We Need a Little Christmas Now!

I feel like I haven't blogged in forever!

Okay, LOTS of stuff to cover. First of all, Thanksgiving was great. We had a good show, and then I went home to K-town to hang out with my family and watch the parade, which much to Marla and my delight included Kristen Chenoweth singing the Christmas Waltz on a float with the Care Bears! I noticed that I tended to watch all of the marching bands and color guards a lot more closely than in previous years, too. My dad and I made commentary on all of their costumes; he knows how much I dislike color guard uniforms in general so we were trying to pick out the good ones.

I have to admit I got a little cranky at my Mamaw and Papaw's...We had a wonderful dinner, which of course made me sleepy, on top of the fact that I hadn't slept yet. Then Mamaw wanted us to decorate their Christmas tree, which is great, but it's a big tree and there are a lot of ornaments, and after awhile I realized I was the only one hanging them up, and got a little pissy when my mom asked me if I wanted to take a nap...

"No, I want to do this, but nobody's helping me!!!"

So then Mom, Dad, Aunt Julie, Mamaw, and Marla hopped up and helped me finish the tree. That made it a LOT more fun. Then when I got ready to leave, Mamaw was like, "You have to leave already? Do you have another party to go to or something?" And of course the rest of the family is like, "She has to go to work, Mom!" Haha.

Mom packed up left-overs for me, which was awesome! And I drive back and went to bed.

Friday morning at work was actually really easy. I got my show done really quickly, which was good because that gave me lots of time to get prepared for my live shot at the mall. And the live shot went really well; I was super-nervous at first, but after I got the first hit under my belt, I started to get more comfortable. And when I got back to the station, I found out that apparently everything was going wrong right before the show--people hadn't gotten to work yet because they'd overslept, one of the cameras went down, the teleprompter went out--but luckily everything got ironed out. And Baron was back to directing that morning for Kim, who had the day off, and he is so, so calm in crisis situations, so he set the tone and they all got through it just fine. And we didn't have any problems out at the mall; it was actually really fun! But I definitely have a new appreciation for what our anchors and reporters do!

Friday afternoon was fantastic as I got to meet a bunch of my HSM kids for lunch at McCords (yummy!) and then we went to my apartment to watch some videos I'd made from our summer. Then I spent the rest of the day with Justin, who is like the little brother I never had, Christmas shopping and getting his oil changed. Then his mom called and told us to bring back a pizza and watch chick flicks with her (so cute). We dug out the Christmas Show DVD from 2003, which we were both on, and found the points where we were standing next to each other--so funny! We were the same height, even though he'd been a 12-year-old member of the Kid's Choir and I was a freshman in college! (He's like 6'5" now.)

I came home that night to find Fish (my male betta) looking very sickly. He had been looking pretty rough that morning when I came home from work, so I had put him in a smaller bowl (fishy intensive care), so he wouldn't have to swim or move as much to get to his food, which he wasn't really making an effort to eat anyway. I was not very hopeful that he would recover, although he's surprised me in the past, but I wanted to give him a chance, so I tried to get him to eat before I went to bed, but he was struggling just to stay right-side-up. So I put the fish bowl in the kitchen and went to bed.

I slept in Saturday morning, then finally got up to see if Fish had made it through the night. He hadn't. I did a little ceremonial flush, cleaned out his bowl, put his little castle up on top of the microwave, and put his food away in the cupboard.

Poor little Fish. He's been through a lot with me. He got me through my first year living on my own. He got me through a couple of break-ups, and through a couple of holidays that didn't feel like holidays because I was working. He listened to me practice for civic theatre auditions and sit down occasionally to butcher songs on the piano, and he never complained once. He was always happy to see me when I came home from work every morning and he would wake up in the middle of the night to keep me company when I couldn't sleep during the weekends. Fish was a good fish, and I'm thankful for the time I got to have with him.

Anyway, after putting Fish to rest, I didn't really have anything to do, since I'd done all my house-cleaning Friday morning. So I finally decided I'd just put up my Christmas tree and decorate the apartment for Christmas. That was really fun, and it definitely got me back in the holiday spirit!

And then, this morning I went outside to go to church, and it was a winter wonderland! My initial reaction was, "Whaaaaat." But then a smile immediately crept onto my face as I sloshed outside to brush all the snow off of my car. I had no idea we'd get that much snow overnight! So now I'm sitting here at my desk, with the window blinds open so I can see the snow-dusted trees and picnic tables outside. I'm sure this will melt away pretty soon, but it was such a fun surprise this morning!

OK, I think that's all. You're now caught up on my life for the moment.

Until later!