Yuletide crabbitude

My lungs hurt when I breathe in. That's a good sign, right?

I got all the Christmas shopping done today. The boys are giving their grandmother one hell-ass ugly candle, but hey, that's what she gets for already owning everything in the universe, isn't it? They got their grandpa a ham, for pretty much the same reason. In fact, I bought both items by myself and wrapped them, so the kids will see them for the very first time on Saturday when they're opened. They have been instructed to try not to look too surprised. Shortcuts at Christmas? Yes, I am overworked and overwhelmed, and not getting enough sympathy for the fact that my mother died, so I am Queen Badass.

Incidentally, one of the many tragic side-effects of that is that I no longer have my favorite emotional blackmail line - for the past year I've been telling my husband, "My mother has cancer, so you have to be nice to me!" No, I am not sorry I said it, it was funny. There are a lot of things I regret about the last year of her life, but being able to find a joke somewhere in all that mess is certainly not one of them. Cass'll back me up on that, though he'd probably say as jokes go, that one is pretty pathetic.

However. I am still only 2/3 through my database administration certificate thing, and I went and signed up for another course (yes I know what you're thinking, but there is an explanation. Perhaps one day I will supply it.) and my book (yet another JavaScript book - can't you people just pick one text for all your classes? The CSS people do.) came today but I haven't enrolled yet and I have one or two more things to do for the webmaster job and of course the other job isn't going anywhere so there goes my Friday. Oh poop, and I haven't even made the lemon cookies yet! Clearly, I already have enough going on, so this year Christmas can pretty much bite me.

Oh, and Firstborn? Had an English test today and forgot to turn it in. Automatic F. A native English-speaker in a German high school, in a class full of kids taking only their third year of English instruction. The Husband and I were assuming that here was at least one class where he couldn't tank.

Apparently we underestimated him.