Estoy Nueces

I've certainly had a day of Christmas. I spent most of the day at my grandmother's nursing home at their Christmas party. It made me cry but it was fun. Santa Claus came in and ho-ho-hoed his way around and had a present for everyone that lives there.

I also spent the day getting aggravated at my aunt and cousins. There is no good reason to let them aggravate me, they don't do it do aggravate me, they don't involve me in their lives much except to tell me what goes on, yet it aggravates me.

It irritates me that my 40+ year old cousin is borrowing my aunt's car every day for the last two weeks while his is out of commission. Is his in the shop? I doubt it. Yet he takes her car and leaves her without transportation. It irritates me that she lets him do this.

It irritates me that my 30+ cousin is allowing another marriage to quickly go down the drain. "He tells her what to do" seems to be the complaint. When a wife is spending her evenings out drinking with friends, a husband needs to "tell her what to do." And I'm not a male chauvinist. My husband does things that shouldn't be done in a good marriage and I promise I will tell him what to do too.

Nothing these cousins and aunt do has an effect on my life but I hate to hear about their problems. We all have problems, we all have cars that go kaput, we all have relationships that need nurturing, but some of us apparently have learned how to do these things better than others.

I actually did a little shopping tonight and got a present for my mother-in-law and father-in-law and something for my brother-in-law too. If I'd needed too I could have done some more shopping but I didn't want to wear myself out. There is always tomorrow (I can say that for four more days).

I'm on vacation this week and I enjoyed it today, knowing I didn't have to get through with what I was doing to rush off to work.

Tonight I did the big grocery run for the weekend. I had made the most wonderful complete grocery list through the week but it had disappeared tonight so I had to wing it. I already have discovered I missed onions and celery but I'm sure there are other things too that we'll need to make a trip for.

I addressed a few Christmas cards tonight too. I love the long letters people send with cards and I haven't finished mine, so I wrote on the back of our picture card to some people that probably don't really care about our whole year in review. I may also save paper and the time it takes to print all the letters by e-mailing the Christmas letter to those that are on online. I want Mark to read and edit the Christmas letter tomorrow. I wrote a long rambly rough copy and need a polisher to finish it. So far, it doesn't have anything clever in it. I hate to be over-the-top funny (and I can't achieve that anyway) but I want it to amuse and not be just the dry recounting (recounting, ha, there's a Florida reference right there!) of our year.

Mark will be home soon. He played in Fayetteville, Arkansas, last night and at Momo's with another band tonight and will be in soon. I've missed him and I know he is exhuasted.