It's Christmas

...big whoooooop-de-do. I love all the stuff that goes along with the holiday, the decorating, shopping, gift wrapping and opening presents; I just hate the holiday itself. I'm sure there are a lot of reasons but I'm not going to go into all that now. I'm already depressed enough right now.

I survived Christmas Eve with the family over. I was very anxious before hand, but chatting with Genelle online before everyone started showing up really helped calm me. (Thanks for the return favor!) The Valium I took and the 5 alcoholic beverages helped too. But just having someone tell me I can make it thru got the notion into my head, got the dialogue started that yes, I could indeed do it. I even managed to have a decent time, though it was really hard at first.

I was going to fuck with my daughter and have her open all her presents, even the ones related to the guitar and then tell her I couldn't afford the guitar itself yet. But I couldn't wait to see her open it because I knew she'd love it. So after everyone had opened their gifts and we were just sitting around talking I said I had one more gift I wanted her to open. We had her close her eyes and then I brought it out. One of her uncles told her it was a snowboard and snowboots, so she was actually surprised it was a guitar. I love the look of sincere happiness and appreciation on her face when she gets something she's really longed for.

She claims she had no idea she was getting it, but it's all we pretty much talked about, so I don't know why she thought I'd get her anything else. She opted to only open one gift, plus the guitar, last night; so she woke me up at some ungodly hour of between 6 and 7 am to open the rest. She loved them all. I did good considering a lot of what I got her wasn't on her list.

I also enjoyed the gifts she'd gotten for me, though I already knew what three of them were because you can tell a cd or dvd when they're wrapped unless you disguise them like I do. I got the new Depeche Mode cd Playing the Angel, the new Korn cd See You on the Other Side, the dvd Closer and the one I didn't know was a new adding machine. I'd asked for one, a small one so it wouldn't take up as much room on my desk as the bulky one I had that didn't really work well, but the present looked too small. It was a small adding machine, a palm held one I can either plug in or just use batteries for. Considering all the cords I have related to my computer, I've opted to just use the batteries.

From my folks I got a shirt, simple and black; and they gave me $150. The money was addressed to both me and my daughter, so I told her guess what....we had part of the money to put towards her birthday party. The next big event we have to plan for. Something we need to get cracking on right away. I'm tempted to wait until a few days after New Years to book the room because I know this is their slow time and I'm hoping they'll give me an even better deal, but I know the girls that are being invited need advanced warning of what we're doing. Wonder if it would be ok to give out invitations with the party details, but list the place as "destination still in negotiations"?