Excessive

This has been a chaotic few days and I'm finding it difficult to cope with the messed up feelings that it's causing my brain to experience. It's been a blur of day after day, non-stop things happening, things to do, places to go, meals to cook, and it's all happening so fast, and I'm experiencing negative feelings as a result that I'm having a difficult time dealing with.

I suppose it starts with Bekki's birthday, which was Tuesday, December 24th. I had to go in to work from 6am to 2pm, and spend the whole work day getting the Christmas buffet ready. We had made plans for that night (Not Christmas related because it's Bekki's Birthday), so the plan was for my family to come over after work, have a birthday dinner, give Bekki her presents and play some games. I got home around 3pm, and I gave Bekki the choice of anything for her birthday dinner, and she chose pizza, so that I didn't have to spend any time cooking, so I could spend more time with the family and be less stressed. Naturally I couldn't let it be that simple, and I insisted on making a few finger foods, making humus, crudite, breads, meatballs and tomato and bocaccini skewers (only the humus was used).

For her birthday I got her two gifts, one was easy and I knew what to get months ago, and the other was something to make the night more fun. I got a beautiful, solitary diamond necklace, with 14k gold and it was just simple and elegant and I loved it right away. There was a slightly larger version that looked almost the same, but it was a significant price difference, but in a perfect world I would be able to buy her anything I wanted. Second, I bought her (I guess, us really) the game Taboo, which is a fun four player game involving trying to get your partner to guess a word but you have a list of words you aren't allowed to say, making inside jokes, and how well you know your partner an important aspect to doing well in the game. Bekki liked both her gifts, and I felt good about her reaction too, it was nice to see her smile.

Once Bekki opened her gifts, we sat down and played some games, mainly Taboo, and ordered pizza from Little Caesars. My Mom, Sister, Bekki and myself enjoyed some wine and had a lot of fun playing the games. Overall it was a fun night, although tiring. We went to bed shortly after everyone left, as I had to work at 7am the next day (Christmas day).

Christmas day is kind of a blur, and it's like six days after the fact now as I'm writing this, I'll try to recall events as best as I can, and at least a brief overview will be better than nothing.

I worked at 7am and made it to work an hour later than normal which was nice (normal being 6am). I remember breakfast being really easy, and I had the Christmas buffet (which was for about three hundred people) just about ready... I had the hot food in the warmer, and the cold food organized and by the time everyone got there around 1pm, it was decided that I could leave so Bekki picked me up around 1:30pm and I was out of there for quite awhile.

Bekki and I had a special dinner, which wasn't really planned super in advanced, but was more of an impulse thing, mainly because the scheduling worked out that we both had Christmas free, and would've enjoyed doing family Christmas that night but couldn't due to conflicts. We decided to have a nice, formal dinner, and afterwards we would exchange gifts. For dinner I decided to make lamb sirloin with root vegetables and baby red skin potatoes, which turned out nicely, although I've been enjoying lamb less recently than I remember enjoying it in the past. We both got dressed up: I wore my wedding suit, including the shoes and everything, and Bekki wore her black dress (which she wore to the staff Christmas party the year before), and it felt nice to get all formal and made it feel like a special night. We drank some wine and enjoyed dessert, and after dinner we went into the living room and decided to exchange our gifts with one another because it was Christmas and we didn't want to wait until the next night to give each other our gifts.

We got each other quite a few gifts, so it's hard to remember everything exactly, but some of the highlights, or coolest things that I got include: a banjo, a wine rack, a feather pillow and a Doctor Who TARDIS mug. Some of the gifts I got Bekki that I thought were extra special were all her super warm wool socks, super soft throw blankets, a leather office chair and a bunch of desserts!

The banjor is awesome because I always have wanted to learn an instrument, and have always loved the banjo, and have always said, "I wish I played the banjo", so I have a banjo now, and now I need to learn! It's a pretty awesome gift, because it's something that you would never think of. It's a pretty big ticket item, but it's also not ordinary... it's not a piece of electronics, it's not directly related to one of my interests, it was awesome and unexpected. The wine rack was special because mainly the furniture in our house is either a) ghetti b) mismatching c)franketstiened together out of unrelated parts. Our wine rack was a cheap Canadian Tire wine rack placed on top of a half broken, piece of shit kind-of-bookshelf, that we only used as a means of having the wine rack at the right height. The wine rack we had itself wasn't the worst but the way we had to have the shelf there to hold it was pretty shitty. Anyway, the wine rack she got me was this nice, wood, old fashioned wine rack, who's purpose was to hold wine, and it was like five feet high, has a drawer in it, a place to hold glasses, a place for all your bottles... it's awesome, and made the dining room feel a lot more complete. The feather pillow was something that I wanted since we got our bed over a year ago, since all we got with the bed was cheap shitty queen size pillows that just felt bad and sucked. About a month ago, somehow, mine broke. It was visibily broken and in two pieces, and I was complaining about it, but not really doing anything about it. Getting a feather pillow for Christmas fixed two problems, my desire to have one since I first got the bed, and my broken ass pillow that I was using.

Here is Bekki with some thoughts on our Christmas:

It was nice to open our presents together and have our own Christmas just the two of us. It was a calm Christmas and we had some special Baileys coffee with fresh whipped cream and chocolate shavings while we opened our presents. I loved all my presents from Jordan - they were really thoughtful and things that I needed desperately (a new computer chair) and stuff that just overall improves my life (like super warm socks and nice blankets). It was also exciting to see Jordan open his presents, as I bought things that I was really excited for him to get. I was mostly excited about his pillow because he had been talking about wanting a king size down pillow since we got our bed last year. He had also been talking about wanting a banjo and had been looking at them online on kijiji so I was excited for him to open that. The wine rack was also an exciting gift that I knew he would like because it nicely displays all the bottles that we are "collecting".

Boxing day was much more busy, involving lots of driving and stress and annoyances. It started with me waking up early with a headache, unable to fall back asleep, I got up at around 6am and just listened to podcasts and played Diablo 3. Eventually Bekki got up (around 9:30am maybe) and we got ready to go shopping (boxing day) and to her grandparents for Christmas lunch. We went to Masonville to the music store to get the bridge put on my Banjo, that didn't take that long. It was busy and annoying but not too bad compared to everything else we did. From there we went to Best Buy, which was a terrible experience. We had to park way the fuck far away from it, and walk up, almost getting hit by retarded drivers, the store was a mess, retarded assholes everywhere unaware of where they were standing or walking or what they were doing. They were sold out of everything I wanted except one thing, and the overall experience was extremely negative. I ended up getting in line to get a Surface tablet, as we got some money for Christmas from Bekki's Mom, and we had planned on splitting on a Chromebook becuase we both wanted a laptop, and I specifically wanted a portable computer that I could write on while watching TV, and while the Chromebooks weren't on sale at all (at $269) the Surface, which runs Windows 8.1 and can act like a Chromebook, was only $299, so it seemed worth the extra cost for it's extra possible functionality. Whether or not this is true is yet to be determined and I have my fair share of critisisms that I will write about, but that's for another time. Anyway, we waited in line and got a Surface, and then got the hell out of there.

Once safely back in our car, we headed off to Bekki's grandparents in the country, where we would awkwardly sit around with her extended family for a few hours, talk about nothing of substance, eat a weird array of food, sit around a bit more and then finally leave. That's just about as much as I'm going to write about that experience.

We left around 3pm and instead of going right home and preparing our own family experience, we thought it would be a good idea to finish up some shopping, which was probably not the best idea, but whatever, we're not always the smartest. We stopped at Toys R Us to get boardgames and had a terrible experience with the staff there and ended up leaving without getting anything (even though we lined up to pay for two things) and from there went to Staples to get a keyboard for the Surface we just bought for another $120, which you know, pushes the final cost of the surface to $419, which is significantly more than a chromebook. Anyway, after Staples we went to some random toy store I had never heard of before to see if they had boardgames but non-retarded staff, and they did (kind of). We picked up Trivial Pursuit, and finally decided it was time to head home. I contacted the family to let them know they could come over soon, and we drove home.

Our family Christmas (on December 26th, evening) consisted of finger foods, gift exchange, dinner and then some games. For the finger foods, I prepared humus with carrot sticks, pita and crackers, venison meatballs in spicy saucem and grape tomato and marinated bocaccini skewers. We exchanged gifts while we snacked on the food, and it was a lot of fun. Everyone got a bunch of stuff they loved and it was a lot of fun, we laughed and talked and it was just nice to spend a lot of time together. Some of the stuff exchanged was... I got another TARDIS mug from my Mom (woo double!), robes for Bekki and I to keep warm in from my Sister, candles and bubble bath and a book to learn Banjo with. We all had a lot of fun and I can't wait for next year for the same reasons.

After gifts, we had dinner, which was essentially all prepared from the day before, so I warmed it up and finished off what was finished off, and we sat down to eat. I made dijon and sage marinated chicken breast with brie and leek potato gratin, honey glazed carrots and turnip and stuffing. I think everyone enjoyed it (at least that's what they're comments suggested), and it was quite easy to get ready, so that was fun. For dessert I made Maple Pudding Cakes, which are indidividual cakes in ramekins covered in maple syrup and cream.

After dinner we all played some games, including Crokino and Taboo, and that was a lot of fun too. Eventually everyone was pretty beat after that long day, so that was that and the day was over.

I could keep writing about the next days but this post is only concerned with Christmas itself, so I should stop now. It's worth noting, because I probably won't write about it, that we went out boxing day shopping the next day and got some actual stuff, like games and movies, which I may or may not list in a future post. So that abouty wraps up Christmas time. Most recently I've been super sick with a fever, missing work and unable to feel sane, so it's been a pretty rough week.

It's New Years Eve right now, with a few minutes to the countdown, so I hope to start the new year on the right foot, feeling okay and with the right state of mind. Hopefully I'll be writing more often, so maybe I'll get to know myself again in the new year.

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