18 December 2002

K.T.'s game last night. I think I'd have enjoyed it more if I hadn't spent half of it having to fight to stay awake. I was so tired. If we'd been home, I think I might have given up and gone to bed around 9.

The Particle seems to like a nap around mid-morning - say from about 10 to noon. It was all I could do yesterday not to take a nap right there at my computer, and then as soon as I'd had lunch, I perked right up. And the Particle's bed time, of course, is quite early, around eight in the evening. I'd promised KT I wouldn't lay down while we were still gaming, or else I might have curled up into the corner of my chair, pulled my jacket over me for a blanket, and gone right to sleep.

My pregnancy book mentioned this - both this dragging exhaustion and that I would begin to match the baby's sleep patterns. I suppose it'll be useful to have my body trained to the baby's rhythms by the time it's born, but for right now it's kind of annoying. I'm looking forward to the second trimester already.

Still, it was amusing, watching Matt's character try to explain civilization to his charmed orc pal.

And K.T. gave us our Christmas cookies, too! Whoo-hoo!

(Matt eats cookies for breakfast on Christmas. That's his thing, and I don't mess with it. But I'm not making cookies this year - unless I get inspired over the weekend, which seems unlikely - so it's nice to know he won't be skipping breakfast.)

And she made gingerbread cookies, which are just lovely. Honestly - the pies and the fudge and the other cookies are good, but the gingerbread cookies? Matt'll be lucky to get two of 'em.

I finally got around to putting together my menu for Christmas dinner yesterday, and its accompanying grocery list. I swear, I'm going to have to buy just about everything. I think the only ingredients I already have on hand are butter and flour. Oh, and olives for the relish dish. But, luckily, I'm keeping it fairly simple. There's only five of us, after all, and I don't expect either Mom or Grandmom to be heavy eaters.

So tonight when I get home from work I'll need to re-arrange the freezer to make room for a turkey, and when we go to the grocery store, I'll be buying (hopefully) everything I need.

The turkey will come back out of the freezer to thaw in the sink on Saturday or Sunday (depending on how big a bird we get) and when that space is cleared up, I'll make the peppermint pie I'm planning for dessert. (It has to be frozen, and I'm pretty sure there is not room for the pie and the turkey at the same time.)

Whether I roast the turkey on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day kind of depends on whether we're doing the family get-together to open presents at my parents' house or at ours. If I'm going to be at my parents' for most of Christmas Day, then I'll have to roast the turkey the day before and just re-heat it quickly before Christmas dinner.

And now I'm sure you know far more than you ever wanted to know about my plans for Christmas dinner.

--Liz