Merry Christmas, for those who celebrate it...

...and for everyone else, best wishes as appropriate (either for the holiday of your choice, or for the ending of the holidays).

It's felt very warm and cozy and holiday-ish this season. Today doesn't feel like Christmas, though, I admit. Yesterday felt more like holidays than today. Then again, it's not the religious aspect that I adhere to, and for the secular holiday, what's one day more or less?

And lest everyone think I am horribly cheerful at this season....

...only sometimes. For example, from this time last year: Why I hate bell ringers.

Still true today. I saw one bell ringer this year I'd give money to - and one I'd love to sue, just to make him go away. The latter was ringing a full-strength bell inside a tiny entryway at the mall between two sets of doors. It was deafening. I'd have told him what I thought of him, but I doubt he could have heard me.

The Salvation Army sucks. And as a general rule, I try to fight the urge to give them any money, because they put these assholes out here with the loud bells to HURT us every holiday season. I don't pay to be annoyed - or injured.

Heh. Last year I sent almost no gifts; this year I sent tons. It's all a question of whether something catches my fancy and, this year, it did. But I don't buy into the "must" of the holidays, so I do hope no one will be upset if I sometimes do and sometimes don't send stuff. (The corollary of this is, for pity's sake, don't send me stuff from a sense of obligation!)

It was a long day.

I almost said it was a bad day, but it sort of wavered. Scott and I left a bit before 11, arrived for the party at 11:30. It turns out the hostess had called the guy who was scheduling it and told him not to show up until 12:30 or 1:00 as she wouldn't be ready, but, he had not passed that on to anyone. So those who are normally on time, descended while the poor woman was still rearranging her living room, which would include us.

There was a cat, and two smokers, and then a little lap dog showed up with the family that had two kids (the girl was older and spoke reasonably; preteen or teen? the boy was younger and stomped a lot). Unfortunately, I tally these things because by 1:00 I had a headache, and it got progressively worse throughout the thing despite my measures to damp it down.

There were gifts (unexpected, at least, I had not been led to expect them) and food (which was really quite good; if my head hadn't been pounding, I might have had a second helping - the ham was delicious). The people were nice, as best I could tell given that making conversation got progressively harder to focus on.

And then we fled. The drive home is a blur - I don't get headaches this bad, but I had one. Once we got home, I crawled into bed in the dark; an hour's nap helped a lot and food and cold water and more medicine seems to have done the rest. My head feels sort of hollow, but, no more ache than a pinch.

I would have liked today a lot better without the headache. I would have liked to stay later, talk more, listen more, be more cheerful. Even eat more if I'd felt better. But I'm glad we went. I'm just not glad I got the headache.

And coming back to read my friend's list, I see the mix of the bad holiday stuff and the not-so-bad holiday stuff. For those who had good holidays - yay! For those who didn't...well, I hope things get better.

I don't think I'm going to visit Scott's relatives on Friday. My holiday cheer sort of fizzled this morning and this afternoon didn't help, even though I do wish I could have been less headache-y for it.