This has been the LOVELIEST Christmas.

Christmas day, we had the usual suspects for dinner, five altogether. Boxing day, we had seven; then the 27th, a pair of friends with three kids dropped in, for a further excellent dinner.

There has been lots of food and ham and puddings and ham and more food and we don’t want ham again until at least Easter, seriously, and fruit mince pies – I still have 1.5kg of fruit mince jarred up, will it keep until next xmas you think? and excellent company, and games of the card, computer, and beach-ball variety, AND I still don’t have to go back to work until the 7th Jan and I am a happy woman.

I’ve cleaned some things, but not all the things I want yet. Still, I’m happy with the overall success of Operation 2012: the house is still a bit of a problem in certain areas, but I feel more on top of the overall operation. Life-management is always a work in progress.

I’ve also had the time to be crafty. In the last couple of days, I’ve finished these two. It’s continuing to be a good vacation.

800km, three days, and one funeral later, I am home.

It was a nice funeral. The talk was split in reasonable parts between Nana’s life and religion. I’ll grant you that I felt weird – back in a church I’ve not stepped foot into since I left Mum’s home – but it was fine.

And all the family were welcoming. Which was the bit I’d been most concerned about. Friendly and chatty and … well, they acted like family.

I was fine through most of the service. Only really started crying when Nana’s life as a cook was mentioned, and I remembered the fish custard story.

She was cooking for a convention. Several hundred, if not a thousand, people to feed. (As part of a team, I mean.) She was tucked into a dark corner of the kitchen, making fish stew.

It needed thickening, so she added cornflour. Tasted. It didn’t taste … quite … right.

So she took the cornflour box into the light. And realised that no, this was actually custard powder.

After a little doctoring, they served it anyway. Apparently the fish custard was a big hit…

Nana passed away in her sleep this morning. Mum rung me at work to let me know – and to ask me to ring my other grandmother and tell her. Which I did, as I’m a dutiful granddaughter.

I am presently sitting in a park near work, letting myself mourn. And yes, for me that involves telling the Internet. I’ll be OK. She was 81, after all. It’s a good innings.

My Uncle is 1.5 hours drive away; Mum hasn’t told him yet, so that he can drive there safely. He’s already on the road. Mum’s sitting beside Nana’s bed reading the Bible aloud to her.

I’m glad we went to visit last weekend.

Went to see grandmother. She’s been told that odds are that she won’t live. But, the doctors don’t know. Either way, I’ve done what I felt to be the right thing by visiting; I’ve done what the relatives feel is right by visiting. Mum in particular is pleased. Uncle and Aunty were there too, and they were welcoming to Tobermory (who they’ve never met before). They asked for more pictures to go up on Facebook, as it’s a way they regularly keep in touch with their own children. We’ll see, I guess.

Once Uncle left, Nana chattered for a good hour or so. She didn’t need much prompting, beyond the odd “was that where..?” or similar question. Tobes learned lots of family history today; I knew most of it already, but it was nice seeing that she was happy sharing it. I know the trick with talking to old people – get them talking, and they’ll think you’re a brilliant conversationalist.

Her eyes lit up when I walked into the hospital room. There was no mistaking that she was thrilled to see me. Us. In fact she talked until visiting hours were over and Security kicked us out.

We went to see my maternal grandmother too, as we were already in that city. She was likewise pleased to see us, and chatted our respective ears off as well.

I have no idea if Nana (paternal, this time) will live. But at least if she passes away I’ve said goodbye.

I am tired. Soul-weary as well as physically, as I ended up doing all six hours of driving – Tobes wrenched his neck napping in the car, so, yeah.

Now that I have the full story on my grandmother, I do feel kind of guilty. It’s not likely that she’ll live past the weekend. Internal bleeding that they can’t find, and thus can’t stop, despite xrays and internal probes and goodness knows what. She’s also a chronic asthmatic and struggling to breathe – which doesn’t help, given the low blood count.

It’s not looking good.

We will probably visit her on Sunday. Apart from anything else, I think my mother would feel better if we did.

I’m actually having a good week, that aside.

At work, the Ops Manager is going on maternity leave. When she announced her pregnancy, I said that I’d be interested in taking advantage of any opportunities that fell out of the reshuffle tree.

It’s ended up going like this – Ops Manager going on maternity leave, Project Manager will move into Ops, one of the server team is moving into Project… and yours truly is moving into the server team. The lead of that team actually requested that I move, I didn’t have to apply or anything.

It’s only for a year, but a year is a long time, you know? The worst-case scenario is basically that the Ops Manager wants to come back part-time, everyone else gets asked to move back down the chain – and I have a year’s experience in server admin to take to another employer. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think they’ll push me back down the chain having once promoted me – this is a good employer! But if the worst case is basically that I have good experience to take to another job, I can’t particularly lose.

Dance is going well. At the end of the beginner’s salsa class yesterday (I was waiting for the next class, improvers, to start) my teacher was advertising some zouk workshops they’re running in a couple weeks. Of course, there was promptly the chorus of “What’s zouk?” And he asked me to do a demo with him for the class. Ego: boosted!