The hunger problem

It's hard to believe that the year is winding down, that Thanksgiving is almost here, and Christmas is just a few short weeks away.

It's been a heck of a year, and one that I wouldn't want to repeat any time soon. Most of it has ended up okay, though -- my dad is out of the hospital, and doing well. I haven't had any complications or problems after my surgery, and feel fine.

Fine, that is, except for a case of food poisoning that I seem to have gotten over the weekend at a catered dinner at a hotel. The less said about that the better, though, and I'm pretty much over it except that I just feel kind of generally crummy, and I'm trying to be very careful about what I eat. We were going to go out to dinner for my birthday tomorrow, and last night I told Bob that maybe we ought to wait and do it next week or something.

He asked me if I would like to have something special for dinner tomorrow at home, and he asked me what sounded good. I said that things that were kind of bland and soothing sounded best to me. He had called earlier in the day and asked if I wanted him to fix my weekday stable dinner of baked fish and creamed spinach, and it just didn't sound good to me. But by the time I got home and he said he was going to run up to McDonald's and pick something up for his dinner, I decided that I could probably eat, and I got a fish sandwich and fries, and that seemed fine.

It's just that an experience like that kind of makes you never want to eat again, but, of course, there's that problem with hunger . . .

I've been a bit swamped at work the past couple of weeks, and all I've wanted to do when I left the office was go home, sit in my chair, and knit. The upside of that is that I've finished most of the poncho I've been working on. The downside is that I haven't written anything, either here or anywhere else. But I'm okay with that. This is just a horrible time of year to try to do anything, at least it is for me. Between the weather change and the time change, all I want to do is hibernate, not to mention thinking about Christmas shopping.

So I figure I kind of gave myself the month of November off, basically, and I think I needed it. I try to be as nice to myself lately as possible, even though I know I slack a lot at home and Bob makes up for it. He's been doing a lot of laundry, not to mention practically all of the cooking.

December will be interesting, since we're going to be on vacation the week of the 13th, and then my office will be closed the week between Christmas and New Year's. I'm hoping it will be a slow month and that there won't be a whole month's worth of work squeezed into the other two weeks, but if there is, I guess I'll figure it out, like I do every other year. It's just always a stressful time, and I try to keep that in mind and not get too bent out of shape, although Bob might argue with that.

We all just do the best we can.

I went out last weekend and tried to get into the Christmas mood, and I seem to have succeeded. I went to Target and bought some wrapping paper and a few ornaments, and even bought a few small gifts. I was thrilled to see the Christmas-patterned paper towels were out, and bought four rolls.

I thought about it, and discovered that I don't like a lot of little Christmasy (or other holiday) decorative stuff, but I adore everyday things, like paper towels and napkins, that are holiday-themed. I also bought a package of Christmas-themed plastic bags, which is sort of dumb, but which will make me happy when I take my lunch to work next month.

I also have a stash of Christmas gift bags that I kept from last year to use to carry my lunch in. It's the little things, really.