Christmas 2014

So, Christmas is finally over.

I was up as early as usual on Christmas Day. We were cooking a whole leg of lamb as well as the chicken, and someone had to get it in the slow cooker at 5am so it'd be falling apart by 1pm. The lamb was kept simple, while the the chicken was done up with homemade stuffing and seasoned with fresh thyme and garlic. I also made duck fat potatoes and from-scratch gravies, both chicken and lamb.

The day itself was stressful. A lot of cooking and feeling exhausted. My brother's fiance came over, which was the first time we've had people in the house for a long time. There are a lot of contributing factors, but I just feel too vulnerable when there's so little safe space left in my world.

We had these new Christmas crackers this year, and as it turns out they're quite tough to break. Mum and I were holding hers, and I was like 'okay, just hold it still, pulling it will only lead to disaster'. But of course it led to disaster anyway.
When it did snap, my wrist flew back, whacked down on the wine glass on the table, sending the glass flying to the fate of smashing and spilling all over the carpet.
...and I never even got to open my cracker.

For the last week I've been falling asleep sitting up, unable to stay away for the duration of the day. I've only been getting on average 5 hours sleep the past few weeks, so I guess it's catching up.

The last few days have been pretty flat. I'm just too exhausted to do much at all. Time has come to mean nothing for the week surrounding Christmas. No meal times, no bed times, too many missed meds, cleaning at 5am, wrapping presents at midnight... no routine at all. 

I didn't end up doing as much baking as I'd planned. I skipped the sponge and cookies, and just made the two chocolate cakes, a triple batch of chocolate truffles, and a quadruple batch of caramel slice. We've also had so much chocolate around these past few weeks, it's unbelievable. We still have a lot left, but there's been 2kg of choc-coated peanuts, 2kg of Maltesers, 1kg of peppermint creams, a box of Favourites and a box of Roses, not to mention the chocolate for baking (the cakes alone had 1kg of chocolate between them)... so baking more wasn't a huge necessity.

I spent the day jingling as I walked, which is apparently nothing unusual on Christmas Day, as it was several hours before anyone noticed. I had a belt hidden under my cardigan, which I used to wear as a kid. At some point I put all these Christmas bells on it, and so it became my Christmas belt. My jingle belt.

Yesterday I looked through our old photo albums to find a photo of me wearing it as a kid. After much searching, I was starting to think that maybe there just wasn't a photo of me wearing it. Then I started looking earlier, and lo and behold, the very first photo in the album marked "1996-1997" shows me and my brother standing in the backyard of our old house, me wearing my red belt and him wearing a matching yellow belt, aged 3 and 5.

I gave my brother a Game of Thrones letter opener, but it makes the perfect sword for Sir Mini Milo

xxBella