kitten and her hub, trin, won't be coming out for christmas after all. the tickets are just too atrociously expensive. i'm sad i won't get to see her for the holidays, but also relieved we won't have a dozen people at the dinner table. i am quite social myself, but my husband isn't, and so many people in the house would also be quite a disruption for my son.
and it's not like our place is built to accommodate so many people. maybe when i finally sell a novel we can get something more suitable for the dozen or more dinner party.
yea, right. in my dreams. :P
hopefully, though, arrangements can be made for me to go out and be with her when the baby is born. trin is supposed to be in iraq by then, and i figure i can spare at least a week from work to help her and baby settle in. i wish i could spend more time there, but my money pays the rent and we'll still be working on recovering from the holidays and buying the car, so more than a week is a stretch.
plus, the plan is for saxy to go see his family sometime in january or february. the double hit to our income will be more than enough to make it harder to get on top before the summer hits.
and i suspect that the other member of the team i'm long terming on right now will be due around then as well. makes the answer to the possibility of getting called to long term for her easy, but it also means i will be earning even less money than i could be and that there's no guarantee that i will be working every day. the long term stuff definitely kills my free time, but it's guaranteed work and a higher pay rate.
anyway, so, we'll have linnorm with us, jewel has said she'll be by for christmas as well, so it won't exactly be a totally quiet holiday, just quieter than we were expecting. it also means we bought extra dishes for nothing. it could be worse -- we could have purchased the hens already as well, but i told saxy to hold off since a dozen hens can take up a lot of freezer space.
not playing hostess to a bunch of other people also gives me more time to do something i desperately need to do: write. as much as i love my girl, i don't get cranky from not seeing her for a week or so. i haven't been able to find time to write and that is definitely making me very cranky. but now i can send the youngsters of with their father, the husband off to work, and not have to entertain the daughter and husband, so i can immerse myself in what i love doing. i might even get to finish a story or two that have been too long neglected. i won't finish any novels in 2 weeks, i just don't write that fast, but i can definitely make progress on the newest project.
still, i wish i could see my baby girl before she has her baby. if the whole going out there happens, the next time i see her she will be days away from being a mama herself.
as for kitten, she's not happy with the change in plans and, apparently, cried for some time before she finally called and told me. i reminded her she has her own family forming and she'll be making her own holiday traditions. starting this year might even be a good thing for her and her hubby. i don't think it went over all that well. for all her being out on her own and married and about to be a mama, she's still my girl, and my girl misses her mama very much.
calling her on christmas won't be the same, but it will be something. beyond that, i guess i better pack her christmas ornaments and try to find a way to ship them out. it won't be much, but it will be a little something from home that she can use to start her own holiday traditions.
word of the moment: picaresque
belonging to or characteristic of a type of prose fiction that features the adventures of a roguish hero and usually has a simple plot divided into separate episodes; relating to or characteristic of rogues or scoundrels; picaresque fiction - prose fiction featuring the adventures of a roguish hero
