Let's get this party started

So I’m already feeling quite unmotivated at work this week, and I’m not even past lunchtime on Monday yet. I think it’s a variety of things, but mostly having to do with the holidays. It’s this sort of restless feeling I get every year around this time, a mix of excitement for a break from the mundane and a little worrying about the fact that time passes much too quickly as you get older. I know, I’m only 26 years old, but I’m already starting to feel like the years are blurring together. Vacations that feel like they were just this past summer actually happened two and a half years ago. Dan and I argue about what we did last Christmas because our holidays together are now part of the routine, not all sparkly and new like they were the year we got engaged, or the first year we were married. Weird how that stuff happens isn’t it? It’s not necessarily a bad thing, I even find some comfort in the safe stability of it all, it’s just that it sort of snuck up on me.

As a whole, I’m really looking forward to it this year. I can’t wait to have my brother home, I really truly miss him on those nights we are sitting around the dinner table at my parents’ house. There’s a noticeable void. And as fantastic as it is that he is in Chicago, doing his own thing, making a life for himself, it’s strange to know that we will probably never have the whole family living in the same city again. Except for the holidays. Therefore we all cherish that time that he is back home with us. There really is just something about having the three of us siblings all together, bickering and laughing, sitting around the dining room table. It’s usually inexcusably loud, irreverent, and sometimes we even say really horrible things to our poor mother (and sometimes she deserves it.) I just can’t wait.

Thus, my lack of motivation here at work. One more week of this, and then its family and friends visiting from out of town, heavy carb-laden food from casserole pans, crazy children running frantically through the house with sugar and present-induced hysteria, long leisurely dinners at my parents, followed by coffee, laughing, and plans for late night movies, waking up early on Christmas morning to join in the fun as Dan’s brothers and sisters discover what Santa brought them this year, and After-Christmas Sale shopping and lunching and all that is in between.

This weekend I watched White Christmas and Home for the Holidays, and I wrapped presents and finished most of my shopping. I am ready for this holiday.

This week is so going to drag.

I rule at Christmas

I am seriously so pleased with myself and my internet shopping abilities. Basically, the internet = awesome, and I have been able to do so much of my shopping online this year that I have almost completely obliterated holiday stress from my life. Kick ass. My favorite sites for fun and different gifts, you ask?

Uncommon Goods
Creative Kidstuff
Etsy
Oh My That's Awesome
See Jane Work
Rare Bird Finds

Check em out. I'm thinking today is pretty much the last day for internet shopping if you want to avoid heavy rush shipping charges.

Anyways, I don't have much else to talk about. I just ate a ridiculous amount of crock pot food and christmas cookies and random snacks, as today was our company's annual potluck holiday lunch thing. I'm stuffed and feeling a bit sick. Also, I have tomorrow off, so that is awesome. I think I will clean like a mad woman and maybe do some gift wrapping (my all time favorite thing about the holidays). And tonight is the last night of class until January 10th. High five! Unfortunately we were assigned one year ago, to have read by tonight, a book I have presently barely touched. So I'm taking the afternoon off to plow through it. My procrastination these days is making me very nostalgic for undergrad. Hey girls - remember when I dropped that Lit class after a near-meltdown the night before a book was to have been read? A book I had not read one single word from? Man, good times. Remember when I hung out and watched movies with my lump of a boyfriend instead of studying for my Macroeconomics exam? Never fear... I'm still the same stupid girl.

Surprisingly though, I'm quite upbeat about it. =)

Just breathe

Ok, I am feeling much better about things, just 4 days later. I got the marketing paper done, and have another due next Thursday that I feel like I have a much better handle on. So I am no longer feeling so spastic and inclined to write annoying "woe-is-me" blogs. I'm much more calm, and hopefully there will be no more random posts out of nowhere about how horrible my life is. Because it isn't. But I guess we all have the right to freak out a bit once and a while right?

So tonight, I finally get to run on the treadmill, which I haven't had time to do all week. A week where I really could have used the endorphins and exercise-high, but there was just no time for it.

Monday - I was too busy with my freakout that you all witnessed.
Tuesday - I ended up staying at work until 8:00, trying to avoid wasting my entire night on a snowfall-induced 3 hour commute.
Wednesday - I had to interview my grandpa for a paper I'm writing about him (due next week).
Thursday - Work, class, wine, sleep. No Time!

Tonight I have to bake cookies for a cookie exchange with some friends tommorrow, and I am so excited! I am a terrible baker, but I love it anyways, and a night in the kitchen with the ipod blasting Christmas music sounds almost perfect.

And hopefully tommorow, out with the girls, I will be able to get some Christmas shopping done, since all we have is a few random things purchased the day after Thanksgiving. Crap. Seriously... what am I going to get for Dan? Argh. Whatever, I'll figure it out, I always do. See how optimistic and cheery I am? A different woman, I swear, from two days ago.

Happy Holidays (this is seriously AWESOME!) I just hate how elf-Dan is so much skinnier than me. Bastard.

I am stressed

Ok. I am "this close" to crying right now. For the last half hour I have been writing about how exhausted and stressed out about school I have been, and how it is impossible for me to enjoy the holiday season, and how sad that makes me because it really is my favorite time of the year, and a whole bunch of other crap. And I just some-how erased it all. ALL OF IT. And all those feelings of relief I had from getting it all off my chest and straightening it all out in my head are GONE, because the words are all GONE. Ugh.

I need to go eat like 14 cookies or something. I think that will make me feel better.

I can't wait until December 14th. This will all be over December 14th. Maybe I should go meditate and chant that knew little mantra. Because god forbid I actually go work on the paper due Thursday.

Dan and I did take an evening last week out of frantically writing up our marketing case studies to put up the tree and decorate for Christmas. Here are a few pictures from the last few weeks. The softness of our decorated living room soothes me... and the first snowfall on Thanksgiving felt like a reminder of better things to come. At least that is something.







She deperately wants to investigate this foreign being...


... and evenutally gives into the temptation.


Finally, she attempts to destroy.