Holding Pattern

We're home. The in-laws have left. B.'s back at work. Clara Jane' keeps trying to remove the dog's collar, probably because she thinks it's yet another gift to unwrap. I have eaten enough summer sausage and my granny's super-salty party mix to keep my blood pressure somewhere near bursting until next Christmas. If I have a massive stroke before then, I'm sure all of the sodium in my system will keep me beautifully pickled and I can be propped up next to the Christmas tree. Yep, we're mostly back to normal.

I'm more than slightly annoyed that I'm still hanging my hat at my temporary blog digs. You know when you've been staying at a hotel for too long and you start doing things to make it homey, like setting candles on the particle board nightstand and buying a hotplate to keep next to the sink? Well, I'm getting the urge to move my blogroll and Sitemeter to this site, because I'm on the verge of accepting that poppymom.com is never, ever coming back. Ever. Granted, I haven't heard anything of the sort, but my therapist tells me that I catastrophize everything and assume the worst.

I don't have much to tell about the holiday. Clara Jane had a ball. If I hear a computerized voice chirping , "Thanks for learning with Leapfrog! Buh-bye!" one more time I'm going to convert this entire family to one of the Amish religions. I've come to the conclusion that childrens toys with batteries and lights and mechanical voices are the work of the devil. Having four such toys, all motion-activated, some without off switches, babbling at the same time, is unbearable. I'm sure such techniques have been used to make people talk at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo.

No real in-law stories to report from this visit, probably because I spent most of my time knitting. My new hobby might be the saving grace in my relationship with my in-laws, because it provides the opportunity to completely tune them out without running from the room, screaming as if my hair were on fire, which was how I dealt with them in the past. The only real annoyance: I'm not sure what my father-in-law has against bathing. I just wish he'd make amends with the soap for everyone's benefit.

I've been a knitting fiend for the past two days. Now that I'm out of the world of Christmas gifts, I'm finally making something for Clara Jane - this delightful little hat. And by "little" I mean "oh please sweet Jesus, let this thing stretch enough to fit onto her massive noggin without cutting off the blood flow to her brain."

And on that note ...