Last night Jim and the kids and I went to see the new animated spider man movie and that was a wonderful ending to our first Christmas together. Life is wonderful.

The holiday was not without challenges. Scheduling was a bad dream this year with my ex and his SO who took greater interest in having the kids in years past and I was left holding the short stick. I didn’t see my kids until 5 PM on Christmas Day. We stilll made the most of it, but by then, they were so over “Christmas meals” we skipped our long standing tradition (which I vowed we would not do), and just opened gifts and stole away to a movie instead. Maybe that’s the new tradition? We’ll see.

The rest of the festivities were a blur. With my bro coming home for the first time in a long time, everyone in the fam wanted to plan something. Having divorced parents makes things tough, and it’s not lost on me that my own choices have caused my kids to have to endure that mess throughout their lives.

At this point, my kids have been children of divorced parents longer than they haven’t — they don’t remember any different. They don’t care for the back and forth, but have not once complained about getting twice the presents at Christmas. Go figure.

As a divorced person I recognize how my parents might not enjoy going to social events together so I’ve tried lately to minimize those events, celebrations and such. That means we double up a lot. That’s ok. I digress.

We rarely spend time at my house (Jim and I) as most of it is spent at his. I’ve said before that he’s already gone to great lengths to make us feel at home there so it just makes sense for us to be there. Yesterday however we were celebrating at my place and we had nothing to do all afternoon waiting for the kids to show up.

He changed lightbulbs inside and outside and fixed my toilet while I packed more things from my kitchen. The amount of time for us in that house is waning and at this point I see “things” and ask the following:

1. Will I use this in the next 30 days?

2. Does this have value (sentimentally or monitarily)?

3. Will someone potentially get use out of it in the future?

I gravitate toward minimizing but Jim doesn’t think I should get rid of anything. That’s interesting given all my shit is headed for his house. In any case, I was able to sort several more cupboards in the kitchen and only failed when it came to deciding what to do with jars of sand I’ve kept for 25 years. Wtf am I ever going to do with 8 old tostitos salsa jars filled with different colored sand I collected from places I visited in my 20s? The answer is “I don’t know”. Whatev.

I guess this blog post makes it official.. my mind has officially switched from Christmas back to moving and what lies directly in front of me. It was a very up and down holiday, and it was great to have been able to spend as much of it with my love despite not having my children. I’m sure fixing my toilet is not how Jim envisioned our first Christmas together either .. haha! I guess we are both practical and are just more about getting stuff done than sitting around.

In all fairness, with 4 days off in a row, we were sort of over sitting on the couch watching shows and such so it felt good to be productive. I’m really looking forward to the rest of this week and want to be super productive. The only exception would probably be getting back to work. I’m not super excited about that. No surprise there.

I feel like I’ve wandered around aimlessly enough for one day. It’s time to get back to that productivity I’m always writing about.

Peace and Prosperity,

~Miss SugarCookie