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Originally posted at December16.co.uk.

Today I went to the cinema with Michael to see Paul. It was pretty good, but not quite as good as I had expected. (I'm not really sure WHAT I expected, tbh, but it was no Hot Fuzz.) The projectionist fucked up -- the first two minutes of the film were projected onto the audience at the front instead of onto the screen. People had to go outside and inform staff; clearly they don't bother checking from the projectionist booth! Once they had been informed, they repositioned the projector but didn't restart the film, so we missed the intro. Quite annoying. The sound also blipped out quite a few times in the second half of the movie, which ruined a few lines.

Overall, it was the worst cinema experience we've had, but we enjoyed the film. Dickmilk is quite possibly Michael's favourite curse word now. I preferred fucknut. I will be making use of it.

I GOT THROUGH!

"She had a very stable night. She's in a bit of pain now, so we've got the Pain Relief Team with her and they're just going to give her some extra analgesic. We're happy for her to move back to a normal ward today. [...] We don't know which ward it'll be yet; that's with the housekeepers at the moment. [...] Would you like me to pass on a message?"
"Just... Just let her know that her daughter called, please."

I SHOULD HAVE THOUGHT OF SOMETHING AWESOMELY RANDOM.
"Yes, please tell her that the blue fish has sailed and it's time for chips."
"Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!"

She was not expected to leave ICU for a couple of days. Once she's back in a normal ward, she'll have access to her own TV, radio and telephone - which they obviously don't have in ICU - so she'll be able to tell me how she's doing herself.

I called my aunt right away to tell her how her sister is doing, and then I called my Dad and brother. My brother let on that he was secretly concerned... Which is nice to hear.

I can't believe how relieved I am!

 So, if you didn't know... Phones absolutely terrify me. It might be caused by a combination of partial deafness and social anxiety -- not important -- the point is, they terrify me. They turn me into a mushy anxious mess until I actually make the call, and then I am a shaking, less-mushy mess... And once it's finished, I'm all "well, that wasn't so bad. What was all the fuss about? I could do it again now! I am IN CONTROL of the telephone!"... And then I decide to make another call and the entire process begins anew.

Ringing the hospital to find out how my mum is doing is not as easy as it sounds. I've been playing the "no, you first" game with my aunt since last night (it's one-sided; she has no idea she is playing this game and yet she still isn't cooperating.) She called to tell me that she had tried to get through to the ICU/HDU ward and couldn't, and to say some disturbingly control-freak-y things she has done or plans to do in regards to my mother... which I am telling her about ASAP. Not cool, Susan. Not cool.

Anyway. I am currently psyching myself up to call the ward, since my aunt has obviously not done it yet (we have an agreement to call the other once either of us hears anything.) I'm like, OK, I'M READY. GO!... Shoot. OK. NOW!... ALRIGHT. WRITE A QUICK LJ ENTRY AND THEN DO IT, OK? OK! ALRIGHT. I'M READY. NOW!

... I entered the number and paused for so long over the 'dial' button that my phone reset and now I have to do that again. OK.

OMFG, IT IS ENGAGED, YOU GUYS.

ARGH.

TEN MINUTES. I WILL DO IT AGAIN IN TEN MINUTES.

----------------------------

It's been twenty minutes. I have tried twice. ENGAGED BOTH TIMES. Seriously, what kind of hospital telephone system doesn't put people on hold? I'd rather listen to rubbish music for ten minutes, and pay the phone bill, than have to keep trying!

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I would name it Awesome. No shame. Planet Awesome, where only the Awesome people who are also nice to Jennifer may live. Hell, you're not even allowed to look at it unless you're nice to me.

Maybe I would name it Xena. That's Awesome too. I never liked that they chose Eris over Xena for the dwarf planet.

 Okay, I feel compelled to create an entry which isn't just whinging and complaining about being sick.

HELLO.

Last night I watched Up! and I cried three times. Twice because of the movie, and once because Michael said "I want to grow old with you" somewhere at the beginning and I was already emotional from the opening sequence so I cried AGAIN. It was pathetic. Such a lovely movie though. :(

ALSO. We have established that we have seen EVERY Pixar movie now, and have created a master list which merges our individual favourites to create the Official Jennifer and Michael Pixar Preference List. We're that lame. Perfectly suited for each other, really, even though he insists on putting Toy Story much nearer the top than I do, and consistently demerits Cars even though I think it's adorable. The tractor, whatever his name is? SOSWEET. I want to squish it.

Yeah, I'm a bit odd-headed (haha, as usual, right?) from being ill, and quite tired too which only magnifies the effect, so my language/sense/everything is a bit off. Whatevs! If you're on my LJ then I clearly don't mind you seeing it so who cares.

Anyway. I have to go eat some free (potato) crisps (sour cream & chive) so I can answer a survey about them, so toodlepip chaps (and ladies).

Yes, I am home again... at last.

After leaving on the 19th, I spent a week at my Dad's house (covering both his birthday and Christmas) and returned to Birmingham on the 27th... For about eighteen hours. Then I caught a coach up to Mum's house in Leeds and returned on Sunday the 2nd. It was strange and awful to be separated from Michael for New Year's, but I'd spent my birthday with him, we spent Christmas with Dad, so New Year's had to go to Mum to keep it fair. She was all alone for Christmas, which made me feel pretty bad (but I wasn't going to change my plans to make her feel better. As I kept reaffirming, "Christmas is with Dad and Daniel [and with Michael].")

They are my core family unit and I don't know what I'd do without those guys. <3

My birthday was just before we left, on the 16th (I'm 24, you guys. How did this happen?! Most of you are far more mature than I am!) and I got the best birthday gift ever: an Amazon Kindle 3G. I cannot even talk about this without grinning and getting a stupid bubbly feeling in my stomach. I seriously freaking love it.

Anyway. The trip down was on the 19th, the day after heavy snow hit Britain and the day before it hit again. We were very lucky because our coach was still running (though it only did half it's route -- luckily it was the half we needed!) and we only had to wait 40 minutes (in -5°C without big coats; we keep meaning to get some.) It got further delayed en route and we ended up arriving about 90 minutes later than expected. Thankfully I was in contact with Dad on the way there and could keep him updated on how far behind schedule we seemed to be getting, so he didn't have to wait in the cold car for ages!

That was the 19th. I was pretty exhausted and probably went to bed quite early. The 20th and 21st were quiet -- Michael and I stayed at Dad's home while he and Daniel worked, though Daniel came back early both days. We played some video games but mostly stayed on Dad's computer devouring the internet and discussing news stories... and reading the Kindle obsessively. Next step: Get Michael one.

Dad's birthday was on the 22nd. I cooked a roast dinner (we had two small roast chickens because ASDA had gotten rid of all the larger ones to make room for the turkeys!) and we gave him his presents -- every Star Trek movie on remastered (where relevant) DVD. He was pretty pleased with them, which was awesome. :D

On the 23rd I cooked another roast -- because we'd bought an extra piece of meat and I didn't have any other time to cook it. I suspect my Dad was making up for the lack of roasts during the months I wasn't there..! ;)

On Christmas Eve I went with my brother, Daniel, to visit our maternal aunt. She's very nice and not terribly like our mother, which is refreshing. We bought her an orchid for Christmas, a lovely purple thing with lots of buds, and she'd bought us Christmas gifts as well -- I got a scarf knitting kit, a pair of gloves, a couple of pairs of socks and a box of chocolates. Daniel got basically the same, minus the socks and scarf kit (but with an ice-scraper for his car which has an LED torchlight in the handle. Very handy!) Her gifting style is very much like our Nan's, and I miss her gifts terribly. They were usually practical, and if they weren't then they were darling cheap little things, like bags of marbles or knock-offs of popular toys. Unwrapping Nan's gifts was always so much fun because she'd actually thought about what kinds of things we liked.

Christmas Day was, of course, the main reason we had both travelled to Hampshire and it did not disappoint. Unfortunately Dad is "feeling the pinch" this year and had to tighten his pursestrings a little, so we received about a third of what we did last year (in value -- not in amount! Hahah.) One of our gifts hadn't arrived (still hasn't) so we got our main present on its own instead: A 250GB HDD for our Xbox 360. :D :D I WAS SO THRILLED. I've wanted one of these since we first replaced our broken console (we bought a cheaper console without a HDD because we were strapped for cash (and had just bought an engagement ring) and were still using our old 25GB hard drive.)
I CAN DOWNLOAD EVERYTHING. :D No more deleting downloaded content to make space! No more worries about when to buy Rock Band 3 because we'd be unable to copy all the Rock Band 2 songs to the disc. Oh no, siree! We can do whatever we like now. :D
Our MIA gift is Fallout: New Vegas, which I am ridiculously excited about playing. Dad will be sending it up via his company's courier once it arrives. :)
However, we bought Dad a DVD and some NASA pins because he has some on his wall and loves them. My brother bought him a Saturn V model-building kit which he completely geeked out over. My Dad is where I get my space-nerdism from -- all of his gifts this year were space-themed! :) We also bought Daniel a 360 controller (he needed a replacement for his PC) and I gave him the Pingu I won at Butlins in September because I'd promised to get him one for Christmas and thought it would be a nicer gesture. :) We also found fibre optic lamps while we were down there, so we bought one for ourselves and one for him -- they work brilliantly. :D
We also bought the cat a stocking. She liked nothing in it apart from a small catnip mouse (though she's not attracted to catnip at all -- it's the tail and 'sticky' (to her claws) fabric which fascinates her!) thus proving that buying for animals is always predictable and entertaining. I have official word from Dad that she's still playing with it at 4am and waking him up by leaping from his room to the landing and vice versa in failed attempts to slay the tiny beast.
As is tradition now, I cooked Christmas Dinner and everything went splendidly! We had: a turkey crown, a gammon joint, roast potatoes, swede and carrot mash, brussels sprouts, broccoli, sage and onion stuffing, sausages-in-bacon (pigs in blankets) and cheese-in-bacon (... cheese in blankets?) with two types of turkey gravy to choose from. Dad opened a 1986 bottle of red wine, but it was terribly corky... So I came up with the bright idea of filtering it using kitchen paper and a teapot. It worked! Hahah. But Dad opened a 1989 bottle instead, so we had two to choose from. I preferred the '89 because it was a bit fruitier but I still put lemonade with it. I just can't handle wine; the taste is too strong! Oh, and we also had a strawberry trifle for dessert, though nobody had any room to eat it for a few hours!

Boxing Day was how it usually is -- a bit slow; everybody's run out of things to do (let's be honest, everyone runs out of things to do about an hour before Christmas Dinner on the 25th, right? Except my brother, who occupied himself with PC video games and galliantly didn't hog the Xbox 360 to play his new 360 games until shortly before we left on the 27th.) and we just sit about watching movies and TV. We had leftover meat in bread rolls for dinner and ate very little... We needed to recover after that enormous Christmas meal. Leftover roast potatoes, stuffing, gammon and half of the turkey crown were picked at during the day by everyone.

We left on the 27th, as I've mentioned, but not until the late afternoon so we had plenty of waiting around to do. Thankfully it gave me time to pack and repack everything (it was a close call -- I nearly had to leave some stuff behind!)

We didn't get home until about 20:45, with KFC, so I had enough time to eat, unpack our things, then repack my own and to blearily watch TV with Michael before giving up and going to bed. In the morning I had to be up, washed, packed and ready by 11:30 for my coach to Leeds at 12:30. It arrives in Leeds at about 17:20 and Mum swung by in a Taxi to pick me up.
We exchanged our Christmas gifts on that first night -- I had bought her a Snuggie knock-off (half the price, does the same thing... why not?) and some wheat-bags (personal warmers which are heated in the microwave) because she just can't find them in Leeds! I also bought her the DVD of The Happiest Days of Your Life which my grandmother is featured as an extra in.
She gave me £30 and some of her unused craft things. :) I got a Beatrix Potter cardmaking kit, a "Jewelry* Class in A Box" (It is spelled Jewellery in British English.) and another pretty cardmaking kit. She also made a note paper kit for me, with its own paper box and everything. She even stained some paper and created note cards for inside it. It's very nice!
She also had gifts to unwrap from my aunt -- I was the courier from Hampshire to Leeds, naturally -- and got some chocolates which we munched on and some biscuits which I think she was saving until I left and she wouldn't have to share... xD

On New Year's Day we (well, I) cooked a roast dinner -- a medium-sized chicken, a teensy bit of gammon, roast potatoes, swede and carrot, stuffing and chicken gravy. Very tasty, if I do say so myself, especially since I was using an oven which I am unfamiliar with (and most ovens have quirks, such as cooking more heavily on one side than on the other, or requiring the temperature be lowered by 10°C so it doesn't burn everything to crisp, etc... Which all need experience to learn. Luckily this one was fairly straightforward!)

I returned home at about 17:30 on the 2nd. We had McDonalds for dinner because I couldn't be bothered to cook, and decided that our New Year celebration would take place on the Monday bank holiday... with plenty of vodka and lots of recorded TV to catch up on. We did that yesterday, on the 3rd, and it was just really nice. So good to be home, with no immediate plans, and time to spend with my boyfriend. I missed him terribly while I was at Mum's house and only survived because I discovered that Meebo Mobile works splendidly on the Kindle, so I spent entire evenings talking to him! :)

Now it's the 4th and I'm trying to catch up on everything I couldn't quite do on the Kindle. It's much easier to catch up when you're able to multi-task! :D

At 4:26am my fiance's sister-in-law gave birth to a healthy little boy called Jack Harry. He was 12 days overdue and weighed 9lbs 5oz .

I'm an auntie! :)

Which Hogwarts house will you be sorted into?