What A Joyous Time of Year…
Last night Judy watched the kids and we spent 2 grueling hours in a packed Wal*Mart doing the bulk of our Xmas shopping. This year I/we decided fuck it, if you’re a grown up who can buy your own crap, I’m not even gonna bother hazarding a guess as to what you DON’T already have, so (and hopefully none of them are reading this, but I guess it doesn’t matter much if they are) all grown ups in our lives are getting pictures of the kids and gift certificates. Blake got almost all of the gift certificates yesterday on his lunch and only has one more to get today and then we are DONE.
Today Madison and I are going to clean the bathroom, then tomorrow after work Blake is going to vacuum and then my house will be presentable enough for when my mom, her boyfriend John and his son Chris come over to have Xmas with us on Boxing Day. I didn’t get John or Chris anything for Xmas because my mom basically told me not to, which was a great relief because we’re in the poorhouse as it is and my poor Visa is dangerously close to its limit. We decided not to defer our mortgage payment this month, but instead do all of our Xmas shopping on Visa and pay it off when Blake gets his bonus in March. If anything comes up between now & then, like say the car blows up, then we can defer a mortgage payment if need be and have it taken care of. Now that we’re done our Xmas shopping, the only “big ticket item” we have to worry about is getting all of the animals their shots in January and then getting their township tags.
After we got home from Wal*Mart, Blake made a great steak dinner that I couldn’t eat because right now I’m pretty fucking sick and the only thing keeping me sane is Advil Cold & Sinus. I thought it was just a cold when it hit me on Friday but I’ve had a fever off & on all weekend and yesterday, my whole body aches etc. so I’m putting it more in the flu category. I am SO SCARED to get any of these friggin’ kids sick (ours + Courtney) that I reek of hand sanitizer and there have been no bedtime hugs. I just do not want to deal with 3 sick kids during the 2 & a half week holiday break, especially not if I’m sick myself. I feel really bad that I felt too bad to eat the dinner Blake made us last night. :o/
We (well he) ate while we watched the Leafs vs Sabres game I started recording while we were at Wal*Mart and when food was done, I got started on wrapping presents. We got Madison this cute makeup bag that’s turquoise patent leather and her first set of makeup. I went way way way overboard in hooking her up with a good variety of stuff (like 6 bottles of nail polish, 3 compacts of eyeshadow…) and I wrapped each thing individually and put it in the bag, with cotton balls on top, zipped it up, then put the bag in a box and then we wrapped the box up. Annoyingly, Blake left a bag on my chair this morning with my hoodie over it which contained makeup removing facewash and mascara that should have gone in the bag with everything else, but I thought all of the cosmetic type stuff was in the bag I was wrapping from…soooooo I wrapped up the mascara & taped it to the box and the facewash I’ll just put in her stocking or something.
And that’s all I got wrapped last night because rapping all of those teeny tiny things took me the entire hockey game and when it was done I was exhausted so I just went to bed. What kills me about wrapping presents is how bad I suck at it. I make all these cute little girls with cute little paper dresses and I’m a whiz with scissors etc. but when I wrap presents, it looks like it was done by Wes. In fact Wes probably does a better job than I do. That’s why every year I usually get Blake to do all the wrapping but this year there won’t be enough time for that so I have to pitch in. While we were at Wal*Mart I bought gift boxes so at least some stuff I won’t have to wrap.
The next thing on my blogging agenda is that my cat is fucking retarded. Every single year for Xmas I buy her a treat or a toy and every single year she wants no part of it. Last year it was a laser pointer, she wanted nothing to do with it. The year before that a mouse or something, I can’t remember but she didn’t want anything to do with it. The year before that I bought her like, 5 different kinds of cat treats but she wouldn’t eat any of them. She just likes her cat food and that’s it. A few weeks ago someone on Facebook linked a YouTube video of all these cats getting stoned on catnip in a garden and I thought HEY WE SHOULD TRY THAT because I’ve never seen a cat actually high on catnip before. So last night, I bought some and it came with a little heart-shaped toy to put the dry catnip in. So I filled it up and got the cat and got her to sniff it and…she wanted no part of it. The toy then split apart and I spilled dry catnip all over my office floor so I picked a bit up and got her to sniff it and no dice. I thought maybe, just maybe, after we went to sleep she’d start getting all stoned on the pile which I left on my office floor for her but when I woke up this morning, it was undisturbed. So I give up. The cat no longer gets anything for Xmas and I guess Alex’s cats have a new toy and a big bag of catnip. Someone remind me next year that my cat sucks and not to get her anything because I know I’ll forget (or maybe it’s denial).
Blake & I weren’t going to get each other anything for Xmas this year due to money, but when we were at Wal*Mart I picked myself up some makeup because I’m running low on the essentials and this was an excuse to replenish my stock. We also happened to be going down the aisle with all the sports stuff and Blake pointed out Leafs jerseys….that were PINK & WHITE. Obviously not regulation, being pink & white, but NHL sanctioned and so Blake got me one for Xmas and I got him a Leafs home jersey (not regulation either). One day I will have a regulation Leafs home jersey to go along with my Leafs 3rd jersey but since they’re over $100, we’ll make due with Wal*Mart jerseys for now.
The rest of the stuff we got was mostly odds & ends, like I was out of incense so I picked up a bunch of that and I wanted to get a plastic “boot mat” for under the dogs’ bowls because they make such a mess and there’s constantly dog food all over my kitchen. (Lucky eats laying down and if Hoover’s eating too, Lucky will pick up his bowl and eat in the living room.) I also wanted to get Madison some yarn because I know she’s getting crochet hooks for Xmas and books about how to crochet, so we picked up a bunch of that too. She also needed pajamas and bras so those went in the cart as well.
We didn’t really get anything for Wes at Wal*Mart because Blake had gotten him stuff at Toys ‘R’ Us yesterday afternoon (Lego, some plastic dragons, I forget what else), but we did pick him up Lego Batman for his DS and Blake had already gotten him a few pairs of pajamas and some clothes so he’s good.
We got my 4 year old sister Raili some Barbies and my 10 month old sister Rachael a set of Little People. We got Courtney next door a DS game of Deal or No Deal. What else? I don’t even remember and you probably don’t care anyway. Long story short, after Blake picks up a couple of things on his lunch today, we are done our Xmas shopping completely. I plan on spending all afternoon today and tomorrow wrapping things and getting the house clean and after that we should be good to go.
Blake called my dad on Sunday and asked him to clean up the garage for the dogs, which he said he’d do and that takes a lot off my mind. What do the dogs get for Xmas? Well my dad hunts and I’m not sure what he hunted for this year, but usually it’s deer and moose and occasionally bear but whatever he hunted for in the fall, he gets the butcher to save him some of the bigger bones for his dogs and mine to have at Xmas.
I also have children’s Gravol to give the dogs before we leave so they don’t puke in the car on the way up. (And yes we called the vet and yes you can give dogs half of a children’s Gravol if they’re the size of mine.)
So I guess that’s it, we’re on track for Xmas. I had more to say but I think I’ll just end things here and start wrapping presents.


