Blog? What Blog?

So...yeah.

Things have been kind of busy around the Sleepy home these days. Nothing earth shattering, really, just the usual randomness of life.

We had a lovely Thanksgiving meal with both sides of the extended family (as we're wont to do) - we met over at my mom's house though I did the cooking. We had some very yummy cheese balls to start off (the big ones you scoop onto crackers), then we had turkey (I'm so done with turkey now, that's twice this year, which is, roughly, 1.5 times too many) - nothing fancy done to it this year as the majority of the family just prefers the traditional on that score, a beet and acorn squash salad with a really rather yummy mustard/maple/pomegranate dressing (doesn't seem like it would work, but it did), stuffing, and potato gratin. The gratin was delightful, but I have to say for Thanksgiving I think I'd just as soon have mashed 'taters. It seems more...correct. That said, I'll totally do the gratin again. Just not for Thanksgiving. We also had cheese/chive popovers but they were an unmitigated disaster owing to the fact that I was in mom's kitchen so while I thought I was turning off the oven I'd used for the turkey, I was in fact turning off the oven that the popovers were trying to cook in. What resulted, after attempting to rectify the issue, were solid, slightly gooey, slightly runny, masses of egg and cheese that you could barely scrape out of the tins. Yum. Or not.

The day after, we put up our Christmas decor as usual. Though with the extra week of November this year the way the calendar falls, we're one of a very small number of folks who have decorated in the 'hood, making me feel ever so slightly premature with the whole business. I'm hoping this weekend more people will get with it.

The boys are enjoying all the decorations though, and really that's why we do it. (Seriously. Cause when it was just me and Tim, we often wouldn't bother. Though seeing Tim get giddy when it's time to put it all up makes me wonder why he didn't just push for it before kids, cause he really gets into it. I like a tree, but could pretty much do without all the other stuff (which is not to say I don't like having all the other stuff, but it's a lot of effort.))

I've been knee deep in edits on my second book as my publisher is hoping to move the release date for that up to April (I had originally been told June). I'm both excited and slightly terrified. The same can be said about the impending release date for my first book at the start of January. Gulp. I have these recurring nightmares that everyone who reads it leaves a negative review until the Literature Police show up at my door and haul me away. There are obvious problems with that (Number One being that with all the drivel out there, there is clearly no such entity as the Literature Police, so even if my book is just one more on the pile of drivel, they're not going to drag me from my home in the middle of the night.) but it's kind of fascinating how the ol' brain works. The "can't-find-my-locker-late-for-a-test-I-haven't-studied-for-in-a-class-I-forgot-I-was-taking" dreams have kicked up again as well. And this morning I woke up from a sound sleep in abject terror as a new and oh-so-delightful nightmare hit featuring the boys. Use your imagination as I'm not actually even able to make myself type up what happened in the dream cause it's too terrifying (even as I sit hear listening to the younger one sing himself awake so I know it was just a dream.)

Perhaps there's a tad bit of stress.

But it's good stress.

Beyond that, I'm happily in elf mode trying to make sure my list has been checked twice. I do love giving people presents. I think I've mostly got it covered, but there are few things yet to do. Then begins the wrap-a-palooza which, if I can, I will fob off on Tim as he's much better at it than I am anyway.