Well, Christmas turned out not as bad as I expected. I was in such a gloomy funk that day. We went to my Dad's at about 6'o clock and of course, Jamie's mom had been there since 2. My poor Dad. It was a tense enviroment at first b/c my Dad was annoyed with me and my sister for not coming over until 6. He was acting like such a baby until I said "I worked all week and I still had stuff to do. If you keep acting like this, I'm leaving. You're going to ruin my Christmas." And he shut up after that. I've never made him do that before. It felt good, actually. Then at around 8, my sister Tia and her family came over and we opened presents. I was very dissappointed, however, about Gi's(the Korean) present. I was so excited to get him the Korean Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. We ordered it off this special website and I worked for an hour making gift certificates since it wasn't going to come for a few days. Then, he shows me what his mom sent him for Christmas. Oh yes. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince in Korean. Ug it was so terrible. I still don't know what my dad did about it. We left around 10 b/c Marci was about to keel over, but, of course once we got home she was wide awake again until 1.
Monday was our real Christmas. Jamie and I spent the day running errands and making returns (my new Chuck Taylors were too big and they didn't have any my size :-( ), and then, at about 7, we ventured to the Buena Vista restaurant for our family gift exchange. All my brother and sisters were there. There were 28 of us! It was SO great having everybody there. It seems like we haven't been able to get together like that unless its a funeral. So it was nice being together for a happy occasion. We did a White Elephant game, which is where you get something from your house, wrap it up, and hand it out to someone else. Well, my Dad invited these two priests to our dinner and told them to bring white elephants as well. Well, since they had to leave early, my neice Julia handed them two white elephant gifts on the way out and sent them on their way. Meanwhile, my sister Tia decided that giving my brother Sean a rock from her backyard would be hilarious. Unfortunatly, when she went to go get his present, it was gone. Julia had given it to the priests! She gave them a ROCK wrapped in wrapping paper. And they actually BOUGHT their white elephant gifts! They gave us this big thing of godiva chocolates and this pretty basket and they got a ROCK. I think it's so hilarious. They must have been SO confused. We all piled into my Dad's house after that to finish the white elephant game and..I know I say this all the time...but my little girl is probably the cutest thing you've ever seen. She doesn't really like to play with kids her age. She had way too much fun running around with my little 8 year old neices. And then, she comes into the living room where we are all gathered in a circle...stands in the middle and starts clapping. So then we all start clapping. Her eyes grow big and wide at what she has just accomplished and she starts to clap again. So, then we all give her a roaring applause again. She was so stunned and pleased with herself. It went on for about 5 minutes.
Tuesday was nothing really special. My cousins and aunts from Pittsburgh came down and we had a big dinner. Weds, everyone came to my apartment for lunch. Since there were so many of us and we didn't have our table then, we had a big picnic on the floor while we watched the new Veggie Tales movie "Lord of the Beans". Then Jamie and I spent some more time decorating our apartment. It's looking really really good. I've started this..well..for lack of a better word, I'll call it collage. I have this big antique gold frame that my dad put cork board in when I was in highschool for my pictures. Well, I drew a big lotus flower in pencil on it and I've spent the last couple days cutting on pieces of magazines to fill in the shapes. It looks like I painted it. I'm pretty proud of it. Its taking a long time b/c I have to look for different shades of each color to give dimension and I have to cut each piece to go in the same direction and fit in like a puzzle. But, I think when it's done, it will look pretty rockin'.
Yesterday, I worked and made 90$ and sliced my finger open. I also got in a fight with my brother b/c he was supposed to come into Damons to say goodbye to me and he never did. I was really upset about it b/c I didn't get to spend enough time with him. Since he's my only brother left, I kling to him more. I really want to go visit him in Boston soon..unfortunatly, that involves money that we don't have.
Other than the basic recordings of my days, nothing else has been going on. Jamie and I are doing SO SO wonderful. Our 2nd wedding anniversary is Monday. We've finally been spending some good quality time together instead of just watching tv. Last night, we stayed up until 4 am working on my collage. He helped me cut out the pieces and find different colors through the magazines. The night before, we took a much needed bubble bath together. I vow that when I have my own house, I am going to get a bathtub that is both wide and long enough for two people.
We talked about deep things. How he really wants to believe in certain aspects of religion, but its hard for him since he is so practical. He says he is scared he is going to go to hell. I told him that he isn't b/c if I go to heaven, it won't be heaven to me without him. Then we talked about dying. This is probably going to sound crazy to most of you, but lately I've been worried that I am going to die soon. I've always wondered if before people die, if they feel different. If they sort of...know. Or feel less alive then they did before. Some kind of subconscience warning. A couple weeks ago, I had a very realistic vivid dream. I was on an airplane without my family. Just me and strangers and there had been some...problems for the majority of the dream with the plane. They tried to fix it, but the pilot just gave up. He came over the loud speaker and said in a very calm, casual way that the plane was going to crash and there was nothing we could do about it. We were all going to die. He told us to call our families and say goodbye. I remember at first, I was very stunned. I thought there HAD to be a mistake. But then, I just accepted it. I accepted I was going to die and decided to prepare for it. And even writing about it now, I can feel it. I can feel what it felt like to know you're going to die. I don't think I'm going to fly on an airplane anytime soon. You are probably thinking I'm crazy, and maybe I am, but it scared me.
I think I've been ignoring my girl long enough. Time to play fetch!