Reading: Chez xx for the first time. Thanks Beth!

Christmas: Target shopping for stocking stuff. Baking snowball cookies.

6 December 1999: Grinning

I was just grinning and happy with SEM-itude all day. I forgot to bring my shopping bag o' presents to mail. I went to the counselor dude again. He recommended CODA, Colorado Dependents Anonymous. Parents. Whatever. I think CODA is an amusing name for an organization of people who revisit their baggage. I might go. I rebelled against Ala-teen when my mother tried to force it down my throat and have been sneerful since then. I have more issues with my mother, who used no substances but enabled her men--father, husband, boyfriend, than with my father. Is there a support group for Adult Children of Enablers Who've Dealt with their Dependent Parents? And I didn't gnash my teeth and wail, so there. I consider myself a fairly happy person, too complacent and undereducated and forgetful and inconsiderate and lacking both a local social circle and a beach but happpy ("demented and sad, but social"), but I know I'm weak when scratched at the right points. Now he probably thinks I'm bipolar. Super.

In the afternoon I stopped at Safeway for eggs and confectioner's sugar and cream cheese. I rolled balls of snowball batter in the sugar and called them done--well, no, I baked them too. I dragged out the alphabetical and calendar files and all the receipts and stubs and things and then ignored them while HAO and I went to Target. I'd made her make herself scarce when we were at Cherry Creek the day before (since I'm an ass and didn't get the present Saturday when she wasn't with me) (and that means I've gone into a retail store four of the past four days) and when she saw the shape of the box, she was very happy. I'd shown the possibility to her several weeks ago and she loved it. Also I gave her a box of cookies--I painted boxes I bought at Hobby Lobby Friday, green and red and stenciled of holly leaves in gilt (that last part you have to imagine yourself though).

In Target I found ornaments for my mother: a tufted titmouse, a chickadee, a cardinal, and a bluebird. I thought they were okay, and HAO thought they were okay, and they're certainly not packed with emotional subtexts like the gift certificate to Service Merchandise from two years ago or the current possibility of Dickens Village figurines this year. In the checkout line I noticed the patron behind me eye the birds. She looked about my age or younger and cool and so I ventured to ask, "Would you give your mother these?" and she said yes, she was just thinking that those looked pretty nice. Whew.

The other stranger I accosted was innocently trying to browse for clothes when HAO noticed that the tag on a shirt listed its color as elephant. This shirt was green. A gray-green that I'd call sage, but still. So I asked this other random stranger, who had certainly heard us, if she'd ever seen an elephant this color. This is the kind of conversation that as far as I'm concerned ideally leads to acquaintancehood at the least, but the last time such a chance remark of mine paid off was three years ago when I told someone at a party that that baby over there looked like Tweety Bird. That baby did look like Tweety Bird, but I can't imagine how lonely I'd be in Denver right now if HAO hadn't agreed with me.

Home again, we watched the taped "Millennium"--I like my friends, but that doesn't mean I have to miss my television shows--and I filed. Today I mailed the kidlets' books and half my Christmas cards. I have more stamping and writing to do yet. CLH isn't quite done, nor RDC, nor BJWL, but I've got cards mailed, gifts bought and shipped, other gifts that don't need to be mailed, and some cookies baked. It's December 7. I am so organized. SEM teased me about that as well, and I told him it was his mother's influence.

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Last modified 8 December 1999

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