Yesterday I bought a crock pot.

I don’t quite know what to do with it yet, but this weekend I will be attempting some sort of beef stew. The one I picked out is all fancy with an apparently elegant and functional design. Also, it came with a mini crock pot for small dippie things. I am actually rather excited to break the crock pot in, but it will have to wait – I have an interview this afternoon, and then I’m being whisked away for a SEKRET CHRISTMAS DINNAR tonight by Ed. I do not know where we’re going, only that I am not to wear jeans or a tank top. That’s 75% of my wardrobe right there, so I’m probably just going to wear my fancy interviewin’ clothes that I will conveniently already have on.

I’m a little leery of tonight’s dinner. I’m not in charge of the planning, and that makes me nervous. More importantly, the last half dozen times we’ve eaten out it’s been utterly horrible. Regardless of the price range, both the food and the service went and made us all stabby with rage. The obvious solution is for us to just stay home forever and never go out to eat, but that would mean I do nothing but cook and clean up cat puke and then there’d be a lot of dishes I’d ALSO have to do, and let’s just say the “feelin’ stabby” would be a lot closer to home. I don’t know where we’re going tonight, but I hope our train of bad luck with outside food is about to be derailed – if I’m not allowed to wear jeans, it better damn well be worth the effort of a skirt.

I am amused and horrified at how excited I am about the crock pot. I better get a lot of toys for Christmas to make up for this shockingly adult purchase I just made.

Any day in which you can successfully bring Arnold-Schwarzenegger-as-Mr.-Freeze quotes into a conversation is bound to be a good one.

The mailman brought me BRAS today!

Six of them!

For my 12 boobs!

Oh, it’ll be a festive and supportive holiday around these parts, that’s for sure!

I am, however, still reeling with disappointment that this bra was sold out in my size. :(

(my apologies; I watched Team America: World Police last week)

This year, Ed and I have to spend Christmas ALONE.

When we lived in Alberta, we spent every holiday with his parents and it was awesome. After moving to Vancouver, it was time to start some traditions of our own – we had one holiday with my parents, and the next two were spent in the delightful company of our Annual Christmas Wyatt. This year, however, is looking a little lonely.

I like having people around. To me, Christmas with just the two of us won’t be quite the same. After all, I am a hermit who never goes outside and it’s *always* just the two of us – more people means more fun, as previously demonstrated by my attempts to get people to come on along on our honeymoon (successful) and 5th anniversary (unsuccessful). Now that our Annual Christmas Wyatt is all grown up with a girlfriend who comes with a family of her own to visit, we won’t have enough people for a truly engaging game of Monopoly or 3-man Slapjack. All our close Vancouver friends are going away for the holidays, Ed’s parents can’t come out because of their dog, and my mom is being stubborn. That just leaves us, and the cats. BOO!

I’ve been trying for some time to get my mom to come out for Christmas, but she won’t bite. She came out once, two years ago, and hated our place in East Van. It’s okay – so did we – but now I really want her to come visit again and see the place in North Van and also not be all alone or stuck waiting on FROOOOOOOONK all day. She’s been sick with bronchitis, and is using that as her excuse not to come. I keep telling her all she has to do is get on the damn bus, and it will deliver her to the train station in Vancouver at which point she will be picked up and waited on hand and foot by us, but nooooo.

I don’t know why I need someone else to be around for it to be a special day; I just do. Ed thinks it’s just dandy that we’ll be all alone, but I can’t help feeling a little lonely about it and therefore pouty. It’s a good look for me, I think.

To combat the perceived loneliness I’m going to feel on Christmas day, I’ve been searching for volunteering type things to do but I can’t find any. What gives? I’ve found dozens of posts of people wanting to volunteer, but nothing saying “hey, we could use some help”. If the internet can’t help me, I’ll have to check the newspaper or something. It’s a little selfish, wanting to volunteer just so I can stop feeling sorry for myself, but I am a flawed, flawed being.

Ever have one of those days where everything smells like weed?

No? Just me, then?

Hm.

In an hour, I’ll either have lovely black hair or shocking Hulk-green hair. It is difficult to say which one I am rooting harder for.

Update: Well, my hair isn’t green – but it’s not exactly black, either. It’s got this brown-black thing going on that is a little too normal for my liking. Luckily, I only used half the jar of henna because my hair is so short. I’ll give it a couple weeks, then henna it again with the other half of the jar. In the meantime, I’m slightly mottled.

Today I had a good day.

I woke up once again in a funk, and was thoroughly disgusted with being so BLAH all the time. I resolved to fix it, and to start by getting a long over-due haircut. After running some errands with Shan, I went to go see our mutual hair stylist and had her chop off all my hair. I’d been toying with the idea of growing it out for a while and as such had a lot of hair – but no more. The cut Chelsea gave me is fantastic. It’s an Erin-style cut of yore, and I love it.

After the cut, I wandered around the mall for a bit and found a super cute kitty hat with fuzzy balls. Then I found some alcohol! I replaced our empty bottle of Irish cream with a new giant bottle, then wandered into the produce store to buy tiny carrots and bags of cherry tomatoes on the vine. I came home, played with some cats, then went to the different mall with Ed to get some dinner.

Dinner was not so good – it was swimming in gravy and questionable intentions – but after dinner I was instructed to busy myself elsewhere while Ed bought me presents. Ed failed his mission and did not find me any presents, but I made like a bandit in Winners and found the perfect shirt to wear to Ali and Doug’s New Year’s party as well as two cute sweaters, a silver frame for my mom, and rattly baby things for River. Yay!

If all that wasn’t enough, I came home and discovered that Valve FINALLY released the plush Weighted Companion Cubes for sale. I now have a set of cubes and a mug on their way to me via Ed, and I am excited.

Cute hair, alcohol, and Weighted Companion Cubes. It has been an excellent Friday.

Even though I am less than impressed that the mail was not delivered yesterday, I still want to get the carrier something for the holidays. I’m at a loss here, because I am very bad at giving gifts to people I don’t really know and I’m not sure if going the clichéd route is the best idea. I thought I could perhaps go for an ULTRA cliché, and get one of those Tim Horton’s mug pack thingies – not a lot, but just as a “thanks for putting up with my hundreds of internet packages and also for that one time you took my resume to give to some guy even though nothing ever came of it”.

Do you give gifts to the various people in your neighbourhood? In your neighbourhood? In your neighbourhood? Do you give gifts to the people in your neighbourhood; the people that you meet each day?

If so, what? Should I just stick with my original plan and not fret that it’s a cliché, or try to think of something original? I don’t interact with anyone else – ever – so the mailman is really the only utility-type person I’m thinking about gifting during the holidays. Is it truly the thought that counts, or should I at least try for the wow factor?

Of course, all this is moot – my “keep Kimli off the street” money isn’t coming this week as scheduled and might get here next week, maybe, if Canada Post (oh look, irony) actually decides to come out, so I’m officially canceling Christmas because I am too poor to play along.

I have much woe.

I’m being a bad neighbour, and it’s harder on me than it is on them.

Our downstairs neighbour is on break from school, and as such is home all day long just like me. Not a big deal, except they recently acquired some sort of crazy sub woofer for their noise-making devices. All day long for what seems like the last million years, from the moment I wake up until around 10pm, there’s nothing but BASS coming from downstairs. I can feel it in our floors. It’s a non-stop underlying noise, and it’s driving me insane.

So to drown out the rumbling sounds coming up from my floor, I have my computer speakers going with some loud music of my own. Unfortunately, I have a very bad headache and a bunch of the quease, so all it’s doing is acting as a wonderful passive-aggressive quick fix that makes me want to throw up. Thing is, the bass from downstairs is slowly making me want to kill and I figure listening to some shitty music of my own at least covers up most of whatever the hell it is she’s watching on TV so loudly is.

I don’t really want to complain because we have a good relationship with these people; they have a cute puppy and everything is friendly and lovely. I know there were actual screaming matches and nasty notes left on doors between downstairs lady and down downstairs lady; I don’t want to be another bad neighbour who complains about stuff all the damn time (even though I DO, just not to their faces).

Mostly I am just feeling sad and defeated and useless and ugly and everything just sucks.

Except these:

I don’t care what Ed thinks; those are totally great.

Richmond is very far from North Vancouver.

Too very far.

There will be no passing Go for me just yet.