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02 January 2010
2010 is starting out fairly well. Marieke begins her new job on the 5th and I'm doing quite well in my classes. She doesn't get paid until the first week in February, but we have confidence that we'll make it till then.
Brian came for a visit on the Monday before Christmas. He got in around 6 and we went straight to Hough's for dinner and drink... and the Pen's game. He stayed the night and left Tuesday morning. Cindy sent him up here with a metric ton of food for our Christmas presents, in true Cindy style, some of it had long expired, but most of it was sufficient to go into the pantry for later consumption- it is, after all, about to be a lean month. She also sent along her traditional Wal-Mart gift card, which we used for Christmas dinner.
As for our usual Christmas tradition of having Jen, her mom and brothers and my mom over, we done canceled it because we just couldn't handle having everyone over. Cleaning was part of it, but there was also the space factor with the new dining room table and we still hadn't recovered from the major drama of the year, so no, we're just not ready for it. At least mom understood. She bought me a bottle of wine and Bailey's for Marieke for our Christmas gifts, then we went next door to look for movies to watch on Christmas. We got a few really good ones, including 'The Hangover' and 'Four Christmases'. Mom surprised us and paid for the movies too, which made it all the better. I made the fifth season of Weeds into DVDs. The day consisted of sitting on the sofa in pajamas, watching movies, then a nice dinner (which I couldn't really enjoy because I got a 24 hour bug thing that made me sick... Marieke got it the next day too) and nothing else.
When I say dinner, I mean that we went out and found a cheap turkey, got up early and roasted it, made mashed potatoes, stuffing, Marieke's sweet potato oranges and veggies, but with portions just enough for two with some left overs. It was, in all connotations of the word, perfect.
We had enough turkey left over to make a decent amount of turkey salad in the big bowl. After about a week of nothing but, we quickly called it quits and had to throw it away on the first trash pick-up of 2010. The antics of Marieke and I can scarcely be underestimated, for even the mundane, often unpleasant work of cleaning out the fridge in this case turned into a raucous event. We both knew the turkey salad was 'turning' and neither of us wanted to empty the contents into the bag, so I ended up doing it. Not wanting to drag the anticipation out any longer than I had to, I asked that Marieke 'hand me the turkey before I chicken out.' This promptly began an approximately fifteen minute laughing binge for the two of us as we both caught the ridiculous poultry metaphor and began to indulge the humor of the situation by throwing words like 'goose' and 'duck' into the mix. It was about the best night of garbage we've ever had.
For New Year, we stayed in because the weather peeps kept threatening freezing rain and drizzle. Olie Bollen were extra good this year, but we missed Kara for them (we tried not to dwell). The fireworks I got for last year's birthday worked well for sending 2009 back to the seventh level of whatever hell it came from.
If 2010 is even 1% better than 2009, it will be a vast, vast improvement.
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