The plan was that Shawn would come home last Thursday, we'd have a couple of days at home, see some friends over the weekend, then go to my parents' timeshare in Palm Springs for a week of reconnecting and significant snuggles (with a drive out to his mom's for Christmas Eve and Day in the middle.)

Well, it started out promisingly: Shawn did come home last Thursday (yay!) Then the furnace started getting wonky (at 28 degrees Fahrenheit outside, that can be a problem.) Thursday night was spent in the living room in front of a romantic fire (a friend also loaned us a space heater, since I'd left mine at work.) We had a guy come out Friday to clean the furnace and fiddle with the electric pilot and tell us that we needed at least $200 worth of duct work, but it started, so we were happy.

Friday, we went out to dinner and I had a bad allergic reaction to the fish.

Saturday, Shawn came down with the flu.

Now, I can't take the vaccine, since it's nigh impossible to find a preservative-free version, and the preservative in the general vaccine contains mercury, which has been linked to fetal autism. So I hid in the bedroom (he'd taken over the futon in the living room), emerging occasionally to bring him more juice.

Sunday, he sent me down the hill to hang out with our friends at our holiday get together. It was fun, but I missed my sweetie. My parents got to use the timeshare themselves.

Monday, I started feeling dreadful and spent a lot of time lying down. Shawn still icky.

Tuesday, I awoke with sore throat and runny nose. The doctor said that, fortunately, it was not The Flu, but it was an ear/nose/throat infection. He put me on amoxycillin (safe for baby), and I spent most of the day sleeping and watching television. Shawn's fever had gone down, but he was still miserable -- especially because he couldn't take care of me.

Wednesday, the furnace kicked out again.

Fortunately, Shawn was feeling a bit better, because after hours of arguing with it, he wrestled it into apparent submission. He also picked up a couple more space heaters from KMart, just in case. I caught up on the Hornblower movies I'd taped a few weeks back.

This morning, we crawled out of bed and did the Christmas thing, which was nice. Shawn surprised me by not only decorating the living room with garlands and ribbon and stuff, but he'd bought a little, Charlie Brown Christmas tree last night and decorated it at the last minute this morning with some red bead garland and a half dozen or so of our most sentimental ornaments. (We'd decided against a tree this year because the kittens would have had way too much fun decimating it. As it is, I'm hoping the picture of Bamf pulling it off the table comes out.)

I like buying presents for my sweetie. He already knew about "Shadows over Baker Street" because he'd seen it in a bookstore and bought it and I had to tell him to take it back because I'd already gotten it. I think the two niftiest were the print of David Deen's War of the Outcast and a DVD of the Reduced Shakespeare Company's Complete Works of Shakespeare (Abridged). Shawn was a little disappointed that the DVD only included one of the original cast members, but he was a bit mollified by the inclusion of a home movie of the debut of "Romeo and Juliet" at the old Agoura faire site. Me, I'd heard such wonderful things about the show but had never gotten around to seeing it, and when Shawn and I went to see the troupe, they were different people doing different skits. Ah, well. At least we have some sort of record of their insanity.

Shawn got me some nifty stuff, too: Boggle and lingerie (most of which would be pretty amusing on me right now) and a really cool Celtic cross with a hidden knife and a Tinkerbell sticker and iron-on (me? a flirt?) and, yes, jewelry, but good jewelry: not expensive cliche diamonds but a couple of earring/necklace sets: pretty silver and blue snowflakes and a lovely green butterfly. Oh, and a little hanging set of three teddy bears holding hearts (mom, dad and child.) And a kitchen timer shaped like a tomato. And a hedgehog keychain. And other stuff. It was fun.

I'm exhausted. I'm going back to bed.

Merry Christmas!

*snurgle*