Seventeen weeks + 4

Well our house was all full of the talk of Christmas presents last night, it's making me feel a little Christmassy I must say, but what's even weirder is Neil says he feels a little like that too, this is a new one for me, as Neil and Christmas don't normally get it together until after his works do. I should explain - He works in a contract tool room, where they have a lot of jobs with a monthly deadline, which means in December it can be a real pressure environment to get everything out, basically with a weeks less time to do it in. Then they all go for a real blow out, I mean it's normally on the 23rd December and they start at lunchtime, with a 3 course meal and all the beer etc paid for. Needless to say we normally end up with a very drunk Neil by early evening, who sleeps through most of the night and then goes Christmas shopping on the 24th, finally in some kind of Christmas spirit, or sometimes just full of them. Over the years (as he's been working at Larkshill since before the boys were born), we have had the odd adventure, my least favourite was finding him on the back door step with hypothermia (he'd been there for over 2 hours in below freezing temperatures), the funniest had to be when he caught the train and missed his stop and then got off at Bromsgrove, so I had a drunk husband in a town I didn't know before we had mobile phones, it's a wonder I ever got this far actually still with him intact. 

Any way back to the Christmas presents, well Xander has written his list, he gave it to me last night, it's small, no not in length, it's on a post it note, so I will lose that if I'm not careful. Will has gone completely the other way and messaged me his on Facebook, I'm not sure which is more scary, or funnier. Neil mentioned my presents and Will said "a puppy", which Neil put a stop to straight away, everyone knows I want another dog before Ned is too old and grumpy (he's only 2 so we have a while yet), but Neil is adamant that one dog is enough. Anyway Xander actually has asked for a giant bar of chocolate, which says a lot about him, but Will has a top hat and cane on his list, so I'm not sure at all what to say about that. I do love Christmas, I love all the preparation and the cooking and the giving, plus all the drinking, it's the only time of year we drink port, which is silly as we both really like it. Also my birthday is only the week before so it's the only time of year I have to look forward to. I'll be 42 this year which on one hand seems really old, especially when I think about the incident in Bromsgrove with Neil which was before the boys, when we lived in Kiddy, but on the other hand I have so much left to do, 42 doesn't seem that old at all. I have to finish my degree, then I'll do my PGCE, I'll be 43 before I actually become a teacher, something I'm so looking forward to that it doesn't really seem to matter.

On to today, well I have Uni at lunchtime, which always fills my day up, when it shouldn't really, and of course I'll go and see Malarky on the way back. Then I'll pop to cooltrader with Xander, as I didn't get chance to do it yesterday. So not too much, wrapped up with a little bit of housework, sounds like an OK day to me. Maybe I should actually write my Christmas list too, I can put a puppy on it, it doesn't mean I'll get one, but there's no harm in trying, is there?