I'm two-thirds of the way through the holiday celebrations and I need a nap. I've been feeling so run down this year and my health has been suffering as a result. One more family get-together to go and that's it for awhile.

I had always thought I was overly talkative most of my life, but in recent years I find myself becoming almost too quiet. I think it's for several reasons, partly because of my increasingly severe tinnitus (my ears hum and buzz with little provocation, the sound of my own voice is often painful to me), partly because my voice seems to give out after too much talking (too many allergies and a persistant dry cough), and partly because my husband and his family are too hard to keep up with in conversation. They are louder and much more animated than I am, and talk endlessly about subjects I can just smile and nod at, relatives and places I don't know, movies I haven't seen... Not that there's anything wrong with that. My family does talk, but we're a much quieter, more soft-spoken lot, except my brother, who is fairly animated and can match my husband in volume. I'm also a classic example of a highly sensitive person, I like to describe myself as an empath of sorts, and can sometimes just be overwhelmed by parties in general. (My husband does not understand this, he just thinks I'm weird or anti-social)

This weekend my husband's sister and her family are in town, which means more smiling and nodding for me. Which is fine, they are a fun group of very enthusiastic and talkative females. We're doing the in-law family Christmas with them, and then we should be pretty much done for awhile with the exception of a few birthdays in January and February.

The trashy vampire romance has turned out to be much better than it started, I think I'll read the second in the series next. Once you get past all the gratuitous sex and heaving bosoms, there's actually a fairly interesting, original vampire story going on. Yea, a new vampire series to follow!