About that fish?

We finally have our house to ourselves - if even for a few days! Our perpetual company went back to her family for the holidays. Her ticket was our Christmas gift. Oh yeah, it was a gift to her too!

Even HB had to admit that the constant presence was beginning to drain him. His way of relaxing is to hang out on the couch in the living room and watch continuous Star Trek with no one .... I repeat no one speaking to him for a few hours. He has a little ritual. He hasn't been able to engage in that ritual since August.

Needless to say, we are enjoying doing some of the things we haven't been able to do since August. We went out to dinner by ourselves. We went to the theatre. We got up early and sat in the kitchen, drinking coffee and not saying a word to each other. He watched Star Trek until his ears got pointy today.

She's scheduled to come back on the 28th, but HB and I have had enough conversation now to know that we have to set some boundaries. Among those boundaries are some pretty basic things like, let's see:

• buy your own shaving cream and do not use my razor
• if you're not going to pay rent, then at least begin to kick in on the groceries once in a while
• there's a tv in your room - let us introduce you to it
• if you're home doing nothing all day, stop it and look for a job!

And most importantly, we're going to have the discussion about how long she plans to stay. We never intended this to be a semi-permanent thing. I have been feeling fairly unChristian about this whole thing, and that's no good. You know that whole my castle is your castle thing? I don't think it was meant for a small semi-detached castle that already has two adults, two growing kids and two very large dawgs in it.

In other news ... still going to the gym and loving it. I'm down 25 lbs as of last week, and loving that! Successfully finished up another semester in the graduate program and completed two exams this past week. Also hosted a full Christmas dinner for 10 people last weekend, got the tree bought, put up and decorated - all in one day.

I'm almost Martha Frickin' Stewart these days.