I'm home for Christmas....

Well, I'm at the parent's house in NJ. I drove up today - I left Baltimore a little before 1, and got to NJ around 5. It rained most of the way, but it wasn't too bad a drive, except for my inability to find a setting on the heater that was between "freezing cold" and "so warm it made my eyeballs hurt and made me wnt to go to sleep". I stopped twice, once at a Maple Donuts, a local PA chain with very good donuts (and very mediocre coffee). I want to try to stop on my way back to take some pics if it's not raining - the decor is very '70's, and they have a giant donut on their roof.

It's kind of a weird Christmas. I've been pretty tense - work has been getting to me, I worry about leaving my cat alone (even though she's in good hands, plus she's tough enough to survive a nuclear blast), and about 50 other stupid things. Plus, both of my parents are sick - my dad has been having sinus problems for the last couple months and is going in for exploratory surgery on Monday - I'm going with him and my mom - and my mom has conjunctivitis in one of her eyes, plus her arthritis has been bothering her - she's probably going to need knee replacement surgery next year. So they are a little out of it, have cut back on some of the traditions, and it's tough seeing them - my parents, the people I'm used to leaning on - needing my brother and I to help them out. It also makes me feel guilty about the fact that I'm not around much to help them - I'm kind of glad I get to go to the hospital with my dad, since I don't get to help them out much, and my older brother - who lives about 20 minutes away - has been helping them with a bunch of stuff. Tomorrow morning I'm going to Christmas mass alone, because neither of them feels well enough to go - which is a break from tradition, and kind of funny since they are way more religious than I am. On the plus side, I can go to a later mass if I don't feel like getting up in time for 7:30 mass tomorrow.

So it's going to be a somewhat strange holiday season. It's certainly not going to be as relaxing or cheerful as previous ones, and I really hope that the 'rents are in better shape next year. I guess I just need to make the best out of it, and things could be worse, but they have been better.

My plan right now is to stay in NJ until New Year's Day. I have a bunch of errands and stuff I want to get done in MD on the 2nd, and I figure that weekend would probably be good to get some cleaning done in my house. In previous years I've tried to clean before I leave so I could come back to a clean house, but that just wasn't in the cards this year - I had enough trouble getting everything wrapped, packed, making sure the cat had noms, ect - so that will have to get done when I get back.