Geez...I had a to dust off the keyboard before typing, it's been that long!!
vacation has been glorious so far, I think I'm crossing the halfway point now and I never want it to end. However, just like life, vacations have their highs and lows. Let me explain in list form:

1. Thursday evening officially marked John's holiday break...for some reason, I thought I'd celebrate too. After a few rum and pineapple juices (daiquiris if you will...John's been reading a lot of Fitzgerald lately and daiquiris are anything that are rum based mixed with fruit juices, he's trying to bring it back--don't ask me why), I had a glass of Jameson and we played lots of Trivial Pursuit and sang to music. You can imagine my excitement when I got up at 6 the next morning. It reminded me of the good old days and why I don't like drinking during the week.

2. I came home from work on Friday and the house was full of deliciousness. On John's day off, he cleaned and he made me my favorite dinner! MMMMM! This is why I'm keeping him. More drunken Trivia Pursuit ensued (hey, it's a cheap yet fun entertainment...plus our local, hometown bar is closed for the entire holiday). I made John giggle with some drunken dirty talk...it was pretty funny, good thing he didn't start laughing until it was all over.

3. Saturday was the laziest day we had. We laid on the couch, did some grocery shopping and watched bad movies (namely, Hatchet, John didn't even make it through that one). We also had dinner where we were outnumbered by pregnant people, and toddlers.

4. Sunday we lounged. Then John took me to lunch since I've been salivating over commercials of shrimp. I believe at one point I said that I wanted my teeth removed and replaced with baline so that I could just guzzle shrimp down by the dozen at a time. I know, I know...what a dream to have!! Then we went out to see our friends down at the FQB. There we were on a mission to catch a buzz because our drunken friends had been there since 2 pm. We started with White Russians, switched over to shots of blackberry vodka and coke, more dark rum and pineapple, a shot of SoCo and lime, and then finally switching to a single beer and a shrug...we were well beyond our budget for the evening and well behind everyone else in the bar who were at this point posing with a giant blow up penis. Ah the holidays, so festive!

5. Monday was the low point in my vacation. It started off great...in keeping with our "drink lots of alcohol theme" of the holiday, John whipped up some vodka, cranberry and sprites for us and we sat and watched Die Hard, which John has declared to be his favorite "holiday movie ever". After a few of these drinks I started to feel not so good. In fact, only three of them had me on my knees praying for death. That "warm and fuzzy feeling stayed with me for hours...it wasn't until about 8 pm that I was able to actually keep food down. Unfortunately, this is the same amount of time I got to spend with T, as I ran back and forth to the bathroom. This little exchange though almost got me strangled.
(John comes back into the house after he ran out saying he was going "to get me something")
John: I brought you Wendy's, you need to something!
Me: I was hoping you got me Pepto Bismol or something... (as I greedily took my sandwich)
John: (tries to keep his hands from my neck) I'll run back out...
Me: No, I'll be ok, this sandwich should help...
I take three bites and fall asleep.

Needless to say, I had a lot of damage control to do on Christmas morning!! I'll stop off here for now.

Where's the justice when John's all snug in bed and I'm all ready for work (complete with a cold shower this morning because the water heater's on the fritz). If anyone says "You have the Summer off!" I will cut you...

I can't even believe that I'm married to a man who's never heard of Emmit Otter's Jugband Christmas! Believe me when I tell you that I'm mostly a grinch and that I have very little holiday spirit (due to a brief stint in retail) but I will forever love Emmit.

John and I have a problem...a real, diagnosable problem. If we buy gifts for each other we can't wait until the designated holiday to give it to them, oh no, we need to give them to each other right away! Last year it was bad, I would get things shipped from Amazon and then wrap them up, minutes after finishing the job John would come home and I would immediately thrust my gifts upon him...the scotch tape still not completely stuck to the package.

This year it's much easier for me...I haven't purchased anything for him yet because I don't really have the available cash to get anything good so I'm saving to buy last minute. Unfortunately (fortunately for me), Mr. Moneybags (aka John), doesn't have the same poor luxury as me. He desperately wanted to tell me what my presents were but he said, "What are we going to do on Christmas? You won't have anything to open!" I said, leaping around like a fool about to be told her Christmas present, "I don't care! Tell me!" and then I jumped on him for emphasis. He kept holding out and so I said as he played around on the Internet, "Why don't you just look at it one more time on the internet (after letting it slip that it was something from Tiffany & Co.), hoping that he would look at it and I could catch a glimpse in the reflection of his glasses. He replied sternly, "No, you'll just check the history." To which I replied honestly, "No, I was just going to look at it through the reflection of your glasses. After a little snugglefest his lips became loose...

And he said to me, "Your gift isn't so much of a gift for you as it is a gift to tell you that I'm completely ready, I'm onboard." Of course, I looked at him like he had five heads, what on Earth was he talking about? And then he grabbed the laptop and went onto the website and showed me this, and then I realized that he was saying that he was truly ready to have a baby. It also made me realize that he's going to have a very spoiled kid if he's already putting the proverbial silver spoon in a non existant child's mouth already!

Oh and if you thought that was too mushy, he also told me this morning that he bought me the Hitachi Magic Wand...the Cadillac of vibrators too...which is most definitely a present for me and me alone! I have to say, it looks more like a microphone than a vibrator.

Alternate Title--Thank You Note to John

We spent our first Christmas together and it was better than I ever expected (at this point I should stop being so surprised about how nicely everything works, but if I did, life would be boring). First of all, rather than diamonds, flashy big TVs and cars that were being flashed across all of the holiday ads, you bought me many wonderful gifts that I wanted but didn't interfere with our master plan (for the rest of you: we're no longer using credit cards or spending beyond our means--it's a very simple plan and it's been working fantastically since the end of August. Once we get out of debt, we will be sitting pretty and we will have finished working on the interior of our house!). I cannot express how excited I am about all my shiny new books, my CDs and my gorgeous photograph that perfectly sets off our newly painted dining room. I kid you not, I spread the books out on the floor and rolled on them. The dog helped, of course.

Beyond gifts, I've never had such an overwhelming sense of happiness. I repeat myself all the time about this but it needs to be said. You are the best guy in the world and I'm so happy, so lucky, and so excited that you are my partner in this not quite-as-we'd-like-it-to-be world. Every day I get a gift from you--when you help me turn around this house, when you nicely "teach" me how to become organized and yet, still have the ability to smile at me and kiss me when I slip back into my old ways. The best gift that I get from you every day is being allowed to be my goofy, happy and laughing self. Let me give an example of one of random exchanges (my favorite of the holidays):
Scene: John and I are driving out of the development and heading towards Wawa because we were a little hungover at Christmas dinner and didn't get to gorge ourselves the way that we wanted. We decided to have Christmas Dinner: Part Deux, in the form of six inch hoagies at 10pm. We started talking about something that I cannot for the life of me recall but this snippet stands out.

John: You know, like a rabbit punch.

Melina: A rabbit punch? What's a rabbit punch?

John: You know, like a punch to the back of the head.

Melina: During sex? That's a donkey punch! Who'd want to punch a rabbit?

John: Well, with that reasoning...why would anyone punch a donkey?

Melina: Because he was a bad donkey?

Cue laughter and defining what constitutes a "bad donkey".

(Please be advised that I don't condone the domestic abuse of donkeys, I was speaking in hypotheticals only)

Onto the next part of my thank you note. On Christmas this year, you received about 20 DVDs that your dad painstakingly transformed from all the old footage of home movies over your lifetime. For hours, I was transfixed as I watched you morph from a tiny baby to an adorable cherubic toddler with a mane of blond curls! Before my eyes you became an adorable little boy and then an older brother. You were adorably sweet to your sister, often helping her open her Barbie stuff and taking the time to show her how the elevator worked on her Barbie Mansion. You became the cameraman, and you would carefully set the scene of wherever your family was. You'd capture each member of the family and ask your brother to give you a smile and a wave (when he wasn't running around wrecking havoc on the scene). I felt your awe as you scanned over a Blue Whale on a trip to DC. I saw your boyish enthusiasm when you filmed about 10 minutes of the same plane when you went to the airforce base! I would laugh so hard I would begin crying over your ernestness, and your sweetness in the fifth grade presentation of Johnny Appleseed and other hilarious (yet adoreable) skits. Then you became a sad tweener, slightly awkward and no longer wanting to be in front of the cameras. There wasn't a reason for it, you were still the cutie that you always were...but I remember running away from the cameras crying at the same age, so I felt your pain. We'll skip over some of the other footage that you found "horrifying" and "embarassing" (wrestling and your directorial debut of your first Godzilla movie) and I'll just say that I'm glad my parents weren't always there to film some of my teenage moments of horror. Finally, I saw you come into to your own on the football field. The confident stance that I've comed to know and love was present, your voice--loud and commanding, you were having fun! I should've known that knocking into people would've opened you up! It was an amazing gift to watch the boy evolve and become the man. I love you, and thank you for wonderful holiday.

Love always,

Me

Well, after a four month hiatus from attempting to get anyone into my bed, heart or life, last night I got someone into my bed. He's T's old roommate from when she lived in the city and he was perfect because we don't see him that often, he's adorable and he was excellent in bed. Score one for me!
How it happened was so incredibly odd...T ended up going home with a long time friend of hers that last night, for some reason, decided to profess love for her and she proceded to profess her own smitteness. So because she wanted to go home with him, Mike had to take me home (he was planning on taking us both home and staying at my house). We came back to my house and started drinking wine...I blame the wine really...actually, I thank the wine. Here's where it gets funny.
I start getting tired. I tell him, "You can sleep in my bed with me because the guest bed is really small." Ha ha, ha...what kind of line is that??? I have six couches in my house and my guest bed isn't that small. So anyways, within minutes we started making out which was my plan...then I went with the rest of it.
This morning was a train wreck though, he was a little out of sorts (he kind of was seeing someone that he said that he was ending things with...) so I think he was feeling guilty, and definitely hungover...and when I saw myself in the mirror, I didn't blame him for wanting to leave! I looked awful. My hair was sticking up every which way, I had bloodshot eyes, mascara under them...it was a true testament for a morning after look. I quickly locked myself in the bathroom and made a quick repair of things--hair in a ponytail, washed the face and put a little visine in my eyes and when I came back out he audibly breathed a sigh of relief. Too funny. He left and I went back to bed, exhausted.

I have to say, that was the best Christmas present I could've given myself...I've been going too long worrying about behaving and acting my age or whatever, but, this is what I do best--and it works for me.

...actually I don't want anything this year. It's sad but I'm pretending that Christmas doesn't exist. I had one gift exchange and we were allowed to spend $20, and I spent exactly that...I never do that. If it has a $20 a limit, I'll easily hit the 50 or 60 dollar mark...easily. So broke ass...as I like to call myself spent exactly $20 (as you can see in the post below).

Our gift exchange was so much fun. Jackie's husband cooked us dinner and then headed for the hills (some undisclosed location...possibly a bunker). We stuffed our faces and then guessed our "secret santas"...and then we opened our presents.

I ended up with some skinny sharpie markers (like I asked for on my little email wish list) and an awesome shirt with a picture of Shakespeare and the phrase, "Prose before Hos" which makes perfect sense to me. Obviously, my santa loved me, and got me a pretty cool set of gifts.

Now, onto other pressing matters. I have to talk to a man about an alternator--because mine, dear friends, would like to leave me for the holidays. Bastard!

In about a half hour I'll be over at my friend's house for a gift exchange. Her husband has made us tons of awesome food, I'm bringing champagne and chambord and I heard there are going to be other fabulous items there.

The gift exchange is secondary to hanging out with seven awesome girls...we had to draw names and we were only allowed to spend $20 on each other. I picked my friend Jackie, for the second year in a row. I opted for the gag gift option. I got her a pill sized item that when she puts it under water it turns into a washcloth that says, "Wash away your issues". A bobblehead mouse thingy that you can put a different picture in the face...I of course, put my own photo in there. I also bought her a lovely peony scented candle.

Can I wait for my gift? No I sure can't...it could be interesting, we've added people to the posse that don't know me all that well. I'll let you know when I get back.

You receive the first Christmas card of the season...you open it up...you don't get the CPA joke that goes along with Santa and a bundle of receipts. You turn the envelope over and you realize that the card was for the person who lived in the house before you.

Oh well.

So I've realized that I'm impulsive in every area of my life! I just spent $178.00 MORE on Christmast gifts...I thought I was done, but I just had to go and do it again. It's all stupid stuff too. My friend was in a really horrible car accident recently and by sheer luck she came out of it with some serious injuries...but she should've been dead (I'm so glad that she's not). For her, I got a japanese good luck statue that is supposed to guard you after near death experiences. I don't want to go into the other purchases, I just know that the mailman is sick of dropping off heavy cardboard boxes off at my house and the idea of wrapping everything that's sitting in my dining room is getting less and less appealing. Do you think it would be lazy if I just called everyone over to come pick up their piles...if the ungrateful bastards turn their noses up at this idea then they lose their gifts. I jest (for now...check back as the eternal procrastinator waits until dec. 24th to begin the wrapping that is required of her).
On to other thoughts, I think being single for Christmas will be very fun this year! I have a cute little tank top that has a couple of presents on it and it says in pink, "Unwrap Me!" and I think that this will be my motto for the holiday season...perhaps I'll get a few unexpected surprises myself! We can hope. In fact, that spurs me to call up D and see if he can't swing on by. Perhaps it won't be a surprise, but it definitely will be worth unwrapping.