Work and holidays

[mellicious]

My sister texted me over the weekend, wanting to go to Cheesecake Factory one night this week. I'm like, "Um, no, sorry, we have to work all week!" and she just couldn't believe that. I'm thinking, Christmas isn't actually next week (well, it is now but it wasn't then) and it's not unreasonable that we have to work this week. We're state employees - actually we're university employees, but the bulk of our funding comes from the state, so we get the number of holidays that the state legislature says we get. The university has been trying to spread them out over the year more recently, I've noticed, meaning we don't get as many in December as we used to. But I'm fine with that. And actually I noticed that the local schools still seem to be in session this week also, so it's not just us. (And we're going to try to go to Cheesecake Factory on Saturday.) 

Honestly, our Christmas celebrations have gotten very minimalist these days and I'm fine with that, too. We're going over to my sister's house and having hamburgers, I think she said! Frankly, I associate Christmas the old way with a heck of a lot of stress and I guess she does too. We do mostly small gifts and eat something that's simple to prepare. I'm much happier with it that way.

Oh, we do have a tree, a tiny one. (I think we may still have a somewhat bigger one boxed up somewhere but we don't usually bother to get it out.) I went in Target several weeks ago and they had these little tabletop trees in a bunch of colors, not just the usual green; they were on sale, and I bought a red one, and gold ornaments. (Then I ended up buying more tiny-scaled ornaments - apparently even a tiny tree can hold more than I would have guessed!) It's cute, I like it.