Ill-prepared

[deborah_c]

It's mostly been a very pleasant last few days. Saturday was the_mendicant's birthday party, so after a day of trying to get the house sufficiently sorted out to get Christmas started (with family birthdays on the 11th, we start late) I departed in the general direction of deepest darkes Rutland. I stopped for a while in Oakham to see daemongirl, since she'd been sounding rather down, and ended up eating chinese food and chocolate brioche (I know this sounds wierd, but it makes sense, honest) with her and zoicinlove, who was also keeping her company. The party itself was great fun -- lovely and interesting people there, and very relaxing, which was very welcome. I retired to bed early(ish), though, after smoke got the better of me. (For some value of "early", like 4am... :-)

I wanted to get back to Cambridge for the morning mass at LSM, so after a short but very sound sleep, I headed back a little before 9am. Driving into the rising sun, with sunbeams glinting off Rutland Water was very beautiful. Bizarrely, starting from rather further away than normal, I ended up getting to LSM rather earlier than I normally manage, which was nice :-) Coffee and then drinks afterwards at the Grad Pad, where (as well as various friends) I got to meet emperor and atreic. I sneaked off home at lunchtime though, joined by meirion, who was at at least a slightly loose end.

I'm fairly sure that I didn't sleep through the whole of Monday, but little of it seems terribly memorable, other than going out as usual for company lunch and randomly meeting an old friend there.

Tuesday was filled with a visit to the UL for morning tea with the_alchemist, where we plotted to record her Shakespearean readthrough for posterity (or something of the sort), a little Christmas shopping, a further mountain of house clearing, tidying and cleaning, some cooking for the first time in ages, and the Calling in the evening. Sadly, the children completely refused to eat what I'd cooked (kedgeree) and one daughter decided to have a huge tantrum instead; by the time I'd sorted that out and cleared my head, I was rather late getting to the Kambar and missed rather more of naranek's set than I'd hoped. However, deliberateblank provided an entertaining set to dance to to finish the evening. In a continuing burst of small-world syndrome, the person I didn't know who'd been dancing enthusiastically for most of the evening turned out to be zoicinlove's brother, oedipamaas49 (which I may even have spelt correctly :-) (Does anyone else find the etymology of LJ user names of people more imaginative than I fascinating? I must ask him about it at some point...)

Lots more clearing up yesterday, with not much of import in the majority of the day (I've rather let the house get out of hand with a combination of depression and work over the last few months), until the evening. The company Christmas dinner was at Restaurant 22, who were in their usual fine form. Excellent food, wine and company -- hurrah! (And an excuse to wear my nice evening dress, which is actually in danger of fitting properly again :-) Curiously, the_magician came up in the conversation -- several colleagues know him, although I'm not quite sure in what context -- who in another fit of small-world I'd met (albeit briefly) on Saturday evening... Unfortunately, while we got home a little before midnight (despite taxi drivers attempting to go via some rather circuitous routes), I then couldn't get to sleep until somewhere after 5am, which was definitely not part of the plan, and my digestive system then rebelled in the morning (but appears now to be back under control).

Most of the remainder of the morning got spent doing the main Christmas food shop, with three mostly cooperative children in tow. As I suppose I should have expected, met several friends from around the village doing exactly the same, which was nice. We now have most of the things we need, and I can go in search of the remainder in the morning. Cooked dinner again (eggs florentine and home-made (or at least home-assembled) garlic bread); children once again refused to eat anything. I'm feeling quite upset that this seems to happen so much at the moment -- the two occasions this week aren't the only ones -- I know I shouldn't, but I do sometimes wonder why I bother trying to make nice things. Hopefully they won't do the same at the weekend...

So, some things are in hand. Many others aren't; this needs to be cured by the end of tomorrow, of course. And I'm feeling tired, and grumpy, and distinctly out of sorts, and a little depressed. And tomorrow's going to be complicated, since I'd really like to get both to the LSM child-friendly service at 5pm tomorrow, and to midnight mass (although I'm beginning to wonder how wise it may be given the broken nights recently), and my parents are arriving to stay over Christmas. I'm sure it will all get sorted out, but it seems a little daunting just at this moment...

This will probably be my last post before Christmas -- I think tomorrow will be a little busy -- so a very happy Christmas to you all! We're here for more or less the whole time, so if any of our friends are around and at a loose end, do ring up and come over to see us, although I don't guarantee to be terribly coherent at any given point in time :-)