Sunday, December 27, 2009

Latino Christmas

Christmas has just been lovely.

Christmas Eve was done more in the Latin Tradition. We had a wonderful dinner party for friends that lasted until past midnight where we drank wine and chatted and ate lots of delicious food. Well actually, I ate collard greens, which were not delicious; but everyone else had pork loin cooked in cherry sauce and turkey and cheese and other lovely things that I would have enjoyed greatly in my previous life!

Luis of course wanted to open the presents at 12:01am, which to me is ridiculous. You don't open your presents at 12:01! It totally leaves out Santa! I said maybe you could open up one present that consisted of a set of pajamas the night before, but you couldn't open up everything! You had to go to bed, and Santa had to come, and presents were for the morning!

It's a really hard concept for these crazy Latin people, who don't have Santa. I don't really understand what they have, because they do have presents on Christmas day, but they say that Baby Jesus brings them, which is retarded. How can a baby bring presents? A big fat guy coming down the chimney makes more sense than a three hour old infant, aren't I right?

Luis and I are going to have to really get our stories straight with our unborn children so they aren't traumatized by conflicting Christmas myths.

Anyways, we opened presents, I drank organic chocolate with soy milk, and we enjoyed the snow that had fallen the night before. We slept in, took a nap, and went to bed early. It was lovely and relaxing.

I did get a sexy set of flannel Christmas pajamas from Luis.

Friday, December 18, 2009

it's off to work I go, well, I am trying anyway

I'm frustrated.

Luis and I decided that in January I would get a part-time. I am taking a course or two at the community college, and the part time would give me some supplemental income and make our house payments easier until the end of April, when I don't have any more doctors appointments.

However, it is much harder than I thought to find a part time job because I have several limiting criteria.

- It can't meet every day. In fact, I can only work 4 days a week because one day I have to dedicate one day to chemo.

- I need at least an hour available during business hours (not during lunch) because I need to get to and from my radiation treatments, which are starting the 18th of January, and will run every day until March.

- I need to not be in a receptionist position or in front of people because my fucking nose starts streaming blood randomly, which slightly freaks people (especially kids) out.

- I need to be in a position where crying all the time isn't a problem.

Which makes it harder than you would think to find something. The obvious answer is, work from home, which would be great. Except that most of the postings are scams, and I have tried to weed through them to find legitimate work from home experiences, and I have turned up zilch.

Considering phone sex, but I heard that unless you can keep the other caller on the line for over two minutes, you really don't get paid very well, and these callers are extremely adept at finishing up before the heavy charges start after two minutes.

Any other ideas?

Saturday, December 5, 2009

family weekend!

I have been to every Lowe's, Sears, Home Depot, everywhere, and I have given up on finding an affordable faux Christmas tree before Christmas. It needs to be faux because I kill plants and my cats eat anything green that is alive. I want a big ass fake tree. because our living room has huge vaulted ceilings, but they are $700! I mean, if you use it for 10 years, considering you will spend $80-$100 each year on a live tree that you will throw away, it not only makes sense for sustainability but also financially, but it is a big blow to the credit card account regardless.

However, I plan on braving the crowds on the 26th and will purchase one on clearance. I love Boxing Day sales! I prefer them to black Friday because there is less people and items are usually more steeply discounted because the store really needs to move inventory.

Chemo has totally destroyed my taste buds, and nothing tastes good anymore. It doesn't taste bad, mind you, but that joy that you get from eating something really delicious isn't really something I can get anymore. I can get satisfaction from hunger, but eating a delicious lasagna is about the same as eating a saltine cracker. It is just food.

I wonder if that is something that can help people trying to diet or not eat so much. Some sort of pill that takes all the chemical rush you get from eating a juicy hamburger and Micky D's fries. So you eat if you are hungry, but that pleasure center in your brain is not stimulated.

My Uncle had his 50th birthday bash last night, and we went to his house today for brunch. Here is a photo of me holding my little cousin Finnley, (she has a twin brother).

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Happy Holidays!

November has just been a crazy month for me, and it has been so difficult to just get on the computer and collect my thoughts. This has to be one of the best months of my year, however. After Japan, I had friends visit me for the first time (besides Lexie to help me out post-surgery) and we had such a wonderful time. My brother-in-law (it still weirds me out to think I have in-laws!) also visited and we had a great time sitting around cooking and eating and talking. Chase and Amanda used to work with me/for me at Meltwater in Washington DC, so we had plenty to catch up on as I really hadn't seen them since I was married.

After Japan in the beginning of the month, we had a huge family trip to Santa Barbara to wine country and that was PHENOMENAL. The first four days was just wine and food with family, and then Friday night and Saturday morning all my wonderful friends drove hours in to see me and hang out. I got to meet their significant others, who were beautiful smart and good looking people that were so much fun to be with.



I got horribly drunk (I can't even remember the last time I was that drunk), but other than a bottle of spilled wine, and a very foggy game of Never Have I Ever, which is never a good game to play with spouses or significant others around because they get all pissed off (never gotten through that game with a boyfriend around without a serious talk the day after), I think I made it through unscathed. A Much better idea would have been Fu** Date Kill, which is a fabulous game that usually doesn't piss people off (since the participants cannot be named during the game).

I learned a new party game called Celebrity, from my friend Joaquin, which was wonderful! You need to be sober, as I tried to get everyone to guess William Shatner by strumming on a guitar. I know what you are thinking, WTF? There is a twisted logic, as the first thing that flew into my head was his perforamnce of Rocket Man in the 1970s. So that is what I went with. I checked on YouTube however, and he didn't even play the guitar when he sang (prosed?) it. Needless to say, no one got it, and I moved on.

So goal in the next three days is to Christmatize (new word) my house. Very exited to pull all the Martha Stewart magazines out, play Christmas music, drink hot tea, and bring the season to my little shack.