12:31 p.m. - 2004-12-09
Moose!
I have a moose!
My work secret santa bought me a stuffed moose, and he is fabulous. He has a jaunty striped scarf and a gigantic nose. Because our library is named for the trees in the neighbourhood, his name is the Spruce Moose, which may possibly be the best name I've ever come up with for a stuffed animal.
Moose!
I'll have to keep an eye on my co-workers, though. My assistant manager is eyeing him very suspiciously. And a kidnapping would just be such a hassle to deal with at this time of year. I'm not quite sure where the Spruce Moose is going to live, but I will have to find him a home safe from the thieving hands of my library.
Moose!
It's very difficult to be in a bad mood when you have a moose. I was running quite late this morning, so I was kind of crabby and rushed when I got here today, but then I got a moose! And now we're listening to the Nutcracker, and I'm feeling very festive and cheery.
I'm not quite used to having a job that I like so much. On Saturday, this branch is having a Christmas party at a restaurant, and I'm really looking forward to it. At my old, pre-library job, my co-workers were not people I would choose to spend time with outside of work. We'd go out for lunch or something, and people would talk about work, and people would take notes, and it was like you weren't actually trying to celebrate a birthday or whatever, and you might as well have stayed in the office. The attitude was sort of that if we had to waste time going for lunch, we damn well weren't going to waste time socializing while we're there.
So it's a nice change, to be in a workplace where I genuinely like the people I work with, and they are people I would hang out with on a non-work basis, and I would invite to my wedding, and I'm looking forward to dinner with everyone on Saturday.
This time last year, I was unemployed, broke, and kind of miserable. I was fighting with my parents a lot, and Christmas last year pretty much sucked. This year, I have high hopes. Not living with my parents any more means I haven't fought with them in nearly five months, which is incredible. I see my sister far less often (though more often than you'd expect given that she lives in Calgary and all), which means we're also much less likely to have a throw down this year. I think it also helps that she has a boyfriend. Last year, a lot of the resentment came from the fact that she accused me of liking Jamie's family more than ours. This year, I think she'll understand being torn between two places a little better. I hope so, anyway. Last year's Christmas Day was kind of ugly.
This year is the last time we're doing old school Christmas at our house, which is kind of weird. Old school Christmas means we're sleeping at my parents', waking up, having breakfast and stockings, getting dressed (and spending five million hours getting ready in the case of my sister), and then spending a few hours opening presents. Dinner is then in the late afternoon. The last couple of years, the intervening time has been spent at Jamie's house - my sister usually comes with me, and the kids are all running around and high strung, and I get a million more presents, and it's all very jolly.
Next year, I'm sleeping at my house on Christmas Eve with Jamie and then splitting the day between our two families somehow. How we end up doing that depends somewhat on what my sister and her boyfriend end up doing, but I will not be spending both Christmas morning and Christmas dinner with my family. Which is just...weird. But while it's weird, it's also exciting. I hate not being with Jamie on Christmas. I hate leaving him behind on Christmas Eve, I hate not getting to spend the whole day with him. And, thank all the gods in heaven, his family's Christmas is almost identical to ours. Stockings, presents taking hours, dinner. Our holiday traditions are very similar, so wherever we end up spending Christmas, I think it will be fairly painless to blend our Christmases.
Moose!
