Home for the Holidays (in which Jennifer tosses her cookies)

What an interesting weekend.

On Friday my new stove arrived. Yay! It's very nice, and works quite well. As soon as it got here I started baking like a mad-woman, as I had my cookie exchange on Saturday, and had not started anything. The baking went okay, but every 4th dozen or so just refused to bake. It was incredibly annoying. The first time it happened, I was a little puzzled and annoyed. I baked the cookies for an extra 30 minutes, and still, they were just greasy balls of uncooked dough. The second time it happened I was a little more annoyed, and a little frustrated. The third time I was livid. Thankfully it was the last dozen I needed to bake, and I had already made some mincemeat tarts.

The exchange itself went well enough. The house got cleaned up, cookies were baked, there were crackers, smoked oysters, pickles and cheese, and of course, red wine. There was only one point that there were more people than chairs, the cats and Mary were all very well behaved. I was pretty stressed out for a week or so before the party, but I'm quite glad that I went through with it.

On Thursday Ian asked his boss what was going on at Christmas and was told that they would be shutting down from December 20th till Jan 2nd or 3rd, and that he ought to bank his hours. Um, right. It would have been really nice to have been told that a little more than a week in advance, you know? Anyways, we've decided that we will go back to Regina for Christmas now. It's going to be stressful, I think, and dificult, but my Dad was thrilled when I told him. I think we will only be going for a few days, and we will be back here before Mary's birthday.

On Saturday, our kitchen and bathroom sinks started to empty straight into the basement. This is not good. We called our friend who is a plumber and asked him to pop by to see what is up. We were hoping that it would be something simple and cheap. No such luck. His exact words were "It just gave up. The plumbing just quit. So, next weekend I will re-plum your house." Ho Ho Ho. Merry Christmas. So, not only will we not have any income over the holidays, but we will need to pay out $1500 for the plumbing (which is a steal, really). Oh, and we bought a new (1984 S10) truck for Ian before all this happened that we need to register and insure. Yay! When it rains, it pours. Anyways, if all this happened a few months ago, I would be freaking out, but now...well...I'm starting to get used to the fact that the universe is out to get us. Every time we seem to be getting ahead, something else happens. Bah. We will handle it, although it does mean that we will need to cash in all our RRSP's.

My biggest concern right now is Mary. For the last couple of weeks she has been going blue in the lips and fingers. Now, you may think that I'm a bad Mum for not taking her to the doctor immediately, but I tend to over-react, and I know this. So I just assumed that I was imagining things, right? Anyways, over the weekend Ian started to notice it too, so I now know that I'm not crazy. I've got a doctors appointment this afternoon with the pediatritian, and I'm worried. She did have some heart issues when she was born, but they told us that it was nothing to worry about...but what if it was something to worry about? Anyways, I had best get my act together, we have to walk to the Dr's office and I'm not sure how long it'll take.