Reverb11 Day 16 – A Community I Love

A Community I Love – Online & IRL we’re all part of a multitude of communities.  Tell us about one that moves you.

I do not easily fall in with a community, I like being the lone wolf most of the time, so I think the community that is most important to me is my family community.  During my life I have discovered that you can choose your family, and most of the time when I talk or refer to my family, we are not all related.  Sure, most of the time we drive each other crazy, we do not always conform and we drink a lot, but when times are tough, we come together and we stick together.  We have a bit of a ‘nobody insults my family, but me’ thing going and it’s quite amusing and touching to watch.

Over the last couple of days I have been thinking a lot of “family’ that I have lost and how much those people meant to me.  It’s a bit morbid for this time of the year, but this christmas is absolutely sucky any way, because we are not doing the whole family christmas yet again.  As much as I might bitch and moan about  my family, they are mine, and I miss them.

Of being the end of the year and christmas

We are quickly heading into what I like to call, the Dead Days.  Our office doesn’t close over the festive season even though we are extremely quiet as most of our clients do close, or are away on holiday.  I usually don’t take leave during this time of year as everywhere is extremely crowded, and we normally work shifts or half days anyway.  However, this year I am feeling so mentally run down that I would’ve loved to take at least 2 weeks, but due to circumstances, I am only taking 3 days just before Christmas.  At least with the extra public holiday we got, that makes it 1 week of not being at the office.

While it is mostly just great working with your best friend in an office where we are short-staffed and it is just us 2, when it comes to taking leave, even sick leave, it’s just awful.  You see, if it was any other colleague I wouldn’t care if they are left alone in the office to do all the work or, like now, have to sit here the whole day with nothing to do and no-one to talk to.  I would just take my leave and not think about it twice.  But when it comes to your bestest best friend, that’s just not allowed (I checked the rule book).  You have to care about them and take into consideration how absolutely crap it would be for them to be stuck in the office during the dead days, and that is how I came to only take 3 days off this year, because I would not have survived without at least a little break from this company.

This year I’m just not feeling christmas, despite my many, many efforts to get into the spirit of my favourite time of the year.  I have hardly bought any presents, I don’t even know what I want for myself, haven’t thought about what to get anyone else and my christmas tree taunts me.  I have done the tree 2 1/2 times already and it keeps looking slightly off.  So last night for the 3rd time, I took all the decorations off to start over again, then simply left them scattered around the base of the tree.

It also doesn’t help that I am flat broke, don’t know when we will get paid for December and have no idea whether we will get bonuses this year and that my dad and uncle will be going away for christmas again, so there will not be a big family affair for the 2nd year in a row.  I am totally writing 2011 off as a bad year and with any luck I’ll be back to my usual christmass obsessed self next year.

Christmas tree oh christmas tree

My goal for today was to have the christmas tree set up and decorated, so I guess I could give myself half a tick for that one. I took out the fake plastic tree and started wrapping some green tinsel around it to bulk it up a bit but then 3/4 of the way through I ran out of green tinsel, so I left that. Then when I looked at my baubles, I decided I didn’t want them for this year so I put them back in the box.

What I have achieved tonight though was to take the tree out, wrap it 3/4 of the way in green tinsel and to put my bear angel on top. Plus I’ve set up a little table and put the tree on top of it. And I’ve wrapped the 4 presents I’ve bought so far and put it under the tree.

Not really the christmas spirit I wanted to project, but I’ll go get the missing decorations during my lunch tomorrow and then I’ll try the tree decorating again tomorrow night. I still have 23 days left after all…

Silly season shopping

I went to Menlyn shopping center this morning, thinking that it won’t be too busy if I take my lunch early and go at around 10:30am.  Guess I was wrong and the silly season shopping is in full swing! I could barely find parking and the shops were crowded even though schools are technically not out yet and most people aren’t on leave yet.

Even though I didn’t find the black-out curtains I wanted, I did get some voile curtains for my lounge window facing into the neighbour’s place, it will at least make me feel a little less exposed.   I also got a very nice surprise when I went to Boardmans; I found the beautiful, red throw I’ve wanted.  It has been sold-out for a while now, because I’ve looked at 2 different branches and couldn’t find it.  Lucky for me, some sneaky sales person must have hidden it for him/herself because I found it tucked into the corner of a bottom shelve on the opposite side of the store to where the throws are.  If I haven’t received such horrible service or virtually no service from Boardmans staff over the last couple of weeks, I might have felt bad for the person, but now I’m just happy cause it’s mine!

The thought of still having to do my Christmas shopping is literally making my stomach turn.  I guess I should be thankful that we are not having our usual huge family Cristmasses again this year or I would be in serious trouble.  And it’s a bonus that my dad and uncle will be on holiday from mid Dec to after the first week of Jan, so I don’t have a Dec 25th deadline for them, so I only have to find stuff for my BFF, the sister and myself.  That should be totally doable, right?