There hasn’t been much to say in terms of writing or even just talking to other people.  The holidays are a busy time for everyone, and I don’t really do Christmas with friends.  We set things up after Christmas, or around it, but leading up to the holidays is crunch time to get ready for family stuff.

Then this year, right after Christmas, I was hit with a flu that had me in bed with a temperature of 102 for a couple of days.  As soon as I recovered from that, it was off to the farm for New Years Eve.

Now I’m back, and last night I got text messages from at least two friends asking if I’m okay, and where the hell I’ve been.  Three nights ago, I was getting texts from other friends I haven’t seen in a while, asking when we’re going to hang out.  For some reason, all this prompted me to check my email, where the progression of emails from my most reliable email pen pal was basically 1. Hey look at this pretty picture, 2. Hey Merry Christmas, and 3. Hey are you still alive?  As I was responding to these, I got yet another text message query about where I am.

I get the feeling I’ve been neglecting people.  This is going to change.  Things are starting to quiet down now, and I have time for people, and no excuses.  I want things to get back to normal within these next few weeks.

2.  I mean REALLY gay.

3.  …and that’s most likely a sin…

4.  …and I might or might not actually mind that fact.

5.  Dealing with my brain is easier with booze…

6.  …except that I can’t drink while I’m on drugs.

7.  Drugs might or might not be worth sobriety, some days.

8.  Numb is pretty good, usually.  The only time “numb” is bad is if you’ve literally lost feeling in a limb or something due to an accident or other loss of nerve sensitivity.

9.  God.

10.  Listening to happy music makes you feel happy.  Listening to sad music sometimes makes you feel happy.  Listening to no music makes you feel sad.  Dancing in your computer chair makes you feel very, very happy.

One of my favourite bubble baths was resurrected from the Body Shop’s list of discontinued products, and I’ve been only too happy to buy a whole ton of it and revel in the fresh, clean smell it leaves on my body.  This morning, I decided to run myself a nice bubble bath to start off my day, and of course I used my new old favourite scent.

When I came back to the bathroom to turn the water off, I was hit with a wave of that smell, and I was immediately turned on.  I caught myself, and was surprised at that reaction to just the smell of bubble bath!  My brain kicked in, and I realized that the smell had brought me back to a memory, and I remembered what this scent used to mean to me, and what I had originally associated it with.

I know smell is reputed to be the strongest sense in terms of association and memory, and it’s only too true with me.  I’m often amazed by the memories certain scents bring back to me, or by how easily just a smell can take me back to another time and place entirely.  Of course, there are times that my sense of smell remembers more than my brain does, and a smell will drive me crazy while I try to remember what it’s reminding me of.  And there are times that I’ll try to avoid a certain smell, almost instinctively, because I know what it will do to me.

I had hoped that one of the side effects of the new drugs I’m on would be a sharp decrease in sex drive, but unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be kicking in.  Maybe it will later, or maybe right now my hormones are running too furiously and are canceling out that particular side effect.  At least I’m not as tired today, and my stomach has finally settled down.

Anyways, off to that bath I just ran, and to do battle with my senses trying to override my brain’s concept of what exactly is a good idea.

Seasonal depression hits me pretty badly, and it’s getting to that time of year.  For those reasons, I’m going to be taking it easy on myself.  I suspect I’ll be less unwilling to leave my house in a few weeks, but for now I need to alleviate the stress myself by making sure I get enough rest when I need it, and take breaks when I’ve been working too hard for too many days in a row.

I’m not depressed, and I am going to try my best this year to do things to keep depression from becoming a problem.  It might require a little patience on my part and from those around me.  And before we go out and spend time together and celebrate birthdays and such, I need to make it very clear that I will not be drinking.  No alcohol whatsoever.  I don’t want to taste anyone’s drink, and I won’t drink even if it’s a birthday or special occasion.  Alcohol is a downer, and I need to avoid sinking into that.

And now I need to go to work.  I have Monday off, so this weekend should be relatively easy on me.

So this Christmas, I will not be providing a wild card food.  The standard foods are at a point that we simply can’t expand the buffet any further, and there’s nothing in our repertoire that can possibly be sacrificed.  Everyone has a favourite thing that we need to have on the table, and although the Mediterranean-style hors d’ouvres I contributed were a nice addition last year, we are just out of room for any other new additions.

Dessert is another thing.  Every year I make a Yule log cake, and every year it sits in the centre of the table, uneaten.  No one likes cake.  It’s not about eating the cake, it’s about looking at it.  If you saw what my cake looked like last year, you’d see what I mean; for the most part, my family didn’t realize until the end of the night that I had actually made it myself.  It’s a nice centrepiece, but it’s one I’m going to skip this year.  It’s too much work when I could be making something that’s actually going to get eaten.

I don’t know whether it was Kraft or Philadelphia that sent us the magazine of holiday recipes, but in that magazine is a gingerbread cheesecake.  The top of it looks a big blah in the magazine, they just covered it in chocolate ganache and let it drip down the sides.  So I’m going to alter the topping a bit.  Mom suggested orange marmalade, which I think is a fantastic flavour to add, but I won’t just make it marmalade.  It’s going to be an orange reduction, so that I can say I made it myself.  And the chocolate is going to be drawn onto the top, and I’m still deciding between drawing one large snowflake on top of the orange, several small snowflakes, or just doing a diamond pattern.

And as for the cocktail tradition.  My aunt and I have been doing this unofficially for a few years now, but it just became something regular.  I learned a few simple cocktails and martinis when I went to bartending school, and since then, my knowledge has expanded greatly by being a regular at a popular little bar downtown, and getting to know the bartenders there to the point that they teach me how to make my favourite drinks.

It was always a chocolate martini for my aunt, after my first attempts at a brandy alexander.  Then I made her a Bazooka Joe, which was my favourite shooter at the bar and I saw no reason why it couldn’t be a cocktail.   This year, it’s going to be a blueberry cocktail.  I’m texting her tomorrow afternoon to find out if she likes the flavour combination, and I’ll get my liqueurs by the end of the month so I have a little time to experiment with the proportions and make it perfect.

Well, that’s food figured out.

Presents.  Dad’s going to be remarkably easy this year, since Mom and I are going halves on a rather expensive gift for him.  Now I just have to figure out what to get Mom.  Mom’s usually the easy one to buy for, since anything Dad wants is a couple hundred dollars, while Mom likes anything shiny, sparkly, nice-smelling, decorative, edible, crystal, soft, and/or colourful.  She also likes opening presents, so if I get her several small things and wrap them separately, she likes it even more.  And the trick is to get her stuff that she wouldn’t buy for herself.  Whether it’s an over-priced trinket she’d absolutely love, or an obscure or difficult to find chocolate; I’ve got an overall budget for her, but not a set amount of what I’m willing to spend on each individual part of her present, so if I find a set of, say, tea towels she would love the pattern on, I don’t particularly care if they’re $20.  If she’d get $20 worth of use out of it, and the look on her face tells me that she loves these tea towels beyond the point that it really makes sense to love tea towels, then $20 is a perfectly reasonable price.

The budget itself is quite flexible; it really just depends on how well I spend my money.  The $20 tea towel thing, for instance.  If I buy those, the budget goes up a little, since tea towels in and of themselves are not particularly exciting.  But if I were to find the most beautiful tea towels in the world, 50% off the already reduced price, and marked down for clearance until I’m spending $1.84 on the same set of tea towels, then the budget lowers.  Since I am a rather savvy shopper, their presents usually end up looking like they cost a whole lot more than they actually did.

Amazingly enough, another thing I think about for Christmas is the outfit I’m going to wear Christmas Eve, and how I’m going to do my hair.  My hair is going to be long-ish this year, so I plan on getting it layered and highlighted blonde.  I’m considering straightening it versus flipping it out.  I’m leaning toward flipping, but it’s much easier to straighten my hair.  My outfit, I have no idea.  Last year I wore black tights and a flannel plaid long shirt in dark greens and blues, the neck open down to my waist with a black tank top underneath.  It’s my favourite outfit, but I can’t wear it often because it’s very obvious.  So this year needs to be something different.

Anyways, enough musing about Christmas.  I’m going to need a few days off in the next couple of weeks to make all this happen; considering I’m getting 44 hours spread out over six days at work, it feels like I don’t have time for anything anymore.  I also have to get my hands on season one of Buffy before December, and already I’m coming to the realization that this week doesn’t seem like a possibility.

So how am I going to have my morning coffee?

My first thought was to just walk to the nearby Timothy’s for my coffee, but then I remembered that I haven’t showered yet, and my hair needs to be washed.  I don’t want to leave my house until I’ve washed my hair.  So I need to have a shower.

But before I have my shower, I want my coffee.  It’s just the order of things.  My morning usually goes:  get out of bed, pee, get dressed if I’m going to work, have a coffee.  Usually I’m smart enough to shower the night before, but when I come home from work late and pass out, I don’t remember to do that.

So the debate is:  Leave the house without showering to get my coffee so I can get on with my day, or, put some shoes on and walk across the floor to get the kettle out from behind the everything, grab the instant coffee and my mug, and make coffee in the bathroom… which is the closest outlet I can think of to plug the kettle in to.

Aieeee…. I’m off to make coffee, in the bathroom.