piss me off and my clothes are getting tighter again. Noooo!!! I also need to join back up to Leigh’s Take It Off Together Tuesday, I think.

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So today is the first day of Weight Watchers, and the weight will drop. I have this anxiety about recording my food intake. I get nervous about it and I don’t do it. Well, I just have to suck it up and do it anyway. And so here goes! My cruise is on October 25, I hope to get down to about 155 or so by then. Wish me luck!

Most of the time after a wedding, the woman needs maternity clothes, but not me! My husband and I got married at the dog park in March of 2003. That makes it just about five years this year. And I will say, I am happily married. We do our own things, we do things together sometimes, and I think it’s a good balance for us. Though for many people it’s probably not enough togetherness. But it’s good for us.

My husband still isn’t working, but he is looking. We both have the anxiety thing going on and so we understand each other in that area. And even though he hasn’t worked for a few months, I am being patient and believing in him.

As for the title of this post, things I will NOT do are berate him, or criticize him, or belittle him… or nag at him or hassle him for not working yet. I don’t want to live in misery like that, and I want him to feel better about himself. I will admit, too, that I’m proud of myself for this, because in the past I would have freaked out (actually, I did years ago) but no longer. I finally have reached the point with someone that I am in the frame of mind that we are in it for the long haul. I don’t have an escape mentality anymore. And I tell ya, I really like it!

I’m kinda embarrassed about last nights dream… was it racist? I don’t think so… but it was kinda odd. I don’t remember every dreaming of a person’s skin color before, but last night I did.

Not coming from a Branson condo… but maybe staying in one, I had a sister who was an African American. And she was adopted… and lived with us white folks. And she fit in well, but for some reason society convinced her that people with black skin were just not trustworthy, even though that is what she had.

So then I met another African American at school… I think it was at school, and befriended her. But my sister, having been programmed against her own skin color, didn’t like my new friend! But I liked them both and wanted them to get along.

It was weird… personally I think all people are created equal despite skin color.

Last night I dreamed that I was with Earl from My Name is Earl. He was a nice guy, though, not a redneck or trailer trash. I was married to him with a couple of kids. But our life was pretty rotten. So maybe we were trailer trash, but we had an apartment even though it was pretty poor and his job was bad.

We ended up time traveling into the past and I don’t remember too much about that now, but I do remember that we went to warn ourselves that we had a rotten life, and to be aware and change it.. but as we warned our past selves, we realized that the fact of warning ourselves is what made our future dismal in the first place.

So we had to go and stop ourselves from warning ourselves… and we managed to do that, and before our eyes our lives transformed and we were successful, the kids had their own rooms and were comfortable, we had nice things and we were happy.