So, I don’t know if you can tell (maybe you’re reading this in Google Reader?), but my blog and I have been sort of fighting the last day or so.  And I think so far, the blog has the upper hand.  I won’t rehash the whole story but I wanted to change something, ended up deleting something I shouldn’t have and thought I’d find a new theme instead of trying to fix the old one.

HA HA HA HA!

That’s a good one.

So maybe sometime this next year I’ll get this all fixed up proper-like. A girl can dream, can’t she?

In the meantime, it’s New Years Eve (duh) and yet again, we have no discernable plans.  You know, other than to eat a ton of greasy snack foods and drink ourselves silly.  But shoot, if that’s not what New Years is all about then I don’t know anything.

We did major grocery shopping today which was pretty much just the perfect way to finish out a craptastic year like this one.  I swear to God, if we had a Super Target, I’d never step foot in Walmart again.  HEAR THAT, SUPER TARGET??  Let’s get a move on, here.  My sanity is in your hands.

We watched “Funny People” last night, rented off of beloved redbox and… it was sorta funny?  But also sorta weird?  Actually, pretty much what you would expect from one of Adam Sandler’s movies these days.   And, I don’t know, there was something about him supposedly being this super famous, super funny comedian that I just had a hard time buying.   The parts about him doing movies with crass humor and childish antics were pretty much spot on though.  And the whole bit with Eminem bitching out Ray Romano? Probably the best part of the movie.  Though I did like the bit with Andy Serkis too.  Not a bad movie, just seemed to go on FOREVER and at the end, Kile was all going, “HUH?” and I had to sorta explain what (I thought) was the point.

Y’all?  That’s not a good thing to have to do after a movie.  Just in case you were wondering.

Let’s put it this way:  It was no “District 9″ or “Inglourious Basterds” (spell check LOVES that title).  I kinda wish “The Hangover” had been available instead.

Anyhow… where was I?  OH YES.  Putting 2009 to bed.

I won’t be sorry to see this year end.  I don’t know if I entirely expect 2010 to be a vast improvement, or anything.  But at least it will be a fresh start.   And I know I could sure use one right about now.  It wasn’t a completely horrible year.  But it wasn’t happy either.  And when I look back at this time last year and realize how I felt and then knowing that I feel the same if not worse this year?  NOT GOOD.  Let’s change that, shall we?

So I want to wish everyone everyone a very Happy New Years.  Drive safe, make merry and roll your eyes at Carson Daly for me, mmkay?

1. What did you do in 2009 that you’d never done before? I went on a cruise.  I flew across the country with two children.  I knit dozens up on dozens of adorable garments.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year? Yeah… about that… I set some very reasonable goals and I’m sorry to say that I didn’t do a very good job at keeping up with them.  Okay… so we did get a little landscaping done and the kitchen light fixed.  But the windows are still busted and the fence is even more kaput than it was last year.  As far as getting into shape?  NOPE.  I could possibly be in WORSE shape.  But, I do at least have a plan for that. And, given the holidays, I think I’ve done a very good job at not going overboard with the bad eating.  So go me.  Maybe I did better than I thought!  Because I have let go of the past.  Or at least, made significant progress in that direction.  I don’t know if our lives are simpler, but I like the things we’ve done, for the most part.  It’s a good thing I didn’t make a resolution about being happier.  Cuz I would have totally bombed that one.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth? Hmm.  Do my message board buddies count?  I say yes.

4. Did anyone close to you die? – My best friend’s mother died and that sucked BIG TIME.  A lot of people died this year that just generally cheesed me off because of the unfairness of it all.

5. What countries did you visit? BAHAMAS! 

6. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009? Happiness.  Contentment.  Well-being.  I don’t think this is a lot that I’m asking for here.  Oh and maybe some more yarn.

7. What dates from 2009 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? August 5-14.  Best. Week. Ever.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? My knitting biz.  While I don’t think I necessarily qualify as a raging success or anything, I’ve done some great things with it.  Everything I’ve accomplished so far is just incredible to me.  I never thought I’d be this good at knitting.

9. What was your biggest failure? Hmm.  There were many, sadly.  Myself, would be the biggest answer.  I failed myself in huge, awful and horrific ways.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury? I had the flu a week or so ago.  That pretty much sucked.  But for the most part, we’ve been a healthy crew.  Nothing to sneeze at, considering H1N1 and all that.

11. What was the best thing you bought? Macbook.  I’d say iPhone but that was a 2008 purchase.  Still, it’s so good it could easily span several years.  But yeah.  The  Macbook is awesome.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration? Not me.  There have been many who have inspired me, and even made me wish I could be one third like them.  Heather Spohr comes to mind.  Among many, many others.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed? Yeah, this one is me.  I’ve been awful, awful, awful this year.  AWFUL.  Words can’t describe.  Total backslide.

14. Where did most of your money go? Yarn.  Diapers.  Disney.  You know, the important stuff.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about? DISNEY.  OMG, that was the best vacation ever in the history of vacations.  I wanna go again.  Like, tomorrow.  That would be so awesome.

16. What song will always remind you of 2009? - there are a few, actually.  Miley Cyrus’ “Party in the USA”, “What Time is It” from the HSM2 soundtrack (will ALWAYS make me think of Disney World), Black Eyed Peas’ “Boom Boom Pow”.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder? - SADDER
b) thinner or fatter? - thinner, I hope
c) richer or poorer? - richer

Sheesh, you’d think I’d be happier.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of? – exercise, take care of myself

19. What do you wish you’d done less of? – yelling

20. How did you spend Christmas? - Here.  At home.  With the fam.  Whoop.

21. Did you fall in love in 2009? - Yes, with my children.  Watching them become PEOPLE is so incredible and humbling.

22. What was your favorite TV program? - Lost.  True Blood.  V.

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year? - Thank goodness no.

24. What was the best book you read? – Woe… I did not read many books this year.  I feel shame.

25. What was your greatest musical discovery? - Radio Disney fare.  Here is where I hang my head in shame.  But honest to god, I am a total Disney music FAN.

26. What did you want and get? Interchangeable needle set, Disney World sweatshirt.

27. What did you want and not get? Yarn dyes.  Yarn.  Knitting books. To get to move away from here.

28. What was your favorite film of this year? - There were a few good ones, I think.  I really enjoyed “District 9″ and “Inglourious Basterds”.  “New Moon” was also a lot better than I was expecting.

29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you? - I turned 34.  It was a nice day but nothing out of the ordinary.  It’s hard to get too excited once the years start piling on!

30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? - More time to get stuff done. Medication.

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2009? - pajama chic

32. What kept you sane? - my message board buddies, knitting.  Yes, the thing that threatened my sanity also saved it.  Go figure.

33. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most? – This is actually rather hard to think up.  I mean, I like a bunch of celebrities, but I’m just not sure that I liked any one enough to say I “fancied” them, you know?

34. What political issue stirred you the most? - Health Care.  I continue to be stunned and horrified that there are people who don’t value human life enough to really want to make a change.

35. Who did you miss? - my best friends from high school.  I could have used them this year.

36. Who was the best new person you met? - I met a few gals from my message board and that was totally and completely awesome.  I want to meet more.

37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2009. - I don’t think I learned anything terribly valuable.  I mostly just spun my wheels this year.  Got nowhere fast.  Maybe I learned to KNOCK THAT OFF.

38. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.

One minute I held the key
Next the walls were closed on me
And I discovered that my castles stand
Upon pillars of salt and pillars of sand

Christmas is past and unlike previous years where there has always been a touch of post-Christmas letdown going on, this year I’m just sorta “meh” about it.  But then, “meh” sorta sums up my entire year.  On the whole, I’d say I’m just sorta glad Christmas is over with so we can move on with things.  If I’m disappointed about anything, it’s the notion that we’re that much closer to summer again.  I could go another 9 months without hot weather, thankyouverymuch.

I hope everyone had a dandy Christmas.  I can’t complain too much about ours.  Nothing spectacular, but was peaceful and homey.  We spent Christmas Eve in the usual way.  Kile was home from work and we got the turkey ready (brined, baby!) and that afternoon we went out to eat at PF Changs.  Evie was… special.  It’s getting very hard to eat out with her.  I had to go out with her several times.  But word to the wise: Crispy Honey Shrimp is out of this WORLD.  I want to eat that every day.

Afterward, we went by Walmart.  The intention was to pick up my thyroid med prescription.  Of course, everyone came in and the pharmacy was closed adn I came to the conclusion that if you’re already having a hard time feeling the Christmas Spirit, then going to Walmart is probably the worst thing you could possibly do.  I picked up a last minute gift for Harry (Christmas jammies to open when we got home!) and fled with my sanity barely intact.  UGH.

I had also reserved “District 9″ at the redbox.  The intention was to reserve it at this particular Walmart so I could pick it up while there.  Except, I reserved it for the WRONG WALMART.  I somehow picked the “Northtown” Walmart instead.   Better known as “Getto-Mart”.  We don’t go there.  We just… don’t.  And here it was, Christmas Eve.  And we had to go.  I jumped out of the van and ran inside (it SMELLED in there!) and… no movie.  Just an error message.  GAH.  So we made a call to redbox support and they apologized profusely, refunding us the rental fee and gave us two free rentals to make up for it.  I checked the redbox iPhone app and luckily, “District 9″ was available at a machine on our way home.  So we stopped and picked it up.  We saw “Inglourious Basterds” was also in and picked that up too.  Awesome!

We got home and let the kids open their Christmas jammies, have a little fudge and then it was time for bed.  Yay, Santa’s coming!

Harry helped us fill stockings, eat Santa cookies and put together Liam’s train table before he headed to bed too.  I was impressed that he was so anxious to get to sleep.  He wanted it to be Christmas as bad as the little ones did.   We set up the rest of the gifts, one big Santa gift apiece.

The train table was beyond cool.  Looks like a regular table?  Inside is…

We knew Liam would LOVE it.  And lest you think Evie got left out:

Every Princess needs a castle, yes?  And for Harry:

God help our ears.  We settled in to watch “District 9″ and it was a really, really good movie!  And I found it was PERFECT for Christmas this year.  I needed some violence.  Forgive the small spoiler, but if you need to see multiple people and things blow up like water balloons?  WATCH THIS MOVIE.  It fulfills that quotient quite nicely.

Morning came rather early, as Christmas mornings often do.  I was woken up by the realization that there was one more dog in our bed than is there usually.  I turned over and saw two heads poking in the door, one of them giggling.  The boys were up!  We grabbed Evie out of her crib and headed down to take in the bounty.  As predicted, Liam was floored by his table.  He just stood and stared at it for a few minutes.  Evie took a few minutes to fully wake up.   Christmas can be very overwhelming.

The kids had an obscene amount of gifts to open. Evie had no interest in the actual opening of gifts.  We had to do most of that for her, but she did quite enjoy the end results.   I got some nice gifts, including a watch from Disney World  and some awesome slipper socks.

But by far my coolest gift was a sweatshirt Kile hunted down for me at Disney World.  While we were there, I wanted this sweatshirt SO bad.  But it was rather pricey and I just couldn’t bring myself to spend a majority of my souvenir budget on one thing for myself.  I left it behind but even after got home, I kept thinking about it and wishing I had gotten it.  It was so cool!  I looked online and it was nowhere to be found.  No Disney Store, no eBay, nothing.  Well apparently, Kile found out about this secret “personal shopper” service that Disney provides.  You let them know what thing you’re looking for, what store you had seen it at, and they’ll go find it for you.  So he used that service and hunted down my sweatshirt.  Imagine my surprise when I opened it on Christmas morning!  Very cool!

Of course, now that I look, they have it online.  Still, that doesn’t diminish the heroic efforts Kile went to to track it down.  Awesome.

All in all… a good Christmas.  Kile has this week off so we’re gonna take it easy, recover from the holidays, do some shopping and just enjoy the season.  Sounds good to me, how about you?

So… er…  Hi.

I’m still here, I SWEAR.  But I don’t know if you’ve noticed or anything.  But it’s like CHRISTMAS EVE tomorrow.  And I’m a knitter.  And as such I am burning the midnight oil (literally!) trying to get out a few last presents for the family.  And, sadly, amidst much knitting there isn’t much time for blogging.

Besides, all you would hear me say is, “FLU! ACK!  KNITKNITKNIT!  MY BACK! ACK! KNITKNITKNIT!”  That’s pretty much all that’s happened since I last posted anyhow.

So yeah.  It was the flu.  As evidenced by the crazy ass fever I was sporting (probably WHILE I was writing that last post which does actually explain quite a bit, don’t you think?).  Luckily, I bore the worst of it in the hood here.  Kile and Harry both were sick but neither were in the throes quite as deep as I was.  So… there’s that?  But I totally lost a whole day of knitting and that SUCKED.

KNITKNITKNIT!

And then the whole back thing.  I did something funky to it yesterday, popped something out of alignment behind my right shoulder blade or something.  Hurts like heck.  I had four ibuprofen earlier which sorta helped dull the PAINPAINPAIN, which is improvement because the 4 ibuprofen I took yesterday did nada.  I seriously woke up this morning feeling like one big old muscle cramp.

I can still barely turn my head to the right but whatever.  I don’t need to be able to do that to knit.

KNITKNITKNIT!

Luckily, I’m mostly done with gifts.  I wasn’t able to get everything done that I hoped, but perhaps that will remain as a lesson to me to START EARLIER.  And not to let ones customs list get so out of control next time.  *cough*  I only have left the rest of Evie’s longies (I’m on the second cuff ruffle… woot!) and a hat for Harry.  Oh and a hat for my father in law, but that doesn’t need to be done until like Saturday or thereabouts.  So a bit ol’ WHEW there.  I will finish!  I must!  And no, I don’t get a day off, because soon as I have a chance, I have to get back into customs.

It’s a good thing I like to stay busy with this, huh?

Kile has tomorrow off and doesn’t go back to work until after New Years which is going to be wonderful. I’m looking forward to a few days of family fun and chaos, actually.  I’m not 100% sure what our plans are for tomorrow yet, but I think they might involve eating Chinese food.  Which is fine by me!  And perhaps driving around and looking at Christmas lights.  That’ll be nice.  Oh and brining a turkey.  But that’s more Kile than me.

If I don’t talk to you before the Big Day, I just wanna say Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone out there (there are still some of you left, aren’t there?).  I hope everyone has a great holiday together and that you get everything on your wish lists.

Ho ho ho!

I was going to write a nice long and potentially interesting blog post today.  Except that I feel like I’m about to die right now.  So I’m going to have to put that on hold.  I’ve had colds this fall so far, but this thing is kicking my butt.  Instead of getting better as the day goes on, as these things usually do, it’s getting worse.  I’m giving the little ones their lunches a little early so I can put them down for naps early.  So I can nap.  Because that’s all I really want to do right now.  Yes, even more than knitting.  This is a first.

I wish I could do more, especially since there is so much that I need to do.

Being sick sucks.