I hope as the days countdown to the big holiday you’re all doing well!

Things here took an interesting turn Tuesday night. My inlaws arrived Tues afternoon and I’d been feel very sleepy that evening, so I took a little nap. That night as I lay down on a sofa in the rec room, my stomach started to hurt and continued to a point where I couldn’t straighten up and it felt like a knife in my belly.

At around midnight, I guess I woke up my husband he took me to the emergency room. After about an hour of waiting in the exam room (pretty fast for an ER) I saw a doctor who had the nurse insert and IV and gave me Benadril for a rash I’d developed that came and went (stress, I think), an anti-nausea drug and pain meds that made the room spin and caused me to fall asleep between sentences in the conversation. I had an X-ray done and a CAT scan (pretty scary to fall asleep between the instructions “Take a deep breath and hold it” and “Breathe normally.”)

Some of you don’t know that I had a kidney transplant almost 7 years ago. Turns out that a cyst on one of my own kidneys was bleeding and that caused the pain, which apparently was referred since it was nowhere near the organs! They admitted me because they were afraid of the cyst bleeding out. The transplanted kidney looks fine and my creatinine (measurement of kidney function) is well within normal range.

I was in the hospital until this afternoon. While I’m home I’m still in a little pain (maybe a 1 instead of a 9) and not feeling great, so I’d appreciate prayers that I will continue to recover.

Thank for your support everyone!

My friend, Karina Fabian, has a great idea for gift ideas for writers. Check out her blog here.

Is your shopping done?

I think ours is pretty much done. We’re going to Ohio after Christmas to spend New Years’ with my family, so I think we’re going to hit the after Christmas sales for a few gifts.

My inlaws, Queen Mother and Marine Guy, are coming next week so we’re cleaning this weekend along with a birthday party the Boy and Beloved are going to and HeartLa‘s Christmas party at one member’s house.

Then next week is exam week for the Girl, so she’ll be home early every day. Both kids finish up early on the 21st then it’s holiday for us!

What are your plans?

Life is so busy this time of year. Even when we try to simplify and pare down what we give, how we decorate, all that, it still seems that the Christmas and Advent season surprise us and we’re not ready.

At least that’s how I feel. I know that I should think about doing some shopping throughout the year, buying little gifts for people whenever I think about them or when I see something they like, but I never do that.

I never put food in the freezer for the holidays, nor do I do baking ahead of time.

However, Christmas always seems to work out. People never complain about the gifts I COULD have bought them if I’d thought about it. No one every notices that I didn’t decorate the way I wanted to.

Christmas is not about all that stuff anyway. It’s, of course, about the birth of our Saviour and our family remembers that, or at least tries to keep that upper most in our thoughts this time of year.

My father was Danish and my birth family had the tradition of opening “family” gifts on Christmas Eve. Daddy always read the Christmas story from Luke before we opened the gifts. Christmas morning was for Santa presents and going to my mother’s parents’ house for the big family gathering.

When Beloved and I were dating and we had our first Christmas as a couple, we spent it, of course, with his family (he was living with them). We went to my family later, but on Christmas Eve I missed opening up the gifts and as Beloved’s mother is Norwegian and HER mother was living with them, I appealed to her, asking if they didn’t open presents on Christmas Eve.

She said they did and my future father-in-law gave in and now we open ONE gift on Christmas Eve. Beloved took the tradition of reading the Christmas story and added to it. On Christmas Eve he reads from Isaiah 53, the prophecy about the suffering servant. Then, if possible, we go to Midnight Mass. I LOVE Midnight Mass.

On Christmas morning, we open gifts and have Julekake (a Scandinavian sweet bread). Beloved’s grandmother made it and I love it. Now that she’s gone and my in-laws usually travel down here, I make it. This year, we’re going to have, in addition to the bread, Jule-waffles. I’m going to try to add the candied fruit and cardamom to waffles and see how it turns out!

What are your traditions? How do you keep the true meaning of Christmas alive?

Have any of you seen Legend, with Tom Cruise?

I’ve heard of this movie and thought it might be interesting to see it so when it came on TV a while back I DVR’d it. (Love my DVR!! Don’t know how we watched TV without it!) Anyway, I sat down to watch it and honestly thought it was boring. I realize it’s old and possibly made at a time when audiences weren’t as interested in starting in the middle of the action. Also, it’s possible that as I writer, I expected more action. OR it could be because I’m not a big Tom Cruise fan to begin with (Enjoyed Minority Report and War of the Worlds) and he’s a little…ethereal in this. Ethereal is not a good quality for a hero in my opnion, but what do I know? Someone will point out the errors of my way I’m sure.

Maybe it was a combination of all those things.

Anyway, when Beloved came home, I asked him if he’d seen the movie and he told me it’s a great fantasy film. I checked it out over at Internet Movie Database my favorite site to just browse, and apparently it won awards and people love it.

I think I missed the boat somewhere along the line.

I read Meg Cabot’s blog (one of my favorite authors) and clearly she’s a major fan, so I’m asking my readership (Bueller? Bueller?) the Big Question:

Did you like it? Should I give it another try?

Check out the Contest page on the side bar there and see what all the fuss is about!

I got a new gizzie for my Firefox browser this weekend, the BlogRovR. I’m still deciding if I like it, but the idea is that as I’m working, this thing will bring up; blogs that mention the webpage I’m viewing, as well as bringing me information about the blogs I’ve added to the list. So, in testing this out, I went to a blog I read regularly, SF Signal. Then I clicked on a link in one of his posts, which took me to an interesting blog post about a warehouse being built in England to store “books, journals and magazines that many of us have forgotten about or have never heard of in the first place.”

As a reader and a writer, I feel a little sad about this. I guess I understand the “need” to store information but you know, how does this impact authors who discover that their work is in a warehouse where, according to the article, it will be nearly impossible to find if someone should ever want it.

On the other hand, if these truly are publications no one wants, do we really have to store them somewhere?

What do you think?