Got Spirit

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Did some more Christmas shopping today. We're having a second smaller Christmas present exchange just between the four of us who live here--Ed and I and his parents--on Thursday morning. Smaller group and smaller gifts. The Big Deal Family Christmas was last weekend but we have to have something on Christmas day right?As I posted previously we had a large extended family todo a week ago yesterday.

We are having a Christmas dinner on Thursday too and Ed is the primary chef as he is off work but his Mom is not. His younger brother's family is also coming for the dinner, which means my niece who is as gaga over story as I am --the one who joined me in last summer's read-a-thon? the one who introduced me to the Gilmore Girls, loaning me her first six seasons of DVDs and kept me in novels during the library closure last year? the one who was my secret Santa last week and gave me a $40 Barnes & Nobel gift card? that niece--she is going to be here. It'll probably be my last chance to visit with her before I leave for several weeks.

Ed and I shopped for gifts for his parents today and for each other but we didn't shop secretly for each other. We sorta just picked out a thing we hankered for and said this is my Christmas present from you. We're not wrapping them. I chose a laptop bag and Ed chose one of the Sim City games. Ed had also picked up a wireless mouse for my laptop earlier in the day but was so eager to test it out he didn't want to wrap it and wait for Thursday. We also picked up a copy of our favorite movie to wath together--Dirty Dancing. We must have watched it twenty to thirty times since we first got our hands on a library copy in the mid nineties. Now we have our own to go with the DVD player Ed bought last Wednesday to go with the gigormus TV his brother handed down to him.

Really though, the things we picked up for ourselves and each other today weren't that much about Christmas. We just saw too-good-to-pass-up deals on things we were in the market for anyway. That second hand TV was probably a bigger deal to us than most of our official gifts. Coupled with the really inexpensive DVD player it makes having movie nights at home a cool deal. Now I can send for some of those DVD at the library that Ed passed on watching with me because he so dislikes watching them n the laptop.

And Ed got his laptop the day after Thanksgiving and said then that his Christmas was perfect at that moment no matter what else happened. Tell the truth, his getting his own laptop was a huge gift to me as well because I no longer have to hang on beyond the need to sleep in the mornings for fear it will be gone when I wake up and I won't see it again until after dinner. Not to mention I get to keep my projects open and undisturbed for as long as I want--or at least until the computer objects.

You might be surprised to see how easy it is for me to get distracted in the process of opening the lid and heading to the right menu or icon to click when the ap I need isn't already there. I can have one intention when I lift the lid and then end up working on an entirely different project or --hhemm--game--hhemm--and several hours later be left wondering where my time went and why I still haven't started that really important thing. So the last month of not having to share my laptop with Ed has felt like an extended birthday or Christmas to me.

But the Christmas spirit for me isn't really in the getting part as much as this post might make it seem so. I found the best part of the season choosing the gifts for others. I'm just not talking about it on this post. I'm 99.99% sure no one in my family bothers to read my blog but just in case, I'm not talking about what we got until they have been opened--and knowing me, by then I'll be off on another tangent altogether.

Obviously I'm still here in the Rogue Valley and not at my Mom's in Longview, WA. The roads are still bad news for driving between here and there so I'm still waiting on the 24 hour notice to trigger my panicked packing day.

I may have done something this moring that will guarantee that I'll get that call in the next 24 hours--I started a novel--a library book--The Kite Runner. Since I'm going to be gone a minimum of a month and more likely more than six weeks, I can't take any library books with me. So that just about guarantees the roads will suddenly clear and I'll have to quit in the middle of the story. Sigh. But at least it is popular enough that it is bound to be in the Longview or Vancouver Libraries--the two libraries my sister and sister-friend Jamie use. They have both promised to keep me in generous supply of library books.

Well now that I've brought up the novel I'm itching to return to it. It is a Large Print which means I can read it faster and for longer. I was clocking in at a page a minute this morning and there are 400 of them. That's what, about 6 or 7 hours? I should be able to do that in two days. That is if I don't spend 3+ hours writing 1000 word posts each night. :)