And you're going to like it!

I have been having insane, wild dreams at night. They're somewhat stressful but man. Anyway. I won't write about that. What was I going to write about? Oh, I was going to tell you something sappy. I think I've written here before about often finding myself wanting to give Beebs quintessential seasonal experiences. I find this comes out in a way not quite intended but in summer I want her to get to sweat in the sun, go swimming, drink lemonade, eat melting ice cream, whatever. It all comes out sounding a bit...suburban but it seems inside more like a deep parental longing to give her happy memories and neat experiences, ice skating in winter, planting things in the spring and watching them sprout up, eating garden goodness, etc.

I tell you all of this somewhat disclaimery goodness to say that we have planned for the weekend following Thanksgiving to be our Christmas decorating weekend. Growing up we never put up the Christmas tree before my birthday the first week of December and it was always just me decorating while Mom watched. It was while Dad was at work. I never feel like we get to enjoy Christmas goodness long enough and I am determined to stretch it out. Last year I idiotically scheduled my gallbladder surgery around 2 weeks before Christmas -- I always had to work some part of Christmas/Christmas Eve/both/day after etc. when working at the hospital and often even if you were doing Christmas you also did Thanksgiving and it sucked balls, man. I hated it, like crying angry hated it. I couldn't stand missing Christmas with my kid but I had. Anyway, I will admit to my poor idea of scheduling this (minor) surgery before Christmas as it gave me a built-in recovery over the holidays and I was thrilled!! Recovery is generally pretty easy after a cholecystectomy. Surgery is outpatient! I was hardly awake when they spoon-fed applesauce and pain pills into my mouth and shortly thereafter I was wheeled to our car. The nurse in me was like..wait..I'm bleeding, I haven't peed yet, blah blah blah.

I was fine at first and thinking, psh, cake! This is going to be the best time of year! I'm off work-woo!!! Things quickly went downhill and then my ass was back in the hospital at my damn WORKPLACE, admitted for a week with pancreatitis (which I can tell you also sucks balls) and happily discharged Christmas day. I've turned this into a ramble but I'm scheduling a fireplace inspection, buying more candles, gathering wood and Christmas music and that weekend after Thanksgiving is going to be complete get-in-the-spirit time, baby. Cocoa and music and decorating - stringing up popcorn, making paper chains. I'm going to have Beebs help us create a little winter woodland scene on the fireplace mantle - inspection to be completed so we can have our first EVER fireplace fire. We're going to cozy this place up like nobody's business.

Christmas sidenote: I do not know how to handle this Santa business. Roommate and I were both kind of like meh, whatever, let's not go overboard. Now Beebs sort of knows about it and asks lots of questions and suddenly we find ourselves spinning quite the yarn about Santa. Ugh. I hear both sides of this argument and I guess we're just playing it by ear. The other night we did a little roleplay because she's terrified of Santa when he's at the mall or something and she always sees him there when she goes with her grandma. So anyway she's thinking she miiiight wanna talk to him so we pretended that Roommate was Santa and I sat on his lap (hoo boy!) and then he pretended other kids came and then she was all about it. After that she wanted to pretend that she was asleep and heard Santa coming and we had to make lots of Santa/Reindeer noise and she'd lie there pretending to be asleep, shivering with excitement and laughing. It was hilarious. It took the edge off of her Santa-nervousness. How do you play this or not play it? It's hard not to get wrapped up in it because that feeling that things are magic is just..wow. So I can't wait to deck the halls.