Okay, then! Candy made; boxes decorated to hold the candy; Mom's gift nearly finished; and I got cocky and said yes to a get-together at a friend's house tomorrow morning. She said I could bring any last-minute things on which I'm working with me if I needed to, and I may have to take her up on it. Then I just have to get out and get something for Eric's dad, as Eric decided at the last minute that we should do, get the boxes to my family and his boxed up, and get them to the post office.

Then I think - I think - we'll be just about finished with Christmas stuff. Oh, except for the part where I have to clean out Gabe's bedroom a bit to make room for the bunk beds. And the part where I have to buy the bedding for Gabe that will be my parents' gift to him, only we're getting it up here so we don't have to worry about shipping. Yep, that's all that's left. I think. And wrapping presents. Uh...

Maybe I'm not so close to being done, at that. Coming up with something new every time I consider it...

We did have fun with the candy, Sam and I. We decided to make Peppermint Bark and Fudgy Buttons. For the bark, Sam had a blast trying to smash Starlight mints with a rolling pin; they were more stubborn than I had anticipated, but he gave it his all. Then he stirred the crushed candy into melted white chocolate and helped me spread it onto waxed paper to put in the fridge. When he licked the spoon, his face fell a little. "It's not so good since it hasn't been cooked yet," he ventured. I don't think he believed me, even as we put the cookie sheet in the fridge, that you could use a cookie sheet for any purpose other than baking; therefore, in his mind, this candy is still unacceptably "raw." We'll see what he thinks of it tomorrow morning.

The Fudgy Buttons were basically butter, cocoa, powdered sugar, milk, and peanut butter, mixed together into a fudge-like ball, then divided into teeny patties. He wasn't nearly as interested in making these, as less testosterone was involved, but he enjoyed licking this spoon more. "It tastes...weird," he said, licking away.

"Doesn't it just taste like chocolate and peanut butter?" I asked.

"Nope. It's just weird." Okay, then.

He was quite intrigued by my hot glue gun, which turned out to be necessary for the box decoration; the Elmer's glue soaked right through the felt and refused to be effective, and my bottle of craft glue had petrified since its last use. His eyes got all wide at the glue gun, and he giggled at the strings that escaped to float through the air every time I stopped squirting. Then, attaching a piece of felt to a box, he accidentally got a little hot glue on his fingers, and it stopped being amusing. After that, he eyed the gun suspiciously every time I picked it up, as though it would go off at random, spraying glue everywhere. It's not like hot glue does more than feel uncomfortable warm for a fraction of a second (at least, that's all my cheap gun does), but he's a Man of Caution.

Oh, I almost forgot; I have yet more to add to my Christmas To-Do list; Sam still wants to go shopping for presents for us. I'll take him out to shop for Eric, but Eric's going to have to handle the other half of that, probably when Eric goes to shop for me. He's doing his "wait until the very, very last second" shopping thing that he does nearly every year (it doesn't help that we're a one-car family these days, and he usually leaves me the car during the day), so I hope Sam doesn't hold his breath.

My body is feeling physical effects of being stressed this year, which is funny, since my mind actually doesn't feel crazed and upset over the evaporating time. My shoulder, though, has been aching all day, getting progressively worse over time, and I'm getting shooting pains up the backs of my hands when I try to knit or write. As soon as the holidays are over, I'm going on a knitting break, I promise myself.

On the other hand, I sure am going to need something to take the edge off life at that point. Eric showed me his approximate travel schedule for January on, and it's enough to make me weep. He leaves for the first stint on January second, and then until May, it's very close to being every other week that he'll be gone. I'm shuddering just thinking about it again. What the heck?! Wasn't I promised that his taking the job here meant less travel time, not more? Not that that was the major deciding factor in the matter or anything, but...I do remember hearing something to that effect. Really, I do.

Poll for December 17th!
If your spouse or partner was offered a lucrative, prominent position that involved significant travel, would you want them to take it?	Sure, why not? No way on earth. Depends on just how lucrative
	Current Results