Christmas Weekend So Far

Ah, what an eventful weekend after an equally eventful couple of weeks-- and not all in a good way. It started out last week when I spent the entire week feeling crappy and losing weight. Now don't get me wrong, I'm all about losing weight and I'm glad that I can now fit in a smaller pant size, but it really was not pleasant. When all was said and done, I ended up losing 9.6 pounds in a week. Now that I'm able to eat properly again, I've gained back two of those pounds. It seems that the problem was caused by the antibiotics I'm taking for Small Intestine Bacterial Overgrowth, which is the fourth answer that I've received since April and it is still undecided whether all of these things can be tied together in some way, or if they are all separate. So the antibiotics made me super-sick for a week and I have four more months where I need to take them for a week. We shall see how this goes.
So, just as I was starting to feel a little bit better and able to eat somewhat normally, my mom got the fabulous cellulitis infection right before Christmas. She went to get it checked it out on Sunday and they gave her antibiotics, which apparently did not help because it got worse instead of better and spread so they put her in the hospital for the night so that they could treat it with intravenous antibiotics. There was the possibility that she'd have to stay until Christmas Eve, but since it improved in 24 hours she was able to go home on Wednesday instead.
So Thursday, Christmas Eve, I had to work. We had been given the option of working longer days at the beginning of the week then only working 1/2 day on Christmas Eve, but I don't like going to work early because 7:30 is already early for me, so I opted not to. Most people took the 1/2 day on Thursday, so after 11am there were only 3 people still working in my department. My co-worker across the aisle put on Elf on his PSP and we listened while we worked. In the evening, I went to my aunt's house for the traditional Christmas Eve celebration. Every year my uncle (who is more like a sibling in maturity) and I provide entertainment by singing Christmas carols, sometimes in funny accents. He was also in theatre at UNR, so he enjoys performing as much as I do. My other uncle dresses up as Santa even though the youngest person there is 11 years old. And we eat lasagna every year. This has become a problem-- I really like lasagna, but lasagna doesn't like me. But I ate it anyway. And it didn't hurt me too much... After we left my aunt's house, we picked up Smokey and went to my parents' house and went to bed.
Christmas Day was much more busy than usual, but not in a bad way. We started off the morning with coffee at Starbucks (actually, soy chai for me) with my half-sister and her new husband and my nephew. Next, we picked up my grandma (the one who's not so nice) and went to breakfast at Black Bear Diner. I had a chorizo scramble which was quite tasty. After that, my parents wanted to take my grandmother out to the casino to gamble. Since I am really not a huge fan of the casinos, I went to the movies while my parents and grandmother went gambling. Yes, I went to the movies alone on Christmas. I love going to the movies alone AND I love going to the movies on Christmas, so it worked out quite well. I wanted to see Sherlock Holmes, but the next show time was over an hour away, so I went to Up in the Air instead. I was disappointed at first, but after seeing the movie, the disappointment dissipated. It was funny and sad all at once. It made me feel both content and depressed with my own life. It made me think about what's really important in life. After the movie/gambling, we were invited to dinner at my half-brother's house in Ferntucky and asked to bring dessert. So we went to the store to pick up ingredients for dessert and went back to my parents' house to make the dessert which was a cream cheese pudding pie. For dinner at my bro's house we had turkey, corn and macaroni and cheese. It was fun spending time with them, but the reality is I made very bad food choices which made it difficult to fully enjoy the evening. I really need to stop doing that. After dessert, I spent the remainder of the evening feeling crampy and tired, but I still had fun with the family. When we got back to the house, I crashed almost immediately.
This morning when I woke up, I got one of the books that I'd gotten for Christmas and went back to bed to read for a little while. We had breakfast, did some laundry and then went out to do some shopping. At Costco I got a beautiful Asian and Thai cookbook that has pictures of every single recipe. I really love Asian food because they use almost no dairy and very little wheat. I can't wait to try some of the recipes in the new pots and pans I got for Christmas. We then went to Starbucks with my brother and his... um... well his "friend"... Yeah, we'll just call her that. The rest of the evening was fairly uneventful. French dip sandwiches for dinner, finishing the laundry and Jeff Corwin's show on food network. Now I am home and I think it is almost time for bed. I think I shall take Smokey, my book and myself and head for the bedroom. :)

In most families, I'd be the weird one, but in this family, I'm the normal one...

Okay, I know. I've been a very bad inconsistent blogger as of late. Back when this blog first started, it was all kinds of emo and I whined a lot about how horrible my life was and so on. And over the last year, I decided I didn't want my blog to be that kind of place anymore. The problem is, the times when things are yucky in life are the times I feel most compelled to write, and so I have ended up writing nothing here. Emotionally, things are great. I look back at my old blog posts and realize that I have come MILES from the emo girl I used to be. That's not to say that I'm not still emo sometimes, because of course I am, but at this point in my life I have far more days between crying binges. (Okay, so that's not really hard since back then they happened almost daily...) At any rate, I am back to my blog and that's that.
As I said, emotionally, I have been great. I have isolated myself much less than usual this year and am learning to not take things so personally. People are people. They are flakey and inconsistent and it has nothing to do with me. It's just because they're looking out for number one...
Physically, I have been eeehhhhhh. But that is a story for another post, if ever...

Today's title, though, is about my family. I have to say that my family of origin/birth family is COMPLETELY insane! This is brought on by lots of family drama and weirdness as of late. It seems that nobody in my generation is capable of having a normal relationship. I will break that cycle eventually, but for now, there is my brother and his wife, each with their "spare spouses" as I like to call them. They each have a "friend" of the opposite sex with whom they spend their weekends and important days (such as birthdays, holidays, etc.) There are my half-siblings, only one of whom has even semi-normal relationship habits. But my two half-sisters... Forget about it. Definitely NOT rolemodels for me in my future life. The older of my two half-sisters got married last weekend with a week and a half notice. She married the father of her son. Sounds normal, right? Not so. Her son (my nephew) is TWENTY THREE and did not even know his father until this year. Did I mention that my family is insane?