Christmas is a crazy season for me. As the designated Santa of the household, all I feel like I do is spend 2-3 months per year figuring out what to get who and how to afford things. And this year, affording things has been pretty brutal. We told the kids that Christmas was going to be smaller because we were traveling this year, but Russell also knows it's because we're pretty broke.

For the grandparents, I've got kids making ornaments. Genny selected a beading kit that she's apparently decided is a pain in the ass and isn't so sure she wants to do now. Russell selected a craft that's just hard for him to do because it requires fine motor skills he doesn't really have. I suspect that tomorrow night, I'll be sitting at the table with Mike finishing the stupid ornaments. Next year, I'm making wreaths out of handprints on backed felt. It'd be faster and if I'm going to end up doing it anyhow, then I might as well go easy.

And yeah, I could have just bought something, but we're broke and this was cheaper and more meaningful. I'm all over cheap and meaningful, I tell you what!

Yesterday, I set up LaDawn's books for her daycare in excel and started the data entry. I did a sheet for each family and then connected the sheets, so that she can print out a sheet for her accountant. She was stunned that "you can do that?" LaDawn is a typist of the the two-fingered hunt-and-peck variety, so while she said she'd do some, she's smoking crack. I can get done in two hours, what would take her weeks, so I'm going back to finish up today.

And last night, I fell asleep at 1030 and while normal people would sleep at this hour, I'm wide awake because I've had my 6 hours of sleep. Sick, isn't it? Judging from the yawning though, I'm going right back down for a couple more hours, shortly.

Mel and I have talked and have gotten stuff sorted out and providing that the 10-day forecast on the weather channel website isn't a big fat sorry lie, we leave on-time and everything for a couple weeks.

Mike and I started talking the other night about his job. One of the things that came out is that he's getting bone bored. He's a super smart man, so boredom is a bad thing. We're talking to friends about maybe finding him work out near Mel and her family just because we'd be near Mel and her family and because the friend had worked on stuff for ILM of Star Wars fame. Of course, my mother-in-law pointed out that we'd only be a day's ride from them, too. (I'm sure the kids would appreciate that, but I definitely had the "oh shit" thing going on.)

The thing about living near Mel and family is that the housing is decidedly cheaper there. At $500 a month for 6-9 months a year in heating costs for heating oil, we're also looking at a cheaper way to do winters. We like winters, but here the heating oil ranges on $3 a gallon at 100 gallons a month and the heater runs us $200 to burn it. It's expensive. And housing is expensive -- damned near California-expensive. When we refinanced to pull money out of the house while I was sick, it put us in a rather bad place, as well. Three years of crappy raises at Mike's job has kind of fucked us. The past 2 years, he got maybe $2k in raises because they company was in lean years. This year, he got a decent raise, but nothing to make up for the past two years of jack shit.

I've gotten my substitute license and am in the process of getting applications filled out for each district, but we'll have to see how my knee tolerates it on a day-to-day basis, too. On the good news front, a month of doing leg raises and crunches each and every night has trimmed my body considerably and put my sugars into excellent shape. My blood pressure on a med that often raises it, had actually dropped, a little, 110/70.

After a bowl of popcorn the other night, my sugars were 114, so that's good, too.

Ok, now, I'm getting sleepy again, so I'm crawling into my bed again.