Thirty Days Has September

I still have to use that rhyme to remember which months have 30 or 31 days (shut up February, ya freak).

Well, here we are. Today was generally very good. I had an appointment to meet my new doctor, because my old doctor retired and I loved her but she was all the way downtown and it could take an hour to get to her office (where the parking lot was expensive and often full) and, especially in the winter, I would get massive anxiety about just getting to the appointment, never mind whatever it was about.

Today was an easy thirteen-minute drive, to a small town nearby that I always mean to spend more time in anyway. The office is in a large mini-mall with a giant free parking lot. I was so giddy with happiness I started to feel afraid that I was going to get in an accident in the parking lot just because things couldn't possibly be going this well. Then I met the doctor (at only nine minutes after the time my appointment was scheduled for) and she was unbelievably awesome, and friendly, and thorough, and responsive to my concerns, and willing to refer me wherever for stuff that's going on right now, and generally my ideal dream doctor (well duh, she's Greek and Eve's BFF's mom recommended her).

I dropped by my parents' place on the way home and told them about it and my mom said she might try to join the practice too, and when he heard where it was my dad said "yeah, you should do it, then you can pick up our booze at the LCBO after".

I made three pans of chocolate toffee pretzel bark yesterday to freeze so I would feel ahead of the Christmas baking. I screwed up the first pan, which is really embarrassing because it's so freaking easy - pretzels on pan, simmer butter and brown sugar, pour on pretzels, bake five minutes, pour on chocolate chips, wait two minutes, spread, sprinkle with salt, harden, the end. First pan? Totally skipped the baking part. So the chocolate chips just kind of half-melted and it's less bark-y than... piece-y. Eve just walked by with her mouth full saying "I love this screwed-up bark", so I guess that's okay too.

Matt put up the Christmas lights even though it was raining because he said his options for the next few days were warm-ish and wet or dry and frigging cold. He put the stair-rail garland up yesterday because we remembered that last year he had to travel the second week of December and it put us way behind and made Christmas prep more stressful.

So unlike most years, when I decide to wait until December first to decorate and then December first falls on a Tuesday and I miss it and end up feeling panicky and tired and humbuggish, we're actually almost done (except for the tree) before December first. For people that don't tend to learn from past mistakes, this is kind of a big thing.

All in all, it was a fair and fortunate ending to a bit of a difficult month (that still had many good things in it). I still feel like I'm slogging more than blogging, and don't really have a clue how to get my groove back. But I'll keep trying.