Vacation

Every year we close down the store for Christmas. I have the next nine days off. How did I start it out? I caught a cold, possibly from my friends three year old who I begged a kiss from the other night. That's what I get asking toddlers for kisses. Germs.

I was supposed to go to work yesterday and when I told them I wanted to come in late because I had a sore throat they begged me to just stay home. I had my new assistant do what she could, then I went over there after 5:00, after everyone went home, and I did some last minute paperwork, changed my outgoing voicemail, and put my out-of-office assistant on my email. Work free until December 31.

It's actually not a bad cold, thankfully. I think the eating right and the swimming could be making a difference in that it doesn't feel like it will cling. I took a bunch of vitamins, drank a bunch of orange juice, and I feel pretty good today. I actually feel like I could go to the gym, but I don't want to push my luck. I want to be 100% well for the holidays. There's a lot of fun things happening and I don't want to miss it.

There's going to be a Christmas Eve dinner with friends, I've volunteered to bring the mashed potatoes. There's certainly some comedy stuff happening after Christmas. I'm going to buy some fresh canvases to start some new paintings. There's a New Years Eve thing happening.

I did ask Scumbag if he wanted to get together this weekend before he heads off to another state with his mom for a family reunion. He's nervous about the trip because he hasn't seen many of these relatives since he was about 13, and he's planning on coming out to all of them. Most of them are pretty conservative, so he doesn't know what to expect.

He said he wanted to do something tomorrow, and I was thinking coffee or lunch. I asked him what he wanted to do and it sounds like he wants to do some "day drinking". He wants to go to an English pub he's never been to before because they have scotch eggs and haggis. He likes haggis.

I have mixed feelings about this. His drinking got so bad in October, along with the bulimia, that he was in danger of kidney failure. Now he swears he's eating, but I don't know how he's eating, what he's eating, and I'm seeing his drinking ramping up again. So it's a mixed bag. If he wants to go eat, then yes, I'll go eat with him. I'll feed him haggis till it's coming out of his ears. But drinking with him, now after everything that's happened, it just feels wrong.

I guess I'll make that decision tomorrow. Perhaps he'll cancel, he'll be packing and doing laundry. Maybe I can talk him into going someplace else. I suppose I could cancel, but of course I'd rather see him before he takes off for a week. I'll have to play it by ear. The thing is, my drinking with him or not will not change his drinking habits. He can just as easily drink without me, and then he wouldn't get any haggis either.