Lilac Colored Glasses

We got up sort of early today. Very early for me actually, as I didn’t fall asleep until after 7 in the morning. CB has developed this incredibly loud and disturbing snore. It was sort of giggle-worthy at first cause it’s pretty bone shattering, especially when it’s being amplified through a head set on skype, but at this point, if it doesn’t go away, he’s mentioned going to get it checked out. I mean, not only did it leave me with about 2 hours of sleep last night, but it also isn’t allowing him a very restful sleep either. I noticed last night that he was gasping for breath after each snore, and frankly, that scares me a bit. Hopefully it will resolve itself. Keep your fingers crossed.

Anyway, the getting up early was to go to CB’s parents’ house for lunch. His sister and little niece were there too, which was nice. It felt good to hear and see a little kid. I miss it quite a bit actually. We had fondue, which I’ve never had before, so that was interesting. I knew you could dip stuff in cheese or chocolate, but I didn’t realize you could fry meat too. At first when I saw a plate of raw meat on the table I was sort of taken aback, like, ok, what the heck are we doing with this? But I’m fairly bright when I have to be and it wasn’t incredibly hard to figure out, and it was pretty good. We also had au gratin potatoes, a vegetable sauce (ratatouille?) and some salad vegetables. CabanaMom (hopefully this is an ok alias for you!) gave us a cookbook with traditional Belgian recipes with written excerpts from mothers who hand cookbooks down to their children, so now we have some new recipes to try.

We came home (I tend to fall asleep pretty much anytime CB’s dad drives us back or forth from their house. You try sitting in the back of a warm car while the guys in front talk about stuff you wouldn’t even be interested in in English, in Dutch….yeah, so mostly I nod off), cleaned up the bedroom and made the bed. While doing so I lit the oil warmer I got CB for New Years and filled it with Vanilla Bean Noel scented oil.

And blech!

It was horrible!! In the little vial it smelled sort sweet, but when warmed, it made the whole room reek with the cloying smell of a burning caramel factory. Finally we dumped it out and tried lavendar instead. The whole top floor still carries the lingering miasma of singed sweets. I think we’ll try airing it out and watching a DVD in the meantime. CB goes back to work tomorrow and my class doesn’t start for another week, so now’s the last chance for some good time together (ok, most of the time together is good, but you know what I mean).

We fell asleep.

Yeah, the first 15 minutes of 2008 for myself and CB were spent sleeping. We laid down after a big dinner:

and a few drinks: and the next thing I know, CB is telling me that it’s after midnight.

I was supposed to skype my family at 11:00.

I started crying and called the U.S. on the landline. Dad reassured me that it was ok, and actually seemed more concerned that I was scaring CB with my emotional reaction than the fact that I’d missed the scheduled call time. Eventually I said hello over speakerphone and felt somewhat better about things. I was still pretty bummed about not counting down the new year with CB, but the fact still remains that, conscious or not, we were still together for the beginning of a brand new year. “A year,” aptly put by CB, “full of us.”