Fleece Navidad and Mary Christmas

I have had such a good Christmas. I told Steve this was a 'rich' Christmas - they aren't all going to be that way - so we need to suck the juices when all is well. The Girls are at an age that is still sweet and yet saucy enough to be interesting. Steve bought me a few VERY thoughtful gifts - we sometimes buy almost nothing... and I felt he had paid attention to who I am. There were many moments of gentle peacefulness.

And I had the flu. (Or maybe it was food poisoning - I keep vacillating - I ate a hot dog with onions from an open kind of container on the way to Rae's.) I didn't know it was the flu and only today I said to myself, "Dang Gena, I gots the flu!" Any time I ate I experienced terrible pain in my stomach. 36 hours of the worst headache I've had in a decade... like someone was shoving fondue forks into my brain while termites chewed on my eyeballs. Piercing, blinding pain. And vertigo - could hardly walk upright - kind of like what it would feel like to be wearing someone else's bi-focals while you walked up and down stairs. Wild dreams at night - hot flashes (which I put down to normal temp changes) and so on. Today I am feeling more like a normal person who has a seriously bad flu and is recovering - a low level headache, needing to lay down, can't eat without it hurting.

I did not let the flu rob me of fun. I just sandwiched everything between naps.After a nap, Rae and I ate at Queen of Sheba, the Ethiopian restaurant - which had the large joyous sign, "MARY CHRISTMAS TO ALL!" I kind of liked that. The chef is a great woman friend of Rae's - she loved cooking for us. Then I went back to bed. We opened pj's Christmas eve after a good service and ended the night with a Polish feast - the polish sausage and perogies and cabbage rolls punished me all night. We had 19 for dinner on Christmas day and there was no shortage of laughter and kibitsing around the table. We walked in 52 degrees rain and smiled at the natives. In all this fun I forgot my camera.

It was a fabulous Christmas. Rae and Curtis went to see Sherlock Holmes today and the verdict is that the movie is great. So I still have that to look forward to. And the start of the new year. And a few mornings at home to sleep in and lay about to prepare for 2010! What a great end to a good year.