Christmas Tree

Dear friends,

how are you? I'm good. I'm lying in bed typing this, wearing my navy hoodie, hand knit socks, and snuggling up under the blankets. We are only heating the upstairs of our house , which means that it's like 58 downstairs or something crazy, no way I'm going down there! Just THINKING about washing dishes by hand makes me cold.

Aaron and I were sick for like 3 weeks (Aaron got sick a week before me, and then I got sick, it was a whole thing. ) This means that I have been canceling a lot of my social plans, my house was trashed (although game night last weekend so it's relatively clean now from that, ), and MY CHRISTMAS TREE IS STILL UP. We got so many lovely ornaments in the mail from Aaron's Grandmother, and they were all wrapped up so nicely, and they are all very dear, so I'm kind of afraid to put them away. I think I might put them away wrong or break them in the wrapping process. I'm not brave enough to do it myself, and I can't get sick husband to do any cleaning. (He was REALLY sick. ).

I've officially invited a bunch of people over to my house on monday for a 'knitting circle', so I REALLY hope I am able to put away all of the Christmas stuff before then. I'm inviting my two Georgia crafting BFFs, and they would understand, but I'm also inviting a whole bunch of other girls from work who I've never really hung out with before... SUPER NERVOUS. I'm turning into some kind of weird bipolar extroverted introvert. I mean, I own a SPINNING WHEEL for gods sake, I'm not exactly part of the 'friday night' scene... so why am I facing the possibility of having  SEVEN people at my house, whom I apparently invited of my own free will, thinking it was a good idea? What's going to happen when they all realize how boring I am?

A lot of the time it feels like *all* I do is work and sleep. And when *all* you do is work and sleep, even an introvert starts to crave human company. I need SOMETHING to look forward to to make life worth living, and I think it's human nature to want diversity. (Otherwise my husband and our little game night would be enough social activity for me. )

I'm not really interested in bars or other eating-out socializing, and the only other thing I really like to do is craft, so in a way it makes sense to want to craft together with other people. I've always wanted to be a member of a knitting group, but I've never really clicked with the ones I've tried.

There's a knitting group that meets here that I've never attended because they meet in restaurants, at 8PM which just isn't my thing,
And I tried the spinning group here once and swore off it. I'm a firm believer that you should be able to interact and connect with people who are different ages from you, but I just did NOT feel welcome or comfortable in that group at all. It was the first time I really understood the meaning of the phrase "generation gap", and it was not fun at all.

I'm hoping this will be better. For starters, I suggested we watch 'princess movies' as background/ice breaker activity while we craft (I'm not sure if this is true of everyone, but wearing a uniform every day can turn the most die-hard tomboy into a dress-obsessed princess fanatic. I've seen it happen.  )
I asked one girl to bring DVDs because I don't own any, but if technology works out and everyone is OK with it, I kinda want to stream Penelope from netflix. I LOVE that movie so much! And it's got just enough 'princess' without being too overboard for anyone who might be allergic to Disney, IMHO.

New hair person

I've never been one for having my hair cut regularly. As a kid, it was just so awkward for me--an introvert--to navigate. Do I talk to the person? What if I run out of things to say? What if they don't talk back? What if they need to concentrate? It also didn't help that the place my mom took us to get our hair cut was a beauty school, which meant new people every time we went. It didn't matter if there was someone I actually liked from the previous trip (though there never was) because by the time we went again, they had finished raining and moved on.

After college, my friend found a girl up by her (north of Baltimore, so at least a 45-minute drive for me) who we both adored. She was an easygoing extrovert who we loved chatting with and had no qualms about keeping the conversation going through two hair cuts (both me and my friend, we'd make it a girls day out). The downside was that she was only cutting hair to pay her way through dental hygiene school, which is great that she could do it that way, but left me searching for a new person after she moved on.

Since then, I've just been waiting as long as I could hold out and then sucking it up and going to Hair Cuttery for the sake of convenience. I found one girl there that I liked, but I have no idea if she's still there, she gave me her card to book appointments with her but I do still hate using the phone to call people (especially if I've never called them before) so that did not happen. Now, I'm pretty happy because one of the girls I know at work is a licensed cosmetologist and does all her family and friends' hair and she lives near me! We were chatting one day and I made a comment about not having anybody anymore and she was like "Heck I'll do it!" So I'm going to talk to her this week about setting up a time. She'll even come to my house and do it, that does not get any easier folks! She also has a 5 month old baby, I told her he was most welcome to come if she came to me lol, I love babies. She does kids hair too, which means I'll be asking her to do Joey's while she's here; he's getting shaggy and it's too cold for me to buzz him this late in the year.