I ended up not going to the doctor yesterday, mainly because I had over-the-counter meds that kept the sinus pressure at bay and I really didn't have time to deal with it. Today, though, I realized that I really had to suck it up and go. Even though my sinuses finally decided to play nicely and stop making me feel like my head was going to explode every time I looked down, that didn't mean this thing was gone. I knew if I didn't go to the doctor and get antibiotics this stupid thing would never go away and I'd be stuck next week, far from home, unable to breathe through my nose, with the post nasal drip from hell and my sinuses building enough pressure to force my brains out my ears, smacking myself upside the head for being so stupid as to not take half an hour out of my day just to go see the doctor for crying out loud.

So I went, and got to explain to the unlucky doctor who was on call for the day after Thanksgiving all about my stupid sinuses. She poked me and prodded me and took my temperature and blood pressure and asked me what medications I'm allergic too even though they ask me that every single time I go in there and for crying out loud don't they ever write this stuff down in my chart because don't you think this might be good information to keep for later, and then she finally wrote me the prescription for the antibiotics. Phew. So Richard and I hightailed it off to the drug store, where we did all kinds of impulse shopping for stocking gifts and just-for-the-heck-of-it purchasing while we waited for them to fill my prescription.

We arranged all this happy doctor-visiting fun while driving to and from the traditional family breakfast and ornament-shopping trip for Richard's family this morning. We drove down to Redwood City bright and early to meet the rest of his family and his aunt's family and his sister and niece and inhaled waffles and eggs and bagels and not nearly enough coffee, and then all piled into cars to go pick the yearly ornaments from this gorgeous little garden-and-stuff shop down the road. I picked out a tin frog on wheels that looks like some kind of very old-fashioned toy (and meets the criteria of being nearly unbreakable when it inevitably is knocked off the tree by one of the cats), and Richard found a little mouse king wielding a sword. We also had to get the little bright green stuffed toy cat with the sparkly purple nose just because he needed to come home with us. And on the way home we decided that his name is really Petunia and he's overcompensating for having a girl's name by being extra fierce and growly and green.

This evening we loaded up the car with all the stuff we borrowed from my parents for the Thanksgiving dinner, plus all the Thanksgiving leftovers, and carted it all back to my parents' house where the horde descended (us, my parents, and both sisters and their respective children and spouses) on the remains and picked most of the containers clean. After dinner all the kids had baths and my oldest sister left with both nephews and my little nearly-three niece gave everyone goodbye and goodnight raspberry kisses, which she is inordinately proud of mainly because I think it's something she just recently learned how to do. Then, once the niece was put to bed and it was just six of us adults left, we all collapsed in the living room and played Balderdash until we were all crying from laughter and exhaustion, and did our best to finish off as much of the leftover Thanksgiving pie as we could cram into our stomachs. And then Richard and I hugged our goodbyes, especially to my little sister and her husband who we won't see again for probably quite some time and headed home to our quiet house, where the furniture downstairs is still all discombobulated, and where we're all (Richard and I and the cats) still trying to recover from the whirlwind that was Thanksgiving.