Post Holiday Recovery

Well, we made it through Christmas and NYE just fine. This new year holds a lot of promise and big events.

One side of my family is having a huge reunion in June, and I'm really looking forward to attending with my husband, who has not met most of those people yet and is in for quite a treat. My Pawpaw and his siblings are the base generation for the reunion. He is the second of 8 kids - six boys and two girls - so of course, there are tons of people in our family, and we're scattered all over the country, from South Carolina to Montana to Oklahoma to California to Idaho.

There are some big birthdays in my immediate family this year. I and my husband will both be turning 30! I also have two cousins turning 16, one turning 18, an aunt and uncle both turning 50, another uncle turning 55, and a bratty ass niece turning 5, which hopefully will put an end to her reign of terror. Her two older siblings were also rotten until they turned five.

Last but certainly not least, we are awaiting the birth of another niece in early February! Well, technically she's not related, but her dad is my DH's best friend from high school, and said best friend's parents have practically adopted my husband, so dammit, we're Auntie and Unkie.

Recent development: I started therapy. Yep, good ole counseling with a Licensed Professional Counselor. I've been twice, and it seems like it'll be useful. The guy uses the cognitive approach to therapy, the basic premise of which is that if you can change your thinking, you can change your behavior. I like that idea.

Christmas was cool, as usual. DH and I got a nice Cuisinart coffee maker and toaster from Dear Ole Dad. I got a KitchenAid stand mixer from DH, as well as an assortment of other goodies. It was a very booky Christmas. DH gave me several true story books about dogs- a couple of beagle books and one called Marley and Me, about a newspaper guy and his wife in Florida who get a yellow Lab. The Lab, Marley, is described as being "the worst dog in the world." I highly recommend this book. You will laugh out loud until your sides hurt and cry until you have snail trails on your sleeve from wiping your nose.

I also got a handful of paperbacks, several Dean Koontz and John Grisham's most recent, The Broker.

DH and I took last week off, and were basically lazy. Now that I'm back at work, I'm cranking up some more audiobooks on the iPod. I finished Forever Odd by Dean Koontz, the sequel to his very excellent book Odd Thomas from a couple of years ago. I am half way through Mr. Murder, another Koontz tome.

Koontz rawks. Not only does he blend humor and suspense like no one else, he throws in a lot of big words. I've been listening to these audiobooks with paper and pen at hand, and have written down a page and a half of new words to learn. Some of the better ones are: autodidact, miasma, erudite, cabal, rapacious, mendacity, sanguine, comestible, and elucidation.

I'm an autodidact, a person who is self-taught.

God, I love big words.