Goodbye 2010!

Yay! The holidays are over!!

Don't get me wrong, I love the time off, but it's still so hard to deal with all the festivities and hearing about friends having fun times with their families when I miss my parent's and other family members so much. I'm really trying to get better at dealing with it because I know it's unfair to Robin. I know that she would probably love to celebrate... I feel bad. I hope that 2011 is the year that I can make a positive change in that department and actually have a proper Christmas with my girlfriend for the first time.

On Christmas day we made plans to go to her parent's house like we did last year. She went over earlier to exchange gifts and I told her to send me a text message letting me know what time dinner was going to be. I had a headache so I took a nap. I woke up at 4pm and checked my messages and she said dinner was at 4:30! Holy Crap. There was no way I could take a shower and be in Summerville in a 1/2 hour! I called Robin and told her to give them my apology, but I wasn't going to make it. I felt horrible. I had every intention of going, but totally crashed. Oops! When Robin got home she gave me a couple of presents from her parents and Steven and Karen. I felt awful for not going to dinner. I told Robin I didn't want to exchange presents so these were my only gifts. The gesture made me cry.

For New Years Eve we went to her parents house for dinner, which was nice. The Carolina game was on so I kind of felt left out since everyone was really into it and I don't have the slightest desire to watch football, let alone talk about it. I spent most of the time on Facebook on my Blackberry. We ended up leaving early so we could have some private time at Midnight. It was nice to be home, just the two of us... and our five furry children! Our Midnight kiss was bittersweet because the next day was our final day together before Robin left for her travel nursing job in Florida.

To make some extra money Robin took a job in Del Ray and is staying in Boynton Beach. She's only been gone a few days and I miss her like crazy. We are planning on me going down there for my birthday in a couple of weeks. I've never been that far South in Florida so it should be interesting visiting a place I've never been. I told her that there is no way we are going geocaching since she said at the Florida welcome center there was a big poster showing the 10 venomous snakes of the State. What?! No thank you. There's no way I'm going into the woods in Florida now! She mentioned doing one of those hydroplane boat things in the swamp, which I thought sounded fun. Really though... I just want to see her face and spend some quality time.

Being home alone again is taking some getting used to! I normally don't turn the TV on until Robin gets home, but since the house is extra quiet now it's one of the first things I do after work. The dogs certainly are not great conversationalists so the background noise of the TV makes it feel less lonely most of the time.

The travel nursing contract is only for 4 months so we just need to make the best of it. I'm sure that after a couple of weeks things will be easier so for the time being I just need to keep myself busy. Hopefully I'll be able to get some things done in the house that I've been meaning to do. I'm still organizing my Mom's old painting room. My current project is doing a paint brush inventory of all my Mom's brushes. I've organized the paint brushes by brand and then made an Excel spread sheet of what sizes they are and what the retail price is on them. I mean really, who knew that paint brushes came in sizes and that a tiny little paint brush can run $20? I'm not sure what I'm going to do once all of them are inventoried. I'll probably call my Mom's painting club or sell them on eBay. Most of the brushes haven't even been used!

There are a million projects in this house so hopefully the next four months will fly by! That reminds me... I need to Google how to remove wallpaper and wallpaper glue!