Torture!

I believe that torture has got to be the best way to describe coming back to work after ten days of no work and no school. Now that I am back in school I rarely get long stretches of time off from school and work at the same time. Generally breaks from either do not match up very well. The past ten days were pure bliss, although a little busier than I probably would have liked. This led to an interesting discussion with my husband this past holiday season.

My past two weeks consisted of three dinner parties, two open houses (one which we threw), a card tournament, a full day shopping with my parents and a couple of nights where we had people over. Now over ten days that may not seem like much for most people. For me on the other hand it was hell. I finally lost my shit on Thursday night and refused to leave the house to join my husband at the card tournament. He took that opportunity to point out, and rightly so, that I have a tendency to not go to these events and that our friends would be disappointed that I couldn't make it. To this I replied: "Well for the 500th time, i'm an introvert. This is to be expected." Having spent the day with my generally lovely, but very, very, very, very trying parents (visualize a tiny, slightly OCD Chinese lady, and an overly opinionated, highly talkative, tall German man, make them seniors and you've got my parents) wild horses weren't getting my butt off the couch. "They're going to start wondering if you don't like them" he counters. "Well I am sure that most of our friends won't believe this is a direct snub. But seriously, all our friends know me well enought to know that if I suddenly didnt' like them I'd mail them a fish head or something" - cuz you know, with the Italians you get a horse head, with the Chinese, it's a smelly fish head or chicken feet, but then you have to check that they haven't just sent you dim sum. Unable to counter such heady logic he let me have my way and I proceeded to watch girly, Reese Witherspoon movies, eat as much tofu as I could stuff my face with and napped out.

Seeing our friends and family was a joy this year - especially the part where we chased around the under 2's at Christmas dinner, trying to figure out whose dirty diaper was making that horrid smell - but I am very much a person that requires and revels in my downtime, and those little pockets of the holiday season where I was able to just chill was heaven. The height of heaven was the last two days on New Years Eve and New Years Day. Since we had already thrown a party on the 30th we woke up really late on the 31st, transferred ourselves to our couch and ate left overs and had the most comfy New Years Eve possible. It was so good, we repeated it yesterday.