half-day

on sunday, E had a glorious day of doing absolutely nothing except eating and hanging out on the couch watching NCIS (okay, and doing some laundry), and she expressed the heartfelt wish that I, too, would have a whole day to do fuck-all sometime soon. what i'm getting instead are several days where i get to pretend that i'm back at Fest, taking my allowed half-day off. and today is one of those days!

i slept in a little, aided and abetted by the animals. they've gotten very good at strategic snuggling. effectively, they have learned how to pin me under the blankets and go limp, so that i have either to wiggle my way out at the top of the bed (because God forbid i disturb a sleeping animal) or accept my fate and go back to sleep.

i got one round of dishes done (it's been a little busy here, and things have piled up), signed and addressed a few Christmas cards, wrapped some presents bound for Oregon, made and wrapped some babysitting vouchers for K and J (and by "made", i mean i cut sheets of cardstock into thirds and wrote BABYSITTING in sharpie on each one), folded laundry, cleaned the kitchen, hung out with E when she came home for lunch, and ate approximately ten vanilla bean sugar cookies from this recipe (minus the almond extract, and minus the frosting). I'm watching Little V tonight, and decided that slice-and-bake cookies (plus a bottle of sprinkles) would be a nice low-mess activity. the recipe calls for dividing the dough in half, so i baked half as a test-run:

they're not the most photogenic cookies in the world, but they're delicious, and that's way more important! also, there are sprinkles all over my kitchen now, because they roll right off of the cookies unless you press them down a little. so much for low-mess. hope my sister has rimmed cookie sheets.

one semester of school is finished! they haven't posted grades yet, but unless i'm very much mistaken, i earned a 4.0 this semester. and i'm all registered for next semester, too: Chemistry 105 and College Algebra, here i come! one of the girls in my Biology class will be in my Chemistry class, and we *may* have jumped up and down a little while squealing, "lab partners!!!1!.

you know what's amazing? being able to rent textbooks. seriously. if i were to buy all of my books from the school bookstore, it would run me $530. but renting the two textbooks and buying the lab manual and answer key will only cost $246! THAT i can handle!

what else? mom, K, and i took Little V to see Rudolph: The Musical, and she completely fan-girled OUT, except when Bumble was on stage. scared her out of her mind, poor kid! she was shaking and crying so hard at one point that the six-year-old boy in front of us turned around to reassure her that it was just a giant puppet.

E and i are both off on thursday, and we're going to finish up our Christmas shopping. it's rare that we get to do that together, and we're excited! she has to get...well...pretty much everything, i think, and i just have a few more things to buy. a memory stick for her mom, puzzles for Little E, sausage and cheese for my brother, a card for Little V. a couple more ornaments...a couple more giftcards...not bad for starting later than usual!