Typically, on Christmas, my family has scaled back over the years. For the past 5 years my sister has had a disabling neurological condition. My sister and my mom have been also known to contract nasty cases of bronchitis in the weeks before Christmas. My dad gets random, yet frequently severe medical conditions out of the clear blue. So, when I make my way to California a day or two before Christmas, any decorations in my parents' house are usually left up to me - the only one who is still upright in the days before Christmas.
However, this year, I got in to my parents' house around 10:30 pm on the 23rd to find them in the midst of a massive sewing project for their church that needed to be done by about noon the next day. It hadn't been designed yet, much less patterened, and it was with a tricky material. So my first two hours was helping design it, pattern it, then finally collapse into bed around 1:30 am (after having been up nonstop since 3:30 am California time to make it to work at 6:30 am on Thursday morning).
At 9:30 am Friday, Christmas eve morn (it was really 8:30 but the clock in the bedroom hadn't been reset to standard time), I awoke to realize I had a WRETCHED migraine, which got progressively worse through the day regardless of medication, homeopathic remedies, rest, etc., and culminated in my arrival in Urgent Care at 9 pm Christmas eve for a dose of Demerol and Visterol which knocked me on my can for the rest of the night, the rest of Christmas day, and half of Sunday the 26th.
So this year, the Christmas decorations that were up when I got home were the sum total of the Christmas decorations we had. (see photo above) There's no scale, but that bad boy is about 7" tall and has flashy lights all around it. There was also a creche set in the other room. Mind you I'm not really complaining about that - I'd just as soon spend time with my family than feel duty bound to decorate when we're all half unconscious, but this was a little piteous, even for us...
1 comments:
Yo
Russia is cold, yes, though not much colder than thenorthern US. It's just that winter lasts a lot longer (8 months, I kid you not) and you are outside a lot more often, usually walking in it.
I'm more or less on track to survive, but I'm lucky, Lots of fresh food, exercise, a taken-care-of life and all. It's enough to make me think that I could do this for a while.
Except I most certainly can not. The job I have now is isolated, remote, cut-off, and lonely, and all because of the rules imposed by my ultimate employer. Not even the Marines at the embassy are under as much restriction as I and my colleagues are.
It's the missile inspection aspect of it, I guess. The US military does not want its or its subcontracted employees compromised. Though by what I don't know. Probably women is my guess.
I work for Raytheon, the subcontractor. I'm a translator. Mostly it's easy, and I'm way over-qualified, but the deal is that it's money, a tax-exempt status, and lots of down time. The way I see it, the work I do for free, it's the waiting-around and the deprivation that they pay for.
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