Mr. Pink Paws and Christmas Day

Well, I hope that everyone had a nice holiday, if you celebrate (and, if you celebrate Chanukah, hope you're still having a nice holiday!). Ours was pretty uneventful, for the most part. We sang at Midnight Mass (which for some reason our church has at 10pm.....it ends by midnight), then we went home and opened presents, because I had to get my ass up at 6:30 and sing the 8, 9:30 and 11am Masses. Then we trekked up to my parents house for the foodfest and family interaction.

My aunts and uncles were there, minus one uncle, who freaked out that his divorce became final the day before Christmas and was holed up in his apartment in SoHo, which was pretty stupid, in my opinion-they've been seperated for 3 years and, quite frankly, he missed the yummy food, but, whatever. My one uncle and aunt have two kids, one who's 8 and another who's 20 months old-holy shit, he's like a cross between the Energizer Bunny and Baby Taz! It was exhausting just watching him buzz around the house and terrorize the dog, who kept running away from him like he had the plague. We got lots of goodies, but one of the best is tickets to Billy Joel's concert at Madison Square Garden in February-they're really good seats and it's a sold-out show, so that was cool. It was kind of sad, though-since my parents are moving in June to Barnegat (down the Jersey Shore, across from Long Beach Island), we all realized that it was our last Christmas in the house.

It was weird, though-occasionally I'd think "you know, if I hadn't miscarried, I'd be showing by now and probably getting baby stuff instead of another purse from mom", or "if that last cycle of IVF had worked we'd be announcing that I'm pregnant today"-but it wasn't as horribly depressing or upsetting as I thought it would be. I think that I'm more at peace with all of this now. That doesn't mean to say that it's always easy, because it's not, but I'm more accepting of it all. This is my lot in life, and I need to make the best of it. I can't pretend that it hadn't happened, or that it hasn't affected me in some way, but I won't let infertility rule my life.

We decided to re-do the living room in our house as an anniversary present to each other this year (yeah, boring old married couple shit, right?), so we got a new couch, tables, repainted-all that happy horseshit. Sean wanted it done by Christmas, so when we put up the tree and decorated it would look fabulous (and it does!). I always try to get a few more ornaments every year to put on the tree, and this year I found this great tree-skirt at HomeGoods-it's a deep red velvet with green and gold bands at the edge, and it looks great against the light beige carpet and the tree (decorated with red, white and gold ornaments)..........I'll have to take a pic of it before I take it down.

Our cats like to hang out underneath the tree for some odd reason-I guess we're lucky that they don't like to climb it-and just crash on the tree skirt. Every year when we take the tree down we have to clean the tree skirt, because it's full of kitty hair. One of our cats is an orange tabby (Peaches) and the other is a tuxedo kitty (Buddy). Last night we noticed that Buddy's paws were a distinct shade of pink-in fact, every white part of buddy's body (except his face) was pink. What the fuck? we said to ourselves. We originally thought that it was because he was rolling around on a red cardboard box we had in the living room that had decorations in it, but we realized that we took that box down to the basement last week. We finally figured out that it was from the fricking tree skirt! I was getting upset about the state of his (normally) white fur, especially since Sean started calling him "Pinky Bud-a-dero" and whistling the "Happy Days" theme. It looks less pink today, probably since he's cleaning his fur, but I'm trying to keep him away from the tree. So far, it ain't working.

So here I am, still in my pj's, with a cup a coffee, my laptop, and nothing planned for today, except for a trip to the supermarket. Ain't Winter Break grand?