Try not to fall asleep reading this.

Do y'all remember how I've mentioned more than once that two years ago was my first time hosting our family Christmas because I'm now the only one with a house in Atlanta large enough to have everyone over and that year due to crazy schedules of people I had to cook two Christmas meals in the same day and I swore that was never going to happen again in the history of time?

Guess what I did this year for Christmas? 

We had everyone's schedules all coordinated and everything was going along all wonderfully and smoothly and everyone was planning to come to my house all day long on Christmas Eve (about 11 people).  Until 5 days before that when my brother, the police officer, called me and said, "Hey, you know I told you I was off work on Christmas Eve and I don't have to work until the night shift on Christmas Day?  Yeah, I screwed up.  I forgot I still have to work one of my extra police jobs during the day on Christmas Eve and I don't get off until 5:30 or 6:00."  And then he told me he wasn't sure when his daughter (my 16-year-old-full-of-the-drama-because-of-a-break-up-during-the-holidays-which-ruined-her-life-plans niece) was coming over but it would be sometime in the middle of the day.

And then my aunt called the very next day and said my cousin's husband had to work on Christmas Eve so they could come from 11:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. but then they would have to leave so they could get back home to spend the evening with the husband and get 3 young kids settled down and in bed at a decent hour before Christmas morning/Santa stuff.

And that is the story of how I had to prepare two freaking Christmas dinners in the same day again even though I swore I never would.

We also had one child who is autistic and basically only eats Italian types of food (canned ravioli or pizza) and another child who will only eat chicken nuggets from McDonalds (gross).  And then they found out the McDonalds by my house was closed for renovations but luckily I had some frozen chicken strips on hand and so we told him it was my very special chicken that I made especially for him and he thought it was the best chicken he'd ever eaten.

Do y'all remember when I told you I had ordered two new televisions on Cyber Monday?  I hooked the one up in my bedroom the week before Christmas and it would not work no matter what I did.  So I called AT&T and a tech came out the Saturday before Christmas.   She could not get it to work either.  She said either the walls are too thick in my house or the wireless signal from downstairs on the hardwired box wasn't strong enough or something, but she couldn't get my TV to work upstairs.  We moved stuff all over trying to get the wireless components closer to each other so they would talk and get along and stuff.  Then she said she could drill a hole through my dining room floor and run a wire into my dining room and I would have a wireless access thingie sitting in the floor next to my stairs and she wasn't sure that would even work.  I told her that was an awful idea to even try.  So she left saying she would have another tech come back out on the Friday after Christmas because that was the first day I would be available due to family stuff.

She then called me the next day and said she had to cancel my appointment on Friday that she had scheduled because of some reason or another but she would get it rescheduled and would call me back.

She called me back on Christmas Eve while I was in the middle of cooking my first big family meal of the day, and said she wanted to make sure I understood they were going to have to hard wire a completely separate setup for my upstairs TV and run new wiring from outside, etc.  I told her I understood and she said she would get it rescheduled for Friday morning and I would be contacted to confirm everything.

During all of this, my internet was still working fine although my lap top is seriously screwed up and it sounds like a jet is about to take off so I couldn't use it to blog while I was on vacation.  And I had hooked up my new TV downstairs and it was working fine.

After the majority of family had left on Christmas Eve, my mom, her husband, my brother and I were playing hand and foot because we are all addicted even though my mom's husband is quite possibly the most annoying person on earth to play games with.  At one point I looked at my mom and said right in front of him because I honestly could not take him anymore, "Mom, I will pray for you that you can stay married to him." 

We were listening to a music channel on the living room TV while we sat at the dining room table playing cards.  Around 11:30 p.m. my signal went out.  My brother left around 12:30 a.m. and then we all went to bed, the neighbor's car got crashed into, etc.  The next day the signal was still out.  And my internet was dead.

My mom's husband and I both tried everything we could think of to try and get it back on but then we gave up and played hand and foot some more and we played Scrabble some and he about drove me insane again.  Honest to goodness he was annoying the crap out of me.  Christmas afternoon we had been invited down to my neighbors' house for another big meal so I had to make some more food for that and for a person who doesn't cook I did a whole lot of cooking last week.

The Christmas celebration with my neighbors needs to be a post of its own which I will get to sometime but not today.  It involves annoying people, drunk people, singing, playing kids games, the most hilarious instructions for something I've ever seen in my life, and dancing.

The day after Christmas my mom had promised my dramatic niece that we would take her to the mall.  Let that sink in for a minute.  And she wanted us to go to one of the largest malls in the Southeast.  For those of you familiar with Atlanta, you will understand how much I enjoyed this day:

At 8:30 a.m. we left my house downtown and drove all the way out to Douglasville in west metro Atlanta to meet my aunt for breakfast because they had left a bunch of important stuff at my house when they left on Christmas Eve.

We then drove ALLLLLL the way  to Oxford which is about as far east as you can get in metro Atlanta (it's past Conyers and Covington) to pick up my niece because she had had a drama-filled-Christmas-Day complete with her romantic breakup and her mom called us and said she had been crying all night and had not slept so she would not allow her to drive anywhere.

We then drove ALLLLLLL the way to Buford to The Mall of Georgia which is an hour from Oxford.

We then walked around the freaking packed as crap mall all day long with my plantar fasciitis, my mom's bad hip, and my niece having text conversations with her ex all day. 

We then drove ALLLLLLL the way back to Oxford to drop my niece off at home.

We then drove ALLLLLL the way back downtown to my house and we were so bone tired we just wanted to go to bed even though it was only 6:30. 

Except we couldn't because my mom's husband had hung out all day at a local pub with my neighbor and then they had all come back to my house and were there waiting when we got home.  So then I had to put together snacks, wine, etc. and we played games with their 7-year-old daughter and by the time they left around 8:30 or 9:00 I was about to drop.

By Friday morning when I woke up, I was sick with a horrible cold, my mom and her husband left around 10:00 a.m. to head back to Texas and I still had no television signal and no internet.  And no energy to go do anything so I wanted to lay around and watch TV.

I called AT&T again and told them what all was going on.  They set up an expedited service call and I hung up the phone with them around 10:45 a.m.  At 11:55 a.m. a tech pulled up to my house.  Awesome!

While he was there working, my neighbor who owns the house next door where the renters' cars got smashed was over at the house because they are having a bathroom renovated.  She saw that I was home so she came by for a little while to chat.

It turns out my router had gone bad and my DVR was going bad so he had to replace them both.  And that means I lost over 100 movies I had recorded.  Bummer.  But after he replaced those things, the signal worked on the TV upstairs, my internet was back, and I could not have been happier.

Because the cold I woke up with continued to kick my butt and got worse and worse.  And my sick self did not get off the sofa for the rest of the day.

On Saturday I did not get off the sofa because I was so sick.

On Sunday I had to drive back to Conyers and pick up my brother, then to Oxford to pick up my niece, then we drove up to Athens for another family Christmas gathering (thankfully I didn't have to cook a damn thing), then I drove back to Oxford to drop off my niece, then to Conyers to drop off my brother, and I got home around 10:00 p.m.

I felt horrid.

On Monday I did not get off the sofa because I was so sick.

On Tuesday I did not get off the sofa because I was so sick.  I was supposed to go out with my neighbors for New Year's Eve, but instead I stayed home and went to bed around 9:00.  Because I know how to have a great time.

And I know how to write such an exciting blog post.  (I didn't get off my sofa.  I didn't get off my sofa.  I didn't get off my sofa.)

But I think I'm past the worst of it now.

Oh!  I went to the oncologist this morning about my monster fibroid.  I now have to have an MRI.  She wants to get a very pretty picture of it before she makes any decisions about what the best course of treatment is.  Since it's not giving me any trouble she's inclined to just keep watching it but she wants to make sure my little 7cm friend doesn't look wonky or scary in the MRI.  And you know when she told me that I needed an MRI my immediate thought was, "Awesome!  More blog material!"  And I don't think it will involve the words "I didn't get off of my sofa" even once.