Happy December 28th...

Such a sad day, really. It's Monday, so Mate's getting back to work, and I've completely forgotten what it's like to have a day off where he doesn't figure.

Last week, we took the big kids shopping at the mall (hateful place--not as hateful as the mall where a partially finished hat W/some lovely Hiya-Hiya circular needles fell out of my bag, but still. It's the mall.) Anyway, the idea being that we would give them money and they would go buy the little kids gifts, and then they would take a little kid a piece (after they got their santa pictures) and go shopping for the other big kid. The thing that happened that was pretty awesome was that they took the first bit of money we gave them and then... spent their own. All of their birthday money and left over allowance money and "I didn't buy lunch when I had the cash" money--and instead of a modest gift, they went about spoiling each other rotten. And they bought ME a gift, which was not on the agenda at all, and since I had two gifts to open Christmas (three total) and I'm a little kid at heart and like surprises, this really moved me. It was very very sweet, and one of the reasons I wished I could just dump loads and loads of stuff in the living room for them every year.

(Funny bit about the mall? EVERYBODY was there--I mean, everybodies that we knew! Big T's best friend, kids from Chicken's soccer team, our next door neighbor and my local Yarn Store owner were ALL AT THE MALL ON THAT DAY. I think Citrus Heights is a small place, that's what I think!)

Although we did get a financial reprieve of sorts-- our bank account was down to fumes (and wasn't everybody's?) and on Christmas Eve, the mail arrived and, lo and behold, iUniverse did me a solid and actually GAVE me my e-book/Kindle royalties for the last year. The check was surprisingly big-- big enough for me to run around the house hooting and pumping my arms and screaming MERRY FREAKING CHRISTMAS TO ME!!! big. Alas, I still maintained my virtue--Mate asked if I wanted him to buy me an iPod with it and I said, "No--remember, we have to service the cars and buy groceries and maybe not go overdraft this month." Sigh. Well, Mick said it best. Sometimes, you just might find you get what you need.

(I DID have an e-book falling off of the virtue path yesterday. As someone said, sometimes it's best to just eat the ice cream and not eat the watermelon, the peas, the three cookies, half a bag of chocolate and THEN give in and have the ice cream. This was me, eating the ice cream, and now I can look my Dreamspinner colleagues in the eyes and say, YES, I have read more than one or two of their books.)

And the last few days have been, mostly, dealing with the rubble. We did go to see Mate's mom & grandma on the 26th--that was nice--but yesterday was spent hanging out in the rubble, and that was good too. Today, I go grocery shopping and make the big kids clean up the rubble. Not as glamorous as Christmas, but, considering how much I don't like rubble? Not such a bad day either.