It occurs to me that school starts pretty soon. This is good, because the Z will be open and I won't have this food paranoia that I hate so much. Also, thawing a big ass turkey that we got as a Thanksgiving gift to munch on over the course of a few days. I'm looking forward to delicious turkey sammiches.

My brothers got me a pair of fleece pajama pants that are bright blue (Jon says they're loud but I don't know what he's talking about) and say "Love", "Joy", and "Peace" all over them. They were sweet enough to stay away from overtly religious symbols. = P But the pants are so warm and nice. Jon's mom found a bolt of fleece to gift to me, and I have to see how big it is, but I might just make another pair of these if it's enough.

Almost done with "The Magic Engineer" and then I get to move on to some assassin book that Jon got a long while ago when we went to see a movie and had to wait in Border's for a while. 'Cause sometimes you've just got to take a break from the Recluse series.

Also realizing that I don't have any more craft projects that need my immediate attention. Which means I've just got to find a place in the house to tie my backstrap loom to and hope everything goes the way it's supposed to. Maybe I'll have a pretty purple scarf soon.

Since I was able to finally get a job this semester, and thus Jon and I have been living off a tiny wage for a very long time anyhow, Christmas has to be the first real instance I've seen of an economic squeeze. That said, there were a lot of different efforts to make Christmas very enjoyable--some worked and some didn't.

We went to Conyers, and we packed blankets and pillows and books and movies, effectively fixing our previous problems but of course opening new ones. Jon's brother was home for various reasons--he was in pretty good behavior when he wasn't drunk, and his new not-a-girlfriend is incredibly awesome. But he has this way of pressing Jon's buttons with comments that don't sound infuriating to other people, so when Jon blows up at him, everyone's mad at Jon instead of Jay. Ugh.

His nieces were enjoyable, but in a weirdly morbid mood all week. Everything was about death, torture, not caring about living...A few talks had to be had. And the hard part was that when they weren't talking about death, they were agonizing over what presents they'd be getting. Jon's nieces have to be the most spoiled good kids in the world--they still appreciate the family stuff, for sure, but it was almost disconcerting...I mean, I made everything this year. They liked it, but I had a lot of anxiety about it until that point.

We watched his family's home videos, which was great 'cause I've only ever seen the two pictures of Jon's dad and I got to see several hours of video of him. Everyone sat down and laughed and talked and then drifted off to sleep so it was just me, Jon, and Michaela for the last few hours. That was nice.

Christmas at his place kind of hurt his feelings, made him feel really left out. It's one of those situations where we know it's not going to be a big ceremony, not a lot like last year--but it also felt like his mom and family hardly knew him with what they ended up giving him. The kind of stuff you get for that distant relative you never see. I don't know.

My mom freaked out about the food being okay, when we finally showed up. But she always freaks out about the food. I got to see BOTH my brothers for once--Ronny's always so busy, I feel like I haven't seen him since last Christmas. We talked and goofed around and eventually Ronny, Jordan, and Jon all ended up taking cover behind the couches shooting nerf guns at each other.

So now we're just going to enjoy the rest of our break. I think there was some talk about coming back up to Conyers until it's closer to school time, but I don't know how that's supposed to go right now. Money money money, right?

I'm at 88% completion of FFX-2. I'm terrified that I've missed some fraction of a point somewhere. I guess we'll just have to see.

And with that, all shopping that can be done has been done. There will be additions in mid-January because that's when refunds come in...But for now, everything's been provided for, and even folks who are getting stuff later are getting a small something now (with the exception of Zach and Eric because I live with those bastards).

So sometime before school ended, I told them I was moving out. I was enjoying a nice hot bath and reading before I packed bags and called up Missy to stay with her. While I was in the bath, Jon went and bashed heads. I came downstairs to a nice clean house and puppydog eyes, so I stayed.

So yeah. Wine has been mulled. Vanilla has been tinctured. Gift bags have been sewn. Multitudes of gifts have been crocheted. Cards have been bought. Jordan's Nerf gun is happily tucked away. A pile of fleece is ready to be assembled by Tori. A "goth kit" has been assembled for Michaela. Izzy's hat was done ages ago. Could it be that I'm possibly ready for Christmas?

Oh yeah, well...I have to not starve first. = P But my tummy is shrinking, so that's good, right?

School's done, passed everything.It's weird, I did best in the class I was most worried about and worst in the class I was least worried about--although I did kind of give up on it when it felt like the lectures were in Greek and I subsequently found out that I didn't need to have that class for my future stuff anymore--no idea how that happened. Graduation will be over the summer, if everything goes as planned--which it won't. Then I need to figure out just how graduate school's going to go--whether to apply now, later, wait a year, blahblahblah.

I need to send out the completed language paper to all the participants--it made a B without any kind of proofreading. And I even turned in the one with placeholder citations on accident. Y'know, where a citation looks like (Hall whatever year). But I think I made good points.

The rest of the time since school ended has been tons and tons of making presents. But all the immediately needed presents are done, all the long-term stuff is finished. I'm just finishing things for mom's boyfriend and Ronny's girlfriend now, so I think I'm in pretty good shape. Oh, something of mom's came unraveled in the wash, but it's okay because it's a quick fix.

Woman I worked with is letting me borrow a backstrap loom and gave me a skein of beautiful purple cotton/wool blend to experiment with. It sits in its bag and mocks me, since I haven't had time to play with it yet.

Nori keeps "helping". It seems that no matter how small the project is, he will find a way to lay on it. But he especially likes fleece, so I'm going to take the leftover scraps and make him a nice kitty bed that he can have for himself and never be kicked out of it, and have a place to prop his little head up like he likes. Awwww.