Pre-Christmas Fun

I have a lot to cover here, so I'm going to need to divide it into sections.

First of all, how have the first few days of break gone?

Excellent. Sort of. I seem to have contracted the plague (for those of you keeping count between the two blogs, this is probably the 7th time I've claimed to have contracted the plague) and am quite frankly miserable. I considered writing a goodbye entry on the blog at 2 am this morning because I was pretty sure my lung had exploded during one of my coughing fits. By some form of Chirstmas miracle, however, I still have two working lungs. 

People keep asking me how I'm spending my break, and I honestly can't remember. It's become a bit of a blur. Most of it involves my sofa. I had to venture out last night, however, in order to go get my sister from the airport. I hadn't realized I had the plague yet so I agreed to go along for some fun. Food was promised, I was in. We left about 3 hours early for the 45 minute drive in order to allow time for food and traffic. This was our first mistake. On the drive to South Jersey I began to feel a bit under the weather. I coughed a bit, I had a stuffy nose. "Man up!" I told myself "This is no time to be a woman and get sick!" I should mention that my inner dialogue is a total chauvinist. It's gets awkward when you go to a women's college and frequently find yourself telling people to "Stop being such a woman". 

*CENSORED awful, awful joke removed here*

I've really gotten off track. Long story short, I was getting sick. We pulled into Famous Daves BBQ, a chain that allows us to pretend we're eating real BBQ food while comfortably sitting on a commercial highway in Cherry Hill. Eating dinner with my mother and father is always interesting because it is impossible for us to have a normal family conversation. OMP has taken to being extra ridiculous in hopes that I will write about him on my blog (I have to assume, because it's the only explanation for his crazy) and so while everyone around us was discussing the Eagles or holiday plans, OMP was giving us a lecture on the anatomy of the deer antlers above our table. G-Dawg (we're going to try out nicknames for my mom this week) was having none of that and called him out on being an attention whore. I, meanwhile, was falling quickly into the seventh layer of sickness hell as breathing was becoming difficult. What OMP didn't know is that I was planning on writing about our pretentious conversations even before he gave his scripted speech. Why? Because the first half of the dinner was an arguement between the three of  us over whether the Germans were justified in bombing the Lusitania in 1915. OMP claims the Germans shot an unarmed cruise line with no intelligence otherwise. G-dawg claimed  that the Lusitania was recently found to have actually had munitions on it, and thus the Germans must have known something. I claimed that the Germans got lucky and were probably tipped off by some narc. So if you had been listening to the conversations in Famous Daves last night, you probably would have heard something like this:

"McNabb really needs to...Christmas shopping...THE GERMANS KILLED INNOCENT CIVILIANS....like my new pants....mmmmmmmm, pork....LUSITANIA......Merry Christmas!....E-A-G-L-E-S-EAGLES...UNDERWATER ARCHAEOLOGY IS NOT REALLY ARCHAEOLOGY...can I get another Diet Coke"

After settling our differences and moving on to the second article in this weeks "Archaeology" magazine, the food thankfully came and distracted us from our arrogance. As we got up to go I realized that standing was becoming difficult. I stumbled out to the car, and realized that we still had to stop at the Christmas Tree Shop in order to do some last minute Christmas Shopping. 

Note: Christmas Tree Shop is not a Christmas store. It is a store that sells all sorts of goods year round. It is an ironic coincidence that we were there two days before Christmas. I do not shop in Christmas themed stores on principle. 

We began our wandering of the store, as that is the only way to shop at CTS. You must meander at a slow and steady pace. Anyone who knows me well will understand that this kills me. I love CTS but cannot stand the slow meandering. As walking and breathing were becoming hard, it added an extra obstacle. Plus, there are a lot of breakable things in CTS, glassware and such. I had to be on top of my game for an hour simply reminding myself to keep moving and to avoid anything breakable. More than one person stopped to stare at me. I'm sure I looked ridiculous. 

We got out of there and continued on to Philadelphia to pick CaBo (we're trying nicknames for everyone) up at the airport. We had plenty of time to spare. We are not good time managers. We expected the place to be packed as it is Christmas...instead it was eerily empty. Apparently people don't love each other this year. Oh well. We collected Caroline and returned home. By this point my vision was getting blurry and I was coughing like a smoker. Caroline simply talked louder about her trip to Mexico City so as to cover up my dying. We got home around 11 and had a nice birthday celebration for the sister, only three days late. As sick as I felt, I was not giving up Bakery House cake, so I rallied and got my head in the game long enough to devour two pieces of delicious. 

Today I feel better, we'll see what tonight brings. I have a busy day of crafting ahead of me, so that's keeping me on my toes.

I look like death

That brings us to section 2, what have you crafted so far over break?

Only the most epic snowflakes ever

Oh, and this bad boy!

I put my soon to be completed Cities degree to work by designing the layout of our traditional New England village. Note my usage of books to create a hill in the background.

Finally, Section 3: Gift buying

I know I said I was making all of my gifts, but I did go out today and buy a few additions. Here I noticed a hilarious trend, the husband buying the wife a gift. I think you can divide it into three sections.

First is characterized by a certain someone I was talking to yesterday. This man was all excited because he had bought his wife jumper cables for Chirstmas. He claimed that she was always talking about how she needed them and that she would never expect them. I told him that this is true, no woman would ever expect to receive jumper cables for Christmas. I know this person reads my blog too, but he probably won't read this until February, so I think I'm safe.

The second husband is the guy that goes to the store and has no clue what to buy their wife but goes by what is "pretty". I was at Burlington Coat Factory today and there was an aisle of glass vases that was filled with panicked men. They clearly did not know each other but they all kept turning to the guy next to them and saying "what do you think of this one" and "is this ok"? I would like to tell all of those men that, no, I highly doubt all of your wives want three foot tall glass umbrella holders. 

The third is the husband that brings the angry 12 year old daughter along. This girl is ticked off because it's the first day of winter break and she's being lugged along to pick out a gift for her mother. The father is usually yelling about how she just needs to help him out for this ONE EFFING MOMENT or bribing her with ice cream. More often than not the poor mother in this situation ends up with a pink fuzzy pillow and the newest Jonas Brothers CD. 

Back to the wrapping and the crafting. 

Merry Christmas, everyone! Have a great day!