Have to say that this day really didn’t turn out anything like I’d planned. Finished my book The Nine, so I guess it’s time for some Alleve and bed, to dream about Supreme Court Justices or something. I did also manage to get an ink cartridge today, so it wasn’t a total bust. I have declined tomorrow’s “Tinkerbell Fairies” party invite, though, to remove any possibility of slacking off. Hopefully tomorrow I will feel better and be more productive. REALLY looking forward to Monday’s appointment with Dale. Despite Dalton’s wise words to the contrary, sometimes pain does hurt, and I’m ready to be rid of it.

On his mom’s side, his grandparents are both full of health complaints, and likely won’t be doing much travel in the future. I’m glad they got to see our house once, and that they made it to Alabama last summer to finally meet mom. James’ aunt Iris has moved back in with them in her transition back to town, and while she looks for work, but it seems she might not look for her own place afterall, since they seem to be benefiting from having someone living with them to help out.

This was also Jen’s first Christmas solo, and I guess the separation is underway, with a year required before they can divorce. She expressed how nervous she was to be visiting the family after all her drama, and was afraid we’d all be mad at her just because we all like Marc. None of us have to live with him, though, and we all support her on her road to happiness however she may have to get there.

I didn’t spend much time with James’ dad’s side of the family this visit, other than some time Christmas morning, and even then his Aunt Mary was too sick to join us. I think Noah was suitably spoiled by Santa, though he was grown-up enough to wait for us to arrive before opening presents Christmas morning and not complain. James’ Dad and Noah will be coming down to Alabama to help set up the New Years eve fireworks show, or rather his Dad will help. Noah will likely get stuck playing games with GNI, pending they managed to extend her visit.

If we didn’t need to check on Kitty, and if I didn’t have work issues, including needing to pick up my paycheck, we probably would have just headed on to Alabama to see my family and start on the fireworks prep, but instead we came back to Atlanta for a couple days. It is always nice to get to sleep in our own bed again after a trip to Chattanooga with the “Worst Waterbed on Earth^TM“. So, today including some random work nonsense, we’ve been doing laundry and packing for a cold New Years eve working outside.

Not really sure what the post-New Years fireworks plan is. I guess there might be some drinking and carousing at the house afterward, if we’re not all just exhausted from the clean-up. Next day we will have to walk the site by daylight and make sure it’s all taken care of. Neither James or I have to work Friday, so I guess we’ll figure out our schedule as we can. We likely won’t head back until at least Saturday, or if they have worked out to extend Ivy’s ticket, we’ll likely be heading back to coincide dropping her off at the Birmingham airport, probably Sunday. The frewtnut niece and her hubby should be on their way home today, though.

Anywho… long gone are the days of just enjoying the holidays, as we continue to endeavor to put on these firework shows. The cabin getaway with Kit & Bob the following weekend should be just the nice, no-brainer break that could use after all this travel and work. For those of you lucky enough to just “enjoy” New Year’s eve at some party, perhaps with a tasty beverage, and with or without fireworks, know I envy you and also wish you well. Drive safe and we’ll see you next year!

This weekend will be the first visit east by the Alabama sis & hubby in quite a while! They’re picking up the Cali niece, hubby & GNI (great neice Ivy) on the way over, and should be here late tonight. She gets to be GNI, at least in writing, because she calls me GAK when she can’t be bothered to say the whole phrase “great aunt Kim” every time. God forbid she just call me Kim.

Anywho… time… has… crawled… today. When we had originally planned on getting the fridge and some furniture from the office this week, I’d figured we’d be buried in a wreck of a house just in time for our visitors. As it is, we’ve actually got it together. There’s beer in the fridge and vodka in the freezer. Still need to run our water line to get the ice maker going, but the essense of the party-fridge is now in place.

James’ office, even, with his new desk, is already all set up. We even managed to keep the countertop and filing cabinets he was using for a desk, just move them down, so we can dub them “Pete’s desk”, as some payback for the Alabama folks who dub the countertop in Pete’s office as “James’ desk”. If only they’d get over this way to use it more often, maybe it would be more true.

Most of you already know I took the Facebook plunge over Thanksgiving, primarily because the frewtnut niece is there. I’m discovering a wide range of folks use it, though, and have found more classmates than on any other free network. Now I’ve got the urge to dig out some yearbooks and look people up. It was sort of strange just listing everyone from the same year at the same high school and asking them to be friends, but that seems to be the norm there. I’m looking forward to sending out some personal messages though — after I look people up!

LJ will likely continue to be my venting/journaling site, but I have to say I’m checking Facebook much more often than LJ now. Perhaps it will help keep mom from passing on her terrible case of “hermit” to me if I manage to reconnect with some folk.

Meh… still not even 6:30. Jeez. They will never get here. =)

Sunday: Cuyamaca Rancho State Park to Julian, CA (elevation 4235 feet) to pick up the frewtnut great niece at girl scouts – Julian Cafe knows apple-pumpkin pie – Then Rifftrax for The Matrix

Monday: Balboa Park: San Diego Zoo (It’s turtle mating season), San Diego Automotive Museum (Ferrari!)

Tuesday: Guy/Girl Day, where JamesT hangs out with the senior chief. I do lunch with niece at Taco Salsa (where they know her name and told on her that she’d just been there the day before) then go shopping and see Twilight at Otay Ranch mall.

Wednesday: Balboa Park: San Diego Aerospace Museum (with the Star Trek experience!), San Diego Natural History Museum, lunch at outdoor sidewalk dining on Coronado, then dinner at PF Changs, B&N and Bolt at Otay Ranch mall.

Thursday: biscuits & gravy to hold us over until turkey & ham to hold us through Wall-E to hold us through pumpkin pie, pecan pie & cheesecake (then Maalox)

Friday: SeaWorld, leftovers, and Rifftrax for “Spiderman”

Saturday: “What the Dickens?” at Balboa Park, complete with Christmas carols and grown men in elf outfits, then a drive up to Del Mar to photograph the sunset and have dinner at Jake’s Del Mar

Sunday: San Diego Wild Animal Park (great-niece in control of my camera!), pop our In-n-Out Burger cherry, and leftover pie!

Monday: Chillout with more shopping and Quantum of Solace at Angela’s mall – which is Plaza Bonita Westfield in National City. Seriously, she did that. Order pizza, watch tv, more chill out and stay up way too late for our last night.

Tuesday: Hug great-niece 2 more times before school, leave her tons of silly notes, hugemongous brunch with niece (and eventually her hubby) at F-Hop, more hugs, ride to airport where we lament not having driven around by the water in San Diego more this visit before then, more hugs, then home.

The Southwest Experience^TM has pretty much already been documented, but it should be noted that at about 2am, when we finally got home, Kitty was only somewhat insanely happy to see us and the only thing trashed from her having run of the house for 10 days was the San Diego shotglass that I’d bought on my first visit, which she’d knocked off onto the tile by the front door and smashed but good. James’ reaction, “Kitty, you could have just called us.” Yeah, we were tired.

If more fun could have been had, we couldn’t have survived it. We have 3 billion pictures to sort through.

2. If you’re going to continue to use Photoshop 7.0, try to remember how to deal with the lame crashing on startup crap that happens every now and then… CTRL- ALT- SHIFT on startup gives the option to delete the settings file. This fixes this crap, don’t you don’t have to freak out and try reinstalling… again.

Especially impressive, apparently, was our attention to detail with our parking and making sure there were clear firelanes for the firetrucks. We had flags, parking signage, caution tape marking off areas, and people directing traffic with flashlights — which was apparently an amazing feat for an event held in Sis’ yard, essentially. Our display permit was prominently displayed. The shoot site was well away from any wandering people, and all of our care was remarked upon again and again.

We’d done so well, in fact, that we caused the poor stranded firemen after the show, who couldn’t get one of their trucks to start, to decide to radio in to their firehouse for someone to bring them jumper cables than to walk over and ask one of us. I found them on one of my rounds of guiding people back to their cars, and noticing that they’d brought their wives and kids along for the show and were apparently still hanging out, I offered to guide them over to the house for a beverage if they wanted. This is when they grudingly admitted to me that their “piece of crap” firetruck wouldn’t start, and they were just waiting for a rescue with some jumper cables.

As I’m turning to go get Pete and his jumper cables, I run into the frewtnut niece, tell her what’s going on, and she laughs and says probably too loudly, “Don’t worry folks, if things had caught on fire we would have had enough people in crew shirts around to push the firetruck up the hill.” The firemen are clearly embarassed, and frantically go to banging, cursing, kicking, and generally attempting to harass the truck into life.

Just as I manage to find Pete in the crowd to send him off for cables, I see the lights of the truck come on, and it seems they have banged it back to life. One of the firemen walks up to me and thanks me for all the effort we put in trying to help them, thanks me for letting them bring their families to the show, thanks me for everything I offered them, and generally just made sure I knew to tell Pete how much they enjoyed getting to come out for these shows all the time. They said to tell him they knew he wouldn’t actually need a firetruck, since he was so careful, and that’s why they didn’t bother to bring “the good one.”

Of course, when I finally showed up back at the house to join in the after-show drinking, I had to tell everyone I was held up because I had to rescue the firemen. I was then reminded that the cop who pulled Ben over the previous night was also a volunteer fireman who was likely at the show, though I don’t think he was one of the guys I was talking to — though it was dark out there. I guess if he’d recognized me from the night before, he might have been even more embarassed at the whole thing.

My taking my own Nintendo DS as an extra one for any kid without at the party was apparently the coolest idea EVER, and instantly made Dennis’ little niece Abby my very best friend. Ivy had her calling me Awesome Aunt Kim, too. Anything that little 8-year-old sweetie needed, I was apparently able to provide, and I guess I didn’t realize how blown away she was by it all. I mean… I may not have picked up the sparklers and snaps, but I did get them out for the kids and light them. Come Saturday night when Tessa and the kids were heading back to the hotel, where they intended to get up early and start the long ride home to Maryland, Abby was SO sad to be leaving. Her brother, Christopher — who announced to me the day before that he was my favorite kid — was frantically trying to think of something he could leave behind that they’d have to come back for. Abby just grabbed me and said “come on”, telling her mom that I had to go with them. I got a big hug out of her, and she left me with a huge pouting lip and eyes full of tears. I, of course, nabbed her lower lip and tugged and told her I’d hang onto it so they’d have to come back for it some time. It was such a sweet and unexpected event for me. [Of course, it wasn't until later that I found out that as Sis walked them to their car with the flashlight, they'd all discovered one of Jess's friends having sex on their way out.]

Apparently put into one of my more generous moods by this sweet behavior, I went upstairs to check on our two remaining kids, the frewtnut-great-niece and drunk-ass-Eric’s sweetie daughter, who had been resigned to the upstairs living room to hang out and sleep, since the tent-city plans to avoid the drunk people had fallen through. As I walked in, they asked me if everyone was too drunk to build the bonfire they’d been promised, since we had bought stuff to make s’mores. I told them that I was pretty sure the people who had promised the bonfire were already passed out, and apologized that I didn’t really feel confident to build one myself. In a very mature statement, they assured me that they had been afraid to ask anyone because they thought people were just drunk enough to think a bonfire was a good idea and too drunk to be safe managing one, and they didn’t think some s’mores were worth anybody getting hurt. As a reward for this very mature attitude, I offered to make up the white-chocolate covered strawberries, which we’d also forgotten to make earlier, and they were very happy.

For someone who doesn’t really want kids of her own, I am apparently a rockstar with other people’s kids. Maybe it’s just because I don’t get to see kids often, so when I do, my tolerance is up. Of course, when I decided to entertain the kiddies Saturday afternoon by setting up the Harry Potter rifftrack, I only sat around in there long enough to hear a couple genital-scan jokes before I decided to make myself scarce and just let them enjoy it. What do I know from appropriate kiddie-material? They weren’t my kids! =)

I tell the story to the Frewtnut niece when she arrives Monday, and we curse the pitfalls of living in such a small town. On Tuesday, as we are all out at the farmer’s market in town, a woman comes up to ask what time the fireworks will be, then chastises Sis for having bought mason jars to do her canning last year. Sis plays along, saying she’ll be sure to ask her for some next time, then afterwards sis tells us she doesn’t even know who that woman is, let alone how she could have heard about her buying mason jars last year and remembered it.

From here we joke about being careful what you pick up at the drug store, lest word of your ailments get around years later. Frewtnut niece, who was for a while my TropicalFrewt niece while she was in college in Hawaii, mentioned that she remembers complete strangers coming up to her during a visit years ago to ask if she was the Ganey daughter from Hawaii, and how weird she found that.

Of course, when we dropped the Ganey bomb on the cop who had us pulled over, I neglected to mention that he too pulled one out of his ass as I say I’m Joyce’s sis and introduce Angela as their daughter. Cop says, Angela? You that one from Hawaii? The four of us in the car answer together with a resounding, YES! Yes she is! and this sinches our getting out of the ticket, of course.

I guess sometimes, small town isn’t so bad.