(no subject)

Before leaving for Christmas, I reprogrammed the weekday and Saturday settings on our thermostat, leaving the Sunday settings intact. I felt very clever yesterday when we came back to a warm house.

I felt much less clever this morning when it took me an entire hour to realize that the reason why the house seemed colder than usual was because I hadn't reprogrammed the weekday settings.

I feel like I was gone much longer than six days. A lot happened: Christmas; a birthday; extended emotional drama; a family medical crisis; the Movie That Dares Not Speak Its Name; anticipation; disappointment; triumph; tears; Scrabble tournaments; pin the horn on the unicorn; ornaments gone scandalously missing; a long slog uphill in the woods, through mud, running water, and snow; preparations for incipient blindness; fine housewares; six kinds of Christmas cookies; a teapot-tempest over whether we should still have beef for Christmas dinner; a seven year old girl with a brand new whistle; nausea; proof positive that my parents should have switched churches already; and more rich foods than any reasonable person could eat in a month, in addition to the aforementioned six kinds of Christmas cookies, with only one night of fewer than eleven people sitting down to dinner.

What I mean to say is: seven Walds plus a constellation of Thatchers, Whitakers, Nutts, and Wolans can get up to quite a bit in six days. Good God.

Updated to add: I see from the sympathetic comments that I forgot to specify that, in fact, on the whole, I thought it was a very nice Christmas.

Also, I left out the uproarious parlor games.

Misc. elaborations: uproarious parlor games; incipient blindness; cookies

( uproarious parlor games )

( incipient blindness )

( cookies )

I also told hobbitbabe that I would elaborate on the proof that my parents should've switched churches before now, but that will have to come later.