Rain

You know what happens when you go to Hawaii for Christmas? It rains.

It rained every day. 25 inches in five days (we were there for eight, and it rained every one of those, but I don't have the statistics for the other three days.)

Amusingly enough, it's raining now that I'm back home, too.

The thing is, even with all that rain, it was a wonderful trip. Maybe even because of all that rain. The first time Dave came out with me, I was a scatterbrained lunatic, trying to show him absolutely everything, and every time since it's been--well, we have to go here. Did we get enough beach time? (Mind you, it's 2.5 hours to the good beaches.) What about trying to see this? This time, since there was no opportunity to do any of those things (we did go to a beach, those of you who can't fathom flying all the way to Hawaii and not getting wet (with salt water, that is), we just didn't stay very long), we just stayed home and hung out.

Which was badly needed. I hadn't quite realized what a stressful few months it's been--putting the house on the market, living in that hysterical cleanliness that is having a house on the market, finding a buyer, making it work despite the housing market crash that occurred at such a nice, opportune time, packing stuff up, moving said stuff, unpacking said stuff (that last bit isn't quite done)--and all that's on top of the normal stresses of work and kids and day-to-day life.

After all that, sitting around indoors, watching movies and playing games? Heaven. It's not often that you're stuck in a house with four other people for days on end and wind up liking them more with every day that passes.

Of course, we're back now, where we actually have stuff that needs to get done, and the rain is getting in the way and not facilitating restful fun. My house didn't magically unpack itself while we were gone, as I'd hoped, and there's stuff to buy and IKEA to hit (not a Swedish Wonderland when they don't have the stuff you need and the people are unhelpful--"I think that's somewhere on Floor Three." "Right. Thanks."), but hey, miraculously we have money to buy the stuff, and neither of us appear to be losing our jobs anytime soon, and while this new house may be something of a pain in the ass to get set up and comfortable, it's a new house and we love it.

I don't normally make New Year's Resolutions. That is, I always make them, but then I immediately forget about them and make no effort whatsoever to keep them. This year, not doing that is one of my resolutions. The others include:

1) Be nicer to certain coworkers who, though they may be annoying, are not bad people. For the most part.
2) Learn to spin.
3) Actually do that thing that I really should do but am so nervous about doing that I can't even name it here and that I use knitting (among other things) as an excuse to avoid doing, but I won't anymore, or at least I'll try not to.

As you can see, some of these will be easier to keep than others.