In memory of family and friends who have lost the battle with cancer; and in support of the ones who continue to conquer it! Post this on your LJ if you know someone who has or had cancer. 93% won't copy and paste this. Will you?

My fiance and I are both cancer survivors. I had aggressive melanoma which I fortunately managed to catch early and escape with just a small out-patient surgery and two weeks of bed rest (and that was just so I didn't tear out any stitches). My fiance was 15 and went through surgery and then a year of chemo. I feel like saying that we're both cancer survivors is like saying that Anne Frank and an elderly lady living in the US during WWII (surrounded by loving friends and family and who died gently in her sleep from old age) both died during the Holocaust. Technically a true statement, but the specifics make or break it.

in 2009 mostly i went to school.

in 2010 mostly i will go to school.

having a hard time working up enough energy to send off or welcome either one.

I received many kitchen related presents! Behold:

• An electric kettle, in red (almost all of my appliances are red :D)
• A scoopy thingie for cookie dough
• A professional quality blender (now I can make sorbets and soups and pies and and and and!!)
• A binder filled with my Grandmother's favorite and best recipes

Additionally, I received a shower curtain with goldfish on it, a rather large amount of nice-smelling objects from Bath & Body Works, the Knife CD with all my most favoritest Knife songs on it, and a lovely hand-knitted scarf from my Aunt Nancy. Also I got a cold, which has been taking up most of my time today. The bright side: lots of delicious tea.

And I gave everyone my Jars Of Pancake! I have my very own made-all-up-by-myself pancake recipe which is delightfully simple to mix up and all the dry ingredients fit perfectly in a 16oz glass canning jar, so I put that all together and put stickers on 'em and handed them out. And everybody liked them! So that was very nice. I really like giving people things that a) they can use and b) are actually heart-felt sorts of things.

So in general: lovely. And this evening we're going to my cousin's wedding, so I'm lazing about in the hope that it will help me store up enough energy to actually participate.

Christmas. :D

Tonight we will go to the 11 o'clock candlelit Christmas Eve service and sing christmas carols. Before that we will eat lovely macaroni and cheese for Christmas Eve dinner, because leftovers will be left out for Santa's reindeer and they love to eat pasta. (Lies that the parents of poor families tell their children when they can only afford spaghetti for dinner end up turning into traditions. Who knew?) After the service we will come home and Dad will hide the pickle ornament in the tree and whoever finds it first gets to open the first Christmas Eve present.


I'm over-romanticizing some, I realize. This is probably my last kid Christmas, though. Next year Josh and I are planning on trying to spend Christmas together, and that means either trying to see both families around Christmas or just both of us sticking with one. With the former option I'll likely miss Christmas eve and morning with my own little family.

I'm very romantic about Christmas. I like getting presents and eating candy but mostly what I like is seeing people and lighting fires and baking in groups (Tuesday night my sisters and I stayed up late decorating gingerbread cookies and dying of laughter) and the wonderfulness of clustering around the Christmas tree in the winter dark of Christmas morning. And my funny little traditions, and the songs we sing and the CDs we listen to, and the big metal stocking hangers that spell out PEACE. Mostly I love that we have a holiday that's all about seeing each other and loving people. I know that that isn't what it's about for some people, but I am lucky to have fallen into a family where it does mean that.

In short, growing up is hard and I am milking the holiday for all it's worth this year.

I bought a netbook from Amazon last week and eeeeee it will arrive soon! I am excited. It will be like a christmas gift from myself: no more hand-cramping in class. (Practically the best gift ever omg.)

I finished my christmas shopping officially today, and now I just have to do a bit of assembling. Of what? I'll put it here after Christmas, but I have a few people who are receiving my crafty gifts on my lj flist sooo yeah. No pictures for you yet. I also managed to purchase a pearl necklace and a good bra for the dress I'm wearing to my cousin's wedding, so all kinds of things have been finished up today. Which leaves my days free for baking!!

This evening I started a batch of gingerbread people dough which is currently chilling in the fridge. I'm also planning just plain old gingerbread cake, some applesauce bread, maybe a batch of molasses crinkles, and if I have the audience for it (as it were) I'm going to make a chocolate candy-cane cake. Or cupcakes, depending.

About halfway through this list I'm going to wish I brought my Kitchenaid home for Christmas.


Josh and I managed to have a pretty good Chanukkah. We fumbled giving each other presents every night and we left the dreidel at the apartment when we came home to my parents' and we ate porkchops for dinner the third night and I possibly may have broken the shammus once or twice (thank goodness for extra candles is all I can say) but we enjoyed ourselves and I didn't screw up his traditions and we lit the candles every night for eight days and didn't miss a single one.

I'm trying to figure out where the line is between respecting/accepting his Jewish heritage and just deciding that my fiance is a Jewish boy. He isn't A Jewish Boy, he's the culmination of a lot of different traditions and faiths and bloodlines, and it's tricky gathering all of those up in a way that I can nicely pay respect to and incorporate in our life together without pigeonholing him into one tradition at a time. We're not going to have a Jewish wedding (as much as I would love a chair dance, LOL) because neither of us are practicing Jews. We're not going to have a Christian wedding because neither of us are practicing Christians. We're not going to have a Pagan wedding because neither of us are practicing Pagans. Etc etc etc, except throw in all our various backgrounds and religions and suchlike.

But we are talking about having two officiants... one his Native American grandmother (who's already ordained and good to marry us) and one my Presbyterian missionary aunt, to represent both of our families coming together with us. Today I was listening to Barenaked For The Holidays (the Barenaked Ladies holiday CD, lol) while mixing up gingerbread dough and one of the Chanukkah songs queued up and I thought "well wait, here we are trying to be at least a little bit cognizant of his Ashkenazi Jewish roots, shouldn't we do something for that in our wedding?" And so now I am guiltily looking at ketubot on the internet and trying to figure out if this is even something you're allowed to do if you're not having a rabbi officiate. Some of these are stupid gorgeous you guys. And through my internet learnings I have found that they're mostly just um... prenuptial contracts? But for most new age-y Jews it's pretty much just wedding vows on a contract, like "I will love and support you" etc. Emotional promises. Which I really like, a lot.

Anyway so there's a big long post about my confusion over Jewishness. Congratulations, you are done reading it now.

Okay, time for an ~*~actual post~*~.

My last real life update was about two weeks ago when I was only a third done with one of my two research papers. On Wednesday evening last week I started my second paper and got to 9 pages on my 15 page socioling research proposal. On Thursday I finished my portfolio for Hinduism, my presentation for my Hinduism final paper, my Hinduism final paper, and my socioling research proposal. Friday and Saturday were spent editing those and studying for my polisci final on Monday, Sunday was just studying and going to bed early so I could wake up the next morning.

Monday morning I woke up at 7am. Got out the door. Took my final (which went bloody great). Turned in my two papers. Dropped by the convenience store for some milk. And went home. And it was wonderful. I'm still processing the fact that fall term is over; it was an insane quarter full of madness and GRE studying and many papers and tests and existential crises. (Do I really want to be a librarian? Am I doing the right thing? What if I can't get a job? Am I actually really stupid and everybody pities me too much to actually tell me so? Et cetera.)

Monday night Darcy and I made a really lovely dinner using fresh-made wild mushroom ravioli from Pasta & Co, some really lovely alfredo, Sofia Coppola sparkling blush wine, and zucchini sautéed in olive oil, in a celebration of the end of the quarter and to make Josh feel special. I also got drunk off my ass and helped Josh with his final paper. Yes, while drunk. I was apparently extremely helpful and gave thoughtful advice and was extremely coherent and organized. Meanwhile, I do not remember any of this. Apparently I should do everything while drunk. Except maybe not write emails to my sister.

Josh and I came home to my parents' house on Tuesday evening, Daisy in tow. We drank rosé and talked about Christmas. Yesterday we got up at 8:30 and made a big hobo scramble with mushrooms, onions, green peppers, cheddar, and salsa. We went Christmas shopping. Went out for sushi. Saw The Princess And The Frog.

Today I woke up at 11am and am as yet still wearing pajamas at 3:40pm. Josh and I have been spending our time writing (jointly - every day has something new to remind me that I'm getting married) christmas cards to our relatives and talking about Christmas. (We went by Cost Plus yesterday and finally managed to find real Chanukkah gelt, so last night's menorah lighting was much more traditional.)

Also: Darcy got Josh and my parents together to buy me a new digital camera - the Canon PowerShot SD1200 in blue! It made me feel stupidly loved, because it's a $200 camera that's everything I wanted and couldn't bring myself to actually ask for for Christmas. It's even the color I wanted! So I've been taking ( lots of pictures. )

THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG IS REALLY REALLY REALLY GREAT

THAT IS ALL

happy first night of Chanukkah. :) I'm celebrating for the first time with Josh, who does this sort of thing.

I made latkes for the first time and OMGGG they are amazing.

I'm 4 pages into my 15~ page paper for Sociolinguistics (sounds worse than it is: I already have half of the paper figured out, I just have to organize it and pontificate) and haven't even started my 10 page paper for Hinduism (this is just as bad as it sounds). I took a shower, and now I'm sitting around drying for a bit before heading off to the library to pick up a few things I need for my bibliography. Unfortunately Walt Wolfram's American English is out until January, but I've got some Labov and Newman at least. And she didn't give us a minimum citation count, thank god - it's a toy research proposal, not a research proposal. Most of the work is supposed to be our own, and the citations are just for the lit review/theoretical framework. So hopefully three barely related references will be enough. (HA. HA.)

This week is going to be crazypants and I'm not looking forward to it.

ETA: 5.5 pages. :)