Thursday, December 11, 2014

The Several Days of Sockmas: Days Five through Ten

On the first four days of Sockmas, my true love lavished me with teeny fulgent foliage, tasty oven baked goodies, a a wee little polar bear hiding in hand!

But this was only the beginning! Tra la la la la... 

On the Fifth Day of Sockmas My True Love Gave to Me... Bike part decor, midweek datenight fun, teeny tinsel tree, a delicata bake, and a polar bear in a pear tree

There's more than one way to deck a hall, baby. My approach typically involves taking "ornaments" (orphan earrings, perhaps) and hanging them from any nail, outcropping, door edge, or other hangable surface I can find. It may further involve a tinsel tree, little polar bear candles, and the equally makeshift strewing/spewing of lights. Possibly on a timer that goes off in the same random disregard for linear time as our math clock (which ticks and tocks but does not always march to the time of its own time-drum). Oh and socks. I may drape festive socks in random places. Stockings are a thing over Christmas, so this hardly differs, except socks are easier to hang!

Andrew's approach is a wee bit more thematic. Currently we've festooned the dining room table with several "team order" goodies. A handle bar. Some shiny things. Some more shiny things. And much packaging. 

I get a little emphatic about the waiting aspect of the holiday, being one for delayed gratification, so I'm nearly inclined to skirt all these goodies away so that they can be properly stored, drowned in wrapping paper and piled under the nexus twixt our Advent tree on the wall and my teensy tinsel tree by the tv. I'm already prone to wrapping up the new Galaxy 5 that I purchased for myself in my single Black Friday weekend suckering moment. The more shiny jolly paper that must die in the making of my 2015 olio of material goods the better!

Perhaps instead of wrapping Andrew's bike parts, I can trick them out a bit with some red and green ribbons and foil. Maybe hang the handlebars from our mini-chandelier and use it as the base of a Christmas mobile from which several globs of tangled lights and some cute character ornaments can hang. I'm sure his shiny metal parts would add a little Star of Bethlehem gleam to the whole contraption!




On the Sixth Day of Sockmas, My True Love Gave to Me... Huge Christmas boxes, bike part decor, midweek datenight fun, teeny tinsel tree, a delicata bake, and a polar bear in a pear tree



I opened up the door to my porch yesterday and realized the front door was no longer a passable ingress or egress. Fortunately we almost entirely enter and exit through the garage, but by golly. A small fortress of boxes! Several of them were my gifts ordered for others, but the two largest were most decidedly untraceable giants lingering on my porch and begging an invitation (boxes like vampires, require permission before entering a domicile). 

Turns out they are from my sister and they are unwrapped. She had previously warned me, but I had to double check the shipping location and size with her. I'll be attempting to swap my giant boxes with the ones that showed up at my mom's house so we can wrap them for each other before settling them in their rightful spots under various trees (which have yet to be set up). In the meantime, I can stoke my holiday spirit by tripping over them every time I attempt to access the freezer. Maybe glue some of the Seattle Chocolate truffle wrappers we're accumulating now that I've restocked the Advent Calendar appropriately. Yesterday we got days 5 and 1 (dark chocolate and "cosmopolitan"). Today just day 2 so far, but we'll get to day 6! I'm drooling with holiday spirit already! 



On the Seventh Day of Sockmas, My True Love Gave to Me...Decked out toes a greening, huge Christmas boxes, bike part decor, midweek datenight fun, teeny tinsel tree, a delicata bake, and a polar bear in a pear tree


I don't often have my nails done. Top or bottom, my nails are pretty well done in most of the time. I do so much typing and chip-worthy activities with my hands that a mani hardly seems worth it. And my feet are just one big morass of best-left-alone. I've got callouses, a black toenail from tango+running, ingrown toenails, etc. etc. I am always flooded with sympathetic horror for any attendant consigned to fixing the mess of my erst-dancer's pods.

Also, I just don't sip cosmopolitans (maybe eat them in chocolate truffle form) and gab with my girl friends very often. I love my female friends, but few of them actually know/like each other, and well I don't really drink. So sometimes the ritual of the pedi is missed upon me.  

 But of course, all the above listed foot maladies are probably superlative reasons (as I always remember once I'm there) for me to get pedicures from time to time. And there is usually some form of comfortable massage chair and foot soaking. Oh yeah, and I may not gab over martinis with my friends, but sometimes I do get these sporadic and spontaneous little pockets of opportunity to actually spend time with them! Possibly not while trying to manage several million other obligations and wildly adorable children all at once. 

Yesterday was one of those days. Just as I was working up the energy to go from watching netflix to taking a full scale nap, bestie Molly texted me asking if I weren't at the opera or in San Francisco or at the opera in San Francisco... would I like a pedicure? Of course I didn't even hesitate to consult my little bunion callousey blister thing that's been bugging me. She could have invited me to get my feet bound in the classic Chinese style and I'd not have had a second thought about it. 

We ended up at a small place in Fairhaven that was apparently far less popular than the one closer by. It featured several snack options, lusciously verdant walls, dark wood floors, and an enormous piece of art that initially looked like several soggy brussel sprouts (actually roses). 

It was lovely to catch up while semi-consciously leaning into my automatic masseuse and cringing through the pain of some much needed nail extractions. And walking back to my distantly parked car in those anemic little flip flops in the rain was... an adventure!

The rest of the day involved some very exciting holidazed Odysseys for a variety of tools and/or part and/or I'm not sure that Andrew needed for a bike project. After looking for several different options and falling short at every hardware store in town, he finally just took his bike in and spent the rest of the afternoon brooding about how he used to have more time to work on bike stuff (although the fact that we spent all day fruitlessly trying to find his tools seems to suggest to me that time wasn't the missing element that day). 




On the Eight Day of Sockmas, My True Love Gave To Me...Transatlantic sparkles, decked out toes a greening, huge Christmas boxes, bike part decor, midweek datenight fun, teeny tinsel tree, a delicata bake, and a polar bear in a pear tree


Now, that's the best way to start a Monday! A package full of toys, smiles and fairy dust waiting at the office. I wasn't really expecting to be able to focus on work today anyways, so this will be a nice happy distraction instead of my bleary eyed mope of a space-excursion! And look, little Christmas bombs!! Yuletide artillery! Scrooges and that Ghost of Christmas Present (who owes me $20 still, the jerk) best beware!

This morning was another morning begun at the blood labs. I was a little nervous, given my previous experiences in November. My veins have had time to recover, of course, but they're still a bit crotchety about all the slurping. And I had a genuinely awful sleep last night. Some nights it's either a raging back or a fully numb arm and nothing in between for sleeping positions. But I got the greatest blessing of all: my favorite phlebotomist. If Nick is my massage ninja, she is my phlebotomy special ops team. After a fairly long wait, I was pricked and set back on my way before the fog from standing up too fast could clear. 

Regardless of the beautifully clean blood draw, I'm not entirely on my game today (see prior night's sleep). There shall be rivulets of saliva and dazed starry-eyes as the walls dance their little jigs for me. And possibly Christmas crackers interrupting the Collaborative Professionals monthly meeting! Truly how Monday oughta be. 

Ooops and decking of halls! I have a trunk full of office Christmas decorations that I cannily left in the trunk of the car. Whoops. I really did mean to take at least an armful or two up with me. But i suppose we're still a fortnight and change from the big day, so delaying for a few more hours won't rile Santa Claus too much. Especially considering that he's happily hanging on my socks and about as bleary eyed as I am!



On The Ninth Day of Sockmas, My True Love Gave to Me... Office space aglowing, transatlantic sparkles, decked out toes a greening, huge Christmas boxes, bike part decor, midweek datenight fun, teeny tinsel tree, a delicata bake, and a polar bear in a pear tree


Christmas/Unitarian-non-secular-not-entirely-alternative-holiday-equivalent-but-we-take-em-all-except-for-Satan-Eating-Babiesmas season has exploded in the lobby space of Englettlaw. A few were harmed. Many turned into elves and a couple noses lit the way through foggy commutes on the way home. But it was a calculated Christmas strike, mostly contained and with minimal collateral damage.

And fortunately, it wasn't until after I noticed my car trunk had been bare to the world for several hours, and after I ran downstairs from my little ivory englettlaw tower, and after I shut the trunk that the afternoon typhoons came. Really, it's a shame that nobody felt more inspired to loot the remaining treasures in that trunk. I have several items that really ought to go to Goodwill but just never quite seem to make it on my regular trips. 

Yesterday, having survived a surprisingly easy blood draw and a regrettably full-session WCP Meeting (we were led astray by an early conclusion of business to believe we might escape after only a half hour, but then somebody had to go and suggest we talk about the practice of collaborative law and nonsense like that), I was in no mood to do additional paper shuffling or legal raptoring. Instead, having experienced the merry delights of my wooville whimsies' transatlantic gift-bombs, I quite wanted to assemble the Christmas poppers and bring on the garlands. 

This did, of course, require me to emerge from my cave - er - office for much of the working afternoon. I nearly had to interact with clients and other riff raff, but fortunately people carrying several armfuls of garlands look insane enough that most clientele immediately look away and try to find somebody less rabidly seasonal. 

I am quite pleased with the results. Sure I could have helped preparations for the daunting mediation looming on today's horizon. Or written that declaration that needs to go out pronto. Or... well I could have. But Christmas season is flooding by and if we don't leap upon it, than surely it shall be missed! Because that's possible. Somebody could miss Christmas season here in the States. Really. Probably by being in a coma between September and mid-January, but still possible. 


On the Tenth Day of Sockmas, My True Love Gave to Me... Happy hand toasters, office space aglowing, transatlantic sparkles, decked out toes a greening, huge Christmas boxes, bike part decor, midweek datenight fun, teeny tinsel tree, a delicata bake, and a polar bear in a pear tree


A little "just because" gift from the mom-boss came to me yesterday with a bashful gleeful (and perfectly crispy) grin. They are - yes, yes, they are - USB powered hand warmers. You strap them (butter side up) atop your hands, leaving free fingers and a warm localized glow only partially powered by the affable grin of the little toasters themselves.

Of course, in perfect timing, the weather decided to return to sub-tropical hurricane levels. It's tempestuous out to be sure, but it was 60 degrees at 5 a.m. this morning. Not exactly crisp or chilly so much as moist and even balmy.

And I'm not feeling too cold. In fact last night I confirmed my new sleeping pattern of one-night-horrible-one-night-ok-rinse-and-repeat. I zonked appropriately only to wake up utterly stiffling. The bed was surely aflame. It's the only explanation. Maybe the heated mattress pad was accidentally tripped, but I swear I checked it. I was, of course, far too groggy to make any affirmative actions on this discomfort for a minor eternity. My first proactivity involved tossing the blankets off, which is usually  the five minute warning for severe horripilation. Instead, I continued to feel overbaked. I stumbled to the bathroom - not so much because I had an urgent need as much as it was something to do - and doffed my warm slippers. Still too hot. Finally, after about an hour, I removed myself to the sofa in the study and managed to pass out in a slight chill. 

Sure my entire right side took the "falling asleep" thing a bit too far and went numb, but at least it wasn't naptime on the surface of the sun. 

I blame my husband. He's just too darned hot. I don't know how his coworkers stand it, but I envisions all the desks around him populated by pasty engineers in Bermuda shorts and tank tops, fanning themselves and warily eying the studly bike-and-chain. 

As is also often the pattern, I feel absolutely a-ok at the moment. Better than after a good night's sleep in fact. This will likely change at some point. Perhaps the hand toasters substitute as pillows? Or maybe there's a whole complementary set of cozies: scrambled egg pillows, and oatmeal blankies? 

Happy dromedary day all! Keep your umbrellas handy and you just may hop the Aeolian express right to Never Never Land!

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